Andy Richardson: Swift action . . . but not from our boys
Carry on Camping. That’s the message from the Government as the world spins off its axis and crumbles to dust.
Boris has channelled his inner Sid James on the Scottish coast by getting away from it all and leaving Gav in charge of exams. It’s a bit like leaving Johnny Rotten in charge of the anti-swearing course.
But who can blame him? Why take responsibility for the upheaval faced by hundreds of thousands of students when you can enjoy the view, walk the dog and spend time with your little one.
Thankfully, Taylor Swift has stepped up and taken charge of a situation that BoJo’s team is ill-equipped to handle.
While ministers undermine their own alibis and develop an acute case of foot in mouth, the American singer has cast herself as the fairy princess in Boris’s pantomime. She’s provided funding to a London-based student who couldn’t afford to take up a university maths course.
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The £23,000 donation may be a drop in the ocean to an artist who has sold 50 million albums, but to Vitoria Mario, it’s the difference between a career of hope and one of unfulfilled potential.
Vitoria will need her qualifications in a job market that is a bottomless pit of despair. The Northern Monk Brewing Company, in Leeds, received 1,000 applications for a packing job, while graduate retail worker Sarah Smith has applied for 2,000 jobs – from cleaning to retail, from care work to apprenticeships – since May, without getting a bite.
Job vacancies have more than halved. Redundancies have gone through the roof. You don’t need to be Gavin Williamson to realise that things are getting tough. Worse is to come. By November, the jobs crisis will be in full swing as furloughed workers head for the dole queue.
An apple a day keeps the Chancellor away. The value of tech giant Apple has boomed to more than £2 trillion pound – that’s two, with loads of noughts on the end. Meanwhile, in the nation that gave the world cricket, the worldwide web and Teletubbies, debt has spiralled to the same level: £2 trillion.
Britain is now worth less than an Apple.
The value of the nation’s debt is greater than the value of the economy for the first time since 1960. Anyone lend Boris a fiver? He needs to pay his camping fees.
