SARAH VINE: The general sense of chippy militancy sweeping the country is making me feel chippy and militant, too. It’s time for us mums to go on strike!

What’s this summer’s hottest accessory? A pair of Dolce & Gabbana platform slides that cost more than a month’s rent? A Christian Dior beach tote? A Prada raffia bucket hat?

No, none of the above. There’s only one thing to be seen with this season, and that’s a placard.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, appears to be on strike. If they’re not already manning the picket lines, they’re thinking about it: rail workers, Tube drivers, barristers, doctors, postal workers, airline staff, fire-fighters.

Half of America is threatening a sex-strike — just like in the Greek play Lysistrata — following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn Roe vs Wade, which now means there is no constitutional right to an abortion. (Aristophanes’ drama was full of laughs, but there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in the so-called land of the free right now.)

And you never know when the strikers are going to, well, strike. The other morning, having lured the teenage son from his hormonal pit (using a pain au chocolat as bait), stuffed him into his suit and driven him to school through horrendous traffic, we arrived (triumphantly) four minutes before the bell.

Three minutes later, he rang me. School’s been cancelled — the teachers are on strike. Again.

SARAH VINE: Why try to raise a respectful, responsible human being when the rest of the world can’t be bothered? It’s time for us mums to go on strike!

Hell’s teeth. What’s the point of banging on to him about punctuality and reliability when neither of those things seem to matter a jot? Why try to raise a respectful, responsible human being when the rest of the world can’t be bothered?

Apparently there was an email from school which I must have missed. How remiss of me. It’s not like I have anything else to do apart from waiting to be told which of the many groups paid to provide the gold-standard services (ha!) my taxes help to fund has decided to take the sodding day off.

All of which gave me an idea. Because the general sense of chippy militancy sweeping the country is making me feel chippy and militant, too. So here’s my proposal, sisters: we mums should go on strike.

A 30 per cent pay rise for doctors? We’ll settle for 1 per cent, because even that’s more than the big fat zero we’re used to. Plenty of us hold down jobs and pay out taxes, too — but we all simultaneously run a home and raise the next generation of worker bees. All for precisely diddly-squat in return.

Less, in fact, since women who take time off work to care for their children often tumble off the career ladder and are penalised when they finally get to claim their pensions.

So . . . who will join me on the picket line?

‘What do we want?’

‘A lie-in?’

‘When do we want it?’

‘Umm, before we die?’

Unfortunately, there is no mums’ union. No one is paid handsomely to represent our interests in society, or to make our case to politicians. Which is probably just as well, because if mums ever did go on strike, it would be Armageddon by teatime.

No one to walk the dogs, clean the hamster cage or remember to feed the rabbit. No one to pick up the towels off the bathroom floor, find those lost socks or put the milk back in the fridge.

No one to open the door when you’ve forgotten your keys — and, more importantly, no one to slam it on when it all goes wrong.

The trouble with this delicious flight of fancy, of course, is that we could never go on strike because we’re a vital part of national infrastructure.

So we will plod on, and while everyone else is busy waving their placards and looking after their own interests, we’ll still be here, looking after everyone else’s. Picking up the pieces. For free. As we always do. You’re welcome.

More shots, fewer rocks, Emma 

Congratulations to Emma Raducanu for winning her match in the first round of Wimbledon (she plays again this afternoon). But why was she wearing £36,000 of Tiffany jewellery? It’s a tennis tournament, dear, not a nightclub.

Emma Raducanu is shown celebrating victory against Alison Van Uytvanck of Belgium in the Women’s Singles First Round match. But why was she wearing £36,000 of Tiffany jewellery?

Top-drawer service it ain’t

Having recently moved house, I ordered a new bed for my daughter. After several failed delivery attempts (driver issues, apparently), it eventually showed up yesterday, along with two burly men to install it.

I showed them to her room and left them to get on with it, only to be summoned almost immediately. There was a problem: a chest of drawers was very slightly — by about an inch — in the way. ‘Oh don’t worry, you can just shunt that to one side,’ I said. They both looked at me as though I had just suggested something untoward. ‘Sorry, love, we don’t do that.’ Apparently not part of their remit. So two strapping blokes with tattoos and biceps stood by while I, a middle-aged woman with a sore back, wrestled with the offending item. And they say chivalry is dead.

Give Nicola her vote

If you ask me, the best thing the Government can do with Nicola Sturgeon is to let her have her referendum — before the next General Election.

If she loses, great. If she wins and Scotland leaves, it’s a shame, but at least the Tories could go into the next election without the threat of a toxic Labour/Lib-Dem/SNP pact — which will undoubtedly bring about the break-up of the union anyway, since that is the price she will exact from lily-livered Keir Starmer.

I’m sorry for Jeremy Vine and the staff of his Channel 5 show who all have Covid. But it doesn’t mean the entire country has to go back into lockdown. ‘Why isn’t the Government mentioning it? Why isn’t it urging anyone vulnerable to stay indoors?’ he wails. Because public policy isn’t determined by TV presenters, that’s why.

In the meantime, get well soon, Jeremy.

Yesterday, the chair of governors for my son’s school, which has recently been downgraded from outstanding to failing, cancelled a meeting with parents. The reason: Covid. Oh dear. That Prince Andrew strain is obviously catching.

I must confess I quite like the idea of posties being asked to check on the elderly and infirm as they do their rounds — just as long as it doesn’t become a substitute for proper social care. Which, something tells me, it inevitably will. 

Presumably the festival-goers who left behind a tsunami of plastic rubbish at Glastonbury were the same people cheering on Greta Thunberg. As ever, it’s one rule for the self-righteous woke, and another for the rest of us.

Presumably the festival-goers who left behind a tsunami of plastic rubbish at Glastonbury were the same people cheering on Greta Thunberg

THE HIGH STREET GOES HIGH BROW 

I see John Lewis is branching out into Botox. What was its old slogan? ‘Never knowingly undersold’. Now, like those delightfully eccentric haberdashery departments, its customers can be frozen in time, too. 

Turns out that thanks to a pandemic payout, the taxpayer has a stake in ‘upmarket’ sex party firm Killing Kittens, run by the Duchess of Cambridge’s old pal. Does this mean we all get free admittance? 

A man who told a planning committee his wife looks prettier with her clothes on than off has, understandably, found himself in the doghouse. He was arguing against the removal of a willow tree, without which, he claimed, passers-by would be able to see her getting undressed. He insists he was joking, but good luck with ever seeing her naked again, matey. Still, it could be worse: he could be married to me. It would take more than a willow tree to hide that horror from the world. 

I must confess I quite like the idea of posties being asked to check on the elderly and infirm as they do their rounds — just as long as it doesn’t become a substitute for proper social care. Which, something tells me, it inevitably will. 

My father rings from Italy. ‘I don’t buy this story about Prince Charles and the bags of cash, S,’ he says. ‘Oh really, why’s that?’ say I. ‘Three million euros in 500 Euro notes — that wouldn’t take up a lot of space. One bag would do it easy.’ I think this conversation says more about my dad than the prince, but I love him for it anyway. 

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