Durham at least safer than the Duchy of Lancaster, which is chancelled by a cokehead. But that reminds me, of course there's not one rule for us and one for them.
Agreed. He has just handed the Opposition four years worth of attack lines. I am delighted,
This will not be an issue in four years, but many more will be
Oh it will be come the next election, remember the family funeral you couldn't attend because of the virus that their incompetency brought into the nursing home which killed Nanny. 60,000 excess deaths is 600,000 people with reasons not to vote for Boris when the truth comes out.
And I suspect there will be a lot more, as the economy is going to collapse on it's arse.
But manufacturing and co will have no reason to try to fix things as the uncertainty of next January is going to make investment impossible,
There will be people with justifiable anger but I think your numbers are well out.
The ratio of people who visit Nanny in her nursing home on anything more than a occasional, perfunctory basis is not 10:1.
Johnson backs Cummings. He did what any father would do.
Twats.
Is it clear yet whether he did what any father would do twice or three times (with concomitant return journeys of course)?
Would any father have done this?
Not sure I would have put my four year old in a car with a sick wife and driven them 250 miles to lodge with my elderly parents. Even a man of modest means, few relatives or friends, would be unlikely to do that.
Boris's ERM moment....the press have got huge buckets of shit that are going to be liberally thrown over him.....
Quite possible that this weekend will be seen by historians as the moment they lost the 2024 GE.
I think the election of Keir was the game changer,,,
But...I have been surprised just how quickly the Tories have trashed their best position in memory (even better than the Falklands)...it takes a special amount of incompetence and a Pandemic combined.....
Well, this is Boris’s Black Monday. It’s not quite over yet: Starmer will take Boris’s stance apart at the next PMQs. Tory MPs will begin to make noises about grey suits and letter and Cummings will be gone in a week or two.
But it won’t be enough. The only difference between John Major’s post-Black Monday lame duck administration and Boris Johnson’s post-Coronavirus will be a quarter of a century.
Enjoy the next four years PB Tories. Another decade or two of Labour government begins in May 2024.
His objective in leaving his home and getting in a car with a person with corona symptoms was to stop the spread of the virus. We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
Starsports have cut Boris further to 4/1 to front this afternoon's briefing.
Dominic Raab 7/2 Grant Shapps 7/2 Boris Johnson 4/1 Robert Jenrick 5/1 Alok Sharma 11/2 George Eustice 8/1 Michael Gove 8/1 Gavin Williamson 12/1 Oliver Dowden 12/1 Amanda Milling 14/1 Matthew Hancock 16/1 Priti Patel 16/1 Rishi Sunak 40/1
I can't see it being Jenrick who also faced questions about driving round Britain in search of a bed for the night. Gove might be seen as too close to Cummings. Sunak would be a good choice but his enormous price suggests the odds compilers know him not to be in London.
How wise of him!
Sunak also potentially has enough political capital in the bank to tell Johnson to *** off if he thinks he's accepting that commission.
Sunak made a mistake in tweeting in support of Cummings as he did yesterday. He did not need to and he will need all his political capital in the weeks ahead.
Sunak will survive that - he tweeted what everyone was asked to tweet. If Cummings is forced out, he can always say "new information came to light... Dominic hadn't been straight with us and I feel terribly let down, as do we all".
Johnson's position is more difficult in that there is certainly a risk that Cummings HAS told him the full story. That's the impression the defence is giving (i.e. if Johnson didn;t know, they just should've said "Dominic made a dreadful mistake but the PM has given him a dressing down and forgiven him". It's incredibly dangerous if Johnson knew.
Not all Cabinet Ministers tweeted their support. Notably Priti Patel stayed quiet. She has a certain low cunning I suspect. Or maybe less of a tin ear for the public mood.
Priti is an ally of IDS and Cummings and IDS hate each other, see also IDS ally Tim Montgomerie calling for Cummings to go.
Boris has played right into the opposition's hands regardless of what the few remaining Cummings apologists are claiming. I doubt there is a single person who believes that Cummings had to drive to Durham in order to get adequate child care.
Lockdown is already under strain. We went out with the little guy this afternoon to run around the grounds of a local ruin, as seemingly did a big chunk of the rest of West Oxfordshire.
No-one is really bothered about the 2m thing any more. There was a bit of half-hearted standing aside, I guess.
Cummings breaking the rules, and Johnson supporting him doing so, is going to turbo-charge this.
If that means a second spike in cases, it will be terrible news for the country. It will also be the death of this government.
Johnson backs Cummings. He did what any father would do.
Twats.
Is it clear yet whether he did what any father would do twice or three times (with concomitant return journeys of course)?
Would any father have done this?
Not sure I would have put my four year old in a car with a sick wife and driven them 250 miles to lodge with my elderly parents. Even a man of modest means, few relatives or friends, would be unlikely to do that.
