Dear Log,
«Most depressing is her head-girl jollity. "Gosh, what a dull lot," she exclaims over reports that young people are rather conservative. "Oh for heaven's sake, lighten up! Live a little! Rebel a bit!" Though not to the point, one imagines, of asking troubling questions, such as what it is about the English that makes it possible for social scientists in prestigious positions to write witless, patronising pap like this and be commended for it? To reach a wider public? That is easily enough done: all it needs is for educated folk to piss on them from an ever-greater height and in an ever-widening gyre. If you end up with a piss-sodden, cow-eyed public, one incidental result will be that they will be all the less qualified to compete with you for a place at your seat of higher learning. A culture of condescension is a great way to keep people in their place. Could that be a hidden rule of Englishness, too?»-- review of Watching the English: the hidden rules of English behaviour
