RandoEFC

Again, if they'd said yes he made a mistake, he's very sorry and he won't do it again, but he won't be leaving his position as he's too important to the government at this stage in the crisis, enough people would have accepted that by now that this story would have faded from sight for the general public and been restricted to people like who spend too much time on the internet banging on about it. By pretending he didn't break the rules and forcing the police to investigate it, they've caused this themselves, Cummings will be back on the front pages tomorrow a full week after this first broke. More bad press for the government and more noise distracting everyone from getting this crisis right. The anti-Tory in me definitely enjoyed this for most of the weekend and I'm glad that a lot of people are starting to see this bunch for what they are but the actual human being in me is back in the driving seat now and this farce needs to end. It's the media's job to report on it and the police's job to investigate the matter, no doubt they'll get abused for doing their jobs but theres one man who wants the country to move on from this and has access to one very simple solution which will allow that to happen.

Several countries managed to sort this out overnight and it's going to take us over 3 months from the start of the pandemic to do the same. Beneath the government's spinning of the truth and flat out lying to make themselves sound better than they are, the decisions made at government level along with the contributions of SAGE, public health England and the parts of the NHS, such as procurement of PPE, which aren't the nurses and doctors reacting on the front lines has been an absolute national embarrassment by almost every measure. More data from the FT today suggests that excess deaths per capita in the UK is worse than anywhere else in the world that has published comparable data, including USA and Italy. We had longer to prepare than most comparable countries, we have the unique geographical advantage of being an island and therefore having more control over the virus entering the country, we have a national health service that may be understaffed and underfunded compared to previous years but still much stronger than most other countries have to fall back on. Set the Cummings incident and the government taking the absolute piss out of their own lockdown rules to defend one man while the death toll approaches 40,000 against this backdrop. The handling of this in the UK has categorically been an abject failure and a combination of our clown government, corrupt and irresponsible sections of our media, the lack of a viable testing strategy even now, and the general idiocy of many sections of the public mean that there's no guarantee we won't see a second wave either. Don't forget this embarrassing shambles of a country under this tin pot populist administration is supposed to be big and strong enough to leave the biggest trading bloc in the world without a single trade deal in place with any other major economical power while relying on a demented psychopath who tries to shut down social media for fact checking one of his tweets and might not even be reelected in a few months' time as their primary ally.

I'm not sure, when I say bored I'm only bored of talking about it because theres only so many times you can repeat the same facts to people who choose not to see them. It won't be forgotten though. Their lead in the polls has been cut from 15 points to 6 points according to YouGov. It'll be interesting to see whether it remains on the front pages tomorrow, I don't think it will be aside from possibly the Mirror and the Guardian but the damage has still been done over it, and Tory MPs are still coming out to condemn him today and call for him to resign. Bits and pieces will continue to cut through and damage them. A brighter light will be shone on Cummings in the long term and any further controversy surrounding him you'll see this episode erupt back to the fore again.

Remember when they called themselves the People's Government back in December? Lasted long that .

I'm a bit bored now of the Cummings thing. I'd be fucking angry if I'd been affected like many have not being able to get childcare or see dying relatives or attend funerals, I've moved into a state of being more concerned about the dodgy shit, the right wing trolls on Twitter, at least some of whom are clearly coordinated, and Cummings highlighting his addiction to deceiving people into thinking he's the mastermind by editing his blog and being more clearly than ever in total control of the PM. With or without Cummings, this government will devour itself long before the five years are up. I just hope what comes next is the restoration of some common sense and professionalism. I dont know what's left of the Tory party apart from the ERG and this cult of morons and liars who have pinned their careers to SS Brexit.

The worst thing about that one is Nick Ferrari chuckling like it's his old mate trying to convince him that he never snogged his girlfriend when they were at school together 40 years ago. You should have heard how different his tone was when he interviewed the head of one of the teaching unions a few weeks ago who came on to try and explain why there was anxiety about bringing more kids back to school. He accused teachers of not having a can do attitude, failing to acknowledge that every one of us had to relearn their jobs overnight to provide an education to their students whilst staffing schools throughout the lockdown including holidays and bank holidays, BUT besides the point. This is a great rant from Alistair Campbell. Theres actually an 8 minute video on reddit of the full interview but he really eviscerated the government here. Obviously he's a Labour guy so pinch of salt and all that but a great rant all the same:

Sorry to hear @El Profesor

Class.

I'm still convinced they're over reaching but they have at least mobilised some of their rabid attack dogs to send death threats to bishops who spoke out in favour of honesty and actions that save lives over the weekend so at least they've achieved something.

He's such an odd little man. I hope the media which appear to have found a rare consensus on public interest which transcends their political bias look into this and give us the facts and detail on this too. It's a slim and obscure demographic of the population that knows he does shady stuff like this to make himself look like a mastermind.

I noticed you'd come to play . I got another bite this morning from someone who couldn't spell the #scummedia hashtag properly, tried to argue with me based on my low number of followers then deleted the tweet anyway and added me to a list (oh no).

Resignation from a Cabinet Minister:

If anyone was wondering, this is what happens when you engage with the right wing keyboard warriors on Twitter. First I replied to The Core's tweet, they blocked me when my reply got the most likes of any of their actual followers. Then a guy replied calling me a bot and blocked me before I had a chance to reply .

