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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2020 11:06:05 GMT
Cummins or whatever his name is, irrelevent.
Are those media bunfighters keeping ANY kind of social distancing?
What a bunch or arseholes, shear media frenzy, nothing less.
And they want to be holier than thou?
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Post by michael on May 24, 2020 12:20:58 GMT
I think if Dominic Cummings wasn’t behind Vote Leave the media might not be so interested.
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Post by racingteatray on May 25, 2020 8:42:53 GMT
I think if Dominic Cummings wasn’t behind Vote Leave the media might not be so interested. Oh come off it. I think this is mostly to do with him a twat being someone who actively radiates contempt for the rest of us from every pore. If this was about Brexit, arch-Brexiteers like Steve Baker and Peter Bone wouldn't be calling for his resignation.
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2020 8:54:53 GMT
A twat being protected by the PM, I think Boris will regret that. The sooner they stop prevaricating and he goes, the better it will be for them. Shooting themselves in the foot in front of a suddenly credible laboured partly is unforgivable in supposedly intelligent people.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 25, 2020 9:48:02 GMT
It would be hypocritical for me to condemn him as I’d have done exactly the same in his position. Family comes first.
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2020 10:27:46 GMT
Sadly for him, he is supposed to set an example. Should he find himself unable to stick to the instructions he himself set out, he MUST resign. Simple really.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 25, 2020 11:33:19 GMT
Sadly for him, he is supposed to set an example. Should he find himself unable to stick to the instructions he himself set out, he MUST resign. Simple really. Having had time to re-read the guidelines, including the caveat that not all of them will be possible if you have kids, I’m satisfied he didn’t break any rules. It is bad optics, however.
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2020 11:45:55 GMT
I think if Dominic Cummings wasn’t behind Vote Leave the media might not be so interested. Oh come off it. I think this is mostly to do with him a twat being someone who actively radiates contempt for the rest of us from every pore. If this was about Brexit, arch-Brexiteers like Steve Baker and Peter Bone wouldn't be calling for his resignation. The BBC were laying it on thickly on last night's news and we know where they stood on Brexit with their supposed impartiality, so I'm inclined to agree with Michael. His statement was about the media, so I'm presuming the two fellas you've mentioned are journalists?
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Post by michael on May 25, 2020 12:22:14 GMT
It’s a story fit only for the media bubble and it’ll continue to give this story as much airtime as possible because of Brexit and not because of the facts. I’d have done the same we’re it me. We thought we were going to be driving to Kent earlier in the week to look after the niece and nephew but I doubt that’d make the news.
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Post by PG on May 25, 2020 14:24:51 GMT
It seems his son is autistic (a fact ignored by the media). Therefore what he did was to care for his son. Yes, it looked bad and the press are loving this - a chance, they thynk, to stick one on Boris by proxy - but I don't think he actually broke the rules as written.
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Post by Alex on May 25, 2020 15:24:34 GMT
It seems his son is autistic (a fact ignored by the media). Therefore what he did was to care for his son. Yes, it looked bad and the press are loving this - a chance, they thynk, to stick one on Boris by proxy - but I don't think he actually broke the rules as written. The trouble is that so many other people have been going against all parenting instincts during the lockdown in order to obey the rules and are rightly questioning why he didn't also. Unfortunately Boris has only fanned the flames by suggesting he only did what any parent would do as that suggests that those who obeyed lockdown rules don't love their children as much as Dominic Cummings. Personally I think he should go, even if that does leave us without someone to tell Boris what to say. There have been plenty of other people who have broken the lockdown rules but he got caught and surely as the one pulling the government strings so presumably the one responsible for the rules being issued in the first place, he has to accept his punishment. He made Boris send us all a letter telling us to follow one simple rule and he then went and broke that same simple rule.
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Post by garry on May 25, 2020 16:38:45 GMT
Just listening to Cummings being interviewed. I’m not persuaded on two points:
I have no idea if he broke the letter of the law by making the trip, but he definitely broke the spirit of the law, The general public were explicitly told to stay put, He decided that he knew better. It’s seems particularly wrong that he set off on this trip whilst presenting with what he thought were early stage covid symptoms.
The explanation of his drive to Barnard castle is odd - a 60 mile round trip to test his eyes and he just happened to end up in a beauty spot next to a river.
