This is more for information than any other reason.
Buy popcorn.
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So: disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who was removed from office after being caught on CCTV having a lockdown-busting snog with someone who wasn’t his wife, is to be a contestant on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
The problem is that he is still a sitting member of Parliament and, while he might insist that his office staff will continue to provide an adequate service to his West Suffolk constituents, he still won’t be in Parliament to take part in important votes during most of November.
It’s no wonder the Conservative Party has withdrawn its whip from him, then.
There’s a lot of commentary on this. Let’s have a couple of videos:
I love the comment about Hancock being “in a jungle, sucking on a worm”. Is his girlfriend also going to Australia, then?
And is it a justifiable criticism to suggest that Hancock is stealing his MP salary, because he is taking reality TV money as well?
Sorry everyone, but here’s Ann Widdecombe:
I’m willing to bet she does watch the show, in the end.
Her other points seem good, though. Hancock wants to raise his profile but, by doing so, he’s betraying the dignity of his office. He wants to raise awareness of a dyslexia campaign – but it will probably be edited out of televised episodes of the show.
But what do members of the public think?
I asked readers of the Vox Political Facebook page – and it’s fair to say the question attracted quite a few responses, in spite of the algorithm that restricts readership to only around 350 of the 42,000 people who follow the site there.
“I don’t usually vote for who does the trials, but this year I’m looking forward to voting, hope Hancock is ready,” wrote Rose Dixon. This may be an idea whose time has come.
Helen Selling seems to think so: “I’d be astonished if he didn’t get more votes to do foul tasks than all the others put together.” But she also stated: “ITV have probably given him at least twice the usual ‘celebrity’ fee because they know without a doubt they will rake in millions from all the people in the UK who will ring in because they have good reason to hate Hancock more than any other ‘celebrity’ ever.” That’s a depressing thought.
“He’s absent from work without any valid reason – that would be the sack in most places of employment,” pointed out Lisbeta Ingles. “Just suspending the whip isn’t enough.”
Fiona Dowdeswell Simmons may have commented for us all when she stated: “I’m hoping against hope that he gets lost in the jungle and at times there’ll be future random sightings of him waving a cobbled together spear while snarling.”
Andy Wrathbone may have been more realistic with this offering: “Just goes to show how desperate the media are for celebrities i guess. I hope the vile Tory mollusc chokes on a cockroach… (apologies to the cockroach)…Unless HE IS the Cockroach ,(perfectly feasible), In which case I retract my original Cockroach apology and hope he chokes on a Scorpion, (apologies to the Scorpion).”
Why is he going? Brian O’Reilly has a thought about that: “It might have something to do with him been responsible for the deaths of thousands of elderly people when he said we have put a ring around care homes and then sent people from hospital back into care homes without checking if they had Covid.”
Adding to this, here’s Andrew Turner: “Well somebody is keeping up the tradition of exporting criminals to Aussie..Hope he gets a one way ticket.”
But this leads us on to a new question – of public perception. Rob Allen makes the point well: “Disgrace. The man is appalling- yet watch the public ‘relate’ to him despite the tragic consequences of his tenure. People who had or have family in nursing homes know this well. What a nation of idiots we have become.”
Is this the plan – for Hancock to be rehabilitated in the eyes of the public, despite the many thousands of deaths for which he is principally responsible? If so, it’s our duty to make sure the attempt fails.
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The briefest of briefing rooms: your local parish council could have done a better job, and cheaper, but Boris Johnson gave the contract to a company based in a hostile state. Now it is being withdrawn from service. How many times was it used?
Boris Johnson has scrapped plans for White House-style press briefings from a new £2.6 million TV studio in Downing Street – meaning he spent all that public money for nothing.
Apparently the room will be used for internal government briefings by Johnson and his ministers instead. They could do that in any ordinary Whitehall office.
Most of us have been doing much the same from our own homes, using Zoom, Skype, or even Facebook Messenger.
The decision confirms what This Writer believed – that this was nothing but another hugely expensive vanity project for Johnson.
His overspending on fripperies like this, described by some as “spaffing cash up the wall”, has brought a new meaning to the phrase “quantitative easing” (which is what the Bank of England has been having to do in order to allow the nation to cover the cost).
Johnson was shamed into admitting the existence of the studio in February, after it was reported on the social media that, after the huge expense, the space was going unused.
Last month he announced that he would be using the studio after all – and we all warned that he doesn’t have the personality to pull it off.
And then we discovered that the studio had been fitted out by a tech firm based in Russia. Who knows what surveillance equipment was installed there?
(I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, if Johnson really intends to have private briefings there instead of public, press affairs; any really embarrassing secrets will soon get out if the place is full of bugs.)
The whole sorry saga has been a national embarrassment.
Our man-child of a prime minister wanted to play with a new toy that he thought would make him look good – and has wound up looking like a spoilt brat squatting in his own mess.
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£2.6m on a TV studio and it will look much like this: the flags will be there but probably not the fireplace, and Johnson is likely to be speaking from a podium. One thing that is likely to remain absent is a comb.
Funny how the Johnson government has announced it is planning to run daily press conferences from its £2.6m media briefing TV studio, shortly after the social media reported that the space was going unused and the money had been wasted, isn’t it?
I said at the time that the spending on a Boris Johnson vanity project showcased his fascination with the United States presidency. Perhaps he wants to seem presidential?
If so, it won’t work because he simply doesn’t have the personality to pull it off. All that will happen is we will be able to identify his lies more quickly, without a layer of client-journalist interpretation to get in our way.
This in turn causes me to speculate on the selection of press representatives who will be allowed access to the briefings.
It seems unlikely that anybody without a Conservative Party membership card in their pocket is likely to get past the Downing Street gates.
