Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

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  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    ... On one level, I am reluctant to bring in the posh boys versus everyone else trope as it can get too broad-brush, lead to accusations of 'the politics of envy' yadda yadda yadda - and I've opined about that on these boards before. I come from South Wales and find posh people difficult.

    But for all that, I think there is something of that going on here, the privileged gang closing ranks to protect themselves. If there's anything that would drive me to equal and opposite levels of enraged mob / herd-instinct behaviour it'd be the sight of Toffs covering one another's backs and getting away with it. ...
    If Cummings is posh, that's only in right of his wife. She's the daughter of a baronet and her grandfather was a long-forgotten and not very well known even then, Conservative MP in the fifties. Cummings himself isn't posh.

    The posh ones probably regard him as a convenient oik who's a useful hired gun because he's clever. One or two of them may have read his blogs and assumed that because they can't understand a word he's saying, he must be terribly bright. They themselves, not being, aren't able to spot that they are vacuous cr*p.

  • The marginal risk from one man, even if it's Dominic Cummings, driving to Durham and back is small. And so one man might easily persuade himself that there's little harm done if he takes a little excursion in what he might consider to be a good cause.

    The catch, of course, is that what is good for Mr. Cummings must also be good for the millions of other people who would like to drive a few hundred miles to see their relatives, and the risk of a few million people driving around the country is not so small.
  • I wonder how much extra driving about there's been today, following Cummings' example?
  • He drove from an area where C19 was rife, to an area where it was almost completely unknown, knowing that he was definitely bringing at least one person who was infected.

    That's not a marginal risk.
  • jay_emmjay_emm Shipmate
    Apparently we'll change our minds when we hear his side of the story. We've heard 5 versions of his side of his story.
  • GalilitGalilit Shipmate
    After Cummings' live statement:
    Kosher maybe, at a stretch ... but definitely stinky
  • Furtive GanderFurtive Gander Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    I don't like him or what he stands for (Tories and Brexit) but in this, he seems better and more thoughtful than I imagined.

    I still charge him with two big wrongs:

    1. risking other people's health, wellbeing and lives by driving for several hundred miles probably with infection in the vehicle
    2. assuming he was needed at Number 10 when the person he was advising was too ill to function
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    Going for a drive 'to test one's eyesight' doesn't sound as though he's actually the sharpest knife in the kitchen...

    ...hopefully, he'll soon find out who is. Apparently, being stabbed in the back is not necessarily painful, even if terminal.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    This is such transparent bullshit. 'The dog ate my home work' would be more credible.
  • Will anyone actually be convinced by Gollumface the Gobshitter?

    A rhetorical question, of course, as the answer is (sadly) 'Yes'.
    :disappointed:
  • He can say what he did was legal, but it rested on his own interpretation. Well, why can't I do that?

    And yes, going for a drive to test my eyes, oh boy, I need a double scotch, to test my reflexes.
  • Doesn't this make the regulations meaningless? I feel bad, so this is exceptional, so I am off on a long trip. Bye bye.
  • I thought opticians were closed and unable to provide eye-tests. Or, are they open in England?
  • AnselminaAnselmina Shipmate
    I don't doubt the veracity of his statement (well, more than usual). It hangs together coherently enough as one family's journey into the nasty unknown of COVID-19. I don't doubt that some of these dilemmas were real and difficult. At times the worry must have been immense. And, yes, he is in an unusual position as top political advisor with a unique set of personal circumstances.

    But the bottom line remains, that he has just reinforced the old story that if you're rich, influential and have a tame boss, you have more 'options' to interpret life's restrictions, than the peasants. And permission is self-given or retrospectively granted by said tame boss. Again, this can't be news. Big deal! But for my money the disappointment was in Johnson's response to spot this, or to care about this from the perspective of the ordinary people. It was stupidity in Johnson to play the 'anxious parent and father' card on Cummings' behalf. And it was a mis-step to make the assertion that what Cummings had done was 'responsible' and had 'integrity'. How could this weigh equally for someone with the extraordinary resources available to Cummings' family, over and against those going through the same thing, who have no such resources or options. Of course, people felt insulted.

    We know we live in a very unequal society with preferential exception given to the top of the pile. But it's not smart to rub it in people's faces at a time when their loved ones are dying.

    In itself the incident itself is probably really a non-event. But in its context and breakdown it has exposed one of the things rotten about this administration.
  • Two rotten things, at least:

    1. Johnson
    2.Cummings
  • I think Cummings will get some sympathy, as the journos were pretty hostile. And yet there is something ludicrous about some elements, e.g., the eye-sight drive. Also, I found it boring, which will help him.

    Let's face it, he is rich enough to be able to go to the family farm, and he is mentally agile enough to "interpret" the regulations. What's new.
  • Yes.

    I've heard some reports that suggest that Cummings Junior wasn't left in County Durham with relatives but brought back to London after the round trip.

    Is that right?

    If it is then it blows the whole lame excuse thing out of the water. People have been turned back from the Lake District and the Peaks, stopped on the Welsh border, others have been fined for minor breaches of the regulations.

