I'll stick with our "disposable society" in the days of the washer tub twin Chunga

A which? members reported that their Kenwood mixer was still strong today. Photograph: Fox photos/Getty Images

The double Hoover washing machine tub played much in my childhood in the 1970s. Washday (almost every day, as it was one of eight children) to prominence in our kitchen fogged-up pipes and hoses precariously attached to faucets and Sinkholes and SOAP residue floating on the odor and worrying grey water swivel.

They broke every month, more or less. The kitchen then became a workshop of deleted panels, motor parts, rubber seals and washers. I took this as normal things until that in our 24-inch Bush color TV, I saw a documentary in Japan. Out of Tokyo had a mountain of rubbish discarded videotape recorders. We couldn't afford a VCR from one of the new optional had equipped with washing machines. But here is a country which launched to perfectly working device to update the latest model.

Now we are all Japanese. In 1970, the cost of a washing machine was equal to 8% of the average annual income. Today it is only 1.5 per cent. Do the manufacturers, who?, each time over design of low-cost products to be disposable rather than repair.

The latest issue of its magazine tired asks: "Is nothing built to last?"

Some things are. A place will be the Chef Kenwood (above), begun in 1950 at a price of ￡ 19, equal to almost 500 pounds today. One be? Members still regularly uses his Chef in 1971 with original Bull.

Fridges can also maintain bulging of 50 years or more. Is a 1957 Westinghouse "never gave us any problems", a which? members of Surrey wrote. Two Truvox 74 still beautifully polished parquet floors for its owner of Middlesex, few years older than the machine itself same.

But the reality is that there was no golden age when things better and were built to last. In 1971 that? It found that half of all the washing machines broke in its first year. A cold storage room needed repairs, too.

Today, consumer goods have collapsed in price, but their reliability has improved considerably. The possibilities of a washing machine breaking in his first six years now is only 12 per cent. The workshop of repair of high street has been closed, not because we live in a disposable society, but because the work there. But I'm not about to add to moaning them about our disposable society. Only I am grateful that I don't have to fight with a tub of twin Chunga. Some things have got better since the 1970s.

? But not trains. Congratulations to the railways Chiltern, which this week took a step to simplify the absurd railway of Great Britain, ticket system. The problem with the railroad of prices is not a lack of low fares. For example, I'm going to Edinburgh for the festival for the return of ￡ 43. It is cheaper, mile by mile, than in most of the railway networks in developed countries. But I have to play the system - just buy three months ahead with rates online alerts. The real problem is the rates on the day, that of Edinburgh are only € 150, and over 200 pounds, second class. As it has organized mugging. We do not accept payment 15 to go to a stop on the tube because we forget booking 12 weeks ago. By what should we accept because the journey is a long distance train.

p.Collinson@guardian.co.UK

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