To think this Telegraph article is missing the point re the differences between 1976 heatwave and this one?

[Jane379]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/23/heatwave-hysterics-wouldnt-have-lasted-a-day-in-1976/?recomm_id=5c4fe0b2-18cb-42bf-9ca5-46c0d81dcb68

you need to give more information about the article - I think it's behind a paywall.

It's a right wing paper... the nearer to fascism you get, the more you deny that an economy based on consumerism and profit is driving climate change.

Humanity will be like the modelling computer VIRGIL in Supervolcano... we'll keep pushing and pushing the system until it crashes on us. Those who survive can look at a new model of existence.

You don’t even have a point though.

Why don’t you share an opinion before asking others to?

If you don't want to read garbage peddled in service of the short-term interests of the mega wealthy, by dismissing or downplaying important issues that impact the rest of us, why subscribe to a right wing news source?

Hopefully this makes it readable

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/20260623173749/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/23/heatwave-hysterics-wouldnt-have-lasted-a-day-in-1976" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.is/20260623173749/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/23/heatwave-hysterics-wouldnt-have-lasted-a-day-in-1976/

I can't read the article but if its saying that everyone in 1976 just toughened up and then they're wrong.
My friends Dad died of heat stress.
Its not a thing to treat flippantly in any decade.

I can't read the article but yes, I agree it's getting very tedious with people wanging on about events 50 years ago that half the population weren't even born for. Principally, welfare standards are higher now than they were back then so even if it's no worse now, people expect better than " muddling through".

We also have far better prediction models and communication channels these days that make concerns more visible.

But all that aside, heatwaves are more frequent and intense than they were in the past. Temperatures peak higher and humidity is higher, making it feel worse. That's why people and institutions seek to adapt their behaviour and implement temporary workarounds like early school closing.

I do wish people would stop harking back to a time when both the climate and health standards were different.

This isn’t one bit accurate. Fascism is generally characterised by authoritarianism, nationalism, suppression of dissent, and the subordination of individuals to the state.
If we’re making historical comparisons, it’s worth remembering that fascists were often keen adopters of the fashionable science of their day. Eugenics and racial theories were considered modern and scientific. Just like climate change theory

Ah the torygraph. Nobody can read it so perhaps you could fill us in. Is it claiming everyone in the 70s were made of tougher stuff and we’re all pansies now in a nutshell?

I know it's hot bit like 75% of posts on MN don't make full sense and are completely without ocntext last 2 days. Is that hot or just influx of some kind of trolls

YABVU for simply posting a paywall link then running without making what YOU think is the point.

They would be correct

Why are you reading the Telegraph? Its worse than the Daily Mail these days for idiotic reactionary opinion pieces. Utter drivel.

I was a teenager in 1976 and I remember a very long period of hot dry weather but I cant really recall it being uncomfortably hot. The problem, in my opinion, is the overbearing nanny state nowadays, hectoring us constantly, stay in the shade, drink plenty of water, use sun tan lotion, go out early morning/late evening, be careful around lakes/rivers.
We know all this, we don't need to be reminded every 5 minutes.
Obviously there are those who completely ignore any kind of sensible advice, but as my dear departed DM often said " on your own head be it"

The Telegraph minimising climate change? Shocked

The heat in a brief spell of summer 2022 definitely contributed to my mum’s massive stroke, which led to her death. She had AF, and heat makes managing AF very difficult.

I was small and it was intense but I remember the Green Goddesses with fondness. Also walnuts.

I remember working in intense heat in London in 1976. It was awful, some places had standpipes where you had to queue for water. I am now someone in their late 60s with multiple health conditions and the heat affects me really badly, mostly because of the medications I am on. I also have skin cancer from not wearing sunscreen in my youth. it is very sensible to remind people to take care and every country experiencing a heatwave is doing it.

First post. AIBU to think the Telegraph is trying to drum up subscribers? I also don’t remember the 1976 summer being uncomfortably hot. I was 17 that year so I do remember quite a lot about it, including the water shortage measures.

It’ll be interesting to see how the infrastructure has improved over the last 50 years.

I was a youngish Mum with children 4 & 2 in 1976. It was very hot, but the main thing I remember about it was the length of time that it lasted. I remember that it got really boring after a few weeks, waking every day to bright sunshine. And we were weeks without rain too.

In this part of north Wales, which normally has plenty of rain, most of the fields and gardens remained green for a good while and we didn't have a hosepipe ban, but when we travelled to the South on holday the thing that struck me most was how yellow all the fields were, and the lack of animals in them. They must have all been indoors because of the lack of grass. There were water shortages everywhere down there.
This hot spell is forcast to be over in a few days, but I'm sure the temperatures now are higher than 1976 and that is imho the main difference. I'm now 82, with heart failure, and it is affecting me a lot, so I feel lucky not to have to work in it and sorry for those that do.

It was a deplorable article, the kind of puffed up wank you will find in the Telegraph, supassed only by the stupidity in the comments.

@Stillamum3 My mother says this too, it just lasted for weeks and weeks and weeks and was a bit scary. I was 2 at the time and had to take my baths in the sink because of water restrictions

Two weeks. The actual heatwave lasted two weeks.

Really? Is that true? I was a teenager and it did seem to go on forever. But I definitely remember being sent home early from school and it just being boring rather than unbearable. We mostly went to the river and sat about as I recall, and then the government appointed someone to sort it out, there was an almighty thunderstorm and that was that.

Heatwaves are unbearable regardless of the decade.
I'm sick of the it was different then attitude.
I can't imagine not being able to sleep, feeling dizzy and water shortages being any less shit then as it is now!

Though to be fair, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but daily showers were less of a thing.

I was a toddler at the time so don't remember much but my earliest memories seem to contain a lot of sun.

Like much of life, you've got to go back to source material at the time to find out what really happened.

1976 is a year in recent history that is perhaps the most romanticised there is.

Long hot summer, punk.

Maybe it's because to really remember it you've got to be about 60.
Dh who's 11 years older than me, remembers it as a long summer of bike rides, leaving at 8am and not getting back till 8pm.
He was supplied with snacks and squash. Or he'd drink from a stream.
I'd say his upbringing was middle class.
Maybe that's a difference.