Schools cannot afford another year of Covid mayhem – we need a concrete action plan
Class action
AFTER two years of Covid chaos, kids and parents crave normality as the school year begins. Their hopes are already in shreds.
Where is the Government strategy? All we hear is vagueness — plus the usual hyperbole and scaremongering from hard-left teaching unions.
Much of life is returning to near- normality with the vast majority of us double-jabbed. We hoped that would be so in schools too, what with masks and self-isolation requirements axed.
But the staggered beginning to term looks only the start of the trouble. The ever-destructive unions are already forecasting a return to masks, other restrictions and even winter closures.
Our reliably insipid Education Secretary Gavin Williamson offers no comfort. He welcomes kids socialising again, but warns them not to “get too carried away”.
What sort of steer is that for teenagers?
The answer to all this uncertainty is more jabs, urgently.
Covid is highly unlikely to make kids ill but they can pass it to older groups. So maximise protection for the winter by rolling out booster shots now — first to the most vulnerable, then to all.
Why is the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation so painfully slow to approve them for 12 to 15s too? It’s not even clear if they will need their parents’ consent. Sort it out today.
Schools cannot afford another year of mayhem. We need a concrete action plan. Not muddle, drift and hysterical speculation.
Blame game
AFTER 9/11 Britain leapt to America’s aid.
Without hesitation we joined the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — and even if the latter was a mistake our loyalty to our No1 ally has never been in doubt.
That friendship is a one-way street under Joe Biden. Desperate to deflect from his catastrophic underestimation of the Taliban, officials are trying to blame Britain for the Kabul massacre.
So the 20-year war we fought together ends not just in humiliation for Biden’s America, not just with him emboldening terrorists everywhere by surrendering a country to Islamist extremism, but with transatlantic buck-passing too.
Biden’s long career of misjudgments has finally had immense consequences.
He deserves every ounce of blame for the horrors in Kabul — and the hideous oppression now engulfing Afghanistan.
Tone Defra
GERONIMO’S sad death exposes an ugly obstinacy in Defra and the Government.
Of course, it may not be the last word if a post-mortem reveals the alpaca’s positive TB tests years ago were false.
That would mean Environment Secretary George Eustice had a healthy animal culled despite the nation rightly beseeching him to have him retested.
Mr Eustice should pray Geronimo had TB. If not he may be alpacking his bags.