Jennie Bristow in Spiked laments plunging post-pandemic school attendance, which recently prompted the UK government to launch…an ad campaign. The social contract among schools, parents and teachers was not, however, broken by the Covid-19 lockdowns, Bristow argues. As damaging as the school closures were – resulting in 100,000 chronically truant “ghost children” – the overall problem is even larger and longer-term.
The Paper-Pushers Who (Barely) Control America’s Skies
Fans of the 1999 movie Pushing Tin will recall frenetic scenes of air traffic controllers working to keep airliners from colliding in crowded skies. The current reality, writes John Tierney in City Journal, is far worse. Control tasks at U.S. airports today are still exchanged using paper “flight strips”. In contrast to this “international disgrace”, writes Tierney, European and even Canadian control towers have gone nearly all-digital.
