Pictures littered newspapers on New Year’s Day laying bare the “wild night of celebrations and booze-fuelled mayhem” on the streets of Britain that marked the end of 2016.
And the drunken milieu they created prompted a bout of moralising from one prominent columnist.
Under the headline “Pictures that make me weep for today’s young women”, Daily Mail writer Sarah Vine essayed what she seems to view as the end of civilisation.
The writer described a “bunch of alcohol-sodden, helpless and hapless wrecks, so out of it they appear barely able to control their bodily functions”, and reserved her most stringing rebuke for the sistehood. She mused:
“Getting ‘wasted’ is a badge of honour among today’s generation of ladettes,
“And just like so-called ‘slut-shaming’ (criticising a woman for being promiscuous), judging a woman for being drunk to the point of incontinence is not the done thing any more.
“These girls have grown up in a post-feminist society that tells them anything a man can do, they can do better.”
But let’s ignore her previous ode to the middle classes “drinking ourselves into a stupor night after night” and the fall in binge drinking among young people, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Instead, let’s focus on the unremarkable pictures of New Year celebrations that are familiar to millions and speak of a nation most worried about getting a cab home.
Here are selection of largely covered-up revellers who aren’t vomitting or fighting on the streets of Britain.