George Santayana, wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

There was a series on television recently looking back at the 1970s. Being a child of the 70s but having lived "abroad" for most of them I was fascinated with the programme. The series was all strikes, austerity measures, oil prices, credit card debt, house prices, doom, gloom, some pretty awful fashion sense and flashes of absolutely cracking music. I dont know whether it was the intention of the programme makers but everybody that I know who watched it came away thinking about parallels between the situation back then and the situation now. This comparison wasnt mentioned at all but it screamed at you from the TV at every single turn and you could not fail to see it.

During that programme there were several moments that really brought the comparisons back to me. At one point the presenter mentioned the exchange rate between Dollars and Sterling as being an example of something that had gone wrong. I cant remember the exact figure that was quoted on the programme but out of interest I looked up the exchange rate for the day that the programme was aired. It was pretty much the same as had been mentioned as one of the examples of tough times during the 70s.