Global Warning

8 November 2008

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning

I was awakened at one in the morning in my small and elegant hotel on the Herengracht, the resort of literary types, by that most terrible of sounds — raised English voices.

A group of standard English drunken thugs in their thirties had entered the hotel with their prostitutes in tow and were refusing to leave. They were conducting two arguments at once: one with the police, who had arrived to eject them, and one with the prostitutes over how much they should be paid (the prostitutes were demanding E300, and they were offering E100). Somehow the police involved themselves in this latter argument too; a policewoman appealed to them to find ‘middle ground’, i.e. (I suppose) E200.

I hesitate to sound like one of those Protestant divines who saw in outbreaks of the plague God’s justified vengeance on a sinful people, but as I looked into the crude red faces of those men in their bully-boy Saturday-night uniform of short-sleeved shirts not tucked into their trousers, exuding lager fumes and arrogant in their inalienable right to make a nuisance of themselves, I could not help but think that no other nation has ever more deserved a prolonged period of economic hardship and utter misery. The slump is indeed God’s wholly accurate and justified judgment upon the English.

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TDK

November 6th, 2008 10:25am Report this comment

Over a long period, I've worked in Amsterdam for probably a year in total, broken into one or two week hotel stays. Many different hotels. I am fully aware of Amsterdam's other attractions and viewed them myself the first time I stayed. However, I've never once seen rowdy English people arguing with prostitutes.

I would guess that your small hotel in Herengracht was not quite so "elegant" as the brochure said. If the receptionist raises her eyebrows at a request for a whole night reservation, you have a clue.

Shark

November 6th, 2008 6:17pm Report this comment

Sadly, God's judgment generally favors fools. So I'm not expecting Him to make an exception of the English. When He brings back Hell, Damnation, Scourges and Plagues specifically for louts, then He will have my support.

Richard

November 7th, 2008 2:28pm Report this comment

When will TD stop moaning about the English and do something inspirational to contribute to their betterment - but that needs imagination. He's become an intolerable bore.

James R

November 10th, 2008 9:18am Report this comment

There you are, Theodore, according to Richard, it's your fault. You've not been providing the louts with entertainment

Rahul

November 12th, 2008 2:02am Report this comment

"ould not help but think that no other nation has ever more deserved a prolonged period of economic hardship and utter misery."

Actually you have it a bit wrong, but the first hint to the real reaction was earlier when you mentioned Lord Curzon, a despicable fellow really. Perhaps not in your eyes, but in mine yes, as this is the man who decided he would partition Bengal and terrorize the great Souls fighting British oppression.

Flash forward to today, and Curzon-lovers are forced to suffer the embarrassment of seeing their countrymen behave like louts. I see some amount of justice in this.

Janner

November 19th, 2008 2:50pm Report this comment

A love of architecture and a love of cannabis are surely not mutually exclusive?

R. Buckwalter

November 22nd, 2008 7:52pm Report this comment

This man Dalrymple: he is our Decimus Juvenalis.

It is men like Juvenal that relieved eyes wearied by the perverse ugliness of that age; he was elevating to the mind, for he gave honest men, incensed by the hypocrisy idiocy, & injustice of all others around them a belief that virtue was once in the world, while reminding them that the highest virtue is knowledge.

Inquit: "Mens sana in corpore sanum"

Vale

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