Mark Andrews on Saturday: So bunking off is now ok, minister?

DURING his time as education secretary, Michael Gove introduced a policy of fining parents for taking their children on holiday in school term time. He said it was disrupting their education, insisting that even a few days off could cause youngsters to fall behind in their studies.

This week the same Michael Gove, now Environment Secretary and tipped by the bookies as the possible next prime minister, rolled out the red carpet for a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl and ‘climate change activist’ whose claim to fame is, er, encouraging kids to bunk off school on Fridays.

NOT that Gove is the only offender by any means. Indeed, the way political leaders from all sides were this week jostling to have their pictures taken with Greta Thunberg has been truly cringe-making.

Now maybe we shouldn’t be over-critical of a 16-year-old girl, even if we keep being told to treat children that age as adults and allow them to vote. I’m even prepared to confess a degree of admiration for the way she has run rings around the political classes, although I always find such earnestness among young people a bit disturbing. She should be enjoying the best years of her life, not talking to middle-aged men in suits about carbon emissions.

But while we should perhaps cut Greta a bit of slack, no such charity should be extended to politicians jumping on the bandwagon. Do they realise how stupid they look, feting a precocious teenager as if she were Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill all rolled into one?

Messrs Gove, Corbyn, and Miliband, fighting to have your pictured taken with a teenager doesn’t make you look cool, edgy or relevant to young people. It makes you look like an embarrassing dad break-dancing at the school disco.

OF course John Bercow, the increasingly ridiculous Speaker of the House of Commons, was at the centre of the Greta Thunberg love-in. Has that man ever found a camera he doesn’t like?

Also this week he was reportedly trying to prevent Donald Trump from addressing the House of Commons when he visits to commemorate D-Day.

Now I’m no fan of Trump, not least for his oafish bad manners and the way he treats the United States like his own personal fiefdom. But the choice of who should be US president is a matter for the American people, not a pint-sized self-publicist who is supposed to be above politics.

Mr Bercow said addressing the Commons was an ‘earned honour’, not an automatic right. But what message does it send out when you are quite happy to indulge a 16-year-old schoolgirl, but not the leader of the free world?

So hats off to Betty Boothroyd, the former speaker and West Bromwich MP, for bringing a bit of Black Country common sense to the proceedings, and reminding Mr Bercow that it is not always about him.

“Those in authority often have to carry out duties they may find unsavoury but responsibility also brings with it duty,” she said wisely.

How we miss you, Betty.

GETTING back to global warming, exciting news from a Scottish university which reckons low-emission cows are the future of British agriculture, cutting methane emissions by as much as 50 per cent. I’m sure there’s a gag in it somewhere.

It shows that while the attention-seekers are busy gluing themselves to public transport, there are some really clever boffins all over the world coming up with positive ways of securing a better future for our planet.

The solution to climate change will come through painstaking research and hard graft. Not Loctite.