Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Tube strikes, rail strikes, uncollected rubbish, energy crisis, rampant inflation, recession, and burgeoning national debt. We seem to have been here before. For those of us over a certain age, the current experience of rising interest rates, rising prices, strikes or ‘industrial unrest’, as it used to be called when we still had industries, is eerily reminiscent of the 1970s. The structure of the economy and the composition of the population have altered dramatically, but for those of us who still just about have the capacity to remember, those unsettled times seem to be returning. The portents aren’t good.
Tube strikes, rail strikes, uncollected rubbish, energy crisis, rampant inflation, recession, and burgeoning national debt. We seem to have been here before. For those of us over a certain age, the current experience of rising interest rates, rising prices, strikes or ‘industrial unrest’, as it used to be called when we still had industries, is eerily reminiscent of the 1970s. The structure of the economy and the composition of the population have altered dramatically, but for those of us who still just about have the capacity to remember, those unsettled times seem to be returning. The portents aren’t good.
