Dominic Cummings: he and his buddy Boris Johnson probably think they got away with it again.
Durham Police have confirmed the adage that the UK has one rule for the elite and another for the masses, by refusing to fine Dominic Cummings for breaking social distancing rules in his controversial trip to Barnard Castle.
What about the breach of lockdown represented by his trip to Durham, where he breached social distancing rules by handing his son, who had been exposed to two people who had Covid-19, over to his elderly parents – vulnerable people who were now potentially exposed?
What about the implication of dangerous driving – a criminal offence – in the fact that Cummings himself said he drove to Barnard Castle because he believed Covid-19 had affected his eyesight and he wanted to check whether he could see well enough to drive back to London?
All we get is that Durham Police “did not consider an offence had been committed”.
To the rest of us, this simply suggests that Durham Police are not fit for purpose; this service cannot enforce the law with equality towards rich and poor alike.
PM aide Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle “might have been a minor breach” of lockdown rules, Durham Police has said.
But the force said no retrospective action would be taken against the PM’s chief adviser.
In a statement, Durham Police said they view Mr Cummings’ 50-mile round trip to Barnard Castle with his wife and son as “minor” because there was no apparent breach of social distancing rules during their visit.
The force said it had “no intention to take retrospective action in respect of the Barnard Castle incident”, since this would amount to “treating Mr Cummings differently from other members of the public.”
Other members of the public who have been fined for travelling may take a different view. Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski recently made a fuss about being denied access to Welsh beaches for fear of being fined, for example. Was he mistaken? Would he – and others – have been permitted to make the trip, if Cummings’s 60-mile round trip was not worthy of a fine?
On the issue of whether it was an offence for Mr Cummings to drive himself and his family from London to Durham to isolate on his family’s farm, Durham Police said it did “not consider an offence was committed”.
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Dominic Cummings’s presumptuous decision to hold a press conference in Downing Street over his decision to break lockdown rules so he could visit his parents should lead to a prosecution for dangerous driving, it seems.
As part of his defence, he claimed that he had driven 30 miles to Barnard Castle because Covid-19 had affected his eyesight and he wanted to see if it was possible for him to drive back to London.
Incidentally:
How amazing that in 16th century dialect Barnard Castle was a euphemism for a pathetic excuse! pic.twitter.com/7c5hV4wLs1
(For those who can’t read images well, it says: “‘Barnard Castle‘ – a Durham dialect term for a coward. It derives from the Northern Rebellion… by the Catholic earls in 1569, when Sir George Bowes refused, despite many opportunities, to leave his fortified position in Barnard Castle to engage in battle. Hence also the expression come, come, that’s Barney Castle, meaning ‘that’s a pathetic excuse’.”)
Driving with impaired eyesight – meaning that a driver cannot look properly – indicates dangerous driving, which is an offence.
#DominicCummings had been ill; his vision had been "weird", so he got into a car and onto the roads – to see if he could bring death onto them? What rubbish!
Indeed, the chairman of the Police Federation took to Twitter to express his concern that anyone hearing Cummings’s excuses should not assume that they can do as he said he did:
As a former road death investigator with Hampshire police I have investigated many serious collisions, including fatalities. Some of these were caused by drivers with impaired vision, this is a serious issue. Do not drive if your eyesight is impaired or you feel unwell.
It’s a microcosm of the entire Cummings scandal – a public servant doing something forbidden to the rest of us because he thinks he is above the rules that govern us all.
If you need information here’s an easy-to-read map of Dominic’s Travels:
There was plenty more of it in his statement, and in his answers to journalists who were on the scene. I commented on a few of these transgressions:
A falsehood. There WERE people in London he could reasonably ask to help. #DominicCummings
If #DominicCummings is denying he was with his parents in their property, that is NOT what Durham Constabulary has told us. I believe the police over the politician.
(In a statement release half an hour before Cummings started his press conference, Durham police said: ““We can confirm that on April 1, an officer from Durham Constabulary spoke to the father of Dominic Cummings. Mr Cummings confirmed that his son, his son’s wife and child were present at the property. He told the officer that his son and son’s wife were displaying symptoms of coronavirus and were self-isolating in part of the property.” Some have claimed that, as “the property” includes three buildings, it was possible for Cummings and his wife to have stayed away from his parents – but unlikely. They would have had to meet up with them to gain access and hand over the child – who could have been a carrier of the disease, remember. Also, we only have Cummings’s word for any of this, and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw his boss.)
