Sir Shannon: what was the best ever decade?
One of the great running conversations at The Bloated Toad is "what was the best ever decade", says Sir Shannon Albury.
I grew up in the 1960s, but I had a great time in the 70s as well. No matter how grim times are life always goes on - and there is always fun to be had.
Being a teenager for most of the 60s means that decade was most etched in my sensibilities! I know exactly where I was, for example, when President Kennedy was shot. I was a 17 year old and I 'lost' my virginity at pretty much the same time as he passed the grassy knoll. I have always been amused by that expression' losing your virginity' as if somehow it was a precious item that was unfortunately misplaced on the way to school.
It wasn't precious and I seem to remember I couldn't wait to throw it away. That night Beverley Brennan's parents were at a wake and Beverley 'showed me heaven'. We had been studying Kennedy in our Sixth From politics class and discussed his speech... 'Think not what your country can do for you, think what you can do for your country'. It's fair to say that I did not think much about my country but a lot about myself that night and as that decade raced on. Thanks Beverley, wherever you are...you really got me going!
I'm sure we were more self reliant then. The state was less pervasive. We had less but expected less. Politics and government felt remote and less intrusive.
I was having these thoughts as I contemplated the goings on at Westminster over the past couple of months -including a budget that was yet another kick in the backside for the pub trade. Memories of the UK's weaker moments came into my mind. The 1967 devaluation - when the pound in our pockets was most definitely devalued, and the very regular general elections and budgets of the 1970s. I remember watching the early 1960s budgets on a grainy black and white tele. Everything in those days seemed to end up with a 'run on the pound' and a 'credit squeeze'. You could only take £25 away on a foreign holiday - for God's sake. It was part of being British. We were the sick man of Europe. As the 1970s progressed it got worse but then in 1979 Margaret Thatcher became PM. That seems like a different age too. But what she did was for the first time ever was to give a priority back to individuals, emphasised individual rights and responsibilities. Things became much better - we weren't the sick man anymore. But it now seems we are back in those grainier, funny old days.
The recent budget was as abject a piece of economics and politics as anyone can remember. It showed why all Labour governments end in failure - all in the same way. It's actually because they despise us - they despise everyone even their own kind. Gordon Brown is just like so many socialists before - he thinks he is cleverer than the rest of us. That only he knows what is right and is happy to lecture us all - pretty much all the time. His You Tube performance was more pitiful than anything else and his discomfort of the past week is well deserved - he needs to be put out of his misery. And so do we.
What we now need - in my view and in the view of the regulars here at The Bloated Toad is an adminidtration that believes in SMALL government, that wants to make itself redundant, which wants to tear up legislation and to start to trust us, the people and voters, again. To let us get on with our lives. The welfare state makes a society stupid in 3 generations. New Labour has done it in one.
In year's to come people will look back on this decade, like my father did when remembering the 1930s, and the headlines will be of slump, failures, bank collapses et al. But there will still be fun to be had and a generation of kids will 'throw away' their virginity - just like we did. The sooner we get a new fresh government though - the better. The view from the bar here is - we need a good old fashioned conservative administration that can give us back our businesses and our lives, stop taxing the hell out of us and give us back our freedoms.
