General discussion on current situation

[JenB]

they decided to take a short drive to see if he could safely manage to drive back.

Barnard Castle is approximately a 50 mile round trip from Durham.

[gaffy]

... It is very obvious that there is a lynch mob in media circles out for his head and they are going to take this opportunity to attack him no matter what the truth is.
Cheers
Guy

I can't stand the self-entitled arrogance of Cummings and I think he breached the spirit of the lockdown measures by a country mile, but I take the point, for the amount and severity of opprobrium levelled at him by some elements of the media for a sustained number of days has left me uncomfortable, especially since their motivation is so clearly to achieve a scalp, rather than holding to account.

[jillruss]

Gadget is right - politics come into most issues nowadays. Those who state that they don't wish to bring politics into it are being naive.

Surely the point here is credibilty. I too have no particular truck with DC. Mostly, I couldn't normally give a monkeys what he does but this is different.

Its an unprecedented situation with an unprecedented (I now expect Guy to post a finding that a similar thing happened in 900BC in Timbuktu, but anyway..) 'solution' i.e. lockdown. Most of the population heeded the goverment's edicts because they thought 'we were all in this together' and that this was the way to save lives (as we were told several times a day).

Of course, there were always going to be a small percentage of people who ignored the 'rules'. You can never account for what they will or won't do, but you don't expect one of those small percentage to be a man who is supposedly only second in command to the PM and who the PM clearly feels he can't function without.

The PM' and DC obviously put their heads together and came up with an explanation to fit the evidence that is in the public purview. Parts of it are ludicrous (the Barnard Castle eyesight thing for one. Incidentally, I don't remember DC saying that day also happened to be his wife's birthday so wasn't this just a touch of the Wallace & Grommits? A Grand Day Out?)

The PM's credibility is shot to pieces. I doubt he will be believed ever again.

[suey]

I wonder why there is not any uproar on this forum about the following Labour MPs who have flouted the lockdown rules …..

I'm pretty sure that if they were the party in power,  making the rules and telling everyone to stay at home, they would have been receiving exactly the same attention.

Agreed, and if anyone thinks for one minute that these or similar scenarios wouldn’t have happened under an alternative government then I’m a monkeys uncle.
After the disgraceful way MPs behaved in parliament during the Brexit debacle I’m afraid I lost respect for the whole lot of them.

I might have forgiven DC if he had just come out, held his hands up and said “I’m sorry; with hindsight, I made a bad decision albeit one made with what I considered best for my family at the time” .

Job done, enough said and don’t keep changing your story or digging a deeper hole. 😡

[Jomot]

Personally I feel the most damning part of the whole thing was this paragraph: 

"At this point, most of those who I work with most closely, including the prime minister himself and others who sit within 15 feet of me every day, either had had symptoms and had returned to work or were absent with symptoms".

This was 27th March.  If things were that bad within the heart of Government, why did lockdown only begin on 23rd March?

[Skoosh]

Anent the worst death rate in Europe can we now expect all the peeps who were fined for breaking the lockdown rules will now have their fines reimbursed as these rules were not law just guidance, according to Boris Johnson.

Skoosh

[Guy Etchells]

Anent the worst death rate in Europe can we now expect all the peeps who were fined for breaking the lockdown rules will now have their fines reimbursed as these rules were not law just guidance, according to Boris Johnson.

Skoosh

Many such fines were deemed unlawful weeks ago and have been reimbursed.
Cheers
Guy

[Gadget]

I'm not sure if anyone else remembers Black Wednesday (Sept 1992) but I feel that the vibes are very similar to then.

The latest YouGov poll is out and makes worrying reading for Boris.

[Marmalady]

"...any medical need, to donate blood, avoid injury or illness, escape risk of harm, or to provide care or to help a vulnerable person"

The advice given at the time was that if there was no-one a family could call on to provide care, they should contact the local authorities
And if the nieces were the only possible people to be able to provide such care, they should have travelled to London provide the care.