“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” The opening of “The Go Between” by L.P. Hartley. We have forgotten the enormous changes over the last 30 years. The landscape was just so different back in the time of “Life on Mars”. I have to pinch myself to remember the Miners Strike of 1984 and 1985 and yet sometimes the memories come streaming back. Did I really hear a man, who is now a pillar of the establishment, justifying the death of David Wilkie all those years ago?

N.B. David Wilkie was the taxi driver killed by miners in South Wales. His crime was driving working miners to work.

Did we really think we could all be killed by the Soviets? It all seems a bad dream. Now, in the memorable words of a staunchly anti-communist former government minister, Dennis McShane (not, I hasten to add, the aforementioned pillar) the maggots (he meant Eastern European communists) have become respectable business people.

We have become fixated on relatively trivial matters. Remember that when you start to panic about the latest fad or fashion. Remember that when they tell you that we face the greatest threat that we have ever faced.