Have you ever heard of the big freeze of early 1895? I thought not and no, neither had I until I sat down with a book about past weather extremes.
December 1894 was unusually mild. So much so in fact, that it was precisely the sort of balmy winter that would lead to protesters hurling cans of soup at paintings and shrieking headlines. Even chrysanthemums were flowering in Herefordshire at Christmas.
However, it all changed in January 1895 when the cold started. A vast mass of freezing air had locked itself down over Britain, preventing the mild low-pressure cyclones from pushing up across the Atlantic. Within a few days widespread snow up to 10 inches (25 cm) deep but a fleeting thaw made it seem as if the worst was over.
It wasn’t. On January 23rd 1895 the cold was back and with a vengeance. It began with major thunderstorms followed by a howling gale from the northwest that tore off roofs and ripped up trees while dumping a fresh round of snow. By January 25th a train leaving Wick was buried under 25 ft (7.6 m) of snow.
The snow spread further south, to be followed by plunging temperatures. At Braemar by February 11th it was down to —17°F (—27°C). The same day Buxton in Derbyshire clocked —11°F (—24°C). London was almost mild by comparison. At Beddington near Croydon on February 7th an almost pleasant —2°F (—19°C) was recorded.
The massive freeze ended river navigation. Ships were stuck fast, and cargoes could be neither loaded nor unloaded. The Manchester Ship Canal was solid ice and resisted all attempts to break it up.
The result was also mass unemployment, a catastrophe at a time when there were no benefits and workers could be laid off at the drop of a hat. Farm labourers were laid off because the land was like concrete. Fishermen obviously couldn’t work and had no income, to say nothing of the fish that no-one could now eat (and at a time when the British fishing industry was enormous).
Glasgow became a city of soup kitchens and starving families with tens of thousands of unemployed men. In order to keep the gas works operating on the Old Kent Road a special team had to be organised to be on duty round the clock smashing the ice on the river so that coal could be brought in. That eventually created an ice wall 10 ft (3 m) high and two miles (3.2 km) long.
The frost penetrated two foot (61 cm) underground shattering water mains in the south and even deeper in the north.
By February 14th the Serpentine in London had 9.5 in (24 cm) of ice and a 600-strong battalion of Grenadier Guards performed manoeuvres on it.
It was, in short, a late Victorian Beast from the East. It lasted most of the month and began only gradually to abate in the latter part of February, but Glasgow’s harbour remained blocked by ice until well into March, with another cold snap temporarily halting the thaw.
According to the BMJ for April that year deaths from respiratory diseases in February nearly tripled:
The effect of the cold on the public health was noticeable, especially in the increased mortality among children and old people. The increase in the number of deaths from diseases of the respiratory organs was first notable in the return for the week ending February 2nd, and a month later the weekly number of deaths from these causes was 1,448, or 945 above the average.
That’s more than three times as many deaths than normal from respiratory conditions. There’s no mention of the others who just froze to death.
The meteorological conditions that prevailed in 1895 were far from unique. They were a function of Britain’s location. They had occurred before and have happened since, for example in 2018, even if 1895 was exceptionally bad.
The interesting question though is how will 21st century Britain cope if 1895 happens again, especially in the utopian landscape of Net Zero? We live in an astronomically more complicated world. And it will happen again. The only real question is when?
It’s not hard to imagine the devastating consequences on the supply food chain as every electric delivery vehicle grinds to a halt, its battery rendered lifeless by the temperatures, to say nothing of the deadened solar farms. Indeed, the wholesale economic devastation that could be caused by compromising the electrical supply is too awful to contemplate. Back in 1895 that simply didn’t matter.
We also have today a vastly greater elderly population, many of whom are totally dependent on medication and support to keep them alive during their 80s and 90s. With so few homes now unable to accommodate open fires, the reliance on electric heating to keep them warm will be exposed as catastrophically vulnerable. As it is, many of the elderly who live on their own already cannot afford to heat their homes even through the recent years of mild winters.
And what would happen to the hospitals? As the sick and elderly piled up outside the doors of A&E the creaking NHS edifice would collapse. The death rates of 1895 would look like a mouse breaking wind in a hurricane by comparison.
