Now it's the stiff upper lip that must be abolished

Apparently the children of Britain are terribly upset. The cause?

“Children and young people talk a lot about the pressure that get placed on them to do well,” said Richard Crellin, one of the authors of the report. “We reflected this could be linked to a pressure in British society to take things on the chin and have a stiff upper lip. Young people across the UK told [how] they feel judged if they don’t succeed first time.”

Mark Russell, chief executive of the Children’s Society, added: “As a society we can’t be content with children in the UK being the most unsatisfied with their lives in Europe. It has to change.”

That does rather misunderstand the stiff upper lip part, which is that we shouldn’t let anything so transient or feeble as other peoples’ opinions of us to make any difference. The injunction is not, as they seem to think, not to emote, but rather not to worry about such foolishness.

Still, we think it rather an insight into the size of the project being demanded. This isn’t about the economy, or even economics, the task is to dig up the entire society. Still, one point we can make in mitigation. The claim is that children don’t enjoy their lives in Europe, something already solved when we left Europe back on Jan 1 this year.