Mark Andrews on Saturday: Cancelling Churchill, a population crisis, and a very sticky problem for the prison authorities
A primary school has defended its decision to 'cancel' Winston Churchill and J K Rowling by removing their names from its house system. Michele Marcus, 'chair' of governors at Holy Trinity CE Primary School in London, says: "The change was entirely driven and led by our pupils and they feel proud of having effected this change and knowing their views were heard."
What? A primary school is now being "driven and led" by eight-year-olds? Can't wait to see the new curriculum.
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At last. After months of causing misery and disruption, some of Insulate Britain's Loctite louts are finally where they belong, safely behind bars. And no doubt they will be getting a big warm welcome as they explain to the big hairy cons of B-wing how their cells don't meet acceptable levels of energy efficiency. Still, it will no doubt provide some interesting business opportunities for the lags in charge of the contraband.
"'Ere Roman, I've got a geyser on the outside who can get yer 40 tubes of Bostik for 100 snout. Wot yer say?"
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And you have to say, that for all their talk about raising awareness, the Insulate Britain mob were hardly master tacticians.
Every day during the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, they glued themselves to the M25 in London. And when they did venture north of Watford, when the world's bigwigs and media converged for the Cop 26 jamboree in Glasgow, they decided to cause their mayhem in, er, Birmingham.
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Residents in Oldbury are unhappy about plans to convert a smallish three-bed detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac to a six-bed 'HMO', or hostel as they used to be known.
Frankly, I wouldn't be very happy about living next door to such an establishment. And I suspect the poor unfortunates who end up there will be even less happy about it.
But while we can complain all we like about councils and landlords, the real problem is far more simple. And it is exactly the same problem that is responsible for global warming: there are just too many people on this planet.
While the Luddites and hair-shirters try to convince us that all the world's problems are down to Abraham Darby III, what they don't mention is that when Abe was building the Iron Bridge, the world's population was just one billion. Today it is 7.7 billion, all gobbling up the world's resources like Piers Morgan at a free buffet and spewing it out just as quickly.
Until the population stops growing, and returns to a sustainable level, no amount of super glue, loft insulation or hot air from Cop 26 will make much difference. Now, how many children does our Prime Minister have?
