New Injustice Discovered
Not in the Guardian, as is generally the custom, but in the Spectator, thanks to Carola Binney, an undergraduate history student at Magdalen College, Oxford, who “writes on student life.” In keeping with tradition, the headline is bold:
Cloakrooms should be free to stop young women freezing to death.
If the thought process behind the headline (and its missing comma) is somewhat unobvious, Ms Binney elaborates:
As I wiggled into my tights in preparation for an end-of-term night out, I was faced with the perennial clubbing question: should I take a coat? Logic, and my mum, would say the answer was obvious. My outfit was hardly cosy, and a tipsy walk home at 2am in December is an adventure best braved from within my wardrobe’s most wind-proof, water-proof and fur-lined offering. But the question wasn’t just one of insulation – I had a financial decision to make. The cloakrooms at most Oxford clubs cost between one and two pounds: what did I want more, healthy circulation or a Jägerbomb?
Ah, the life of the mind. Our thoughtful undergraduate goes on to share Dickensian tales of underdressed drunkenness, thereby illustrating the seriousness of her latest cause:
25-year-old Bernadette Lee, for example, died of hypothermia last January after going on a night out in the Kentish snow with no coat.
“Coats,” she informs us, “are especially essential on nights out, because alcohol, although it makes you feel warmer, makes you more vulnerable to hypothermia.” From this, she concludes,
If local councils are looking for a way to protect young women on nights out, they ought to make a free cloakroom a condition of a club’s license.
Readers may wish to take a moment to process Ms Binney’s mindset of entitlement, a mindset not uncommon among our brightest and best. Specifically, the belief that coat-wearing in winter can only be achieved – say, by students at Magdalen College, Oxford, which, incidentally, boasts its own deer park – if local nightclubs are forced to provide storage for these items entirely free of charge. On account of the reluctance of said students to part with one, possibly two, whole British pounds. Money that might otherwise be spent on roughly one half of a tasty and nutritious Jägerbomb. You see, they can’t be arsed to pay. Therefore someone else should.
Via the ever-vigilant Mr Eugenides.
It could be worse, i.e. more stupid. At least she’s not asking for free taxis home.
Here’s a thought Ms Binney. How about the young women wear some clothes?
Since the article notes that “Female binge drinking has increased exponentially in recent years”, maybe it’s no bad thing if people can’t afford as much alcohol as they’d like.
“Coats,” she informs us, “are especially essential on nights out,
Thank God for that Oxbridge education.
Standards are clearly falling at our elite universities. What does “especially essential” mean that ‘essential’ doesn’t? And then: “Logic, and my mum, would say the answer was obvious”. Experience and her mum, perhaps. But logic, Carola, tells us nothing about the world: it is the a priori science of the formal relationships between propositions and concepts.
Specifically, the belief that coat-wearing in winter can only be achieved – say, by students at Magdalen College, Oxford, which, incidentally, boasts its own deer park – if local nightclubs are forced to provide storage for these items entirely free of charge.
I say we do nothing and let nature take its course.
She needs a good slap to keep her cheeks warm.
>>the article notes that “Female binge drinking has increased exponentially in recent years”,
A lazy healthist lie.
If the cloakrooms were ‘free’ everyone using the club would pay for them in higher prices, so those not using the cloakroom end up subsidising those who do.
British bars and clubs are pretty crap in the way they don’t provide cloakrooms or if they do, you need to pay. In Russia, no bar or club could ever hope to stay in business unless a huge free cloakroom was the first thing you came across when you walked in. It was great, because the problem this woman describes is real – do you freeze, or stand around all night with a coat under your arm. In Russia, you wear a t-shirt with a giant coat over the top (and the women wear fur with next to nothing underneath). What surprised me most was that when I went to Vilnius, which is as bloody freezing as Russia, their bars had no cloakrooms (although the clubs generally did). So British clubs would be greatly improved if they had cloakrooms, preferably free. But if they have a cloakroom and it costs £2…well, that’s hardly something to complain about.
In any case, the answer is not government intervention. If she doesn’t like the facilities in the club, she can either talk to the management about it or spend her money somewhere else. If I was her, I’d pay the £2 and STFU.
Hey, it’s government intervention you want?
No Coats, No Boots, No service! Would that work?
If this young woman is so broke that she cannot afford a couple of pounds for a cloak room, maybe she can’t afford to go clubbing. How much do those Jägerbombs cost, anyway – how about having one fewer Jägerbomb and paying for a cloakroom instead? Or is she one of those women who go to a bar and wait for a man to buy them a drink (or several drinks)?
