Brexit, Covid, global warming, a year of teachers' strikes and an improvement in personal hygiene have all contributed to the fall in numbers of what was once one of Britain's most popular and beloved pets: the head louse.
As of today, the humble louse has been added to the European list of endangered species and, within a decade, could be wiped out completely.
Over the last 8 years, Professor Nora Kopfenkratzer of Berlin University, has compiled analysis, based on school medical data, shampoo sales and sitting behind scruffy kids on the bus, which conclusively shows a rapid decline in nits, cooties, and dickies all across Europe.
Reasons for the decline may include: better personal hygiene regimes, not sharing combs, the demise of the bobble hat, and a tendency to aspire to more fashionable, middle-class issues, like asthma and autism. Although experts are still scratching their heads as to the real cause.
A man claiming to be Nigel Farage told Newsbiscuit, 'Yet again, we are being dictated to by the EU, and we are in severe danger of losing another British institution due to the meddling of the Eurocrats. We estimate that over 1000 nit nurses have been made redundant by the NHS over the last thirty years and replaced by "health workers" from overseas, who, no doubt, concentrate solely on foreign parasites, like mosquitoes, tsetse flies and those tiny fish that swim up your bell end.'