As his tweed jacket flapped open to one side of his stomach, my husband stood up unsteadily and arched his arm, jabbing his finger towards me and chanting: ‘Shame on you! Shame on you!’
It didn’t work, because I’ve been living with him so long that, as Berowne says in Love’s Labour’s Lost, ‘We are shame-proof’. His little performance was in response to some news item about Tell the Truth, a spin-off of Extinction Rebellion. Its members don’t actually want journalists to tell the truth, but to do as they say. Their first ‘demand’ is that the climate crisis ‘must be front-page news every single day’. They also demand we change our language. So out goes global warming, in comes global heating; instead of natural gas we must say dirty gas. ‘Do not,’ they command, ‘print the opinion of writers who cast doubt on the scientific consensus.’
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