Why did Mary Wakefield give a false account of all this in her Spectator articles? #DominicCummings
There can be no doubt about the rules we were all told to follow – all of us, including Cummings:
"The guidance doesn't say you've got to just sit there," says #DominicCummings – but that's exactly what we were all led to believe and it is disingenuous of him to say that.
Interesting revisiting this letter from the Prime Minister
– you MUST stay at home – you can only leave home to buy food/medicine,exercise once a day,seek medical attention – these rules MUST be observed. If people break them the police will issue fines
I don't believe this claim that #DominicCummings argued for lockdown. It's just something to say to try to get people on his side now. All the evidence is that he was for "herd immunity" and "if a few old people die, who cares?" or whatever the phrase was.
Cummings said he warned about i.a. corona virus in 2019.
Thing is, he didn't. References to SARS and corona virus were added to his blog post on pandemic risks sometime between April and May of this year. pic.twitter.com/NneonooLoj
“I hope that you don’t mind my informal mode of address but since you were calling all the journalists by their first name I’m assuming that this is acceptable.
“I’d like to summarise my main take-aways from your extraordinary press conference in the garden of No.10 Downing Street. Please excuse me if the points are a bit random, but I think that this resonates rather well with your rambling statement.
“1. The PM’s time is very important, but not apparently anyone else’s. If just 10% of the population spent 30mn waiting for you to appear you’ve just wasted around three million hours of the nation’s time. What were you doing, having a crap?
“2. You don’t possess a smart short-sleeved shirt. I can recommend many charity shops where you can pick one up for less than a fiver.
“3. You tend to panic when your wife is unwell. In view of this, I hope you are in no way involved with national security.
“4. Your family, friends and neighbours in London all hate you.
“5. Your Dad owns a farm with many houses, but not all of them very luxurious.
“6. You have a young niece who is prepared to put her life on the line for you and your family.
“7. Your parents shout in the woods. (I hope I got that one right.)
“8. When you can’t see anything you go for a 30-mile drive to test your eyesight. This tends to make your son want to piss himself, which is quite understandable.
“9. Your wife is a fiction writer.
“10. Any confusion related to this matter is all the fault of the press which persists in reporting on things, most of which have proved to be true, which you refused to confirm or deny for two months.
“11. You had some sort of conversation with Boris but neither of you can remember when that was nor what was said. Let’s hope that’s not the norm for your conversation.
“12. You are a very very important person, critical to the future of this nation, and you wouldn’t dream of resigning. You really couldn’t let your fag Boris down in that way.
“I trust that I’ve captured all the key points. Please do let me know if I’ve missed out anything important.
“Finally, thanks very much for going in to work on a Bank Holiday, I do hope that they are paying you double time.
“Hope to see you up in Durham some time. My family is from that part of the world, but you wouldn’t know them – they mainly worked underground in the pits.”
The comment that Cummings won’t resign because he doesn’t want to let Boris Johnson down is ironic as this scandal has turned out to be ruinous for Johnson’s popularity and for any credibility that his woefully inadequate government has had in handling the Covid crisis.
Interesting that, rather than consider resigning, #DominicCummings thought it was perfectly reasonable to put his employers through a bitterly damaging scandal that is not their fault but his.
As a result, it seems Johnson has lost 20 popularity percentage points in just the four days this scandal has been frothing:
Boris Johnson‘s approval rating has plunged by 20 points in four days, amid the ongoing Dominic Cummings scandal, according to new polling.
Overall government approval turned negative, to -2 per cent, according to data from polling group Savanta ComRes. That represents a drop of 16 points in just a single day.
Mr Johnson’s approval also turned negative as the scandal continued. it dropped from +19 per cent to -1 per cent since Friday, the same data showed.
Public opinion of individual ministers such as Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and chancellor Rishi Sunak also fell. Both ministers publicly backed Mr Cummings over the weekend.
But Cummings won’t face prosecution, nor will he resign. Johnson will do his best to ignore the fact that his advisor’s actions have made it irrevocably clear that they, the ministers who supported them, and the entire Tory government consider themselves to be above the law that they impose on the rest of us.
And you know what? I think people are right to be angry about that!
