Crack open the Um Bongo, the Nineties are coming back
Whenever talk turns, as it increasingly does, to the return of imperial measures and grammar schools and blue passports, a lot of people of my age get cross. Older voters, they complain, are trying to “drag the country back to the 1950s”.
Frankly, my generation should give it a rest. We’re missing the point. Which is that, one day, we too will be old. And when we are, we can drag the country back to the 1990s.
Yes, return everything to the way it was during Britain’s true glory days – which, by sheer chance, just happened to coincide with our own youth. It’s going to be magnificent. Centre partings. Tamagotchi. Britpop. Eldorado. The full works.
At long last – after decades in which the world around us will have grown alien and strange – all will be restored to its natural order. Everyone will wear bum-bags. Starburst will go back to being Opal Fruits. Scotland will play at the World Cup. I can’t wait.
It may sound like a pipe dream – but it really could come true. Because it’s forecast that by the time I’m 70, in the year 2050, a quarter of the British population will be pensioners. A quarter! A whole quarter! If you think the “grey vote” is powerful now, just you wait. Politicians will cower before us. They’ll have to give us everything we want. And that includes the Sega Mega Drive, Reebok Pumps and Noel’s House Party.
“We need to go back to oldfashioned values!” we’ll thunder, as MPs tremble and plead. “Restore our great British traditions!” And by “great British traditions”, we will of course mean collecting Pogs, drinking Um Bongo and dancing the Macarena.
Naturally, all kinds of things will change between now and then, as successive generations take it in turns to drag the country back to the decade they each came of age. By 2050 we’ll already be back in the EU, because the generation born in the late 1950s will have voted Britain into the Common Market again. Nigel Farage, by this point approaching his 90th birthday, will be disappointed but sanguine, knowing that the generation born around the year 2000 will in due course vote Britain out once more. On the whole, the 2050s should be fairly peaceful. We’ll be over the worst conflicts of the 2040s, during which the generation born around 1970 will have instigated the reinstatement of the Poll Tax, the second Falklands War, and the re-closurere closure of the coal mines. Sure, there’ll be a fuss when a 101-year-old Tony Blair scraps Clause IV again, bu but most Labour voters will have comeco to terms with it by the time he leads them to their landslide v victory of 2057. Ah, how good it will feel to have things back theth way they should be. Dial-upDial Internet. Double de denim. BT Charge Cards. Right Said Fred.F The young won’ won’t like it, of cour course – but, since hard hardly any of them will bother to vot vote, they’ll have no one to blame bu but themselves. Ho Honestly. The yo youth of the 20 2050s. They don’t kno know they’re born born. Sad Sadly, however, it won’t last. The fools 10 years younger than us will insist on invading Iraq, offering subprime mortgages to low-income Americans, and ordering RBS to buy ABN Amro. And then everything will be ruined.
All I can say is, I’m glad I won’t be around to see it. The football authorities, I’m afraid, are about to do something foolish. Something that will grievously damage the game so many of us love.
They’re going to stop referees from making mistakes.
During Tuesday’s match between Spain and France, video technology was trialled to ensure the referee got all his big decisions right. As a result, a contentious goal for France was correctly ruled out, and a contentious goal for Spain was correctly given. A match that might have finished 1-1 instead finished 2-0.
How disappointing. Injustice and outrage are crucial to our enjoyment of the game. Eliminate referees’ mistakes and you rob fans of the righteous thrill of grievance, the furious chanting about bias, the indignant rows afterwards in the pub. Mistakes mean unpredictability and excitement. Without them, fans’ lives will be blander.
Please, referees. Go on getting it wrong. When you’ve finished reading this newspaper, don’t throw it away. Put it in a box and stow it in the loft. One day it will come in useful. If not for you, then for someone else.
We’re living through extraordinary times. Times that will dictate how Britain, Europe and America fare for the next 50 years or more. Brexit. Trump. Putin. Climate change. All of these are going to matter.
And so, to future generations, today’s newspapers will be objects of historical fascination. People will be engrossed to see how they covered these events and debates. What was their analysis? What predictions did they make? How did they reflect public opinion, and shape it?
I’ve always loved looking at old newspapers. Here’s the front-page headline with which the Mail greeted the UK’s entry into the Common Market, in 1973. “EUROPE, HERE WE COME!” it proclaimed. “For 10 years,” read the subheading, “the Mail has campaigned for this day.”
But times change. On Wednesday, as Theresa May prepared to invoke Article 50, the Mail’s front-page headline read simply: “FREEDOM!”
So keep today’s Telegraph. And on particularly significant days, buy all the papers, from the Guardian to the Sun, and keep them too. Your great-grandchildren will be glad. The same articles may be online, but the web won’t show what prominence individual stories were given, or what overall line a newspaper took. Only print can give the true feel of the age.
The decisions we’ve made, and are going to make, will be studied by schoolchildren and historians alike. They’ll find today’s papers invaluable.