Plus Ca Change
Just found some old copies of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, saved by my parents, from the day of Winston Churchill's funeral 40 years ago, and the following day.
Naturally there was acres of text about the funeral and about Churchill's legacy - which certainly puts that of Tony Blair, such as it is, into perspective.
But the most interesting thing was how familiar some of the other headlines were.
"Health Service in Crisis" - with doctors and nurses complaining about the mess a Labour government was making of running the NHS.
An item about the (then) new corporation tax - with suggestions about how "Advance Corporation Tax" on dividends would work. Of course, the question of whether pension funds should pay such a tax is currently a live issue. The last Conservative government's strategy to build up pension funds, which was so successful that in 1997 Britain had more money in occupation pension funds than the rest of Europe put together, included such an exemption for pension funds. Gordon Brown helped destroy that position by scrapping that exemption in 1997 in the infamous £5 billion a year raid on pension funds.
A cartoon about attacks on grammar schools, direct grant schools, and public schools - then as now the Telegraph took a very dim view of this!
As the French would say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (The more it changes, the more it's the same thing.)
Naturally there was acres of text about the funeral and about Churchill's legacy - which certainly puts that of Tony Blair, such as it is, into perspective.
But the most interesting thing was how familiar some of the other headlines were.
"Health Service in Crisis" - with doctors and nurses complaining about the mess a Labour government was making of running the NHS.
An item about the (then) new corporation tax - with suggestions about how "Advance Corporation Tax" on dividends would work. Of course, the question of whether pension funds should pay such a tax is currently a live issue. The last Conservative government's strategy to build up pension funds, which was so successful that in 1997 Britain had more money in occupation pension funds than the rest of Europe put together, included such an exemption for pension funds. Gordon Brown helped destroy that position by scrapping that exemption in 1997 in the infamous £5 billion a year raid on pension funds.
A cartoon about attacks on grammar schools, direct grant schools, and public schools - then as now the Telegraph took a very dim view of this!
As the French would say, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (The more it changes, the more it's the same thing.)
Comments
Your comments are on occasion supportive, but you do not return requests to contact the electorate.
|am stil waiting for you to contact me on planning matters.
Richard
I am concerned to read this, as I presume from your comment that you have attempted unsuccessfully to contact me. If that is correct,
1) please accept my apologies, and
2) please could you try again and include in your message how you tried to reach me before so that I can check what happened to your previous message.
The best email address to contact me on is
chris4copeland@btinternet.com
I carry out regular checks that my SPAM filters have not intercepted any genuine messages along with the vast quantity of junk which arrives in my inbox every day. However I have occasionally had problems when I missed the fact that hidden among literally hundreds of worthless adverts for everything from medicintes and intimate body modifications to bogus degrees, not to mention attempted fraud, were one or two legitimate messages. Could this be what has happened ?
I will check my filters particularly carefully over the next few days to make sure than any real messages get through.
My telephone number is available from Directory Inquiries or the Copeland Council website.