Having spent most of my childhood just a few miles from Cheddar in Somerset, from which that type of cheese originated; I was until recently unaware of one of the most crass instances of Big Government socialism I have encountered.
During World War II, the heavy boot of central government control descended onto the neck of UK farming and food production - from whence it has never been lifted.
And one of the first actions of this command economy socialism was to wipe-out many hundreds of historical and locally varieties of distinctive local cheeses; and force all milk producers to supply a handful of factories making a single uniform type which people called Government Cheddar.
The excuse for such inefficient and unproductive tyranny was 'fair rationing' - and this maintained the practice for about nine years even after the war had ended! (And would probably still be enforced on the masses, if not on the rulers, had the socialist government had its way.)
But, after such wholesale annihilation of centuries of tradition; it took several decades before British cheeses revived and recovered to anything like the current level - when there are probably many hundreds to choose from, from almost every region of the country.
The story reminds me of why George Orwell got the idea of 1984 - not so much from the Soviet Union - as from the UK wartime government; with its tendency to impose drab, moralistic, oppressive controls on the populace - under cover of 'fairness' or 'the public good'.
There has long been a significant slice of the British people who are eager for such restrictive policies, and plenty of mini-tyrants keen to oblige them; as we have more recently seen with birdemic lockdown/ distancing/ masking/ pecking program, fake-justified by 'health'; and the ongoing program of tedious economic destruction, fake-justified by 'preventing climate change.
Luckily, there are other Brits (mostly English, and middling sorts of people - especially the self-employed) with a more independent and sensible traditional attitude; who will push-back in whatever ways they can.
It is to these people - certainly not to our rulers or their lackeys among the intellectual class! - to whom we owe such wholesome pleasures, freedom and dignity as yet remain to us.
