Top rock band Jethro Tull were Living In The past and scored a hit with a song with that title?

The British rock band Jethro Tull, led by flamboyant front-man Ian Anderson, had a hit in 1969 entitled Living In The Past, and if time travel was a possibility and I could go back in time I would. You see I often end up thinking that the good old days really were better than the madness of modern life and the state of the world today.

And you don't have to go back that far. I am talking 20 years, 30 years or 40 years ago, when I think life was better for a number of reasons.

One reason I have is that stuff you bought then often worked a lot better and lasted longer. One item that comes to mind is the old-fashioned wind-up watches which you simply wound every day. Most modern watches are battery operated quartz watches and the chances are the battery will pack up and with it your time-piece. It has happened to me so often living here on Tenerife.

The problem is made worse by the fact that you have no way of knowing how long a battery has been in any watch you buy. The worst I have had is for the watch to stop working within a month. Now of course it is possible to get new batteries but you need the right ones, you cannot always find them and it is a lot of hassle having to do this.

With a watch you wound up when it stopped you realised it needed winding and after you had done so it worked again. A simple solution that worked most of the time.

The problem with CDs

CDs were hailed as a brilliant new invention but give me old-fashioned vinyl any day. It not only looked better because you had a much larger record sleeve and any accompanying artwork but vinyl records also played better too.

I find that CDs, even with a tiny mark or bit of dust on them can stop playing properly, stick or skip. Vinyl just crackled a bit but had to be badly scratched to have any really bad and noticeable effect.

Neil Young and CDs

Singer-songwriter and rock guitarist Neil Young, who is a personal favourite of mine, says that the sound quality of vinyl is better too and I am inclined to agree with him. Sadly I had to get rid of all my vinyl collection and record player when I moved abroad and have had to get used to CDs but I miss what I once had.

These are perhaps trivial reasons for wanting to return to the past but there are far more serious ones. When it comes to health I believe that it was genuinely easier for many people to stay fit because the quality of food and drinks available then was better. You see although perhaps there were less products and variety the food that was on sale was not laced with all manner of toxic additives like aspartame, mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) and genetically-engineered soya and maize flour. Genetically modified fruit and vegetables were not on sale.

Colony Collapse Disorder

The natural environment was healthier and this was reflected in the fact there were far more birds and butterflies about as well as wild flowers. Bees were not dying from Colony Collapse Disorder. The oceans were not full of plastic that is killing marine animals and sea birds. It was a very different world. The natural environment is being poisoned with pollution of all sorts including chemicals and very dangerous radiation. We are being poisoned too!

When I was younger we didn't have fluoride in the drinking water supply but now in many places you have this toxic element added so are denied choice. Surely the public should be allowed to decide if they want to risk taking this poisonous substance into their bodies on a daily basis and shouldn't be the victims of enforced mass-medication?

If you don't want fluoridated water in your domestic supply you have to buy an expensive reverse osmosis water filter to get rid of it or buy bottled water, which in turn adds to the problem of polluting the planet with plastic that is accumulating in the oceans and killing marine animals. Fluoride is classified as a poison and is the unwanted by-product of the aluminium industry. It was used by the Nazis to make their prisoners docile and to render people infertile. That is documented. So what is it doing in our water supply? I know I don't want fluoride in my water, thank you very much!

And it doesn't just harm people but it kills some plants such as the Dracaena species. I have seen enough Dragon Trees (Dracaena draco) dying or in a bad condition after the public water has had fluoride added to it here in Tenerife to have concluded that this is what is weakening the trees.

Where have all the public drinking fountains gone? When I was child these sources of fresh drinking water could be found in parks and public places. The water didn't have fluoride in it. Now this method of supplying free tap water has gone and we are expected to buy it in plastic bottles or go without!

It used to be safer too. There was nowhere near the amount of 'mindless violence', vandalism and street crime that is so prevalent today. Many cities and towns have become dangerous places to be after dark, especially on weekends. Mugging and burglaries are taking place where once they were unheard of.

There are many causes for this including drugs and crime motivated by a need for money for addicts to feed their habits, but also because money has become a problem for many more people caused by the ongoing economic crisis created by the banks and bankers. The world really is in a much worse state of affairs from what it was just decades back!

So if I really could travel back in time and stay there to live I would jump at the chance!