    The anonymous civil servant who tweeted their outrage via an official Civil Service tweet - taken down after 9 minutes but not before the Beeb got hold of it - will probably lose their job. Cummings walks away scot free.

    It's the sheer arrogance and sense of entitlement that sticks in my craw. Cummings of all people must be aware that there are journalists behind every hedge waiting to catch him out. He is a loathed and detested figure so is bound to be a prime target. I can understand that he feels under pressure, that he'd be disorientated - but where's his common sense? Where's his common decency?

    People have been making sacrifices to self-isolate. Cummings and Boris, Gove and all the others have treated the British public with nothing but contempt.

    As well as clapping the NHS and frontline workers from doorsteps or balconies or from high-rise windows each Thursday we should be burning effigies and hoisting them on pitchforks.

    I'm Mr Moderate but this has made my blood boil.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    According to some news reports, a goodly portion of the British public took the opportunity to follow Cummings' example today, and to flock to beaches, beauty spots etc., with no regard to social distancing (and 30-40 people at a BBQ hardly counts as exercise...).
    :rage:

    An even goodlier portion did the proper thing, and Stayed At Home.
  • Social media enjoying this - "eye-tests now available on the M1, half price".
  • W HyattW Hyatt Shipmate
    His innate Conservatism remains a mystery to me some 30 odd years after he died. He always thought I was a Communist ...

    I'm guessing that as young adults after World War II, my parents saw the world as having only one political spectrum that mattered: conservative vs. liberal vs. communist, so they became Republicans. From your comment, I wonder if something similar applied to your Granddad.
  • :lol:

    Didn't take long for this sort of thing to appear, did it?
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    Prime Minister’s press conference is not going well.

    (Well, in my opinion.)
  • Also - Beth Rigby is asking the most incisive questions !
  • Boris will just bore you into submission. I think they have both diluted the regulations. You can interpret them as you will.
  • I think they have both diluted the regulations.
    Homeopathic approaches to flatten the curve.
  • Well, Boris was true to form and simply deflected the questions. Handy having Cummings give an hour long press conference earlier. That way he could say, 'You've already asked Dominic Cummings these questions so I don't need to answer them ...'

    I wonder if Cummings gave him that idea?
  • W Hyatt wrote: »
    His innate Conservatism remains a mystery to me some 30 odd years after he died. He always thought I was a Communist ...

    I'm guessing that as young adults after World War II, my parents saw the world as having only one political spectrum that mattered: conservative vs. liberal vs. communist, so they became Republicans. From your comment, I wonder if something similar applied to your Granddad.

    Dunno. He worked hard and was respected for that. He never had a day off sick, never went on strike. He'd talk openly and candidly about the grim conditions of his childhood but never complained about them. He simply seemed to think that that was the way things were and yet they'd pulled through.

    He never had much of an education but was a bright bloke. His mental arithmetic used to astound me. An odd bloke in many ways but I loved him to bits. Quick witted dry humour.
  • My maternal grandfather also saw his birth as his inheritance. Very smart, knew the Latin names for every single plant he might come across as a gardener, ran a double-plot allotment into his late 70s, and nothing would fail to grow.

    But he never once thought of challenging those in authority over him, in terms of pay, conditions, or especially, becoming one of them. Which, I think, he easily could have. He opposed my mum's education from the get-go, and later, her ambition to do better. He wasn't at all religious, but there was something God-ordained about his station in life.
  • I wonder if Johnson and Cummings are secret followers of the teachings of Aleister Crowley?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema

    A bastardised version of 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' might seem to apply to them...
    :flushed:
  • Well, they skipped the "Harm none..." part and went straight for the punchline.
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    I thought opticians were closed and unable to provide eye-tests. Or, are they open in England?
    Only for emergencies, and only really ones in supermarkets/Boots which are open anyway for essential services. If you've suddenly developed dodgy sight or broken your frames things still need sorting.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Interesting that ABdePJ turned up to do the coronavirus briefing today, when the heat* was on someone else.

    One question nobody asked Cummings was what were their usual childcare arrangements - surely a couple of their means, both working, would have a nanny? And even if she was indisposed, in a place the size of London, they'd be able to find a substitute?

    * such as it was - the reporters didn't exactly give DC a hard time
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    Piglet wrote: »
    Interesting that ABdePJ turned up to do the coronavirus briefing today, when the heat* was on someone else.

    Specifically on the un-elected individual currently running the country.
  • Or running across the country...

    They seek him here - they seek him there!
    They seek King Dommo everywhere!
  • Just need to put this somewhere:

    They are all utterly corrupt, they have lost any sense of a moral right, and they have condemmed tens of thousands to die.

    I will never ever accept their authority. Tories - led by the crook-in-chief Cummings and his vassal Johnson - are dead.
  • It's time that the nation realise that nothing the current government says can be trusted. That includes any statement that it's safe to relax the lockdown. So, we should ignore them when they say it's safe to relax the lockdown restrictions - only go to work if you're in a key service, don't let your kids go back to school (if you're a teacher refuse to cooperate with reopening schools before the scientific consensus is that it's safe), don't think it's safe to go to the beach or anywhere else that requires a drive and is likely to be busy. To follow the recent pronouncements of the government is to actively participate in their plan to kill thousands so that they and their pals in big business can continue to screw obscene profits out of the country.
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    My maternal grandfather also saw his birth as his inheritance. Very smart, knew the Latin names for every single plant he might come across as a gardener, ran a double-plot allotment into his late 70s, and nothing would fail to grow.