Oh, I agree. I'm just quoting from the soon-to-be-released Take Back Control: 100 Rules of Tory Parenting.
Johnson backs Cummings. He did what any father would do.
Twats.
Is it clear yet whether he did what any father would do twice or three times (with concomitant return journeys of course)?
Would any father have done this?
Not sure I would have put my four year old in a car with a sick wife and driven them 250 miles to lodge with my elderly parents. Even a man of modest means, few relatives or friends, would be unlikely to do that.
Incidentally how big was the car ?
A four hour journey would possibly have led to cross-infection in an ordinary car.
PB Tories calling out the hounding of Cummings is a noble thing to do, except they've never called out hounding of MPs on the other side.
Yes we have.
Also, Cummings is a civil servant, a member of staff not an elected politician.
When?
Personally, right back to Gordon Brown when he was PM, and Damien McBride was his media henchman who became the story.
I don't ever recall such harassment of a civil servant as we've seen in the last couple of days though.
Cummings is in reality much more political than civil. I don't think he'd wish to be thought anything else. But of course he shouldn't be harassed personally and picketing someone's home is always repulsive.
Repulsive is very very generous- this is a culture war with the Puritains trying to burn their self anointed witch.
Horrible narrow minded people.
Scum actually.
Up pops Harry now he's got something to use to try to deflect from Cumming's misdeeds. All fake outrage because a van parks outside the Cummings household, straw clutching at its finest
That van was silly and childish and I cannot believe Starmer approved
If you had read the many posts on it , it was right wing Tories, Starmer had nothing to do with it. You should not believe everyone would stoop as low as Boris and his thugs.
I thought it was Led by Donkeys (ex Greenpeace activists IIRC)
Well, this is Boris’s Black Monday. It’s not quite over yet: Starmer will take Boris’s stance apart at the next PMQs. Tory MPs will begin to make noises about grey suits and letter and Cummings will be gone in a week or two.
But it won’t be enough. The only difference between John Major’s post-Black Monday lame duck administration and Boris Johnson’s post-Coronavirus will be a quarter of a century.
Enjoy the next four years PB Tories. Another decade or two of Labour government begins in May 2024.
I doubt it, Starmer might be better than Ed Miliband and Corbyn but he is still polling far lower than Blair was pre 1997 and even John Smith was pre Black Wednesday.
If he gets in it will likely be with the LDs and SNP, not a 1997 style Labour landslide
Boris has played right into the opposition's hands regardless of what the few remaining Cummings apologists are claiming. I doubt there is a single person who believes that Cummings had to drive to Durham in order to get adequate child care.
It's unbelievably crass.
"He made a mistake. He has apologized. We need him to keep doing his very important job."
Nobody is going to listen to a bloody word these people say ever again on the virus.
Listening is still useful.
But with the proviso that you remember they will break the rules if it suits them.
Listening is useful, as they will be the opposite of what they are saying.
No listening is useful because it can provide good advice - 2m, don't touch things, wash your hands - but you have to make your own judgement about what is good and with the proviso that the people doing the talking are different to you and with their own values and aims.
There's a danger for Labour that this is going so badly that Boris does get the sack over this. If I were Starmer I'd want to face him at the next election.
Boris approach to this Cummings scandal is bonkers. Surely the easy solution would be to do what Blair did with Mandy, get him to stand down, and bring him back in a bit when things have died down. They could easily put out a statement saying, he thought he was doing the right thing, but now acknowledges he made a mistake.
Prof Pantsdown is still working for the government, despite his scandal. They just send an understudy to the meetings. I bet he will be back if / when a second wave comes.
I think it has to be certain Boris steps down early next year citing ill health.
Boris has played right into the opposition's hands regardless of what the few remaining Cummings apologists are claiming. I doubt there is a single person who believes that Cummings had to drive to Durham in order to get adequate child care.
Given the way the Guardian go for him I'm sure a few of them can have sympathy with the view that he might not have many suitable childcare contacts in the immediate area.
Well, this is Boris’s Black Monday. It’s not quite over yet: Starmer will take Boris’s stance apart at the next PMQs. Tory MPs will begin to make noises about grey suits and letter and Cummings will be gone in a week or two.
But it won’t be enough. The only difference between John Major’s post-Black Monday lame duck administration and Boris Johnson’s post-Coronavirus will be a quarter of a century.
Enjoy the next four years PB Tories. Another decade or two of Labour government begins in May 2024.
I doubt it, Starmer might be better than Ed Miliband and Corbyn but he is still polling far lower than Blair was pre 1997 and even John Smith was pre Black Wednesday.
If he gets in it will likely be with the LDs and SNP, not a 1997 style Labour landslide
Lockdown is already under strain. We went out with the little guy this afternoon to run around the grounds of a local ruin, as seemingly did a big chunk of the rest of West Oxfordshire.
No-one is really bothered about the 2m thing any more. There was a bit of half-hearted standing aside, I guess.
