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Covid-19 Response Committee : Cummings Tells All?

The Barclay empire is on hostile manoeuvres this morning with denunciations of their former messiah Cummings and any scientific advisers brave enough to come out and agree with even a fraction of Cummings’ statements to the committee. The adenoidal and dim Fraser Nelson is now posing The Spectator as the alternative Lancet.
 
Storm in a teacup. Vaccines are today's story and they are being painted as a complete success by the 'in the government's pocket' media. Most people don't care about 12 months ago as long as they are 'cured' and the pubs are open. Maybe Hancock will go, maybe he won't, but Johnson's healthy majority will remain and his approval rating/lead in the polls will be undented. As I have said before we have to face the fact that the traits of this government so many of us on here despise are actively admired by a significant percentage of the population.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
That he gave Gove a free pass is telling, I think: "Don't look there, look here". He and Gove are a very dangerous combination IMHO.
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Agreed, though Gove did largely manage to slither off out of the public eye on covid. I remember him saying some stupid things about Scotch Eggs, but beyond that he’s just been the usual rubber-faced sack of uselessness. His role is some abstract made-up crap (Gammonfuhrer Of The Duchy Of Lancashire or something), nothing where anything beyond hollow posturing and repeating the words of others is required. He’s likely more to blame for the ongoing Brexit disaster.

PS The more I think about Cummings’ testimony yesterday the more I feel those of us who rejected/ignored the government covid advice from the outset and called them out as the corrupt charlatans they are were absolutely right to do so. We saw exactly what covid was and we saw they were lying and changing message pretty much daily. I went into full-tilt lockdown mid Feb 2020 and stayed there until I’d had my second Pfizer jab several weeks ago. I never gave a shit what Hancock, Johnson and the rest of the lying crooks said, I just followed the scientific evidence. This was the logical sane approach as it is now absolutely clear the Conservative government were not protecting the elderly, disabled, vulnerable or those like me with underlying health conditions. They hung us out to dry and tens of thousands of us died due to their actions. Johnson need to own this.
 
slavedata said:
Interesting that he makes no negative comments about his old mate Gove. There was a suggestion previously about Cummings dishing the dirt for Gove when Gove was away in Israel attempting to look statesman like. I predict the slimy Gove will crawl out of the woodwork in a coup attempt soon with creepy two faced Vine backing hubby in the Daily Fail. Plus of course Dom back as a special advisor.
All appropriate behaviour by this bunch of self interested two faced back stabbers all squealing away with noses deep in the trough.
Whatever happened to civic duty and a sense of a higher purpose for the public good?
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True, it also puts another nail in the coffin of Cabinet Collective Responsibility which was almost a constitutional given until a certain M. Thatcher had a cabinet of vegetables (Spitting Image ref.)
Strange that we are all in it together but they are not!
 
tiggers said:
Storm in a teacup. Vaccines are today's story and they are being painted as a complete success by the 'in the government's pocket' media. Most people don't care about 12 months ago as long as they are 'cured' and the pubs are open. Maybe Hancock will go, maybe he won't, but Johnson's healthy majority will remain and his approval rating/lead in the polls will be undented. As I have said before we have to face the fact that the traits of this government so many of us on here despise are actively admired by a significant percentage of the population.
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Yes I think this is right.
 
tiggers said:
As I have said before we have to face the fact that the traits of this government so many of us on here despise are actively admired by a significant percentage of the population.
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Agreed. The disgraced, moronic, racist and corrupt Trump only lost by a couple of percentage points, and in England we have no opposition even remotely of the standard of the Democrats/Biden to counter our Britain Trump. England is now a alt-right Tory oligarch thiefdom and I suspect will be so for a long while yet.
 
MichaelC said:
It would be with near certainty that I wouldn't offer any politician a job.
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He has well established links to important businesses in the health supply industries relating to half a dozen contracts, one of which was worth £250m.

Also Babylon and health First (?), i'm sure he'll be ok even if without a job as we know it.
 
Peter Geoghagan on why it's unlikely Gove had as little to do with this as Cummings suggests:

https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan/status/1397576809282260992?s=20

Political journalism is obsessed with personalities, and so is Cummings, but we've got to look at the processes behind the people Cummings is protecting. With Gove it's outsourcing. Cummings, you'd imagine, is 100% on board with outsourcing and with the lack of transparency that surrounds it, because he sees private industry mavericks - and especially dealers in dodgy data - as the answer to the government's problems with, well, governing.

With Sunak it's the entire economic setup. Cumming's worldview seems to be entirely technocratic, at best: politics is just good project management, by brilliant people. There's no appreciation for how politics, and this pandemic in particular, is tied up with broader socio-economic factors - such as the strong preference of Tory sponsors for protecting the value of property, rental income, and employers' rights, and their consequent hostility to lockdown, good sick pay, rent holidays, workers' rights, support to isolate etc.

