Brace yourselves, travel agents of Britain! People have been watching those hysterical chaps with their flapping arms and their weather maps like a homicidal pizza on the telly. Last week, Europe was burning in the hellish heat of Cerberus, this week it’s Charon.
“Sharon who?”
“Oh, Neville, do keep up. It’s Charon. You know, the man who ferried the dead to the underworld in Greek mythology.”
“What’s that got to do with our fortnight in La Palma, Mary?”
“It’s unbearably hot there, wildfires and everything, according to the BBC. Better cancel, Nev.”
Brrrring brrring, brrring brrrrring.
Neville: Hi there, I’d like to cancel our holiday in La Palma. They say on the news it’s very hot.”
Travel agent (sighing audibly): It’s the summer, Sir. It’s always hot in the Med.”
Neville: I know, but they say it’s dangerously hot in La Palma.”
Agent: Actually, the temperature in La Palma has been in the 20s and it’s forecast to remain below 30. Very pleasant, actually, for the time of year.
Neville: What about the wildfires?
Agent: The fires have nothing to with the heat, Sir. I think you’ll find the BBC spliced clips of the fires in La Palma into its heatwave report to make it look like it was happening in Spain.”
Neville: La Palma isn’t in Spain?”
Agent: Er, no, its 1500 kilometres away, Sir.
Neville: So we shouldn’t bother to cancel?
Agent: I’m afraid your travel insurance doesn’t have a clause covering Nervous Nellies scared half to death by the weather forecast on the TV. Sorry, Sir, it’s non-refundable. You won’t get your money back.”
Neville: Ah, okay. I’ll be glad to get away from this awful weather to be honest with you. Not exactly summer, is it?”
You may have noticed that climate catastrophism has gone nuclear over the past week, as if on cue (we’ll come back to that), but the good old British weather refuses to co-operate. Disappointingly for the We’re All Gonna Fry brigade, it’s cool, rainy and sullen here with fitful gusts of wind; almost autumnal at times. As a July baby, I can tell you this is not unusual for July. (Prince George will have to get used to having his parties in the cloudy drizzle on our mutual birthday.) Still, reporters scour the rest of Europe for better (ie bad) news. Tourists at the Trevi Fountain in Rome are invited to agree that the weather is “unbearable”. If it’s unbearable, why aren’t they back in their hotel rooms with a wet towel on their heads instead of happily licking their pistachio gelato and soaking up the rays? Why are reports of wildfires in La Palma being linked to soaring temperatures, when the weather on the island is in fact unusually mild, and set to be in the mid-20s all week?
Really not very unusual weather events have suddenly acquired important, scary names drawn from the mythological flames of hell. After Cerberus and Charon, get ready for Heatwave Hades. If the current weather in the UK had a name it would be Colin.
Are Brits really “cancelling their holiday plans” because of the “truly terrifying conditions”? Or are they, like me, stocking up on Hawaiian Tropic (used to be sniffy about it, now addicted) from Boots and crawling through the final fortnight of work before I can replenish my stocks of Vitamin D on a Turkish sunlounger.
There is something horribly familiar about all these apocalyptic warnings of catastrophic consequences if people don’t act. “Temperatures across the Mediterranean are nearing the highest ever recorded in Europe with travellers being warned that local medical and health services are strained in some areas.”
Ah, yes, that’s it. Knew we’d heard it before: Stay At Home, Save on Sunscreen, Support Net Zero.
It’s almost as if the same people who scared the pants off us during the pandemic, terrorising people into obeying often idiotic rules, were at it again. The Behavioural Insights Team (aka the Nudge Unit) – spun out of the Cabinet Office, and now working many large corporates, global institutions and national governments – is teaming up with broadcasters to drive messages about climate change.
A report by the BIT in collaboration with Sky TV called ‘The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles’ says that “behavioural change on climate can be driven by TV... It comes at a critical time as experts now widely accept that we must shift the behaviour of millions of people to deliver our collective net zero goals”.
You don’t have to be a climate sceptic to find something sinister in the idea of broadcasters plotting to manipulate the public into reaching “our collective goals”. Whose goals are they? Why no questioning of whether this is in the population’s best interest or not? Where are the alternative points of view?
After the disastrous impact of its Covid propaganda on the nation’s mental and physical health, a period of embarrassed silence would be welcome from the Nudge Unit. Yet, here they go again with their sly tricks, their cold calculation of human weakness, their sneaky sleight of hand. What is the betting that the sudden change in TV weather maps, from pastoral greens and shy yellows to diabolical reds, even bruised purples and black, was suggested by the Nudge Unit?
And why has the Foreign Office weighed in, updating the Greece and Spain sections of its website, adding an ‘Extreme Weather’ section detailing how to stay safe during the heatwave as well as “important resources to take note of if heading to the holiday hotspots in the near future”? For heaven’s sake, has no one at the FO heard of this excellent thing called “a siesta”?
None of this is to deny that it looks like a very hot summer for southern Europe – although we must wait for the full statistics to properly assess how it compares with previous heatwaves. But if you were being cynical, and after two years of the entire population being professionally frightened by our own government it’s hard to be otherwise, you would conclude that sunshine is being weaponised in a bid to get the British people to adjust their ways to hit an unattainable and self-harming net zero target.
No. No. We have been shamefully mistreated by our masters, criminally misled by “models”, controlled and horribly hurt by unseen forces, and now the wily bunch think because they got away with it last time we will roll over again and do as we’re told. No.
By happy chance, I’ve just read an important new book, Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist It. Authors Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan have some great ideas how to recognise Nudge Unit tactics and how to fight back because “there is a war on for your mind”.
They have over-reached this time, I think, with their lurid weather maps and their brazen attempt to get us to cancel our summer hols. Rebellion is stirring. People are mocking. “In Cyprus, we’re just about holding out,” reports one laconic reader, “Locals simply call it ‘summer’, but what would they know?”
We shall fight the Nudgers on the beaches. We shall fight in the seas and swimming pools. We shall revel in the heat and defend our fortnight in the sun. We shall never surrender our minds to them, for our minds are ours and ours alone.