Better of order, laydees and gents, please. I have been watching re-runs of the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Membership (Affiliated) on Speaking Footage TV.
Starring Northern comedians Bernard Manning and Colin Crompton, it was the mannequin for Peter Kay’s fabulous Phoenix Nights sequence.
Working from 1974 to 1977, the favored ITV present was set in a fictional working males’s membership and featured ‘turns’ starting from knife-throwers, jugglers and xylophone gamers who made Sooty sound like a live performance pianist, to down-on-their-luck American stars reminiscent of Roy Orbison, The Platters and Billy Haley and his Comets.
The opposite night time featured a horrible one-trick-pony magician, yodelling Australian crooner FrankIfield (Keep in mind him? He remembers you), and Britain’s reply to Doris Day, Kathy Kirby, who had clearly had just a few earlier than tottering on stage.
(Really, I’ve a household connection to Kathy Kirby. My Uncle Eddie was a chauffeur who used to drive her from her residence in Essex to a drying-out clinic in Swiss Cottage. On the best way again, he’d cease and purchase her a bottle of gin for the journey residence.)
It was a cornucopia of hilarious hairdos, appalling fashions, rotten enamel, flat beer and a bar menu which included such delicacies as ‘peas on a saucer’ for 5p. That is in case you may see by way of the fug of cigarette smoke.
Most of the jokes weren’t even borderline racist and sexist, which is why Speaking Footage has to broadcast a set off warning about ‘offensive, outdated attitudes and language’ earlier than each programme.
It was so dangerous at instances that it was completely magnificent. And regardless of a few of the materials which at the moment would have the membership raided by police and Manning banged up for ‘hate crime’, there was an innocence about it.
Nineteen Seventies TV present the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Membership, starring Northern comedians Bernard Manning and Colin Crompton
Garbage piles up on the streets of London through the Winter of Discontent in 1979 when dustmen went on strike
The Wheeltappers was definitely a extra genuine consultant of the Seventies than trendy PC interpretations reminiscent of Life On Mars.
So the place am I going with this? Since earlier than the final election some commentators, me included, have been warning that Labour would take us again to the Seventies.
Strikes, gasoline shortages, stagflation, a run on the Pound. Sounds acquainted? The harm carried out to the economic system by Rachel From Complaints in her disastrous Price range has drawn legitimate comparisons with the 1976 sterling disaster.
But it surely received me pondering. I by no means thought I might say this, however would going again to the Seventies be such a horrible factor? It wasn’t all dangerous.
The previous actually was one other nation. Sure, it had its privations. Strikes have been commonplace, however at the very least we had a producing base, in contrast to at the moment.
In 2025, politicians appear solely too blissful – certainly, thrilled – to sacrifice our metal and motor industries on the altar of Web Zero and to outsource jobs and prosperity to China.
Talking of strikes, I can bear in mind banging out tales by candlelight on an outdated sit-up-and-beg typewriter due to the facility cuts which resulted from the 1974 miners’ dispute, which additionally compelled the then Tory authorities to introduce a three-day working week. At this time, a three-day week is seen as an imposition, if it entails truly moving into to work.
Looming energy cuts are actually deliberate official authorities coverage, because of Ed Miliband’s kamikaze-style Web Zero nosedive.
Again then strikes by dustmen left garbage piled up within the streets. After they have been working, although, the bins have been emptied at the very least as soon as per week. But now, councils not emptying the dustbins greater than as soon as a month is par for the course in pursuit of saving the planet. End result: overflowing bins and widespread fly tipping.
Within the Seventies, you may get a same-day appointment together with your GP, who would make a house go to in case you have been bedridden or too sick to make it to the surgical procedure. For those who have been significantly sick, an ambulance would flip up and rush you to the closest hospital.
In 2025, you’ll be able to wait weeks to see a physician and one of the best the Authorities can promise is that, in case you’re fortunate, inside 5 years you might solely have to attend 18 weeks for an operation.
On Sunday, my telephone pinged to inform me to not trouble going to A&E if I got here down with flu or Covid as a result of all of the hospitals in North London have been full to overflowing. On the Whittington, in Highgate, they’re even promoting for nurses to deal with folks in corridors, in the event that they ever make it out of the ambulances stacked up within the automobile park. I may at all times strive the 111 web site. Do not name us . . .
