A RETROGRADE SENSATION

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 14

A RETROGRADE SENSATION

By

WHIM WHAM

Would I be far out. if 1 guessed That in Nineteen-Twenty Or thereabouts, the Population Of this Great Nation Was less than Half what it is Today? And would I be silly to suggest This was Plenty? All this Growth, where can It get Us except deeper into Debt? The more People there are, the More It costs the Government for Amusing them, educating them. Taxing them, regulating them. Keeping them in Health, or in Gaol. Collecting and delivering their Mail. And the Logic — don’t you follow me, Sir? Is that what We were Fifty Years ago was a far, far Better thing than Whatever we are, Having doubled our Numbers And multiplied the Debt that encumbers The Soil and the Soul . . . Never fear! At least, we've a Government here That remembers the old simple Track — The Clocks in the Beehive tick back — And we cut This and That, and we spend No more than the Market will lend — And we grow, if at all, in Reverse — Can we say. this is Better, or Worse? Is the Country in Coma? Or if That’s a Misnomer. Was it always our Way — to survive! Neither dead, nor entirely alive.