WHAT DO THE PEOPLE THINK ABOUT KEEPING SCHOOLS OPEN DURING LOCKDOWN?

I'll start this blog-post with what for some of you may be a familiar appeal. Please - if you have come to value my writing and would like to support my bid to secure publication for my pandemic journal: 'Dying to Know' - do press the blue Follow button on this blog-post. You will find it at the top on the right-hand side but only when you have a full website screen in front of you using a laptop computer. It seems it is not visible when you are in phone mode.   

I will be honest. No one has pressed the button to identify themselves as a Follower in the last 24 hours. It would be cool if I could get to 20 such Followers by the start of Lockdown on 5 November.  

Following on from my blogpost yesterday which has already had six positive responses, here is  a short one today that provides you with the findings of a YouGov survey on this question of keeping schools open during the next lockdown that begins next Thursday, 5 November 2020. 

Here's a link to yesterday's post, if you missed it:

https://robdonovan.blogspot.com/2020/11/johnson-cummings-and-starmer-bad-mad-or.html

Once again I am sharing a SKWAWKBOX posting. They are such an important source of sanity in this political maelstrom.

Starmer's policy adviser was right - [and Starmer is wrong] 

(SKWAWKBOX - 3 November 2020) 

At what cost?

A YouGov poll that asked English voters whether they want schools open or closed during the government's 'fire-break' national lockdown carries a stark message for Labour leader Keir Starmer.

People across the nation believe that schools should be closed - hardly surprising when they represent one

of the main drivers of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic and even Boris Johnson has admitted the virus passes readily from children to adults - and the areas with the highest numbers who want schools shut, including an outright majority in one, are the Midlands and north:

A divided country - but the division mirrors the difference between those who are experiencing the full impact of the second wave in the north and midlands and those in London and the south for whom this reality is still around the corner. 

In spite of the clear scientific evidence that schools are playing a far bigger role in the spread of the virus than shops or hospitality - and his own acknowledgement that not closing them will prolong the lockdown in other sectors - Starmer continues to side with the Tories in their determination to keep schools open.

This position is rejected by voters in the northern and Midlands areas where Labour lost fifty seats in last year's general election - and will inflict the heaviest damage on those same areas.

As the SKWAWKBOX exclusively revealed yesterday, a Labour policy adviser tasked to investigate the pandemic crisis and advise on the party's response warned both that not closing schools would help the virus spread - and that failing to oppose the Tories on schools would be a squandered opportunity to boost Labour politically.

The first part of that advice is clearly supported by the science - and the latter part is borne out by the new polling.

If Starmer is remotely serious about winning power, he is going about it in exactly the wrong way - and enabling Boris Johnson to cause even further needless deaths.

I value the knowledge and insights that SKWAWKBOX provides. I hope you do. Honest politics is precious.