All this change but everything remains the same. In fact, in certain areas, it’s getting worse.

Look at the European scene. The economy is going to the dogs, if the gloom-sayers are to be believed (and there doesn’t seem to be any reason not to believe them) and bigotry and intolerance are on the increase. 1920ish, anyone? Back then, from my sketchy grasp of history, within the context of crashing economic decline, Jew-baiting was the circus distracting the great unwashed from the fact that bread was getting expensive.

Now, a different ethnicity is being targeted, and the early signs of a lurch to the unacceptable right are there to be seen.

Austria, which has the unenviable distinction of being the birthplace of the most unacceptable thug of the right to infest the planet relatively recently, has gone in that direction and as belts tighten, the ineffectualness of the left will continue to look unattractive to voters everywhere, never mind that it is the abuse of the so-called “free market” that is taking us where we seem to be going.

As the feeling of well-being decreases, as the casualties of the financial incompetence displayed on both sides of the regulatory divide in the financial centres of the world begin to multiply, so does resentment increase.

Resentment manifests itself in much the same way all over the place, we’re all human. Governments, even if, like ours, they had little to do with the mess that’s been made (for all that people who like the sound of their own voice and think they know it all prattle differently) will feel the cold wind of blame wafting their way, and will hunker down to try to survive.

The bunker-mentality this will generate will, it is hoped, not spill over into bellicosity becoming the substitute for vigorous protection of the self-interest that lies at the heart of all policy, whether it is individual, corporate or national.

In other words, and I hope that my pessimism is a function of the fact that I’m writing this in the grey hours before dawn, having been listening to the financial news (isn’t all news financial at the moment?) let’s hope we haven’t forgotten the history of Europe, and the world’s, last 100 years or so.

Exaggerated? Perhaps. Manically depressive? Maybe. Totally out of the question? Not really.

Accepting fully that at this point I’m swerving wildly with the most tenuous of grasps on narrative continuity, this feeling of wonderment at how things don’t seem to change grows when I look at the Labour Party’s current situation.

According to the Lil’Elves (some day, I’ll work out where this marvellously convenient phrase had its genesis – I know it was forged in the white heat of comment, counter-comment and blog that powered the campaign during the last elections, but it would be interesting to pinpoint it) we’ve got a spanking new MLP, run by a whiz-kid who has reaped an earthquake.

Do you reap earthquakes? I don’t think so, and I suppose I’ll get mildly insulting emails and texts to tell me that I’m something that a certain garrulous lawyer sues for libel about, for using words in a manner that is not four square within the canon. When I coined, carelessly it has to be admitted, the descriptor of one of the weekly rags as “somewhat of a shrill”, I was told I was organically based, and spelt correctly to boot, unlike the way that lawyer’s supposed insult was spelt.

Is it possible to be a “shrill” and thus to be somewhat of a shrill? I have no idea and I’m not fagged to argue the toss – someone else can Google it to check. I tried Google to settle a sartorial point last week, and didn’t – can anyone help? Is it the right thing to do, to keep the flaps on your jacket pockets tucked in, or is not totally non-u to let them flap?

Back to that spanking new MLP, though.

From Doctor Alfred Sant, touted by his Baptists back in the day as the young technocrat poised to sweep Old Labour out on its less than tolerant backside, who managed to find a way for people to be grateful to him for stopping the thuggishness that was inherent in the MLP in the latter years of the twentieth century (gee thanks, AS, you stood up against illegality and bullying – seriously, thanks but that’s a bit like saying thank you to people for obeying the law) we’ve now got Doctor Joseph Muscat, a young technocrat poised to sweep old New Labour out on its more tolerant but equally incompetent backside.

The thing is, this sweeping out is being carried out in a moderately peculiar manner. Back on the scene is Toni Abela, for instance, who for many of us embodies the intellectual arm of Dom Mintoff’s latter-day Labour Party. To be fair, which columnists and bloggers needn’t be, Abela legged it when the MLP became even less acceptable in democratic circles than it was in the Seventies, but he can hardly claim to be a breath of fresh air in Muscat’s hurricane of change, can he?

On the other side of the bookshelf is Anglu Farrugia, who wasn’t part of the Labour Party before – he was a copper, he couldn’t be. But his way of doing politics doesn’t seem to have traits that are different from the way it was done then – in those days, electoral fortunes were lost by the MLP because of foreign interference, in Anglu’s era, the interference is home-grown. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, but in this case, there doesn’t seem to be an excuse.

One of the things that irritated so many of us back in the day was Labour’s foreign policy. Then it was more serious, because they ran the country so the friends they made, for better or for worse, were our friends too.

Now, it’s not that much of an issue that the first bunch to whom Muscat makes nice, aided and abetted by none other than Alex Sceberras Trigona, whose latter-day notions of foreign policy administration back in the Eighties didn’t exactly cover him in glory (maybe it was because he was only nominally in charge, to be fair) are our southern neighbours.

I’ve got nothing against the Libyan government since they’re making an effort to rehabilitate themselves, though I’d love it if they took some responsibility for their geographical location, but does it say much for Muscat’s grasp of the importance of perception that the first thing he did after anointment was to trot off to Libya?

And then to come back to remind us that it was Mintoff who made us buddy-buddy with Gaddafi, when both of them were – how to put this charitably? – not precisely at the cutting forefront of the fight for human rights and democracy?

Swerving a bit again, you know what really hasn’t changed, not even after the drubbing they took only months ago at the hands of Austin Gatt?

The arrogance of taxi-drivers, that’s what, to say nothing of their apparent utter failure to understand what makes their world go around.

In the same breath, last week, they told us that there isn’t enough business to sustain the 200-odd white taxis that are currently enjoying the benefits of what is viewed as being a cartel, while making it clear that they had vowed to defend their businesses to the death.

Excuse me? You’re not making a decent living but you’re prepared to fight about it? Huh?

Or would it be more truthful to say that you’re actually doing very nicely by doing very little in the small market that exists, thank you, and you’re worried that if someone with a bit of commercial sense comes in and expands the market by making taking a taxi the painless experience it is in, say, London or New York, you’re going to have to compete and work to give a service, as opposed to intimidate and take people for a figurative ride?

So, really, things don’t change, they just gyrate round the same tired old pole, with us, the punters, looking into the hypnotising eye of the raddled old dancers.