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Post by Alex on May 25, 2020 19:58:25 GMT
It does seem an odd way to check if your eyes are ok. Last time I had ah eye test they didn't ask me to drive to another time and let them know how it goes.
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Post by ChrisM on May 25, 2020 20:53:18 GMT
It may be rather infuriating and inconvenient that opticians are currently closed, but driving 60 miles to conduct your won eye test does seem to be stretching things.
I didn't listen to his announcement but have read that he drove hs wife and child from London to Durham because they were feeling ill. Not sure where they were staying in London, but shouldn't they have stayed put in London, especially if they thought they may have had Covid-19 as I thought that the advice was anyone who felt unwell should not travel but self-quarantine wherever they were.
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Post by Big Blue on May 25, 2020 21:32:12 GMT
I've got an autistic son. He insists on us all driving down to Grandma's in the Var in June when she opens her pool and staying there until August when we absolutely MUST go to the Titanic Resort in Turkey because we booked it already.
Sounds reasonable.
People's parents, husbands, wives and children have died alone in hospitals and homes. He's a cunt. End of.
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Post by johnc on May 26, 2020 8:01:24 GMT
There are two problems with the current situation: one is an idiot who really should realise that what he did was wrong and some other way of dealing with it should have been found. The other(s) are the press and opposition parties who smell blood and have gone into a crazy frenzy - they really should concentrate on important matters and cut out this maniacal pursuit which (although it has some grounds) is basically politically driven and these numpties need to grow up and try as much as possible to work together instead of taking the opposite line on everything. They have forgotten what their job is.
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Post by Deleted on May 26, 2020 8:04:05 GMT
There are two problems with the current situation: one is an idiot who really should realise that what he did was wrong and some other way of dealing with it should have been found. The other(s) are the press and opposition parties who smell blood and have gone into a crazy frenzy - they really should concentrate on important matters and cut out this maniacal pursuit which (although it has some grounds) is basically politically driven and these numpties need to grow up and try as much as possible to work together instead of taking the opposite line on everything. They have forgotten what their job is. The thing is this has been the case for a long time. Why would/should it stop for this particular instance of fairly brazen hypocrisy?
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 26, 2020 8:18:25 GMT
There are two problems with the current situation: one is an idiot who really should realise that what he did was wrong and some other way of dealing with it should have been found. The other(s) are the press and opposition parties who smell blood and have gone into a crazy frenzy - they really should concentrate on important matters and cut out this maniacal pursuit which (although it has some grounds) is basically politically driven and these numpties need to grow up and try as much as possible to work together instead of taking the opposite line on everything. They have forgotten what their job is. This happens with both right and left (and those in the middle). They look for a weakness or a misstep by a political opponent, or a wrong comment here and they pounce, demanding resignation, screaming from the rooftops, enlisting their allies in the media, like a pack of wolves. It's been going on for years and it's getting worse. We will reach a point where government will be impossible as no politician will be portrayed as having any credibility. It's no wonder that so many people are coming round to The Donald's opinion that they're all Fake News.
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Post by Big Blue on May 26, 2020 8:41:07 GMT
Yes this is modern politics and the media. However consider this: it's because we are, in terms of the 99% of residents, fairly content and safe in our lives so politics is becoming increasingly irrelevant and posturised. This is why the activists we see are generally from those groups that feel in some way slightly marginalised for their particular type - be it race, sexual orientation, religion, dietary habits or family situation. This then leads to the rise of the "ordinary" person (there is no such person, obviously - even on the Clapham Omnibus) who sucks up the rhetoric of gimps like Farage and the effect of his ilk drives mainstream politics down a more extreme route (see "Corbynism", "UKIP" and "2016 Referendum") just to maintain some relevance in a settled society.
Even if there were a political party that reminded everyone that they weren't badly off and demonstrated this with pictures of middle class Americans queuing at food banks, African villages living in shacks, Chinese workers slaving themselves to suicide, Syrians living in rubble etc. the media and those slightly marginalised groups I pointed out above would immediately point to a person sleeping in a doorway in a UK city and say that's the whole of society in one picture without explaining why or how that person got there.
Basically get on and live your life in the comfort of Western Europe and ignore the fringes of politics and the media to a larger extent.
