Our future leaders are currently busy running away from pre-school

OF COURSE we must condemn it, and we do. Whenever it is revealed that toddlers have walked out of creches or nursery schools or playgroups and headed for the M1 or whatever dangerous road is nearest to them, we rightly wonder what the hell kind of operation the people in charge think they are running.

They should be closed down, we say. We stop short of wanting them put in the stocks so we can throw tomatoes at them, but that’s really only because stocks are in short supply around Ireland at the moment and in addition, we’re all so broke, any softish tomatoes are going into soup, not onto faces, no matter how much those faces deserve them.

Once the moral outrage dies down, we forget about the whole thing, mentally filing it under “Things that should never happen”.