The kids aren't alright

Let me get a couple of things straight from the start.

1. The Government KNEW 6 months ago that ventilation is a good mitigation for COVID, and could have sourced ventilation units for all classrooms. This has been true all through last summer holiday, the autumn term and Christmas holiday. Only now is "action" being taken. The current culture war is around the fact that children aged 11-18 are expected to be masked, mainly because there is no good ventilation.

Apparently, the ERG claim, this will damage the children's minds.

I am glad suddenly the ERG and the Government Ministers care so much about children, because it wasn't that long ago that they were shamed into providing meals for poor children during school holidays.

They only apparently care when it suits their dogmatic agenda.

Today's and yesterday's papers were framing the wearing of masks in schools by pupils as damaging to children, and today that, apparently, as cases are falling, the need for masks is now much less. I have been looking at the data and I see no such fall in cases. As the whole UK has not reported data since New Year's Eve, who can tell? And in England, cases dropped yesterday to 137,000. If this is what a success looks like, I'd hate to see a failure. And no UK cases to be reported today either, and none in Scotland, I guess, tomorrow either, so the full picture will not be known until Wednesday lunchtime.

2. The front page of The Times today for England and Scotland are very different. In England the headline screams "Ministers confident new curbs not needed", while in Scotland their readers are told "Gatherings likely to be banned well into spring".

Both cannot be right.

This is now how a modern democracy should be run, but it what a decade of Conservative rule has brought. But its not even a decade, as for 5 years the sensible LibDems held the headbangers back.

The path is set, even the harshest lockdown now would only have an effect in a month, and by then many will become infected, ill, hospitalised or dead. Or each one in turn.

Of course the NHS and the public will be blamed.

Its the Right's way.