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The year the Thames froze over
đ¤ Robot authors | đ ââď¸ Petite bourgeoisie | đť Boozy Brits
Comment
Snipers watching over the great and the good in 2018. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty
Davos elites have lost control
The far left and far right agree on one thing, says Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal: the World Economic Forum, meeting in Davos this week, is an âall-powerful networkâ imposing its ânefarious agendaâ on the rest of the world. âThis reading gets Davos exactly wrong.â The key tenets of the âDavos agendaâ â global security, an integrated world economy, progress on decarbonisation, gender equality and alleviating poverty â are neither secret nor terribly nefarious. And far from successfully imposing them on the world, the Davos elites are âwringing their hands as the dream slowly diesâ.
The war in Ukraine grinds on; the Middle East has âerupted into chaosâ; the rift between China and the West is only widening. With both the US and the EU introducing import restrictions to reverse the economic damage from low-wage, low-regulation production in China and elsewhere, the Davos dream of free trade has never felt further away. The World Bank warns that the 2020s could be a âlost decadeâ, with poor countries hit hardest. Given all this, âthe Davos hills are alive with the sounds of failureâ. And to cap it all, the meetingâs hilarious âRebuilding Trustâ theme seems to assume ordinary people are losing trust in their leaders because âdisinformation has muddled their brainsâ or something. But thatâs balls. They are losing confidence because the establishmentâs approach to the key problems of the day isnât working. In the end, this isnât a crisis of trust. âIt is a crisis of competence.â
Heroes and villains
Villain
Ed Balls, for kicking his Good Morning Britain co-host Susanna Reid in the head. Sitting in a mocked-up plane seat ahead of a debate on public transport etiquette, the former shadow chancellor swung both feet on to the headrest in front of him, accidentally clipping Reid on the noggin.
Hero
Pope Francis, for proclaiming sexual pleasure âa gift from Godâ. The pontiff made the remarks during a catechesis devoted to the âvice of lustâ earlier this week. âWe must defend love,â he said, rather gloomily adding that it was being âundermined by pornographyâ.
Hero
Japanese novelist Rie Kudan, for making the robots do the hard work. The 33-year-old won one of Japanâs most prestigious literary awards this week, and promptly revealed that about 5% of the AI-themed book, The Tokyo Tower, was generated by ChatGPT. One member of the judging committee described the novel as âalmost flawlessâ.
Hero
Bristol Central, which has been named as the constituency with the highest proportion of voters who want immigration to increase. This has given me an idea, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Instead of wasting time trying to send immigrants to Rwanda, the government should give them âfree train tickets to Bristol Temple Meadsâ. The Corbynites of Bristol Central get more immigration, just as they wanted. Everyone else gets less immigration, just as they wanted. And the immigrants get to live in Britain, just as they wanted. Itâs the perfect solution.
Property
THE TOWNHOUSE Part of Mornington Crescent, one of the best-preserved Georgian terraces in London, this Grade-II listed townhouse unfolds over five storeys, with three main bedrooms and period features including a black marble fireplace, ornate cornicing and panelled doors. A self-contained apartment on the lower ground floor provides two further bedrooms, along with an additional kitchen and bathroom. Mornington Crescent Tube station is a two-minute walk. ÂŁ2.9m.
Quirk of history
A carnival on the water. Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty
The year the Thames froze over for two months
Nearly three-and-a-half centuries ago, England was in the grip of a winter so cold it became known as âThe Great Frostâ, says Bethan Bell on the BBC. Temperatures in London were recorded at around -4C indoors and -12C outside. âThe lowest reported was -30C.â Whole families froze and starved, âcattle and deer died where they stoodâ. The journalist Charles Mackay wrote that it was âso cold the trunks of trees exploded with cracks as loud as the firing of musketryâ. The diarist John Evelyn claimed âcrowsâ feet were frozen to their preyâ, and a monk wrote that he had seen âsoup which has accidentally spilled while being stirred, freezing at one side while the other still steamsâ.
The Thames froze, topped by a layer of ice a foot thick, and remained frozen for two months. Londoners soon erected booths and stalls, creating a âfrost fairâ. Out-of-work watermen pivoted to guiding tourists out on to the ice to see the attractions, and some attached runners to the bottoms of their boats, turning them into sledges. Evelyn described the âbull-baiting, races, puppet shows and many food and drink stallsâ â including an entire ox roasted on the ice near Whitehall â as a âbacchanalian triumph or carnival on the waterâ. Souvenirs were produced, ranging from engraved silver spoons to tickets printed from presses that had been hauled onto the ice. Another diarist, âwho rejoiced in the name of Narcissus Luttrellâ, recorded on 4 February 1684 that there were âthree or four printing houses on the iceâ when he visited. There hasnât been such a major freeze since, and the last, in 1814, lasted only four days.
