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.

In Vino Veritas – Or, Whatever It Takes to Get the Truth Out of Such a Crew
Winston Churchill drank his way to saving the world from Nazism and, according to Alec Marsh in Spiked, the old bulldog would fit right in with certain current Parliamentarians enjoying a tipple to endure late-night sittings in Westminster. “Well, why not?” Marsh asks. “Politicians wouldn’t be human if they didn’t.” This news doesn’t, however, sit well with certain neo-puritan scolds from – you guessed it – the Green Party, which on the other hand does support providing free narcotics to welfare recipients.


