Kids let down
THE scars on our society caused by Covid lockdowns are legion but perhaps the deepest is the damage done to an entire generation by school closures.
Education watchdog Ofsted spells out how the vast majority of kids fell behind in their development, while some were even left struggling to talk or hold cutlery, as “loneliness, boredom and misery became endemic” for millions.
In extreme cases, closing schools robbed children of a sanctuary from abusive home environments.
Ofsted’s gut-wrenching report is the clearest argument yet against teaching unions whose default answer is to reach for the lockdown panic button.
Some risks are greater than Covid.
Inject urgency
AS NHS chief exec Amanda Pritchard states on this page, we can look back on the past year since the first Covid vaccine with enormous pride — and relief.
But we do not have the luxury of time to rest on our laurels.
Ministers must untangle knots in the booster rollout with urgency, but the rest of us can play our part by booking our vaccines as soon as invited, or volunteering as a Jabs Army hero.
The virus won’t let up. We can’t either.
Kabul shame
WATCHING mandarins floundering to defend their roles in the Kabul evacuation debacle to MPs yesterday, the only surprise is that we got ANY Afghans to safety.
The failures of the Foreign Office as the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August are deeply shameful.
Civil servants seemed to think they were in a call-centre rather than one of the great offices of state, working from home and clocking off after eight hours even as a humanitarian crisis unfolded.
We wonder what those families abandoned to their fate would make of yesterday’s mealy-mouthed platitudes.
When Afghans needed us to save their lives, too many penpushing jobsworths prioritised their work-life balance.
Truss no wuss
WHAT an antidote Liz Truss is to the self-flagellating wokery that now infests every level of our society.
Our Foreign Secretary argues that Britain must rediscover some patriotic positivity to be a force for good in the world, and counter the malign behaviour of Russia and China.
We can of course learn from history, but an obsession with judging Britain’s past by modern standards serves only the egos of self-appointed Twitter witchfinders — and our nation’s enemies.
There are big enough dragons to slay in the here and now, without resurrecting long-dead ones from our own past.
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