PRINCE Charles, Christmas supplies and the mishandling of Covid were the issues raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Stephen Glover said the Prince of Wales managed to be an admirable and an infuriating man at the same time.

“But while we should on the whole be grateful that the heir to the throne cares so much [about the planet], and is generally so knowledgeable about the issues he embraces, it can hardly be denied that he sometimes sounds like an interesting though dotty professor who is worryingly out of touch with the lives of ordinary people,” he said. “According to him, young people ‘see their future being totally destroyed’. If that is true – and I doubt it – surely it is the role of a wise prince to try to put such extreme anxieties into some sort of balanced perspective, rather than to risk whipping them up by declaring that ‘it is already beginning to be catastrophic’. “

He said no one could dispute that over many years the prince has done the country some service by drawing attention to our depredations of nature.

“But it is now time to stop ruffling the feathers of millions of Britons, and to bend his energies to becoming the kind of gloriously impartial monarch his mother is.”

The Daily Express

The newspaper’s leader section said we needed to keep calm.

“While Christmas may well be affected by current delays, retailers have put their heads above the parapet to reassure British families that they are working flat out to ensure that Christmas will have stocks of seasonal produce,” it said. “A further boost came yesterday as the Government secured a deal with a producer of CO2, vital to food and drink production. But a word of caution. Panic buying would scupper this process.”

It urged against stockpiling and said we were in a better place this Christmas than last.

“While it may not be back to pre-pandemic plenty - will be a season to be merry.”

The Guardian

Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said the first official report into the Government’s handling of Covid has shown how misguided they were.

“In spring last year it was clear to those of us who work in global public health that the government had taken the worst path,” he said. “Ministers allowed the virus to spread throughout the country without building any kind of surveillance system or protecting health workers with adequate PPE.

“I can understand that those who lost loved ones, those who faced delayed care from the NHS because it was forced into being a Covid-focused service, and those who lost financially from prolonged restrictions will be angry and want answers.”