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Noted
The people of Britain have âlong been famous for their drinkingâ, says Henry Jeffreys in The Spectator. A Frenchman writing in the 12th century described the various races of Europe: âThe French were proud and womanish; the Germans furious and obscene; the Lombards greedy, malicious, and cowardly; and the English were drunkards and had tails.â By the mid-1700s, at the height of the gin craze immortalised in William Hogarthâs Gin Lane (above), the English were averaging 20 bottles of gin a year, per person. But sadly, we seem to have lost our taste for alcohol. A third of pub visits are now booze-free, and a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds donât even drink a drop. Whisper it, but Britain has âsobered upâ.
Comment
Barry Keoghan in Saltburn
Down with the middle classes!
âOnly someone with a name like Emerald Fennell could make a film like Saltburn,â says Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman, a treatise on the âhorror and aesthetic depravity of the petite bourgeoisieâ. Critics have missed this, mistaking it for a tale of âterrible toffsâ and their âtoxic elitismâ. In fact, the real villain is a boy from the suburbs with a pushy mum and a front lawn. The film might claim to satirise the fripperies of the British aristocracy, but this is dishonest. âThe filmâs brain says âeat the rich!â but its soul says âeww, the middle classâ.â
This is nothing new. There is a long history of viewing the middle classes as the âtrue villainsâ of Britain: âuntrustworthy and covetous social climbers with none of the exotic intrigue of the poor, nor the blasĂŠ taste of the richâ. The most evil character in Harry Potter isnât Voldemort; heâs far more appealing than the ghastly Dursleys of Privet Drive, a âboorish Nimby patriarch and his curtain-twitching wifeâ, who havenât earned the right to their petty snobberies. âMiddle-classness is not incidental to their evil but the source of it.â In Keeping Up Appearances, Hyacinth Bucket calls her bungalow âthe Residenceâ and pronounces her name âbouquetâ. âWe laugh because she does not know her rightful place in the hierarchy.â And in Howardâs End, the upwardly-mobile Leonard Bast is killed by a falling bookcase. Forsterâs metaphor is none-too-subtle: he is literally âcrushed by his class pretensionsâ.
đď¸đ¤ This goes both ways. Concealing a relatively privileged upbringing is âone of the most celebrated British traditionsâ, even if it means âclimbing down the social ladderâ. The same John Lennon who wrote Working Class Hero grew up in a house with a name. Jamie Oliver adopted a mockney idiolect, but his admission that his parents owned a pub-slash-restaurant in leafy Clavering in Essex âalways struck me as reluctantâ.
Inside politics
Ramsay MacDonald: âthe man who betrayed his party for powerâ. Getty
The ghost of Labourâs Judas
A century ago next week, Ramsay MacDonald became Labourâs first prime minister, says Tom McTague in UnHerd. Easily Britainâs âmost working-classâ premier, he rose from nothing to the top â and yet today he is shunned as âLabourâs Judas, the man who betrayed his party for powerâ. In 1931, MacDonald made the fateful decision to form a ânational governmentâ coalition rather than go into opposition with the rest of his party, âwho wouldnât back the spending cuts he wanted to balance the budget during the Great Depressionâ. He effectively enabled a Tory landslide in that yearâs election, and his party has never forgiven him.
Every elected Labour PM since MacDonald has similarly been accused of betrayal. Tony Blair was dubbed âRamsay MacBlairâ for his fiscal conservatism. Clement Attlee outraged the left when he introduced prescription charges in the NHS. Harold Wilson was âtarredâ for a round of austerity in 1966 to try and prop up the value of the pound. The philosopher Roger Scruton argued that the liberal âspirit of improvementâ, which hopes to overcome seemingly intractable difficulties and differences, contrasts with the conservative instinct âto make least worst choices based on incomplete informationâ. Labour leaders âcampaign as liberals but govern as conservativesâ â in power, they realise they must choose between options they âpreviously hoped could be reconciledâ. There is little reason to believe Keir Starmer, given the dire state of Britain today, can avoid the fate of his predecessors.
Weather
Quoted
âEven if youâre on the right track, youâll get run over if you just sit there.â
American humourist Will Rogers