The main point is it’s not so much that the weather has changed (regardless of what anyone thinks about that or by how they measure it, or what the causes are) because it’s always changed, but that our world has altered beyond imagination since 1895. In some respects, we seem more in control than ever before of our environment, but the truth is that we are actually more vulnerable than we have ever been: every aspect of our existence now hangs by an electronic thread.
Worse, we seem dead set on making ourselves as vulnerable as possible. Moreover, our expectations of the state have exploded. Back in 1895, people were rather more self-sufficient, because they had to be.
Perhaps the next Government, whomever it’s formed by, will have ‘top people working on it’. Perhaps the chancers who run our lives will strike lucky and it will all pan out as we march joyously into the promised land where the sun always shines on solar farms and the battery is always charged. But I wouldn’t bank on that. It only has to happen once, and the whole house of cards will be flattened. Just like the batteries.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Don’t care, I’ll never watch the shyte!
Sure and it’s healthy not to get drawn into this stuff too much. However the problem is the cancerous effect on our youth is still multiplying. So in a wider sense, some action needs to be taken.
I prefer actions that find opportunities:
All the films that are doing best, it seems, are resolutely un-woke. Maybe a bank which states it will take customers of any political persuasion should open up. The Daily Wire are doing great stuff with streaming content – documentaries and some more films in the pipeline. Rumble are attracting ever more content producers, because they are so concerned about the randomness of YouTube bans and demonetisation. Twitter is now paying content creators, and it seems now successfully attracting increasing numbers because of this coupled with its anti censorship stance. Jeremy Boring did a great job establishing a competitor to Harry’s Razor’s when they released a ridiculous anti-customer woke rant advert. He has taken a huge chunk of their market share in the US and also produced one of the greatest adverts ever.
Oh and let’s not forget this website – the Daily Sceptic. It appears to have established itself and I hope finances are doing well.
So there are many reasons to be hopeful but we need to work harder to find new opportunities, because the tide, though showing signs of turning, is not yet turned.
Politics, like nature itself abhorrs a vacuum. But vacuums are loved by entrepreneurs. It is pure opportunity. Such is the power of the free market that they are trying to destroy.
..me either Dinger..just the description here had my brain dribbling out of my ears!!!
I DO care. I have two adult sons – fortunately born before the anti white male propaganda really kicked off.
If they were children or even young teenagers now, I’d be seriously concerned about the messages they were constantly getting.
Most TV ads only feature simpering, dimwitted effeminate men unless they are black
Yep it’s been like that for years. There are even a couple of black man YouTuber’s I’ve seen drawing attention to it and laughing at how ridiculous it is (and also slightly offended by the implication they “need the cultural help” – but only slightly offended, because they are of the right politics so are made of sterner stuff).
We are without doubt living in one sick world today.. or should I say sick Western world. All playing out as planned to bring about the West’s ultimate destruction.No stone is being left unturned, every institution undermined and destroyed.. bit by bit..
Nothing like this happens in a vacuum.. its not a spontaneous idea.. every Western country is effected in the same way at the same time as if by magic. Its not magic of course, its been long in the planning.
So who’s going to name the planners ????
Me….. Neo-Bolsheviks
Kalergi Plan…
The 8 genders of the Talmud……..
Talmudic.. Everything that is happening now is Talmudic.
Palestine has come home….
Ukraine… Zelensky… Puppet for the same people..was not placed by the CIA
When it’s released in China, it is called “Baizuo”, rather than “Barbie” and billed as a comedy.
Sounds pretty much like every other major Hollywood movie from the past 10 years at least.
I was pointing out this misandry back in the 1990s. I was reviewing films for the the local paper and had to sit through ‘chick flicks’ so other people didn’t have to. Overwhelmingly, they involved the noble female protagonist in a relationship with a cheating wealthy man and her group of female friends all in relationships with weak, lying, scheming men as the women all support each other when they ditch said cheating, weak, lying, scheming men. It was particularly noticeable in films such as The First Wives Club and Waiting to Exhale.
You see the attitude in the wider sphere now. In 2000, I flatshared with some girls. One was a complete misandrist. She hated men, used them for recreational sex, then went out of her way to break them. It wasn’t enough to dump them. She was incredibly unpleasant to me: she said it wasn’t personal, but she didn’t want to live with a man because it meant she couldn’t express herself as a woman.