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Post by racingteatray on May 26, 2020 10:02:38 GMT
Oh come off it. I think this is mostly to do with him a twat being someone who actively radiates contempt for the rest of us from every pore. If this was about Brexit, arch-Brexiteers like Steve Baker and Peter Bone wouldn't be calling for his resignation. The BBC were laying it on thickly on last night's news and we know where they stood on Brexit with their supposed impartiality, so I'm inclined to agree with Michael. His statement was about the media, so I'm presuming the two fellas you've mentioned are journalists? Tory MPs actually.
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Post by racingteatray on May 26, 2020 10:11:21 GMT
It would be hypocritical for me to condemn him as I’d have done exactly the same in his position. Family comes first. Agreed. So might many of us. But, boy has he handled it badly. If he'd just apologised, I'd have been relatively sympathetic and I wouldn't have thought resignation was in order, just as I didn't think it was for Ferguson or that Scottish deputy medical officer. But sorry seems to be the hardest word, as the song goes, and so my sympathy has evaporated somewhat. And that press conference. Good grief - what was that about? In the Downing Street Rose Garden, usually reserved for top announcements by PMs and or photo ops with visiting foreign Heads of State? An unelected special advisor? The symbolism of it gets lost in all the twittering about whether it's appropriate or not to test your eyes by driving 45 minutes from Houghall to Barnard Castle, and back again. But talk about nakedly flaunting your sheer power. It was an exercise in saying, without much attempt at subtlety, "I run the show, the show can't operate without me and you better just swallow that because I'm not budging". In Boris' shoes, I'd be pretty embarrassed at being so openly exposed as a sock puppet live on TV.
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Post by racingteatray on May 26, 2020 10:14:24 GMT
It seems his son is autistic (a fact ignored by the media). Therefore what he did was to care for his son. Yes, it looked bad and the press are loving this - a chance, they thynk, to stick one on Boris by proxy - but I don't think he actually broke the rules as written. Is his son autistic? Do we know that for a fact? The internet suggests that may be fake news.
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Post by johnc on May 26, 2020 10:20:54 GMT
There are two problems with the current situation: one is an idiot who really should realise that what he did was wrong and some other way of dealing with it should have been found. The other(s) are the press and opposition parties who smell blood and have gone into a crazy frenzy - they really should concentrate on important matters and cut out this maniacal pursuit which (although it has some grounds) is basically politically driven and these numpties need to grow up and try as much as possible to work together instead of taking the opposite line on everything. They have forgotten what their job is. The thing is this has been the case for a long time. Why would/should it stop for this particular instance of fairly brazen hypocrisy? I think the current Covid crisis just shows up our adversarial system to be unfit for purpose. Think how much more could actually be achieved if MPs didn't spend all their time looking for ways to get one over on the opposition. An MP's job is to act on behalf of their constituents, to represent their interests in Parliament and for the good of the country as a whole. If MP's did that instead of getting involved in the inter party gang warfare, they would get a lot more done and would benefit the country much more from their efforts. I think Cummings is an ass and he should have had the balls to resign but the amount of effort from opposition parties to try to bury him (because they think it will damage the Government) just shows that those other parties aren't interested in the good of the country, they are only interested in themselves.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 26, 2020 10:35:51 GMT
It would be hypocritical for me to condemn him as I’d have done exactly the same in his position. Family comes first. Agreed. So might many of us. But, boy has he handled it badly. If he'd just apologised, I'd have been relatively sympathetic and I wouldn't have thought resignation was in order, just as I didn't think it was for Ferguson or that Scottish deputy medical officer. But sorry seems to be the hardest word, as the song goes, and so my sympathy has evaporated somewhat. And that press conference. Good grief - what was that about? In the Downing Street Rose Garden, usually reserved for top announcements by PMs and or photo ops with visiting foreign Heads of State? An unelected special advisor? The symbolism of it gets lost in all the twittering about whether it's appropriate or not to test your eyes by driving 45 minutes from Houghall to Barnard Castle, and back again. But talk about nakedly flaunting your sheer power. It was an exercise in saying, without much attempt at subtlety, "I run the show, the show can't operate without me and you better just swallow that because I'm not budging". In Boris' shoes, I'd be pretty embarrassed at being so openly exposed as a sock puppet live on TV. I think you're possibly reading too much into the significance of the Rose Garden. The conference had to be held outside for social distancing reasons and if it had been held inside where they have been doing the briefings people would have said he was being granted the same platform as a Minister or PM. I think he'd be damned wherever he'd held it. As I said I don't want to be a hypocrite because if I was living in London and my parents had an empty cottage 50 yards from their main residence I'd have gone there, no matter where it was located. Indeed my Sister-in-law and her husband flew thousands of miles from Oman to isolate with my Mother-in-Law in Northumberland , who has COPD. My BIL then went back and forth to see his mother in Glasgow. Surprisingly he's one of Cummings and Boris' biggest critics and can't see the hypocrisy. Not having kids of my own I stay away from commenting on the actions parents take to safeguard their kids and in Cummings' case I look at it from the point of view of did he put anyone in danger by his actions and I don't think he did. He was just one of 250,000 Londoners who left the Capital for isolation elsewhere.
