(Alamy/PA)
When a vast UFO, improbably shaped like an Italian bistro, lands on Lord’s cricket pitch during the Ashes in Douglas Adams’s sci-fi classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, people literally can’t see it. This wasn’t, Adams writes, ‘because it was actually invisible or anything hyper-impossible like that,’ but rather because if people saw it, it would oblige them to do something about it. It was an ‘SEP’ – Somebody Else’s Problem.
In like fashion Londoners are proving wilfully oblivious to the cost of living crisis this summer. With drinks in hand at Wimbledon, or tramping off to Glastonbury or Gatwick, we seem almost determined to ignore the impending catastrophe. SEP? So it seems.
