After nearly two years of ruined education it is vital that our schools stay open in January

Testing times

AFTER nearly two years of ruined education for so many of our children, it is vital that schools stay open in January.

The Government is pledging to test every child on the first day of term — and making secondary pupils wear masks — in a bid to keep classrooms full.

This week will also see millions return to work with many needing evidence of a negative lateral flow test in order to prove that their annual January sniffle isn’t Omicron.

Yet go to your local pharmacy and chances are you can’t source any test packs. Shelves are empty, hoarding is rife. Rapid test kits are the new loo roll.

Boris Johnson deserves credit for holding his nerve and not introducing restrictions over Christmas, with none seemingly threatened this week either.

He was also right yesterday to hail 132million vaccines delivered in a single year, the biggest inoculation campaign in this country’s history.

But a combination of mass shortages of rapid tests and a refusal to cut the self-isolation time from seven days to five promises to play havoc.

One in ten NHS staff in some hospitals are already off sick.

Weary and cynical parents will expect large-scale teacher absences, too.

So far the Government has made only vague promises about delivering millions of extra LFTs “soon”. We don’t need them soon. We need them now.

Tory cold war

VAGUE could also be the word to describe the Government’s current energy policy.

Millions of Sun readers face massive increases in their gas bills within weeks.

And while the Government rattled off a string of climate change achievements ahead of the COP summit in November, there’s been little on how they plan to tackle spiralling gas prices.

Tory MPs are rightly nervous of widespread fury over this. As Red Wall MP Lee Anderson warned, voters care more about making ends meet than the UK meeting Net Zero carbon targets while China, India and Russia do nothing.

Scrapping VAT on energy bills and slashing green levies would be a start.

Securing safe supplies of gas while we build renewables should have been an urgent priority years ago.

But we have now drifted to a scandalous stage where more of the poorest Brits face fuel poverty.

We are sleepwalking to disaster.

Soap dodgers

RATTLED BBC bosses are considering tackling flagging ratings for EastEnders by screening even more episodes every week.

They could change the miserable, woke storylines that have seen viewers switching off in despair.

Instead they’ll respond in the only way Auntie knows how.

By giving us more of what we clearly don’t want.