Lovely weather we're having: How small-talk masks social injustice

"It's set to rain the next few days"
"gonna be a good sunny weekend for the cricket"
"let's hope it stays dry for Wimbledon"

Safe Topics of Conversation:

These are all examples of interactions that are socially unproblematic. Any combination of citizens thrown together, can talk about the weather without risking political confrontation. One does not have to worry about insulting anyone. There is no danger of being exposed as a snob, a bourgeois, a toff, a bigot, an elitist, a racist, an ignorant, a fool, a philosopher, a psychoanalyst, a Conservative, a Liberal, a fascist or Marxist.

In short: YOU ARE EXEMPT FROM SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER.

So when you come across a culture which falls into meteorological rhetoric at any given opportunity, you know that you are amongst a society that is inherently classist. 

A society that imposes a taboo on talking politics, does so for one good reason: In order that, in true Orwellian style, the oppressed masses are pacified and not stirred to revolt.