To some people the 1960's were the best of times, to others it was a period when many things went wrong in society. Why do people have such different ideas about the 1960's.

There were new laws passed in the 60's which made times better it was made legal to bet and gamble, the death penalty was abolished, abortion was legalised, homosexuality acts were passed which made it legal for two consenting adults over the age of 21 and it was also made easier for people to get divorced. For a lot of people these new laws are what they had waited a long time for, for others they thought it was the complete collapse of British society. They thought that it was morally wrong and that their Christian and own personal beliefs were being attacked.

Politics was also changing which meant that some more people had their say in politics as the voting age was reduced to 18 and also peoples general ideas and attitudes were changing towards things like sex, family and old morals. A lot of people thought though that British traditions that had been the way for so many years were being ruined in a few years and they also felt that democracy was in trouble.

The sixties were a great time for prosperity, full employment, consumerism and variety for almost everything. It was great everyone had a job everyone could afford things, which they never could do before so the economic system went on leaps and bounds. But there were still the people out there that couldn't even see this as a good thing they thought that people were losing sight of things that really mattered like family. Especially the older generation were particularly worried about teenage consumerism. Hippies were completely against consumerism all they wanted was love and peace most people thought it was just a joke though and a lot of people were weekend hippies which meant they had double standards at the weekend they were all for the love and peace thing but as soon as Monday came they were back to their everyday life and doing things that sometimes were completely against hippy beliefs.

The NHS was a really good thing about the sixties, which generally most approved of and also the expansion of Universities but some people still did have their reservations about that pointing to things like student sit-ins. When things like the pill, abortion, divorce and betting made easier. Some of these new rules made life so much easier for people and most didn't abuse them neither but especially for this one a lot of people were against it. There was big moral disagreement about it a lot of people thought it was completely and utterly wrong. When for some abortion was their best option. One of the best things about abortion being legalised meant that the back street jobs could stop which were quite often killing women.

With the abolishment of the death penalty a lot of people thought that the government had seen sense at last but in the sixties there was a significant increase in the amount of hooliganism, hippies were taking drugs and just sitting wherever they pleased and calling it a sit it waving their flowers about as they went so a lot of people were against what they thought was a sheer lack of punishment. As I just mentioned the hippies smoking drugs, drugs were a big part of the sixties because at the beginning a lot of them were still legal and so a lot of people were taking them. I don't think that there was really much positive influence from drugs. All you can really see from them are bad things like the death of famous people and just sometimes the breakdown of people. Which was particularly hard for the family of the victims of drugs to just have to watch them and not really do a lot to help.

People have such different ideas about the sixties because the sixties were for young people you could see this from popular culture. Popular culture is where it started and so if you weren't young in the sixties was a bad time. There was no real change in the sixties, which helped the older generation apart from the NHS, which is one of the only things that there was little argument about the morals of it.