The more things change

In Cuba, nothing ever seems to change.

Once more, the Castro regime is urging all Cubans to join the carefully-orchestrated , Government "celebrations" to mark May Day, as you can see from this excruciatingly silly story in Granma, the official propaganda sheet of the Communist Party.

In Havana, thousands of ordinary Cubans will be given a day off work - but it's not a day off in the real sense of the word.

Instead, the holidaying workers will be bussed to the Plaza de la Revolucion to "celebrate" international workers' day, standing in the sun for hours, waving revolutionary placards and patiently listening to endless speeches about the evils of imperialism.

Who knows? They may even get a glimpse of a supposedly recovering Castro, according to the international media, although this is by no means guaranteed.

Predictable? You bet.

In fact, that's the way it's been since 1962 when Castro decided, without consulting anyone, as far as I can tell, that Cuba would join the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and become a fully-fledged, Russian-style Communist state. In the tropics.

And that meant that Cubans had to start copying everything their Soviet paymasters did.

Like introducing a State-planned economy that was a total failure from the word Go, establishing a KGB clone to keep en eye on trouble-makers, closing all non-Communist newspapers, confiscating all private property ...

And celebrating May Day with an extravagant "people's parade" in the capital, complete with military displays, goose-stepping soldiers, and visiting foreign dignitaries.

I can't imagine there will be much by way of an extravagant anti-imperialist display in capitalist Moscow today. The old Soviet Union itself has since disappeared into the dustbin of history. Where it belongs.

But in Cuba ...