Another woman I flat-shared with reduced her boyfriend to alcoholism with a steady campaign of niggles and undermining him. Many women now consider men little more than animals. If a man upsets a woman, it’s Patriarchy and misogyny. If a woman upsets a man and he retorts, he’s a ‘stalker’.
The media bears much responsibility for this. This has been a deliberate – and successful – campaign across many years. I bring up her name often, although I’m not an objectivist, but Ayn Rand said back in the 1950s that the aim of the modern left was to destroy the strong, independent man, because once they’d done that, they could seize control. And they have done so. There’s such a cultural and legal quagmire around men that it’s almost impossible to function. For a man in the modern workplace, it’s a minefield where one false accusation, or one ill-placed remark that was fine last week, but not this week, can lose you your job, your reputation and your career. That’s before all the additional policies against ‘microaggressions’ and ‘white supremacist’ ideologies come into play.
In essence, everyone, male and female is being tied up in legal knots and men in particular are getting hit right now. It’ll hit women just as hard once men have been broken.
This Barbie film is just one of many, but it’s an example of how ‘they’ are going after our children. The film sounds like merde. I hope it tanks.
Your last point is significant. One might consider the eradication of “Manhood” to be a project of (some) women. But now we find the deliberate elimination of “Womanhood,” and it’s not by males biting back, but by some new category who are neither men nor women.
And so it is the elimination of the very God-given duality of humanity that is the strategic enemy of – whoever. And perhaps NeilofWatford has it right in drawing a comparison with the elimination of real Christians.
Destroy the creation, and you can sideline the Creator. Maybe that enables you to play God, but to play God is not to be him.
It makes me think of Tiberius- and Caligula-era Rome. Decadence, hedonism and a fear throughout society that ‘they’ can come for you anytime!
I agree with a lot of what you say….there has certainly been a ‘feminisation’ of men that has gone beyond what most women, like me, ever thought about when we were just trying for some workplace equality back in the 70’ and 80’s….
The whole thing, as John says in his comment, has gone off the rails now..in one way or another and includes men women and children…
I certainly couldn’t go back into the workplace..I’d be sacked within 24 hours!!
Don’t know if people have seen this story….an 18 year old girl in the USA joining up, and finding she has to shower and sleep with two ‘transitioning women’….!!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12311291/Female-military-recruit-18-considered-quitting-forced-shower-transgender-women-not-undergone-medical-reassignment-surgery-afraid-complain-case-harmed-career.html
I also posted this a couple of days ago in the forum..it’s a good interview with Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson….and is well worth a watch….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFP37Biip8Q
They’re already hitting women ….. we are being “cancelled” as a sex.
I must confessc I havent seen Barbie (yet!), but have observed every Christian portrayed on telly is much the same.
Well, waddayaexpect? There is no real purpose for men, especially young men, in our society. The best they can really hope for is being offspring of a sufficiently well-to-do family that they can fake something for a long while while spending other people’s money and all they usually end up as is some guy (among a dozen others) playing the clown for a bunch of relaxedly bored young women in the hope to catch one out when she’s drunk enough to score with her. It’s just missing the other half of the picture: There’s no real purpose for women, especially young women, either and they’re – on balance – exactly as stupid and superficial as their male counterparts. Hedonism hell to each other and in the meantime, let’s have some comedy!
NB: This is hyberbolically cynic and paints only a part of the picture but one which occurs often enough in a world where sixtysomething people pride themselves in never having grown up, ie, not having learnt anything since they were about 16, just a little worn off over time.
I think Pearl Davis has some interesting things to listen to about the subject You can tell by the reaction of a certain group that she’s over the target…
I am surprised that a certain Californian princess wasn’t chosen for a leading role.
Not fat enough, black enough or gay enough so they’ve had to stick with a privileged white australian!
The word faggot would have fitted the headline alliteratively.
Of course, Warner Bros.. Polish Jews….
Don’t know if anyone has seen Sound Of Freedom yet….but my brother tells me it’s very good..
It’s apparently got the ‘critics’ in a flap, calling it crap, crap, a conspiracy theory, far right and Q Anon etc etc….so if they hate it so much, it might be the one to go and see?
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230718-unlikely-hit-sound-of-freedom-opens-new-front-in-us-culture-wars