Long live the heatwave

Londoners, according to much of the media, are in danger. The threat doesn’t come from bag snatchers, phone thieves or marauding packs of balaclava-wearing teenagers. No, the danger we’re all being told to fear is posed by a spell of nice weather.

Over the past few days, England, particularly its southern parts, has enjoyed some heat and sunshine. It reached 30 degrees Celsius in London on Saturday and Sunday, and is expected to exceed that – by a small margin – on Monday and Tuesday. It will be rainy, overcast and cool again by Wednesday.

For a country whose weather is frequently damp and gloomy, you would expect a few consecutive days of sunshine to be a cause for celebration. Instead, the heatwave is being treated as a threat to our health and sanity – and, of course, to our precious NHS.

The threat supposedly posed by the sunshine has prompted the authorities to declare an ‘amber heat health alert’. The UK Health Security Agency has urged ‘precaution’ and advised us to keep one eye cocked on the ‘vulnerable’. Darren Farmer, director of operations at the London Ambulance Service, insists we ‘keep away from alcohol’. The London Fire Brigade has even warned of wildfires – probably as big a danger to people in the UK as saltwater crocodiles or grizzly bears.

The media are also in panic mode. Today’s Mirror carries a stark warning about the ‘severe’ risks of the weather. The Metro even seems worried about people getting it on in the heat, with an article recommending ‘sex positions and techniques to stay cool in the heatwave’ and to avoid discomfort and injury.

At Guardian HQ, the situation has been too serious for sex tips. The bible of England’s bourgeois liberals has been acting as if armageddon is already upon us. On Friday, it published a piece referring to warm spells as a ‘silent killer’. ‘When days are too hot to function and nights are not cool enough to recover, the heart and kidneys go into overdrive to keep the body cool’, it warned. Last week, one of its star columnists described the hot weather as causing ‘broad-spectrum enshittification, in which everything, from bus journeys to growing dahlias, becomes harder, and takes longer, and is worse’.

Fortunately, if the evidence from this past weekend is anything to go by, Londoners aren’t convinced by the warnings. For 99 per cent of those who enjoyed a pint or tinkered in the garden (or perhaps even did some drunken gardening), it was a glorious weekend. Pubs and parks were full, and a calm and wistful air descended on an often manic city.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Despite the media’s constant infantilisation of the British public, nearly everyone knows that decent weather doesn’t kill you. To step outside isn’t to be immediately vaporised. You don’t need to abstain from alcohol and be told to ‘stay hydrated’, let alone lock yourself indoors, as the authorities are urging. The most likely health impact from a heatwave is an improved mood.

After all, there is also nothing unusual about warm weather in late June, which is often one of the hottest times of the year. The record temperature for June was set nearly 70 years ago – 35 degrees Celsius in Southampton. It reached the same temperature in Camden, north London in 1976. It wasn’t the end of the world then, and it isn’t now either.

The heatwave hysteria is an indictment of our era. We live in a time when we aren’t trusted by those in charge to enjoy anything fun. Brits are treated as uniquely stupid, or irresponsible, or both. But, as the past few days have shown, people are paying less and less attention to the scolding and hectoring from those who think they know best. Right now, they are simply enjoying the heatwave, just as they should. Long may it last.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.