And the bleat goes on

The debate, if that is what it is, rages on whether children should go back to school or not, and if they do should they have to wear masks.

And so on.

Without a fully functioning track and trace, for children, parents, teaching assistants, teachers, cleaners, and so on, then any return to school is risky.

Also, where the family of a child has someone who is vulnerable or needed to be shielded, then returning to school is very risky. Children can carry the virus, back to the family home, and pass it on.

In schools where classes are stable, there is no streaming and so little mixing in corridors and other communal spaces, maybe not so bad, but where in schools where every hour, children from all classes pile into corridors, pass each other closely, to make their way to next classes, with a different set of pupils, then that is something else. Doubly so, as studies show that as children reach teenage years, they have infection rates similar to adults.

While the Mail and Express focus on the dead cat story about Rule Britannia, other papers focus on yet another U-turn by the Government, this time on childfren wearing said facemasks in school. And the point here is not that the Government has changed it’s mind, it that such a change was so predictable, and came after days of Ministers being on TV and radio saying this would not happen.

It is such actions that have destroyed trust in Government, but now it seems that the backbenchers are revolting in that the science advice has changed, it hasn’t, but that the Government should ignore the science, because, facts don’t matter. The Venn diagram between Brexiteers and COVID doubters is a perfect circle, because they know best.

Meanwhile Johnson, happy to go on “holiday” through the A level result fiasco, and say nothing on the matter, can’t be shut up on the Rule Britannia dead cat story. The UK should stop “cringing with embarrassment” about our history he blathered. Thing is, it is a filtered view of history, and like a flag, it is something that xenophobes and Brexiteers are only too happoy to rally round and get all worked up over.

Remember, when the going gets too hard, Johnson hides in a fridge, this was a low hanging fruit, a non-problem that didn’t need fixing, and sone he could drone on and on without having to do any preparation for.

Rumours increase of Johnson’s exit in 6 months time, with the Metro leading with it this time. Turns out that the evil brain, Cummings, was in hospital all the while Johnson was on holiday in Scotland, meaning that Johnson can’t pretend to be PM without Cummings, so went to stay in a remote part of the country in a Daily Mail photo-story.

Who was running the country? Hancock? Raab? Gove? Williamson? JRM? The Downing Street Cat?

In Brexit, former Australian PM Tony Abbott is to be made Joint President of the Board of Trade. Wonder if he qualified under the “Australian points based system” for immigration? I thought we had had enough of unelected bureaucrats?

DD, writing in The Sun says: “I have always said the last three weeks will matter more than the first three years. Michel Barnier is desperate to resolve his red line issues before we get to the critical endgame”. But remember, DD was Minister for Brexit for two years, and totally failed to deliver the easiest deal in history and showed time and time again even after two years in post, an almost total failure to understand the subject, or as Ian Dunt put it: “He was in charge and he messed it up, from start to finish ... After all that arrogance and swagger, there was no intellectual force to back it up. He failed completely."

Meanwhile, elsewhere in trade talks, the grownups have been busy: “The EU and the US have agreed on a significant tariff reduction, the first in more than 20 years. The agreement eliminates or reduces tariffs for € 168 million in EU and US exports.”

Bust listen to DD for sure……..