Abstruse Concerns

Will there never be an end to the quibbling pedantry of the ideologically factual? An upstart cabal of scientific malcontents, which had the gall to purloin the name of the advisory body whose fertiliser is the lily-white Cummings, has attempted to victimise the Government yet further by undermining the drive to get Britain's expendables back to work. Primary schools for inessential children will re-open on Monday (the kind of schools which give us Head Boys like David Cameron and Boris Johnson have prudently postponed the great day until autumn), yet instead of rejoicing at the general opportunification the mere scientists are making dissatisfied noises about a lot of silly old facts. Among other irrelevances, they note the heightened risk to "families with children living in intergenerational households, or who come from a BAME or disadvantaged background," almost as though that were something for the patriotic white working class to worry about. By contrast, the prospect of getting Cummings out of a few of tomorrow's headlines seems to have received only the most cursory analysis.