I don't think EastEnders fans are really that stupid | Verity Lush

If TV bosses implement these announcements then surely some members of the public must have actually queried or complained that the ‘cast of EastEnders are all weeping over one another when I can’t even see my grandma’.

It’s a bit like the sign on the A27 as you whizz off in a Brightonly direction, that tells you it’s forbidden to race horses there. Unless this had actually happened at some point in the past, then you wouldn’t need the sign.

I like the horse sign because it’s a little memento of the past, but if we continue in this manner with constant announcements about how things were recorded, or filmed, or advised pre-lockdown, then are we not nurturing the very lack of independent thought that we actually need to encourage in people?

Sarah Vine (wedded to a certain Michael Gove) wrote this week about how ‘pharmacist, Pooja Jalota’, suggested Johnson’s Sunday announcement raised questions, while pointing out that ‘Ryan Price, plumber’, thought it self-explanatory.

Why did Vine see it as necessary to emphasise their professions? It’s a bit like the horse sign – we can infer that what she’s trying to say is that Ryan may be a plumber but he’s cleverer than Pooja.

How deeply patronizing to Ryan – why on earth wouldn’t he be more intelligent than Pooja?

‘Clever’ as a concept comes down, in large part, to common sense.

Your job title is not your sole indicator of intelligence, for goodness sake. My grandad left school at 13 during the war. A lack of conventional qualifications didn’t prevent his success.

Electricians have an in-depth grasp of physics, I am a teacher – my maths is awful, Boris is PM – he has failed his Covid test. By even bothering to infer that someone’s job is an outward badge of intellect, Vine has simply flagged her own assumptions.

It’s a challenge, but time with my girls is so precious

Home-schooling continues and I at least have the advantage of being a teacher, but as any teacher will tell you, it is easy to remain patient when working with other people’s kids – with your own, not so much!

There is also the fact that I am, like so many, working from home due to underlying health conditions. Attempting to think carefully while planning, sending myriad emails, and focusing on documents while my youngest waves her work in my face, is a challenge in itself. The silver lining is I had assumed any time such as this with my kids had disappeared once they started school. They are top of my priority list in everything I do, and now is no exception.

Johnson had two months to tackle virus and he blew it

When it comes to Covid-19, Boris Johnson is like a teenager who was given his GCSE papers eight weeks early, complete with answers to every question, yet was taken by surprise when he failed, catastrophically.

Rather than revise, Boris decided to go on holiday. He avoided some key meetings. He told his aides to keep notes ‘brief, else I won’t read them’, and jokingly referred to the UK’s grapple for ventilators as ‘Operation: Last Gasp.’ All the while, those GCSE papers sat, unread. Then people died. There is no point in saying we shouldn’t blame government, we should be focusing on the cause. Government are the ones focusing on the cause, that is why we are in this awful mess.