Thread by @PornPanic

The kids are finally back at school. 🍾 (thread)
Without exaggeration, a lot of parents I've met this week (here in one of London's poorest areas) are traumatised by the last 6 months. Teenagers have gone missing and been returned by police - some of them recruited by drug gangs

Domestic violence has been widespread. Children are suffering anxiety. The dread that classes might close again if there's a single case of Covid is often expressed. People, especially single mothers, and especially those with mental health issues are beyond breaking point 2/6

Anecdotally, there's been a surge of badly injured children admitted to hospital. The education system has simply failed to do its job: not just education, but being a safe, protective place for children living in terrible circumstances 3/6

How much child abuse has taken place since March is anyone's guess. Schools should have been regarded as essential institutions, like hospitals or supermarkets. Instead, first they were closed in response to public panic (remember #CloseTheSchools?) Then kept closed by unions 4/6

The fact that it's been the Left - which once fought tooth and nail to get kids out of factories and into education - behind much of this risk-averse cowardice, is a reminder that we need a new movement that understands the lives of genuinely marginalised people 5/6

These privileged, identity-obsessed people are apparently too far removed from the experience of the poorest people to understand that the problem in areas like this isn't "racist policing" or "systemic misogyny", but plain old poverty /end rant

Postscript... FREEDOM!