So I hope you will all be opening your windows at 8pm today (May 26) to give a resounding “Boo!” for Boris Johnson and all his creepy cronies:
— MrsAitchBee 3.5% #3PointFivePercent #FBPE (@MrsAitchBee) May 24, 2020
POSTSCRIPT: Incidentally, even the act of holding a press conference was against the rules that apply to Cummings:
Para 14 of the code of conduct for special advisers
“Special advisers must not take public part in political controversy, through any form of statement..to the press..and would not normally speak in public for their Minister or the Department”
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) May 25, 2020
It seems he cannot do anything right.
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Boris Johnson – giving his opinion of anyone who might try to stop him.
If you think the headline – by economist Professor Simon Wren-Lewis – is a bit strong, you haven’t been paying attention.
His thesis is simple:
Boris Johnson is dangerous because he will ignore the UK’s constitution whenever he feels like it. He will use its power for his own ends, knowing that by the time the courts overturn his decisions, he’ll already have had his way.
So, for example, his false prorogation of Parliament was overturned – but not until after MPs had lost 10 days of debating time.
He is merrily saying two different things about Brexit – that he’ll abide by the Benn Act and seek to delay the UK’s departure from the EU and that the UK will drop out on October 31 if no agreement is reached.
We may conclude that he intends not to send the letter calling for a delay, and to crash out with no deal, knowing that the damage will be done by the time the courts are able to prove his behaviour unlawful.
The lesson we cannot avoid drawing is that this government has become dangerously rogue, and the party from which it comes is no better. People are no longer safe with it in charge. In the past, at least the press would have held the government to account, but now it eggs it on. A BBC that also might have told inconvenient facts has been threatened into submission.
All Johnson’s actions and provocations have one aim. He aims to pretend at the forthcoming general election that he alone is fighting for the people against an establishment of parliament, the judges and the EU that are combining to block the people’s will.
This rings true. If he manages to arrange his “no deal” Brexit, he can say it was in the face of establishment opposition; if forced to delay, he can say it was because of the establishment.
(We must bear in mind that he is not referring to the Establishment as we understand it, of course – he simply means anybody who opposes his desires and is in a position of power, enough to stop him.)
The real threat lies in far right thugs and a government that wants to destroy our pluralist democracy. The only way we have to stop a Prime Minister whose over the top language is used in death threats to MPs, and who describes those who ask him to be careful as talking humbug, is to remove him from power.
It is essential for those who want to protect our pluralist democracy to ensure they vote tactically to remove the Prime Minister who threatens that democracy.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Evolve Politics has also published a decent article on this subject, here.
How does this man get to remain Secretary of State for Health and Social Care?
Jeremy Hunt has issued a tweet claiming that he is proud of the appalling staff shortages he has created in the National Health Service.
See for yourself (hint: red means bad):
Really clever use of technology at @IpswichHosp to ensure safe staffing levels are maintained throughout the day. Thanks to staff who came for a constructive discussion on safety. pic.twitter.com/MWNRYYj69n
See, he wasn’t showing how safe staffing levels were being maintained; he was proving that they aren’t.
Every red box on that rota means at that time of day, on that ward, patients were considered to be at high risk due to understaffing.
On the early shift, only two wards have adequate staff. In contrast, no less than 11 wards have an inadequate number of nurses and are labelled “high risk”.
Probably the single biggest own goal by Jeremy Hunt in 5 years. He just posted a graphic showing what a mess he is making of our NHS & boasted about it in the process. https://t.co/81PPCPBtE4
I think someone at the department of Health urgently needs to explain to @Jeremy_Hunt that lots of red boxes is not a good thing https://t.co/qXmEf3x2qv
Nice chart showing impending doom. How would you feel and what would you do if the safety command console at your local nuclear power plant had that much red flashing up on it? And what if it was like that across all staffing types across all hospitals across the whole country?
This is what happens when Tories start tinkering with organisations they simply don’t understand. And it will get worse, unless they are stopped:
Whilst Jeremy Hunt distracts with Trump CAPITAL letters in his tweets & Boris talks of bridges – let us keep our eye on the huge* changes Hunt & Simon Stevens are making to the NHS – *without public consultation.*
If you can attend both, please do. Only by keeping up the pressure can we overcome the Tory government and its automatic bias against a health service that exists not for profit, but to serve the needs of the people.
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