Chippy – it’s such a clever insult, isn’t it? If someone calls you chippy and you reel back and shout “I’m NOT chippy”, you sound sooooo… chippy. It’s a tactic worthy of any posh, smirking movie villain – or perhaps the officials representing Britain’s independent schools. Some of their private emails have been leaked, sniping about shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, who’s part of Labour’s plan to add VAT to school fees. Apparently, Phillipson “gets chippy” with people challenging her, “so it is very easy to make her sound unreasonable by keeping your cool”.
Class contempt, back-door slander among cronies, sneering at a powerful woman, a smirking plan to manipulate and humiliate her, it’s all there. These officials are drawing a line: she is not like us, she doesn’t get it, she’s not in the club, she’s a proletarian hothead who can’t keep her cool – so that’s how we’ll wind her up.
Obviously, these insinuations are untrue and nasty. But as it happens, I don’t like chippiness either. Those people (on the same side) who make you tired after five minutes, with their constant backchat and sullen baiting and “Yes, but…” ideological purity games. You’re a vegetarian, but are you vegan? You’re a vegan, but is that a leather watch strap? So chippy. I like wit and scintillation, vivacity and the diplomatic arts.
My favourite diss is to say someone is rough, gauche, downscale, doesn’t know how to behave or read the room and lacks a certain poise, elegance, self-awareness or mystique. If I say to you, “There’s no need to say all the stuff out loud, you could leave some of it in the subtext”, or suddenly remark, “Grace, that’s a good keyword”, you know I’ve mentally signed your private school expulsion notice.
Rejecting the rat race
It’s graduation season in China and the diligent new generation can look forward to there being millions more candidates than there are job openings. This is true even for those with the best education, additional postgrad degrees and laurels from overseas institutions. Many graduates see themselves as being above the manual, gig and service economy jobs that are available. Yet for those who get corporate roles, the Chinese “996 economy” – work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week – is exhausting and all-consuming. It’s led to the tang ping – lying flat – movement, in which workers do the minimum or drop out altogether.
I don’t think it’s cool to spend life basking on a rock in the sun like a seal (or staying indoors, online). I hate lazy, sloppy, unambitious people with no self-discipline. It’s good to think, pursue opportunities, advance and progress. Why can’t we (or Xi Jinping) create a society in which there are valid options between doing so much work that you’re practically the living dead, and a living death doing no work at all?
Apologise? Never
How much do you want to hear David Cameron talk? Details of the Covid inquiry hearings have been released and Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt and Oliver Dowden are set to come in for questioning, but they are scheduled for barely an hour each.
If only they were tabled for an actual bollocking. That might relieve an outraged populace and thousands of grieving families. But politicians will never stand in front of us and say, “we were wrong, we flouted the rules, we didn’t respect the science, we ignored the experts, we thought we were better than other countries, we’re callous, we let hundreds of thousands die, we destroyed the NHS”.
If all they’re going to do is deny and self-defend, anything longer than an hour may be difficult to stomach.
• Bidisha Mamata is an Observer columnist
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