Jump to content

The Politics Thread 2020

G STAR RAM

By G STAR RAM
in The Jim Smith Room

Recommended Posts

ariotofmyown

ariotofmyown

Posted
Posted

Really think Johnson and co are taking us for fools here.

1) One parent developing coronavirus symptoms is not an exceptional situation in the slightest. It's a likely situation in a pandemic.

2) Cummings said yesterday that after rushing home to his sick wife, he then went back to work the same afternoon! Surely this was highly irresponsible and put colleagues in danger?

3) If both he and his wife became so ill that they were unable to look after their child, there are surely processes in place to help. Emergency services, social services etc. What are other people supposed to do in this situation if there is no other option? Could someone have driven his niece down to help if things became really bad and there was literally not a single other option?

4) The no travel rule was clearly to help limit the spread of the virus. As happened, both his wife and child went into a Durham hospital whilst probably infectious. London was the epicentre of the virus already and the additional risk to both staff and the area was surely much less in a London hospital. Crashes/breakdowns were also reasons not to travel long distances to prevent additional pressure on emergency services.

5) The clear instruction for people suffering symptoms was to self-isolate from other family members. A 5 hour car trip together seems like a sure fire way to pass on the virus to everyone in the car.

6) The hassle he was getting in his London home was given as an additional reason to go to Durham. This was during total lockdown where you were only supposed to leave the house for exercise once a day or essential supplies. I'm sure the police would have helped out here, as they had time to fly drones over the Peak District looking for isolated walkers. And if things were so bad, why the rush to get the family back down to London? Couldn't they have stayed behind in Durham will the rest of the family?

7) The 60 miles round trip on his wife's birthday to check he was ok to drive was highly irresponsible. What if he had crashed if he hadn't been fit to drive? No only was this a danger to other drivers, it seems like a strange choice for a father who was just concerned about protecting his family.

8 ) A lot has been made of the false stories in the media and how they were told they had it all wrong. The only strongly refuted part seems to be that Cummings didn't go back to Durham, where he offered phone evidence for his movements. Did Johnson know all the facts the night before? Did he really know of the 'eye test' drive before defending Cummings on live TV? Did the cabinet know the full story before tweeting out their support? It's not a crime to look after your family Gove, but it's highly bizarre to go on a 60 mile training drive during a full on lockdown.

I would have liked to see these factual points addressed during the press conference yesterday. Questions like "people couldn't attend funerals but you travelled 250 miles" were pretty pointless as they were clearly different scenarios. 

There was one good question asking why Cummings didn't do the eye test for 30 miles back to London. If he didn't feel he could make it, he could have drove the 30 miles back to Durham. This seemed to stump him and he had no answer.

People say he got a grilling but most the questions were overly emotional and not challenging the facts he was presenting.

What we need is a senior political figure who knows how to cross examine someone properly, based on facts rather than emotion. Johnson is in trouble.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 9.5k
  • Created
  • Last Reply
ariotofmyown

ariotofmyown

Posted
Posted
52 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

Gave this a listen earlier and I think it’s worth a share https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/today-in-focus/id1440133626?i=1000475775828

Interview with their reporter who helped break the story. It gave me a few different perspectives on it all as it’s not an all out attack. Ill write them out without going into much detail

1) why didn’t Cummings double down that he left London as a security issue? I’m not saying it’s a good excuse (if he was worried people knew where he lived I’m sure the govt could prepare lodgings whilst they quarantined?), but I think it would have been seen as a more understandable line. The through line ended up being about the press which doesn’t make sense

2) The govt knew for six weeks about the allegation, my guess had been they hadn’t responded because they had something up their sleeve (a resignation and then carrying on working for the govt freelance so to speak) but that doesn’t seem the case. They kept quiet because they didn’t see it as a big story. They discuss that it’s a massive oversight from Cummings who feels his key successes (brexit and the Johnson election win) are because he understands the public better than the press do.

3) I don’t think as a whole, his story is overly that bad if you look at it as a human rather than a person of significance (who wrote the guidelines!). Especially in the eye of joe public as everyone, including on this thread, ums and ahhs about what they have done throughout lockdown. What I think the public don’t like is deception. The eye test, his wife’s account not mentioning it, adding parts to his blog to say he warned of a pandemic. They are the actions of people who are trying to cover up and everyone can sense stuff like that from a mile off.

4) This means that the public have lost faith in the govt and that’s really hard to get back. Fortunately for them, there is time to do that long term although this won’t be forgotten easily. The big problem they now have is that if they can’t predict how the public reacts which means they can’t control the narrative of how the news is portrayed (even in the mail) and yesterday showed, he didn’t know how to react and tried to make the press into the enemy. The problem here isn’t the press, it’s that the press aren’t doing what the govt want.