Cummings breaking the rules, and Johnson supporting him doing so, is going to turbo-charge this.
If that means a second spike in cases, it will be terrible news for the country. It will also be the death of this government.
Lockdown is over.
What we have is a partial shutdown which itself is slowly ending.
I'm currently translating new German legislation (some people have fun Sundays, y'know) which is quite interesting - they are envisaging the possibility of Covid medicines becoming available but difficult to produce in sufficient quantities, so the legislation gives the authorities to exempt both domestic and foreign pharmaceutical compsanies from all the usual requirements for production (GMP, package leaflet, labelling) and to waive their product liability for Covid products.
What does 'waive product liability' mean ?
Does it mean no responsibility for side effects ?
Presumably, yes
The UK has a scheme for no-faulty compensation paid by the state in vaccine damage cases:
Only applies to a list of named vaccines, not including Covid-19 vaccines. I wonder whether this will be added to the list.
Yes, as I understand it (and I need to get it right since my translation will be the official English version). it means that if the authorities rush through your drug without all the usual checks, then you are not liable for side-effects unless you have introduced them deliberately or through gross negligence. The authorities will only give you this exemption if they are satisfied that the drug is OK for other reasons than the usual procedure - e.g. because it's been licenced successfully in Japan.
Rather undermines the Japanese trade barrier of requiring full clinical trials on Western drugs because “Japanese people are different”
Well, this is Boris’s Black Monday. It’s not quite over yet: Starmer will take Boris’s stance apart at the next PMQs. Tory MPs will begin to make noises about grey suits and letter and Cummings will be gone in a week or two.
But it won’t be enough. The only difference between John Major’s post-Black Monday lame duck administration and Boris Johnson’s post-Coronavirus will be a quarter of a century.
Enjoy the next four years PB Tories. Another decade or two of Labour government begins in May 2024.
I doubt it, Starmer might be better than Ed Miliband and Corbyn but he is still polling far lower than Blair was pre 1997 and even John Smith was pre Black Wednesday.
If he gets in it will likely be with the LDs and SNP, not a 1997 style Labour landslide
Comments
The bald assertion that there isn't one rule for Cummings and another for the rest of us, when the obvious truth is that there is.
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1264591415067189249
https://twitter.com/montie/status/1264589953503301646
https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1264591415067189249
You don't say.
It is an absolute disaster for this government. Those MP inboxes are going to implode on the bucket of anger that is coming.
Looks like I was right, and an awful lot of the overly excitable short-termists were wrong. Not for the first time.
The ratio of people who visit Nanny in her nursing home on anything more than a occasional, perfunctory basis is not 10:1.
Vicious
So that explains it!
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1264506993638694912
Not sure I would have put my four year old in a car with a sick wife and driven them 250 miles to lodge with my elderly parents. Even a man of modest means, few relatives or friends, would be unlikely to do that.
He should go. He won't go. No inquiry.
But...I have been surprised just how quickly the Tories have trashed their best position in memory (even better than the Falklands)...it takes a special amount of incompetence and a Pandemic combined.....
But anyway it does not explain the walks in the woods with blue bells.
But it won’t be enough. The only difference between John Major’s post-Black Monday lame duck administration and Boris Johnson’s post-Coronavirus will be a quarter of a century.
Enjoy the next four years PB Tories. Another decade or two of Labour government begins in May 2024.
Snail-racing, perhaps?
But with the proviso that you remember they will break the rules if it suits them.
And now a technician is right beside Watson - no social distancing
The rest of the country was following rules not instincts.
No-one is really bothered about the 2m thing any more. There was a bit of half-hearted standing aside, I guess.
Cummings breaking the rules, and Johnson supporting him doing so, is going to turbo-charge this.
If that means a second spike in cases, it will be terrible news for the country. It will also be the death of this government.
If he had sacked him he could have moved on
The whole Cummings thing is a sideshow.
A four hour journey would possibly have led to cross-infection in an ordinary car.
Were face masks worn ?
Sack him or don't sack him, who cares?
I'm sure the Praetorian guard of the PB Tories will come and defend him. Popcorn time!!
I would say that travelling while infected was more important than travelling when no longer infected.
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE
Johnson tries to cut him out.
If he gets in it will likely be with the LDs and SNP, not a 1997 style Labour landslide
"He made a mistake. He has apologized. We need him to keep doing his very important job."
That would have been so much better.
Boris getting away with repeating the same brush off broadbrush answer.
Prof Pantsdown is still working for the government, despite his scandal. They just send an understudy to the meetings. I bet he will be back if / when a second wave comes.
I think it has to be certain Boris steps down early next year citing ill health.
Johnson is too good for most of them.
We need to know when the child guidance was rewritten to "clarify" it.
We need to know about these other trips.
you know that
I know that
What we have is a partial shutdown which itself is slowly ending.
Starmer's only been in for a few weeks.....