Call time on pubs to teach our kids
It’s obvious what needs to happen. Turn the pubs into schools
AT the beginning of lockdown, a couple of jokers dressed up as Daleks and patrolled the streets, telling residents in robotic monotone to “self-isolate, self-isolate”.
Seems strange now, but remember, it was a simpler time back then, when a vague sense of humour about all this was not entirely inappropriate.
Now we need those Daleks back, with their original catchphrase. It’s time to Exterminate! coronavirus.
Maybe they can work hand in hand with the Doctors at the WHO (geddit), not to mention The Cybermen, who are presumably the only ones who could get the “world beating” track and trace app to work.
Last week, scientists at Independent Sage, a rival group to the official government advisers, called for England to work to completely eradicate coronavirus, by formally adopting a Zero Covid approach. And only yesterday Nicola Sturgeon pushed for it too, for all of the UK.
This would mean reducing transmission as much as possible, with stricter lockdown measures, closed borders, competent tracing – it’s an ambitious plan, but, experts insist, do-able.
It will be better for the economy in the long run. It won’t be easy, or fun – it will be short term pain.
Rather than what we have now: endless uncertainty, constant outbreaks, measures that seem like flustered knee-jerk reactions and not considered responses. Whack-a-mole – a childish game being played with our lives and our livelihoods.
Because it really feels like the Government are panicking.
Clutching at straws. Bringing in increasingly nonsensical measures – even by their standards – like in Manchester where you can’t sit with friends in a garden, but you can in a poorly ventilated pub.
Briefly considering locking away the over 50s (56-year-old Boris’ latest wheeze to get out of boring old Cobra meetings and, indeed, work of any kind?).
Encouraging people to go on holiday, only to realise their mistake too late.
And now, the latest disaster – news that schools would have to close again in the event of a second lockdown, and rumours they may not, despite the PM’s pledge, even open full time in September. Instead apparently a part time rota system.
Let’s try to somehow contain our disbelief something Johnson said turned out not to be true, and focus on the bigger issue.
If schools don’t go back full time, it would mean many of the groups who have already suffered most in the pandemic – underprivileged, women, the generation who will inherit this mess – take yet another one for the team.
No. This cannot be allowed to happen. It’s just too much. What’s needed is the space for every child to be taught safely, but sadly schools aren’t like the Tardis, infinite in size.
So, as the antithesis of nominative determinism himself, Chris Whitty, said, sacrifices are going to have to be made.
“If we wish to do more things in the future, we may have to do less of some other things. And these will be difficult trade-offs,” he explained.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, insists getting pupils back to school must come before keeping pubs and shops open. It’s obvious what needs to happen. Turn the pubs into schools. The Nightingale (Arms) classrooms.
The Government could go further, actually, and rent all the businesses so far unable to re-open – the casinos, bowling alleys, conference centres, skating rinks, sporting venues – from the owners, and turn them into sociallydistanced classrooms too.
Such a simple solution. The perfect symmetry. Making the priorities crystal clear.
There’s another bonus to all this, that I recognise thanks to my own home-schooling experience.
If we turn pubs into classrooms, at the end of the day the teachers won’t have too far to go for a well-deserved drink.