That is the fact of Our World Class NHS within the twenty first century. OK, so medical science has superior exponentially. However that is all the way down to science, largely funded by Huge Pharma and personal enterprise, not politicians or the legions of self-serving bureaucrats who run the well being service. We weren’t handing out fats jabs and free shampoo on the NHS within the Seventies, both.
Petrol was costly, however the roads have been half empty. You might usually assure attending to your vacation spot on time. There have been no extortionate ULEZ zones or congestion-generating LTNs and blanket 20mph limits, designed to fleece motorists with fines and penalty prices.
At this time, petrol costs are nonetheless astronomical however the Authorities is planning to power you to go electrical, although the deadline is hopelessly unrealistic.
Even Labour’s Web Zero Tsar admitted not too long ago that she had no thought what to do when her electrical automobile ran out of puff.
If Miliband will get his means, we’ll all be operating spherical in these foot-propelled contractions, just like the Flintstones.
Yabba Dabba Doo!
And in case you could not afford a automobile within the Seventies, bus providers have been frequent, dependable and low cost as chips. From this month, by authorities order, the most cost effective one-way bus fare throughout a lot of England has risen to £3. Yep, three quid.
We have a tendency to think about the Seventies as an period of confiscatory taxation. And it was. However now we’re lumbered with the best taxes since World Struggle II – and rising.Â
Does anybody significantly imagine we’re getting our cash’s value from our ‘world-class’ public providers?
A few of us bear in mind when there was a police station on each excessive avenue and in each village, and the police may truly be bothered to patrol the streets and examine burglaries and store robberies, relatively than combing the web for ‘inappropriate’ feedback.
In 2025, the world is now extra harmful that at any time for the reason that Chilly Struggle, but we’re spending lower than ever on defence. And we now learn that Labour is planning nonetheless additional cuts to our Armed Forces’ budgets due to Rachel From Complaints’ monetary recklessness and naivety. Be afraid, be very afraid.
I’ve by no means been in opposition to immigration, however what was a trickle within the Seventies has turn into a tsunami. Our as soon as green-and-pleasant is bursting on the seams and being concreted over to accommodate the uncontrolled inflow. Fifty years in the past, we had room to breathe and our public providers – our legendary faculties’n’ospitals – have been far much less strained.
There was a real sense of neighborhood. Children performed within the streets, not on the web, and folks spoke to one another, as an alternative of staring gormlessly at cell phones.
Possibly this nostalgic look again with a level of rose-tinted affection is as a result of the Seventies have been good to me. I married my teenage sweetheart, had two great youngsters and received my massive break in newspapers.
However, on reflection, I would not return, though I do mourn what we have misplaced, notably freedom of speech and thought.
Within the Seventies, drag queens like Danny La Rue have been much-loved novelty acts on the Wheeltappers and Shunters. At this time, they’re all over the place on the BBC and thought of match and correct folks to learn tales to youngsters in kindergarten, geared toward furthering the militant MGBGT+ agenda.
Anybody with a penis getting into the women’ bathrooms on the Wheeltappers would have been proven the door, and doubtless the gutter, as a foundation for negotiation.
Earlier than the same old suspects begin bouncing up and down, I am not defending a few of the attitudes of the previous. However now we reside below a woke tyranny, the place expressing an retro opinion may end up in your collar getting felt and your life ruined.
The primary distinction, wanting again, is that by 1979 and the election of Mrs Thatcher we have been capable of look ahead with a point of confidence.
North Sea oil and fuel have been approaching faucet, promising self-sufficiency and a extra affluent future. 5 many years on, the Authorities is refusing to situation any extra North Sea oil and fuel licences, condemning houses and companies to paying the best power payments on the planet.
A Labour motion which as soon as stood shoulder to shoulder with unions combating to defend jobs is now intentionally instituting insurance policies which is able to drive firms overseas and put lots of of hundreds of individuals out of labor, maybe completely.
At this time, all we have to look ahead to is one other 4 and a half years of the worst authorities in my lifetime. And I’ve seen just a few. 4 extra years of slash and burn, excessive taxes and inexorable decline.
As for these remaining working males’s golf equipment just like the Wheeltappers and Shunters, they could as nicely shut up store now. The best way issues are going, by 2029 there will not be any working males left.
