Reassurance? Not to sane parents. Certainly not to children.
But yes, very much to your masters in the teaching unions.
Do tell us, will you wear a mask for six hours a day?
Humane heads should know that this is guidance. Not only are they not obliged to implement it, they have an independent duty to undertake a risk assessment of the effect of continuous mask wearing on children. Following government advice is no answer or substitute.
Parents shld knw that they have a right to refuse to consent to their children being tested or wearing masks, *irrespective* of whether they would be exempt were there a legal requirement (eg were children over 13 in a shop).
They should not fear to use their power to stop this.
As I said here, demand to see the risk assessment that considers the potential harm to children from the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the harm of wearing masks. If it doesn’t do that, it cannot be compliant with statutory obligations. Use these two expert reports.
Ten hours in some cases.
Thank goodness for teachers with humanity like this one. They put much of the rest of their profession - and particularly its unions - to shame.
This is grotesque.
To make charity to the most vulnerable group in our society dependent on receiving medical treatment is inhuman. I hope - but do not expect - that those who parade their virtue as supporters of the vulnerable condemn it unreservedly.
I hope that this is true. However, will that be possible given this: "Meanwhile, the Guardian reported last week that homeless shelters were shutting their doors due to growing fears around social distancing...
This is insanity.
Every time we have a winter virus the government decides to track, civil society will be at risk.
Everyone who imposed and encouraged lockdowns must now understand that that precedent can never be undone.
That it has left us forever at the mercy of the state.
The idea that the state has a right - let alone a duty - to ‘protect’ the public by restricting the ability of the entire country to go about their lives is a pernicious ideology that would have been - and often was - grasped by every autocratic regime in history.
Good analysis of Medley’s admission. The problem since last year has been the blinkered focus on only one problem and the failure to appreciate that every policy decision - but particularly legislation controlling people’s lives - can cause foreseen and unforeseen harm.
This approach was built in to UK policy making with Raab’s ‘Five Tests’ (in April 2020) that fettered the government’s discretion to remove restrictions until tests relating only to this one virus had been met.
Even if such unprecedented state control could ever be justified (it cannot) that irresponsible monomania prevented the multi-faceted policy decisions necessary - those that considered the consequences on society, economy, public health & democratic norms in the widest sense.
The greatest gift anyone could give would be to burn every last testing kit and to destroy every last laboratory apparatus capable of identifying this virus.
We cannot live like this. Exist, maybe. But not live.
The human condition has, since the Neolithic revolution, required an accommodation with viruses. This is not simply a matter of health, it is a matter of our ability to tolerate the risks as well as the benefits of society in its widest sense.
(And, of course, a wider theme is the capture of this debate by scientists & medics who, even if they are speaking rationally & on the basis of good evidence and data and not flawed modelling (which they often are not) can speak only to one limited element of the wider picture.)
Anyone watching it without comment is no friend of human rights. Whatever else they do, however ‘kind’ they like to think themselves, however much they trumpet that they are ‘human rights advocates’, they have been tried. And they have been found wanting.
John Smith may be an extreme example. But my old head of chambers, Sir Ivan Lawrence QC, not only had a regular practice at the Old Bailey, he sat on standing committees (considering legislation), introduced a backbench Bill that became law and held the record for filibustering.
In other words, unlike the (largely) dross that sit in the House of Commons now, he was a legislator, giving his expertise and experience to explain what works, what doesn’t, what would he objectionable and why.