AT last, progress over the travel chaos and the pingdemic. What took so long?
To us the solutions are simple:
Scrap the Covid “ping” app. It is absurd it still has two more weeks to run.
Given the number now fully vaccinated it does more harm than good.
As for travel, a binary “green for go and red for no” system for the double-jabbed would leave little room for doubt.
Downing Street stubbornly refuses to go that far. But at least Boris Johnson has compromised.
The tweak to the ping app should slash the total told to isolate.
And the so-called “Amber Watchlist” was a farcical suggestion which would have left us consulting colour charts for holidays like choosing paint shades.
The idea this would be “helpful”, as Digital Minister Matt Warman argued, was risible.
As Boris recognised, by binning it hours later.
No 10, spooked when cases soared again, has not had a great couple of months.
But the Tories’ scaremongering critics now look ridiculous.
Despite Freedom Day, cases are plummeting — and patients in hospital are falling too.
The jabs worked. Time to embrace it.
Plague of trolls
LARGE parts of social media are an open sewer. Sasha Attwood’s ordeal proves it.
Jack Grealish’s girlfriend received 200 foul threats a day, many from jealous young girls wishing cancer on her.
Yes, anyone in the public eye can delete these apps. But why should they hand victory to their tormentors?
The fault lies with the tech firms.
Instagram and TikTok piously claim they don’t allow violent threats.
Yet still they publish them. Despite vast resources their policing of content is a joke.
Anonymous accounts should be barred.
Far tougher age and identity verification must be mandatory, so every poster is accountable.
The firms should be made to hand police details of those posting criminal material.
Social media could be a force for good.
But not while anonymous teenage trolls can, with total impunity, bombard a star’s girlfriend with sickening abuse.
Fur enough
FURLOUGH saved millions of jobs. But Rishi Sunak is right to end it in September.
It will be tough on those who potentially face the dole. But many are in zombie jobs which only exist now while the Government is still funding them.
The upside is the vast number of vacancies nationwide.
No, they won’t be a perfect fit for all those left looking for jobs. But it is work nonetheless.
And the Chancellor’s focus on training in his Plan For Jobs can give many the new skills they need.
The jabs are the great Covid success story.
The furlough scheme, jaw-droppingly expensive though it was, takes silver.