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Post by PetrolEd on May 26, 2020 10:37:51 GMT
I find the fascination people have in this story the most odd.
Does anyone really give a monkeys? Plenty worse things are happening out there. All I see is pompous bloke takes family for a drive up north because he though that the best thing to do for his family at that time. You don't go visiting the in-laws if you don't have to!
This Barnard castle thing is a little naughty but hardly a sacking offense is it. I honestly wouldn't last 5 minutes in the government and the weaselly people we now have running the country is of our own creation as we can't possibly have 'normal' folks running the funny farm as nearly everyones got skeletons in the cupboard.
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Post by scouse on May 26, 2020 10:56:49 GMT
Calling for Cummings to resign and for an 'urgent investigation' for protecting his son when not calling for the resignation of Kinnock for visitng his multi-millionaire parents, Kevan Jones for attending a constituents birthday party , Vaughan Gethin for going on a picnic after telling peopethey couldn't, or Tahir Ali for attending a funeral along with around 100 others smacks of hypocracy of the highest order.
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Post by garry on May 26, 2020 10:57:16 GMT
It would be hypocritical for me to condemn him as I’d have done exactly the same in his position. Family comes first. Agreed. So might many of us. But, boy has he handled it badly. If he'd just apologised, I'd have been relatively sympathetic and I wouldn't have thought resignation was in order, just as I didn't think it was for Ferguson or that Scottish deputy medical officer. But sorry seems to be the hardest word, as the song goes, and so my sympathy has evaporated somewhat. And that press conference. Good grief - what was that about?
In the Downing Street Rose Garden, usually reserved for top announcements by PMs and or photo ops with visiting foreign Heads of State? An unelected special advisor?
The symbolism of it gets lost in all the twittering about whether it's appropriate or not to test your eyes by driving 45 minutes from Houghall to Barnard Castle, and back again.
But talk about nakedly flaunting your sheer power. It was an exercise in saying, without much attempt at subtlety, "I run the show, the show can't operate without me and you better just swallow that because I'm not budging". In Boris' shoes, I'd be pretty embarrassed at being so openly exposed as a sock puppet live on TV. Really? He was sat behind a stackable table on some grass that needed a cut. He looked more like ‘normal everyday dad’. Perhaps the symbolism wasn’t lost in twitter world, but simply wasn’t there and most were more concerned about the answers he gave rather than which bit of grass he sat on? Is there anywhere you’d have been happy for it to be held?
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Post by racingteatray on May 26, 2020 10:57:45 GMT
Agreed. So might many of us. But, boy has he handled it badly. If he'd just apologised, I'd have been relatively sympathetic and I wouldn't have thought resignation was in order, just as I didn't think it was for Ferguson or that Scottish deputy medical officer. But sorry seems to be the hardest word, as the song goes, and so my sympathy has evaporated somewhat. And that press conference. Good grief - what was that about? In the Downing Street Rose Garden, usually reserved for top announcements by PMs and or photo ops with visiting foreign Heads of State? An unelected special advisor? The symbolism of it gets lost in all the twittering about whether it's appropriate or not to test your eyes by driving 45 minutes from Houghall to Barnard Castle, and back again. But talk about nakedly flaunting your sheer power. It was an exercise in saying, without much attempt at subtlety, "I run the show, the show can't operate without me and you better just swallow that because I'm not budging". In Boris' shoes, I'd be pretty embarrassed at being so openly exposed as a sock puppet live on TV. I think you're possibly reading too much into the significance of the Rose Garden. The conference had to be held outside for social distancing reasons and if it had been held inside where they have been doing the briefings people would have said he was being granted the same platform as a Minister or PM. I think he'd be damned wherever he'd held it. As I said I don't want to be a hypocrite because if I was living in London and my parents had an empty cottage 50 yards from their main residence I'd have gone there, no matter where it was located. Indeed my Sister-in-law and her husband flew thousands of miles from Oman to isolate with my Mother-in-Law in Northumberland , who has COPD. My BIL then went back and forth to see his mother in Glasgow. Surprisingly he's one of Cummings and Boris' biggest critics and can't see the hypocrisy. Not having kids of my own I stay away from commenting on the actions parents take to safeguard their kids and in Cummings' case I look at it from the point of view of did he put anyone in danger by his actions and I don't think he did. He was just one of 250,000 Londoners who left the Capital for isolation elsewhere. Not sure I am when you listen (as I did) to what he said. He basically inferred none too subtly that the government couldn't function without his guidance. I'm not be hypocritical either because frankly I entirely sympathise with him for doing what he did, although I do think it was unwise optics for a man in his position. But I can and will strongly criticise his reaction to being criticised, because that sucked big time and unnecessarily put lots of people's backs up. And attacking the media for "fake news" when frankly little of it was fake bothers me deeply, because it speaks to a fundamental disregard for the truth. I'm no lover of the media, but equally I don't want to live in a world where the news is little more than toeing the government's official line, however egregious.
