‘Can I have one last present?’ my daughter asked earlier this week, having turned 15 and covered the kitchen floor with torn wrapping paper. ‘Can I have a sick note for PE?’ Doubtless she’d pored over that morning’s news before charging up and down the corridor at dawn to wake her parents. She must have noted that the government is planning to trial reforms of the sick note system that has been failing this country for decades. She didn’t mention it when delightedly seeing if her squeezy pickled cucumber lamp would work (it did), or when she opened her new...