If Cummings achieved one thing today his half truths seem to have fed enough dimwits on Twitter to start tweeting about the evil MSM and "the left" again so the debate has become a little less one-sided. Some examples of clear twitter trolls who want us to know that, to them, this is still nothing more than a football match: Wait what? Now I'm hearing that these tweets are coming from Tory MPs! Surely not?

I'm inclined to suggest that we move all the political speak about the UK to this thread from now on. Most of our friends from other parts of the world have been driven away from the actual Covid thread because of our obsessive ramblings about the UK's specific handling of it.

Johnson not knowing is believable given that he was ill himself at the time. A former SpAd tweeted saying that there's 'no way Cummings goes to the toilet without Johnson knowing about it' but this PM probably isn't quite as meticulous as most and he was ill so benefit of the doubt there. The being threatened thing was weird. Having Covid doesn't make any difference to their normal security arrangements and if it's that bad that they need to leave town, why is that only the case when the Mrs is ill? The two don't seem to be related to me. The castle explanation was ridiculous. Going for an hour plus drive to see whether you can drive is just bizarre and it's been confirmed that his wife can drive so what the actual fuck they're thinking of here I don't know. I can believe that his eyesight was dodgy but just happening to drive to a beauty spot and have a 15 minute sit by a river on what happens to be your wife's birthday is suspect as fuck. His bottom line is that he was being reasonable because he was dealing with exceptional circumstances. There are two parents in their household looking after one child. He admits they didn't get help with childcare in Durham. Thousands of people across the country with more kids, and many without a partner to help them, have gone down sick with this. If it gets to the point where you're both so sick you can't look after your kids then you call for help. You can't take emergency action to help yourself and your household during a national crisis just to eradicate your own worry of something serious that might happen. The issue always remains, if everyone else in the same situation had done what he did, more people would have caught the virus and more people would have died. The daftest thing is, if they'd just owned this from the start instead of talking about campaigning newspapers and going into fight mode it wouldn't have been as damaging but unfortunately it's in the nature of this administration to react like that.

Five days over on the Isle of Man without a new case of coronavirus. 7 known active cases left on the island. A reminder that every individual case here underwent intense contact tracing and the borders and ports were closed as part of a full lockdown implemented after the first locally transmitted case was confirmed.

This has never been the prevailing thought. There's an entire thread on this forum and a popular hashtag called COVIDIOTS especially reserved for citizens breaking lockdown. Both the government and the individual are culpable. Cummings is now taking questions after his statement. His defence essentially depends on a household with two parents and one young child with one of the parents showing symptoms constitutes "exceptional circumstances" (his words) when in reality that describes the exact scenario of thousands of households across the country at the exact same time.

There are single parents with multiple kids up and down the country who have shown symptoms and self-isolated and had to hope that they didn't get too sick to look after their kids. Some have even called 111 and checked only to be told they must stay at home under all circumstances. If both Cummings and his wife had gotten that ill then it would have been acceptable for them to ask an uncle or aunt to come and take the kids from the home. Preferably those based in London not Durham. There's at least half a dozen degrees of separation between what they could have tried to do in order to stick to the letter and the spirit of the rules, and what they chose to do. That's just the first confirmed trip as well. There's evidence which is almost conclusive that he went back to Durham after returning to work and there are even tweets from locals weeks after all of this happened asking why they just saw Dominic Cummings in Durham when he lives and works in London. Bang to rights.

You need to read the full story before passing comment on this because there is so, so much anger out there over this. I don't agree with people heckling him outside his house but he brought it upon himself by responding "who cares how it looks" before goading the media on camera about how he managed to steer Brexit past their attempted reporting of facts and evidence. The Scottish CMO and Nicola Sturgeon admitted it was wrong and she immediately agreed to resign. (I'm not across the full story about the Welsh guy.) If Cummings and Johnson had even attempted to do the same this wouldn't be the story that it is but they are so utterly convinced that they can convince the rest of the country that the rules that apply to everyone shouldn't apply to them because they're special that they couldn't do it even though it would have been better for them politically. That's the extent of their privilege.

This is the third Conservative MP who has tweeted almost identical words this morning about making their feelings clear to those in government. Think we're over 20 now that have called for a resignation.

The Guido Fawkes and The Core types are sensational right now. Tom Harwood is doing the rounds this morning on tv and radio. What it boils down to is self-professed right wing activists claiming that independent and even right-leaning journalists and newspapers are only criticising Cummings and Johnson because of their political motivations. About 24 more hours they'll be desperate enough to start claiming that "the left think the public are stupid enough to buy into this" as they've done in the past and they'll have to rewrite the definition of irony. The longer they fight this, the more damage they'll do to their own credibility because they've already lost. The longer Dominic Cummings stays in post now, the more damage he does to his own project as Johnson and his cult are currently siphoning support across the country.

Didn't realise how many leftie loony campaigning Labour activists there were in the parliamentary Tory party.

Dont really agree with that to be fair. I have no sympathy for him and his wife but pretty fucking unpleasant for the 4 year old boy. Save it for outside Downing Street if you want to have your say.