George Leybourne, aka Champagne Charlie had a song titled There’s Nothing New Under The Sun, or The Same Old Thing, the chorus of which went

It’s the same thing over again,

The same thing over again,

As the world goes round it will surely be found,

The same thing over again.

What brought it to mind was something I read in a book A World To Build by David Kynaston about the rebuilding of Great Britain after World War ll surtitled Austerity Britain 1945-48. So what George was singing about in the nineteenth century, is applicable to the twentieth and to the twenty-first as far as the Labour Party or New Labour, which is exactly the same as old Labour, is concerned. Witness: (If Mr Kynaston will allow me to quote. If I am breaking copyright here Mr Kynastan I apologise.) ‘Nor was a society seemingly pervaded by pernickety, pettifogging bureaucracy any more attractive for a veteran Fabian.’ And ‘The whole world is full of permits and control of people.’ Fast forward to the 21^st century and what have we got? More of the same only much more so. It would seem that socialism is a mindset that believes unless the state can control every aspect of your life, it is not doing what it is meant to do, that and voting more loot for themselves.

Should the Conservatives win the next election as it seems likely they will (surely the electorate won’t be insane enough to vote Labour in again) instead of worrying too much about reducing all the taxes Labour has burdened the country with, (starting with elf and safety, yooman rights and the compensation culture and making judges, like Solomon, use their common sense) they should set about getting rid of all the pervasive pernickety pettifogging laws Labour has brought in in the last ten years. Taxes then will sort themselves out and all those little piggies can get their snouts out of the trough.

How is it that on an island like Crete where the equivalent of council tax depends upon how much electricity you use and is a fraction of what people have to pay in the UK, rubbish bins are empted twice a week, Monday night and Friday night (it used to be Wednesday as well but there has had to be some economising) and these is no nonsense about how or what you put in the bin or where you bin should be or any of the other pettifogging restrictions that seem to have come in since we left the UK ten years ago, accompanied by fines of course if you don’t obey them. And you pay through the nose for it.