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Post by racingteatray on May 26, 2020 11:05:23 GMT
Really? He was sat behind a stackable table on some grass that needed a cut. He looked more like ‘normal everyday dad’. Perhaps the symbolism wasn’t lost in twitter world, but simply wasn’t there and most were more concerned about the answers he gave rather than which bit of grass he sat on? Is there anywhere you’d have been happy for it to be held? Whitehall is huge with plenty of secure outside space. Like I say, I was sympathetic to what he did and why, and saw no more reason for him to resign that I did Prof Ferguson. But his reaction has been massively arrogant and I think that particular setting simply reinforced that. He's formally just a government advisor. Watching him speak yesterday, my reaction fluctuated between sympathy and thinking "you utterly arrogant unelected cockwomble".
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on May 26, 2020 11:11:08 GMT
I think you're possibly reading too much into the significance of the Rose Garden. The conference had to be held outside for social distancing reasons and if it had been held inside where they have been doing the briefings people would have said he was being granted the same platform as a Minister or PM. I think he'd be damned wherever he'd held it. As I said I don't want to be a hypocrite because if I was living in London and my parents had an empty cottage 50 yards from their main residence I'd have gone there, no matter where it was located. Indeed my Sister-in-law and her husband flew thousands of miles from Oman to isolate with my Mother-in-Law in Northumberland , who has COPD. My BIL then went back and forth to see his mother in Glasgow. Surprisingly he's one of Cummings and Boris' biggest critics and can't see the hypocrisy. Not having kids of my own I stay away from commenting on the actions parents take to safeguard their kids and in Cummings' case I look at it from the point of view of did he put anyone in danger by his actions and I don't think he did. He was just one of 250,000 Londoners who left the Capital for isolation elsewhere. Not sure I am when you listen (as I did) to what he said. He basically inferred none too subtly that the government couldn't function without his guidance. I'm not be hypocritical either because frankly I entirely sympathise with him for doing what he did, although I do think it was unwise optics for a man in his position. But I can and will strongly criticise his reaction to being criticised, because that sucked big time and unnecessarily put lots of people's backs up. And attacking the media for "fake news" when frankly little of it was fake bothers me deeply, because it speaks to a fundamental disregard for the truth. I'm no lover of the media, but equally I don't want to live in a world where the news is little more than toeing the government's official line, however egregious. The problem is now, more than any time in their history, newspapers broadcast media are relying on sales, clicks and ratings to keep their revenues from dwindling at an even faster pace. Newspapers can't report the news anymore, they have to write news stories that appeal to their target market. Same goes for the broadcast media. There is no point in a newspaper writing the truth if it alienates its readership and sales decline further. My brother has a right bee in his bonnet about Cummings being an unelected special advisor and regularly re-tweets the nonsense Alistair Campbell put out - conveniently forgetting Campbell was an unelected special advisor to Tony Blair (one of 80 - 39 at one time) and de-facto Deputy Prime Minister (he was on the interviewing panel that appointed Blair to Labour leader and demanded that quid pro quo). Special advisors have been around since the Wilson government of the 60s (and before that during wartimes) but, as Michael has mentioned, perhaps Cummings being seen as the architect behind Vote Leave has marked him out for special attention.
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