Nobody gives a fuck about the problems working parents face when school is shut. Half term for my son Joshua was already going to be extended by the teachers having one of their seven INSET days, a week on Monday. Now it is extended at this end as, yesterday, Wrexham ordained that all schools here will be teaching online today.
The reason given is that kids and parents may be endangered travelling to and from school by the wind from storm Eunice. Right now, at the start of the school day there is no wind here at all. The sun is shining and the trees are completely still. Winds are forecast to peak at about noon with some gusts of up to 59 MPH but with wind speeds generally much lower. And the winds will tail off thereafter. There is, as such, going to be absolutely minimal risk when kids go home.
Natch, the teachers are loving it but for parents and kids is this neither fair or proportionate. Just as our health minister here in Wales wants to offer Covid vaccines for all children aged 5 and over when Covid has – over two years – killed only 15 under 18s across the whole UK the idea of a proportionate response goes out of the window. Among the 5 and unders there has been just one Covid death.
With my eldest daughter Olaf still recovering from the massive reaction she got to her third jab, if the Welsh Government try to stick a needle in Joshua’s arm it will be meeting extraordinary resistance here. It will happen over my dead body.
And so what does home learning mean for Joshua you may ask? Actual teacher time? You must be kidding. He has been set some videos to watch and is currently learning how to count to ten in Chinese as part of International week. Then there are some exercises, which won’t be marked, to download.
In other words it is another lie-in for the teacher while working parents try to juggle their lives. When Joshua has finished his pointless online learning either the Mrs or I will have to disrupt our working day to get himto do something less moronic than watch the goggle box.
Wrexham Council is always run for the benefit of its wellpaid employees rather than those folk who pay for it via a bloated council tax whose lives will again be disrupted today for no good reason at all. And,of course, none of our elected councillors from any of the parties, with their bloated allowances, will dare stand up to this nonsense.