LITTLEJOHN: High taxes, strikes, a Labour landslide. It’s like deja vu
The taxman’s taken all my dough… all I’ve got’s this Sunny Afternoon.
Whenever someone asks me how I’ve managed to write this column twice a week when there’s nothing new in the world and we’re all going to hell in a handcart, I reply, honestly: I put on The Kinks and start typing.
There’s something about the Ray Davies songbook which never fails to inspire me. Sir Raymond Douglas Davies, to give him his full honorific, turned 80 at the weekend.
It reminded me that he spent the evening of his 50th birthday doing a turn on my long-forgotten London Weekend Television song-and-dance show.
As the late, great Michael Parkinson once told me: ‘In our game, kid, you get paid to meet your heroes.’
The Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon was the soundtrack of the summer of 1966
Sunny Afternoon was the soundtrack of the summer of 1966. Some people are on the pitch, etc.
Those of us who were around at the time tend to recall that summer as an uninterrupted idyll of glorious weather, of England winning the World Cup, mini-skirts, Swinging London, Carnaby Street and Dedicated Followers Of Fashion.
But Sunny Afternoon was as much a lament as a celebration. It also marked the year when Labour won a 96-seat majority at the General Election, tensions between the U.S. and China sparked fears of World War III, and the highest rate of tax in Britain hit 95 per cent.
It wasn’t all Strawberry Fields Forever. The Beatles also released Taxman — one for you, 19 for me.
Why am I telling you this? Reading myself back in after a week off, catching up with the news, I couldn’t help wondering if we shouldn’t start giving away a packet of razor blades with every edition. It’s all doom and gloom, the end of the world as we know it.
Yes, Starmergeddon isn’t the most enticing prospect. Sky-high taxes, self-righteous Lefties lecturing us morning, noon and night.
But we’ve been here before and survived worse. We’ve even had women with penises, courtesy of The Kinks’ Lola, who walked like a woman and talked like a man. Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, only a few years ago they didn’t get gender reassignment on the NHS and blokes with a beard who tried to use the ladies’ toilets got arrested, not given legal aid and their ‘rights’ enshrined in law.
1966 also saw wages frozen, taxes increased, and a national seamen’s strike causing the Government to declare a state of emergency.
Today, there are certain parallels. The temperatures are in the 90s in old money, there’s a Labour landslide on the immediate horizon and England (if not Scotland) are still involved in a major football tournament. We’ve got protests on the streets against the war in Gaza. Back then it was Vietnam. For seamen’s strike, read train drivers or junior doctors. Some things just don’t change.
OK, so we’re going to get clobbered by the taxman. But that will happen no matter who wins — the election, not the Euros, that is. And no one, not even Starmer, is proposing to put up taxes to 95p in the pound.
Sir Raymond Douglas Davies, to give him his full honorific, turned 80 at the weekend
Yes, Starmergeddon isn’t the most enticing prospect. Sky-high taxes, self-righteous Lefties lecturing us morning, noon and night, writes Littlejohn
We British are a pretty resilient race, even when our woes are self-inflicted, as they are about to be with the ushering in of at least five years of loony Labour government.
We made it through the strike-torn 1970s, the Winter of Discontent, the fuel crisis, the sterling crisis, the banking collapse of 2008, the Troubles, the Blitz, Brexit, two world wars and more than one World Cup disappointment.
As I said, nothing new in the world, not even the weather, which was just as boiling in 1966 before global warming was invented.
We’re having a heatwave and Martha Reeves and the Vandals are heading to the Treasury. We might as well lie back and think of England.
We had The Kinks, today’s teenagers have got Taylor Swift. Enjoy, as they say.
So chin up, chaps, and count your blessings. The taxman might be taking all our dough, but we’ve still got this Sunny Afternoon — and they haven’t worked out a way to tax that just yet.
Which is why I’ve given up on the election and I’m just sitting here, sipping at my ice cold beer . . .
Oh, and happy birthday, Ray.