Specifically, the belief that coat-wearing in winter can only be achieved – say, by students at Magdalen College, Oxford, which, incidentally, boasts its own deer park – if local nightclubs are forced to provide storage for these items entirely free of charge.
I blame the patriarchy. And capitalism.
You see, they can’t be arsed to pay. Therefore someone else should.
Sounds like the motto of our times.
“It could be worse, i.e. more stupid. At least she’s not asking for free taxis home.” Would that be “home from the club” or “home from the flat of the cute guy she picked up at two but who kicked her out at four”?
Can someone explain to me the allure of Jägermeister? In Germany, it’s exclusively consumed by the elderly as a postprandial digestive. In addition to brains, Ms. Binney needs better taste in cocktails.
First discovered jäger while skiing in Austria 20 years ago in the form of jäger tea. Perfect concoction for putting life back into cold and/or sore muscles. Bought some last year with the intention of making jäger tea again but never got around to it. Then this Christmas, was out of spiced rum, which is what I usually mix with eggnog, so decided to try jäger. Liked it much better than spiced rum or southern comfort or anything else I may have tried in the past. Shots of jäger by itself, I’ve never cared much for. Thought of trying it with root beer, but never seem to have both in the house when such occurred to me.
Excuse me, did she just say she has in her wardrobe a garment lined with (gasp!) FUR?! Think of the poor little animals.
Get yourself a rich, stupid boyfriend, sweetheart. He’ll pay for the coat check and all the drinks, get you home, etc etc, so you can get absoultely rat-faced every night of Trinity term (or whatever it is at Oxbridge). Given that you move in the Spectator environment, such a patsy shouldn’t be hard to find lolling about uselessly somewhere. I’m sure you and he can sort out some way in which you can repay him for his largesse. See, the market solves all problems.
“TWA pund?” — Angus McBeefsteak
I’ll see your microaggression and raise you a carbonated microaggression.
@Ten: Harvard..?!?
Life is tough.
Spending decisions do not come easy.
I thank this woman for highlighting the problem.
I thought it was a pi**-take, but I now realise my masculinely ? oriented mistake.
Or was it just a set up to get knee jerking or twerking or whatever retrogrades like me all worked up?
Sadly, now, nearly all our Universities – certainly the 466,097 “opened” since the 1980s, are no longer fit for their strategic purpose. They should be shut down. The new flood of Young White Ethnic British labour, eager to go clubbing, will drive wages smartly down, benefitting the economy. As to the lecturers and Dons, they can go hang except for the possible exception of Professor Brian Cox, who is sometimes instructive and entertaining.
Can someone explain to me the allure of Jägermeister?
Very clever marketing on the part of some Americans. They took an obscure drink known in Germany more, as you say, as a medicine than a drink and relaunched it as an apres-ski-stroke-winter staple. As a marketing campaign it was astonishingly successful.
This specific sense of entitlement is a particularly feminine one, not especially related to elite status.
They used to say something about fur-lined knickers helping, but I am not sure I want to go there. At least, not in public.
The obvious win/win solution would be to turn the heat down to about fifty degrees in the clubs.
Just as a matter of interest, does anyone know who Ms Binney is related to?
I want to know how it is that a third-year BA student gets a blog with a political weekly. I don’t see any evidence of talent being involved.
I just read something earlier today that pertains to this. Feminism is essentially just the complaints about the inconveniences upper class liberal white women have in their meaningless lives. That’s why they are constantly shrieking about rape. Because rape is the only thing they talk about that makes them seem serious. Although to be fair, modern Feminists have managed to make a topic as serious and horrible as rape into a punchline.
So clubs get forced to offer free coat rooms, and drink prices go up to compensate. What will they be asking government to do for them then?
Has she not heard of Darwin?
Re: Harvard. Some “Progressive” Jewish lass is complaining about the “microaggression” of the Sodastream logo towards Pali-students. Why are there Pali-students AT Harvard, and why is she a screaming twit?
Why? Because the Clown Quarter has taken over Academia.
Why? Because the Clown Quarter has taken over Academia.
You don’t say.
Why? Because the Clown Quarter has taken over Academia.
You don’t say.
So presumably the festivities that celebrate the beginning of studies would involve the ritual burning of the effigy of David Cannadine, with quite particular emphasis on burning all copies that can be found of his book Ornamentalism . . . . .
—Yes, all copies that can be found. I’m keeping mine, but then I wouldn’t be enrolled there anyway . . .