The insidious creep of plastic glasses

It was the afternoon of the first day of the second Ashes test at Lord’s. In the brief lull between overs, the camera panned, as it often does, to a recognisable face in the crowd: Jacob Rees-Mogg. The traditionalist Tory presented exactly as you’d expect: Savile Row suit, tie and cufflinks. But there was one wrong note: he was drinking from a plastic glass. 

Say what you like about Mr Rees-Mogg – and people do – but one attribute that I think we can all agree he possesses in abundance is that he’s in touch, almost viscerally, with his own sense of how things should be done. And this sense, as I perceive it, would very much preclude drinking from a plastic cup. Yet here he was, in footage being beamed around the world, sipping from one, an unlikely ambassador for this awful trend. Plastic glass culture had reached a nadir. 

Plastic glasses have long been a staple at pub beer gardens, festivals and the like, where the prospect of inebriated punters and broken glass in close proximity had crystal-clear implications.