A recent television series of the aforementioned name allowed us some nostalgia for those of us who grew up in 1970s Britain. But along with those iconic cultural memories - long sideburns, flared trousers, the Bay City Rollers, Starsky and Hutch, a chart-topping David Soul, Dad's Army and dodgy Cortinas - people always refer to the dreadful economy. "Those were HARD times," is the refrain.

It was the time when governments managed decline, when Britain was "the sick man of Europe", when factories were dominated by Bolshy shop stewards - "all out bruvvers" became the clarion call. A succession of hapless prime ministers - Wilson, Heath and Callaghan - all failed to stop the rot. We had the three-day week, perpetual strikes, rampant inflation and rising unemployment.

But, most pivotal in what became the Thatcherite finger-wagging retrospective, was the image of Labour chancellor Denis Healey going, as `twere, "cap in hand" to the IMF. Three years later this was followed by the ultimate denouement, the "winter of discontent" when the dead were not buried, when good old suntanned "uncle" Jim Callaghan returned from a summit with president Jimmy Carter in the Caribbean and said (eternally paraphrased by the tabloids) - "Crisis, what crisis?", although he never actually said it, of course.

Coincidently, these events happened exactly 30 years ago. The election of May 1979 was lost by Labour even before it was called, just like an election in May 2009 would be lost by Brown now. Then Thatcher appeared and - supposedly - performed an economic miracle as Britain was steered towards new-found, irrevocable prosperity.

Thirty years down the line, the world economy - but I suspect, more particularly the British economy - is totally screwed up again. Truth is, we never really shook off the old boom and bust cycle. Thatcher was an inordinately lucky politician and her predecessors - above all hampered by a quadruple rise in oil prices - were misfortune personified. Prosperity under Thatcher was an illusory house of cards built on debt and credit and taking in other people's washing.

So life on Mars is really back: unemployment rockets, businesses go under and the pound loses value by the day. Even the spectre of national bankruptcy looms as taxpayers fund the seemingly bottomless pit of losses racked up by the banks. But in the 70s there was a key difference - the notion of community was still intact. You knew your bank manager, your local shop assistant, baker, milkman and village bobby. Words like "pride" and "shame" had not yet disappeared from the English language. The recession won't prove eternal and, economically at least, Britain plc will probably survive. But I suspect the social damage will be even more shattering as crime and disorder escalate.

If you want a vision of the future, see the movie Escape from New York.