City Life: Why I’d rather be in snowy Dagenham than slushy Davos

City Life this week comes from Not In Davos. We’re absolutely anywhere else, but if you had to pick a place it would be inside the offices of City firms full of people who didn’t make it to this Swiss hellhole, a desperate place known only for a hockey team and an annual gathering of the most pretentious people on earth.

There might be many things wrong with the Square Mile, but in its favour it has a strong dislike of hogwash, and most of the inhabitants think Davos stinks.

To their minds, it is like an Oscars for folk even more self-regarding than film stars, except there’s no entertaining movie to be pimped, just a collection of very important men desperate to let everyone else know just how important they are.

How was Davos for you, I asked one of the crew manning the tills at a bank while his boss swanned about demonstrating his only skill: networking.

“It’s not exactly Austerity Now is it?” comes the reply.

Shame, a sense of proportion, are among the things Davos lacks.

One conceit of this annual shindig — it has many — is that a bunch of rich people on a skiing holiday telling each other how great they are is something the rest of us should take seriously. As if pronouncements made in Davos are automatically more meaningful than if they were made in Dagenham (where it has also being snowing lately, so they could hold it there next year. Or else Benghazi).

Another conceit is that the world will be a better place just because Jamie Dimon and Bill Gates met for breakfast.

What on earth did they discuss at the breakfast they probably had? I don’t know, but I can tell you that it wasn’t How To Be Humble.

The event is in dire need of spoofing, of being seriously custard-pied by properly organised campaigners with a grudge against everything.

If you’re about to note that I wasn’t invited to Davos, you’re correct, but I promise that if asked I wouldn’t attend for reasons unrelated to custard and pies.

I’ve been to meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, which are similarly awful affairs where awkward people huddle around each other laughing loudly at their own jokes, but those meetings have some sort of point. They aren’t entirely about self-aggrandisement and protesters sometimes get near enough to at least have their say and see it reported.

What gets reported from Davos is stuff like the following tweet from Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times: “On my way to Davos. Angela Merkel or a look-a-like is on my flight. She is doing NYT crossword puzzle.”

Davos shines a particularly harsh light on the journalistic trade, revealing it to be partly populated by star-struck types who are in the wrong game and who find the chance to say “hi” to Lloyd Blankfein so exciting they have to go on about it later.

The twitosphere is presently littered, even more than usual, with so-called “humble brags” from folk who are beyond our help and certainly cannot help themselves.

They strain not to name-drop, but can’t resist pointing out that they stood near Charlize Theron and found her to be charming and beautiful.

A collection of the grandest people on the planet. In the same place. At exactly the same time.

The good news is it’s nearly over. Next week reality bites, for some of them.