1. The heatwave has provided the government with a brilliant opportunity to test its shiny new emergency alert system (\u201cDON\u2019T HAVE BARBEQUES YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS\u201d) and upset Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Coffey. The former Conservative minister said the country must avoid \u201cPeter cries wolf situations\u201d, proving she knows as much about folk tales as her close friend Liz Truss knew about the economy.<\/p>\n
2. The aforementioned emergency alert also provided the general public with a brilliant opportunity to see how it would cope with living through what felt for a moment like that scene from Threads.<\/p>\n
3. Policy makers have been trying, for literally decades, to find a way of regenerating the economy of Blackpool, and now one here it is.<\/p>\n
4. Actually, many British men look really fit in shorts.<\/p>\n
5. Socks with sandals have gotta come back into fashion one day, right?<\/p>\n
6. Finally, a chance for good, patriotic English wine to take global viticulture by storm.<\/p>\n
7. Always nice to have the opportunity to continue our long-running national argument about whether air conditioning is a life-saving technology necessary to protect health and provide comfort on a planet that feels increasingly like it\u2019s in some kind of cosmic air fryer, or an example of exactly the sort of decadent luxury that got us into this mess. (This argument isn\u2019t actually new: when artificial cooling technologies first emerged in the late 19th century US, opponents argued, quite seriously, that if the Lord had meant for us to be comfortable he\u2019d have made the planet cooler. This argument, oddly enough, was never applied to making the winter warmer.)<\/p>\n
8. The Mediterranean diet is really good for your cardiovascular system and blood sugar.<\/p>\n
9. The traditional colour of grass is actually very pass\u00e9 these days. Brat Summer was two years ago guys!<\/p>\n
10. It has actually been far too hot to do or, frankly, think about anything. That has protected us, among other things, from the ability to give even the slightest thought to the matter of the looming climate apocalypse and the question of whether this planet will become increasingly uninhabitable in the decades to come.<\/p>\n
11. Alternatively, if that\u2019s too bleak for you \u2013 and I am willing to accept it might be \u2013 perhaps the multiple back-to-back heatwaves and record number of heat-related deaths and the fact the entire country south of the Humber is gasping for a drink might make us finally take this crisis seriously.<\/p>\n
12. Water companies have actually been looking for an excuse to introduce surge pricing for ages.<\/p>\n
13. The arrival of pumpkin-spice everything, and the entire internet adopting \u201cspooky\u201d names and black and orange colour schemes the moment a single leaf turns brown, is going to be a whole lot less irritating this year.<\/p>\n
14. Record-breaking summers can also be a source of pleasing dramatic irony. Half a century ago this very week, with Britain being 15 months into an age of unusually low rainfall, the British government appointed Denis Howell as its first-ever minister for drought. Just six days later, the heavens opened, beginning an unusually wet autumn; within a few weeks, people were calling him minister for floods. You just don\u2019t get existential jokes like that without the right setup, do you?<\/p>\n
15. One summer a few years back, I went to the South Coast for a week with the dog. I assumed, from the name of my hotel and frankly, also, from the price tag that I would be going somewhere nice. But no. Not only was it a dump, with neither room service nor \u2013 how is this possible? \u2013 wifi; and not only did I become horribly, profoundly ill the moment the train passed Hayward\u2019s Heath; but it did not stop raining for a week. If we\u2019re going to have to pay international prices for disappointing domestic travel opportunities, then the least the world can provide is some decent bloody weather.<\/p>\n
16. It\u2019s only after you hear a mysterious, unfamiliar drumming sound on the window in the middle of the night, and find yourself possessed by a strong urge to run outside and literally dance with your face turned up towards this ordinary miracle of water coming from the sky, that you really, truly appreciate rain. Footnote: True story.<\/p>\n
17. One day, sooner than you think, we will all look back on the summer of 2026 as the most comfortable in living memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. The heatwave has provided the government with a brilliant opportunity to test its shiny new emergency alert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,528,23102,150],"class_list":["post-106285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-environment","tag-global-warming","tag-weather"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117119220734761207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}