I wish I had waited a few minutes to read this before making a long post!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
i-Ram

i-Ram

Posted
Posted
49 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Really think Johnson and co are taking us for fools here.

1) One parent developing coronavirus symptoms is not an exceptional situation in the slightest. It's a likely situation in a pandemic.

2) Cummings said yesterday that after rushing home to his sick wife, he then went back to work the same afternoon! Surely this was highly irresponsible and put colleagues in danger?

3) If both he and his wife became so ill that they were unable to look after their child, there are surely processes in place to help. Emergency services, social services etc. What are other people supposed to do in this situation if there is no other option? Could someone have driven his niece down to help if things became really bad and there was literally not a single other option?

4) The no travel rule was clearly to help limit the spread of the virus. As happened, both his wife and child went into a Durham hospital whilst probably infectious. London was the epicentre of the virus already and the additional risk to both staff and the area was surely much less in a London hospital. Crashes/breakdowns were also reasons not to travel long distances to prevent additional pressure on emergency services.

5) The clear instruction for people suffering symptoms was to self-isolate from other family members. A 5 hour car trip together seems like a sure fire way to pass on the virus to everyone in the car.

6) The hassle he was getting in his London home was given as an additional reason to go to Durham. This was during total lockdown where you were only supposed to leave the house for exercise once a day or essential supplies. I'm sure the police would have helped out here, as they had time to fly drones over the Peak District looking for isolated walkers. And if things were so bad, why the rush to get the family back down to London? Couldn't they have stayed behind in Durham will the rest of the family?

7) The 60 miles round trip on his wife's birthday to check he was ok to drive was highly irresponsible. What if he had crashed if he hadn't been fit to drive? No only was this a danger to other drivers, it seems like a strange choice for a father who was just concerned about protecting his family.

8 ) A lot has been made of the false stories in the media and how they were told they had it all wrong. The only strongly refuted part seems to be that Cummings didn't go back to Durham, where he offered phone evidence for his movements. Did Johnson know all the facts the night before? Did he really know of the 'eye test' drive before defending Cummings on live TV? Did the cabinet know the full story before tweeting out their support? It's not a crime to look after your family Gove, but it's highly bizarre to go on a 60 mile training drive during a full on lockdown.

I would have liked to see these factual points addressed during the press conference yesterday. Questions like "people couldn't attend funerals but you travelled 250 miles" were pretty pointless as they were clearly different scenarios. 

There was one good question asking why Cummings didn't do the eye test for 30 miles back to London. If he didn't feel he could make it, he could have drove the 30 miles back to Durham. This seemed to stump him and he had no answer.

People say he got a grilling but most the questions were overly emotional and not challenging the facts he was presenting.

What we need is a senior political figure who knows how to cross examine someone properly, based on facts rather than emotion. Johnson is in trouble.

inspector clouseau GIF

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MaltRam

MaltRam

Posted
Posted

What a ducking non-story this Cummings thing is.

Bloke drives car. Whoopie-do.

It's become a story because he's a ********* and people are queuing up to even scores.

The self-righteous froth some of the pearl clutchers are gob-spoffing about it is laughable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
i-Ram

i-Ram

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Needlesh said:

What a ducking non-story this Cummings thing is.

Bloke drives car. Whoopie-do.

It's become a story because he's a ********* and people are queuing up to even scores.

The self-righteous froth some of the pearl clutchers are gob-spoffing about it is laughable.

You really should post more often. Thanks for giving me a good end to my day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ramesses

ramesses

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, therealhantsram said:

Poll in tomorrow's Daily Mail. 

Will increase the pressure. 

Screenshot_20200526-222939.png

 

Another poll…

0_image002.png

And when they break it down…

 

0_image003.jpg

 

 

Who knew that Dom would be the man to bring the country together.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
TimRam

TimRam

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, Needlesh said:

What a ducking non-story this Cummings thing is.

Bloke drives car. Whoopie-do.

It's become a story because he's a ********* and people are queuing up to even scores.

The self-righteous froth some of the pearl clutchers are gob-spoffing about it is laughable.

Agree....the bbc are banging on about this seemingly 24/7. Anything for lefty-points grabbing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
CWC1983

CWC1983

Posted
Posted
6 hours ago, bigbadbob said:

How's this going on? I presume he's sorted all the evidence by now. Not heard owt so just curious

Was that just a month ago?  

No idea, Ive tried to scroll through his Twitter feed to find out something but its clogged up with the Cummings affair. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
RamNut

RamNut

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, SchtivePesley said:

I'm still trying to get my head around the Daily Mail's new angle on all this stuff

Why are they suddenly attacking the government? My head hurts

Because Boris is too soft. They will want an end to lockdown. Business as usual.

get back to work you plebs. It’s only the flu.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...