Rooted royal
LIFE as an 18-year-old member of the Royal Family might be imagined to involve mainly glitzy parties and a bit of waving.
Not so much bagging up potted plants for garden centre customers.
Lady Louise Windsor has a summer job paying £6.83 an hour
So how refreshing to find the Queen’s grand-daughter Lady Louise Windsor taking up a summer job.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised, given her parents, Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, are among the hardest-working and unshowiest royals.
Adding green fingers to her blue blood should also impress her uncle Prince Charles, himself a fervent admirer of — not to mention occasional communicator with — the plant world.
Honest graft on or near the minimum wage of £6.83 an hour will have instilled in Lady Louise useful values and appreciation of the value of money, as it does for many less fortunate teenagers.
We reckon her late grandad Prince Philip, to whom she was especially close, would be very proud.
Pubs in peril
IT’S easy to assume our great British boozers will always endure.
But the pub industry is staggering like a punter at last orders after too many servings of Lockdown, followed by a Cost Of Living chaser.
Pub are struggling as a result of the cost of living crisis
Soaring energy bills that torment households are hammering pubs too, as are supply costs, leading to the gulp- inducing prospect of a £14 pint by 2025.
As Wetherspoons founder Tim Martin points out on this page, pubs’ problems were piling up long before Covid.
We sympathise with his frustration that outdated tax distinctions on food sales are effectively handicapping pubs’ ability to compete with supermarkets.
Our number of pubs has shrunk by 15 per cent in the past ten years alone.
If we don’t want busy local boozers to be something we see only on Corrie and EastEnders, landlords need support.
A-Z of success
AFTER two years of pandemic disruption, it was heartening to see so many pupils celebrating top A-levels yesterday, with results still comfortably ahead of 2019’s.
Yes, they are down on last year but beginning the return to pre-Covid levels of rigour was always a necessity.
It was heartening to see so many pupils celebrating top A-Level grades
That’s of little comfort to those who now face missing out on university places because of a logjam in applications — but with resilience and adaptability, they can turn a setback into an opportunity.
Vocational courses or apprenticeships can offer skills in higher demand with better earnings, while there is no shortage of job vacancies to tide teens over.
We congratulate the many pupils whose dreams came true yesterday but anyone disappointed ought to head to Sun Employment, to read about some business superstars who didn’t need A grades to make the grade.