    But he never once thought of challenging those in authority over him, in terms of pay, conditions, or especially, becoming one of them. Which, I think, he easily could have. He opposed my mum's education from the get-go, and later, her ambition to do better. He wasn't at all religious, but there was something God-ordained about his station in life.

    Im not sure he'd have seen the dire conditions of his background as anything other than unfortunate and reprehensible. Most people he grew up around were in the same boat. It was the way things were. He'd have seen the changes that took place during his lifetime as the result of steady economic progress rather than anything that has to be agitated for.

    He was opposed to my mother staying on at school and wanted her out to work as soon as possible. He never understood why I wanted to go to university. He liked his garden, his newspaper and his fish and chips, hated travel, 'foreign food' and anything that looked 'high brow'.

    However we cut it, much of the British working class are socially conservative. My Grandad was conservative with a small c in that he had very limited horizons - art and culture were out - fish and chips and steak and kidney pie were fine, but not curry, pasta or rice. Sexual jokes and innuendos were out but arses, farting and poop were somehow hilarious.

    We once had an epic shite fight on the hills above Aberdyfi, throwing dried sheep and horse poo at one another. Those were the days ...

  • Im not sure he'd have seen the dire conditions of his background as anything other than unfortunate and reprehensible.

    You say that, but he never wanted to better himself, or his family. Deeply conservative is right. Absolutely dead set against any form of change at all.
  • Just need to put this somewhere:

    They are all utterly corrupt, they have lost any sense of a moral right, and they have condemmed tens of thousands to die.

    I will never ever accept their authority. Tories - led by the crook-in-chief Cummings and his vassal Johnson - are dead.

    I agree with you. There is a stench coming off from them now. No doubt the media and plenty of Tories will go along with it. All moral sense gone.
  • Senior Conservatives are just digging in. Michael Gove on TV this morning repeating the BS. The government just might as well scrap all the lockdown restrictions, let people do whatever they like without any account for social distancing as they were clearly never needed in the first place. I hope everyone in England enjoys the consequences of a second wave of infection. Maybe they can recruit enough nurses to get NHS Nightingale and the other temporary hospitals working at capacity this time around, they're going to be needed.
  • It's time that the nation realise that nothing the current government says can be trusted. That includes any statement that it's safe to relax the lockdown. So, we should ignore them when they say it's safe to relax the lockdown restrictions - only go to work if you're in a key service, don't let your kids go back to school (if you're a teacher refuse to cooperate with reopening schools before the scientific consensus is that it's safe), don't think it's safe to go to the beach or anywhere else that requires a drive and is likely to be busy. To follow the recent pronouncements of the government is to actively participate in their plan to kill thousands so that they and their pals in big business can continue to screw obscene profits out of the country.

    This.

    However, I'm old and cynical enough to fear that not enough people will take this sensible attitude, and that in the free-for-all, the second wave will indeed happen.

    If it does, this country will fall apart, unless the lunatics at the top GO. And soon.

  • SarasaSarasa Shipmate
    I too wouldn't be surprised if there is a leap in the figures in a couple of weeks, but the optimist in me hopes that isn't the case. The super optimistic part of me hopes that defending the indefensible Mr Cummings means that Mr Johnson and Mr Gove discover that they have to resign too.
  • I'd be delighted if all the ministers who have lined up to defend Mr Cummings, from the PM downwards, resign over this. Except, Priti Patel has been conspicuously silent on the subject ...
  • ...and, if I get your drift, we really, really, REALLY don't want her as PM...
    :scream:
  • I'd be delighted if all the ministers who have lined up to defend Mr Cummings, from the PM downwards, resign over this. Except, Priti Patel has been conspicuously silent on the subject ...

    Someone probably pointed a laser at the floor and she's been a bit distracted. She might notice in a couple of days and say something outrageous.
  • Well, the first minister has resigned. Not one of the idiots who are undermining the "stay at home" message by supporting the bullshit story of Cummings, but one of the ministers who see that it is bullshit. Which means a thinning out of the more reasonable* ministers from the Cabinet.

    * relatively speaking.
  • I am really worried. This is another of those times when I really hope I'm wrong. The arrogance of this government is truly breathtaking. And it could cost thousands of lives.

    However, I want to be positive. To some extent our democracy is working. It seems that the Tory MPs who have broken rank and criticised DC, have done so because of the sheer weight of emails from their constituents. As @Alan Cresswell has correctly pointed out several times, this is central to a functioning democracy and as important as voting.

    There is a lot of anger out there. Some of our politicians are listening.

    There is great danger in the government's defence of Cummings because of how it undermines the vital public health messages. Some of our politicians are listening.

    AFZ
  • Yes, I am worried. The regulations are becoming voluntary. It's a nice day, off to the beach. Social distancing, what's that?
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    It's not a very good time for a government to fall apart.
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