ON behalf of the students at Oxford Brookes University, we would like to apologise.

The Oxford Mail is a newspaper that aims to represent the whole community of Oxford for the whole community, and these members of our community have let everyone else very badly down.

Neither Oxford Brookes nor the students have apologised for the appalling behaviour of this relatively small number of people, so we'll just say it for them – sorry.

The students pictured on today's front page, flagrantly ignoring the rules which everyone else has been painstakingly obeying, are sorry that they acted in such a thoughtless way.

They are sorry that, by acting in this way, they have increasing the risk of spreading the coronavirus at a time when people in the NHS and other key workers are still striving to limit the spread as much as possible.

And they're sorry that, as a result, they have increased the risk that Oxford and the entire country might be put back into restrictive lockdown which makes life difficult and unpleasant and harms the economy.

And if they're not sorry, they damn well should be.