Here's Geoghagan again:

https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan/status/1397576484487929856?s=20

Lockdown sceptic scientists, funded by a Tory donor, were brought before Johnson *by Sunak* to make the case for keeping the economy open. Other sources have Sunak lobbying for a brisk end to lockdown, cutting social distancing to 1m, pushing Eat Out without asking Sage, arguing strongly against a second lockdown, currying favour with backbench lockdown sceptics. I mean it might all be bollocks (this is from Calvert and Arbuthnott's Failures of State) but it's just really hard to see Sunak as pushing for caution and maximum support for isolating workers, which is what he'd have to have been doing to really merit praise.

Protect Sunak and you protect the Tory economy; protect Gove and you protect the dodgiest part of the Tory economy, the siphoning off of public funds and government responsibilities into private hands. No idea why he's protecting Whitty by stitching up Sage's behavioural scientists.

Overall, while the general picture he paints of incompetence, callousness and groupthink is convincing, there are significant distortions, and on the whole I wouldn't believe anything he says that can't be confirmed by another source.
 
Hancock is even lying today about “tens of thousands of people in Bolton being vaccinated each day”. He’s out by a factor of ten. It’s almost compulsive- a second hand car dealer running a government ministry.

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The only question that seem to have being asked of Hancock today is ‘are you a liar?’

His reply has been a rather unsurprising, ‘No!”

Surely the question is, did he order testing before people were released back into care?

If the answer is yes, then he’s a liar. If the answer is no, the next question has to be, ‘ Why the hell not!’ and ask if he’s fit to have significant responsibilities for people’s health?
 
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Hancock is not a liar...

… except for the lie he told today in the Commons. Doh! :confused:

"Matt Hancock massively exaggerated the rate of vaccination in coronavirus hotspot Bolton in the House of Commons today. The health secretary told MPs that jabs were going into arms in the northwest town at a rate of "tens of thousands every single day". But official government statistics show that daily inoculations have never topped 5,500 in Bolton, and have hovered around the 2,000 mark in recent days."
 
notaclue said:
Hancock is not a liar...

… except for the lie he told today in the Commons. Doh! :confused:

"Matt Hancock massively exaggerated the rate of vaccination in coronavirus hotspot Bolton in the House of Commons today. The health secretary told MPs that jabs were going into arms in the northwest town at a rate of "tens of thousands every single day". But official government statistics show that daily inoculations have never topped 5,500 in Bolton, and have hovered around the 2,000 mark in recent days."
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These kind of statements ( supposedly of fact) are usually checked by government comms, policy heads and SpAds before they’re run in public- fact checked at each step. The idea that a Minister can stand up and give false information to the public would previously have been met with a request for resignation but not this lot.

It seems facts aren’t essential, they’re a “nice to have” but you can dispense with them at your discretion. The fact that he’s doing it on the day he’s called to respond to credible allegations of past lies, demonstrates the contempt he holds the public and his civil servants in. I assume he gets the brief then ad libs his own falsehoods? If not then there are others who will need to be held to account along with him.
 
Looking at the posts on Facebook, the right-wing aren't taking Cummings seriously. It looks like the Tories can say and do pretty much what they like and the right-wing won't even raise and eyebrow. I'm curious to know what the right-wing media are saying, and if they are still defending Johnson and Hancock?
 
Fatmarley said:
Looking at the posts on Facebook, the right-wing aren't taking Cummings seriously. It looks like the Tories can say and do pretty much what they like and the right-wing won't even raise and eyebrow. I'm curious to know what the right-wing media are saying, and if they are still defending Johnson and Hancock?
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Is it a right wing thing to see absolute horror in someone they don’t know but see far worse in someone they do know and happen to like, and shrug it off as a nothing.

Left wingers on the other hand are quiet and reasonable in considering things on their merit, people who shy away from irrational prejudice in flavour of the pursuit of virtue and light. Enlightened people who despite their inferiority to the over mighty right, speak a fundamental truth.

?
 
Fatmarley said:
Looking at the posts on Facebook, the right-wing aren't taking Cummings seriously. It looks like the Tories can say and do pretty much what they like and the right-wing won't even raise and eyebrow. I'm curious to know what the right-wing media are saying, and if they are still defending Johnson and Hancock?
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Johnson could stand in the middle of Fifth Finsbury Avenue and shoot 153,000 people... Etc.

His popularity is pretty much untouchable. I mean, about the only thing he was worried about was that people might think he didn't like John Lewis.
 
Like him or not, it was refreshing to hear someone from the government (ex of) talk candidly and not mince words or bullsh*t, or speak to people like idiots, admit to failings, lies and monumental incompetence.

For me this is about 75% of my problem with politics, I just can't get over the way they address the public or media, just talk f***ing normal FFS!
 
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