In the good old daze Let’s all wake up and taste the semolina

FAT FIGHT TOON BAN SO FLAKY

REMEMBER summers when you were a kid?

They seem to have been red-hot all the time, starting about now and stretching till the end of the holidays.

As I write this, there is lightning over London, the Midlands are recovering from heavy flooding, it’s raining in Manchester.

It is tempting to think it never used to be like that – apart from the Manchester bit – but it did.

Same with Christmas. I can remember it snowing all the time, but it has happened only 25 times since 1967 and not all over the country.

We tend to look back fondly, and inaccurately, on what’s gone before.

But was it really better in the olden days? According to a new report, almost two-thirds of us think it was.

Pizza

It raises the question, who really answered this survey?

They seem to be a collection of people living in the Tory shires, yearning for an era last seen in Heartbeat when Nick Berry was out on patrol and the only crimes were Greengrass’s.

But real, actual, people know that although there were good bits about the past, lots of it was not great.

My mate asked his 83-yearold mum about it.

And her response, after she’d finished laughing, was to tell him about: TB, rationing, outside toilets, tin baths, coal fires, racism, strikes, worse inequality, measles, corporal punishment, capital THE Government is considering plans to tackle the obesity crisis with a ban on cartoon characters advertising sugary snacks.

Instead of, you know, coming up with a proper public health strategy, investing in nutritional education or promoting healthy eating they are going to take the punishment and school dinners with that semolina that had the jam in it. No fridges, takeaways, washing machines, telephones, cars, internet, or two-for-one cinema tickets. And television was bad, she went on, just a couple of channels... and have you tried to watch any of that old stuff now? For every Morecambe and Wise there was a Terry and June, for every Fawlty Towers a Robin’s Nest. Breathless after her rant, she calmed herself by using her cable

DOES Peter Bone know something we don’t? The backbencher keeps asking parliamentary questions about what would happen if the PM is “incapacitated”.

Mr Bone, right, insists there’s nothing sinister about it. He has asked successive governments and has had no answer.

He is bringing a bill to cement the line of succession – but its second reading is not until next January. Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong in the meantime... easy way out. So farewell to the Milky Bar Kid, so long Honey Monster and see you later to the monkey off the Coco Pops ads. Coco, I believe his name was.

If this bunch seriously think kids will suddenly switch to salads because these adverts are taken off the telly then they need box to put a repeat of Blue Planet on and ordered a pizza on her mobile. Couldn’t have done that in 1947. Anyways. Back to the report. Its conclusion – that 63 per cent of the country think things are terrible – showed that politicians are taking advantage of our tendency to put on rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the past. Look at what they offer today. The Tories hark back to grammar schools, fox-hunting, and blue passports. And Labour has a touch of to wake up and smell the cornflakes. It won’t work.

This is low-hanging fruit. If the Government have real concerns they need to act properly.

Just ask Tony the Tiger. We managed to talk to him before he headed off to the job centre. His verdict: “Not grrreat.” that. Among its most popular policies is nationalising rail.

But largely it was progressive, not just harking back to a supposed Golden Age. It’s the approach we need.

To let go of the supposedly better past and concentrate on the future.

Incidentally, another survey carried out a couple of years ago found 70 per cent of people thought the past was better, compared with 63 per cent this week.

Which shows that even nostalgia is not what it used to be... CHANNEL 4 announced the shortlist for its outsourcing operations and seven cities have made it through to the deliberations. So let me save you some time. Leeds. The Jewel of the North. You took Countdown off us in 2009, Channel 4 – about time you gave it back.