With the briefings being televised, that may not matter. But how long will that last?
I can see live briefings turning into “selected highlights” as the novelty diminishes and ratings decline.
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Press briefing: Johnson spent millions of pounds of your money on a TV studio he hasn’t used once, despite an apparently endless succession of press briefings and ministerial broadcasts.
Sometimes the news is focused so heavily on the Coronavirus that it’s easy to forget that Boris Johnson’s government is incompetent in every other way, too.
Case in point: he spent £2.7 million on a television studio that has never been used.
Worse, there are doubts that it ever will be, as attitudes have changed since your money was used to pay for it.
I’d say the money could have been spent on personal protective equipment but I am reminded that Johnson’s government has spent £15 billion on PPE – and then lost the lot.
This is incompetence on a historic scale.
The TV studio was part of Johnson’s infatuation with the presidential system in the United States:
The room is believed to have been modelled on the press room in the West Wing at the White House in Washington.
It was intended to be used for on-camera briefings from press secretaries and ministers.
The plans for the briefings had to be delayed due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions preventing journalists from gathering.
But with the plans on hold, it isn’t clear when they may be back on the table.
They may never be revived. This studio – worth a fortune – may remain unused for years to come, until somebody remembers it and finds a better use for the space.
In the meantime it stands as a metaphor for the contents of our prime minister’s skull:
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#HeadAndShoulders: Boris Johnson’s terrible turnout is a disgrace to the nation.
Who knew?
The UK’s prime minister managed to distract everyone from his new nonsense policy that won’t keep us safe from Covid-19, simply by looking what he is – a mess.
And now everybody’s talking about the fact that our prime minister can’t wash and dress himself properly:
And Mr Speaker, with our new policy of scalp, shoulders, lapel we can justly claim to be head and shoulders above the rest of the world and look forward to a very white Christmas. pic.twitter.com/aj1ftrZk1G
I foresee times when Johnson will appear before the public with bad news – and also with no tie, or with his short untucked, or with his trousers at half-mast because he now knows that we’ll be so busy gossiping about the mess he‘s in…
… that we won’t realise he’s telling us the country is collapsing around us.
(Douglas Adams predicted this in The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, with reference to bad language: “In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable….So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called “one whole joojooflop situation,” everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year old civilization had just collapsed overnight.”
(What a shame he never lived to see his comedy become a reality.)
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There’s no way around it: Boris Johnson and his gang of Tory nincompoops have really cocked up the Covid-19 crisis.
That’s the message This Writer took from the televised briefing by chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance.
Here’s a summary of what they said, courtesy of that great critic of the Johnson government, Piers Morgan:
BREAKING: Key points from covid presser: 1) If cases accelerate at current rate, we'll be at 50k-a-day by mid-October. 2) Hospitalisations rising, & deaths will too. 3) Coronavirus not getting weaker. 4) Only 8% of us have antibodies. 5) At least 6 months to get on top of it.
Those are the points I got from it too – and here’s my conclusion:
#Whitty and #Vallance have been as neutral as possible but their message is that #BorisJohnson#MattHancock and the #Tories have been incompetent. They have failed to contain #Covid19UK and their policies have inconvenienced the public hugely while increasing the risk to us.
#Whitty is calling for reduced social contacts between households again. People are sick of this, though. Many of us have been under virtual house arrest since March because our politicians have been incompetent in containing #Covid19UK
Interesting: 6,000 people per day are getting #Covid19UK according to #PatrickVallance – that's a lot more than the official figure of 3,899 yesterday.
#Vallance says he wants to get the time in which infections double down from seven days. But it's exponential – meaning they are likely to double FASTER, I would have thought.
Only eight per cent of the UK population have been infected and survived, therefore having antibodies. But these fade. The vast majority are therefore still vulnerable. #Vallance
#Whitty says we have to take the next six months "very seriously". Unfortunate, then, that we have a prime minister who is not serious at all and does not care about the number of deaths. That was clear from his "herd immunity" nonsense back in March.
#Whitty is talking about huge numbers of deaths, in spite of better treatments for #Covid19UK being available. That's a HUGE failure by #BorisJohnson and #MattHancock – their policies and their government.
#Whitty also just reminded us in an oblique way of the fact that the ONLY think lockdown and restrictions have been aiming to do is reduce hospital admissions so the NHS can continue to treat other illnesses as well. That hasn't worked – ask cancer patients.
#Whitty now discussing damage to the economy if containment measures go "too far" – with its own health risks. These are all POLITICAL decisions. Knock-on health risks can be contained by governments with the will to do so. He's confirming that #BorisJohnson is no damn good.
So what can we all expect in the future from Johnson?
More of the same.
He may impose more restrictions on our freedoms but he won’t tell us not to go to work again, because making money for his friends is more important to him than saving our lives.
His policies will be intended to keep hospital admissions within treatable levels – to prevent Covid-19 from overwhelming the UK’s doctors and nurses – as it always has been. But they won’t be about reducing levels of infection to zero because he has never been interested in that. Making money for his friends is more important to him than saving our lives.
Johnson may even try to justify his refusal to impose measures that would eradicate the disease by saying the effect on the economy would cause even more harm to public health. As I tweeted, that’s a political decision – he could legislate to ensure that any such harm is prevented. But he won’t, because making money for his friends is more important to him than saving our lives.
And that means many more people are going to die – your relatives and friends, perhaps. Maybe even you. Because making money for Johnson’s friends is more important to him than saving our lives.
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Chris Whitty: the Chief Medical Officer is facing calls for his removal – before he has even had a chance to broadcast to the nation alongside Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance.
New hashtags on social media are calling for the UK’s chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser to be sacked – before they’ve even had a chance to address the public on television.
The broadcast was scheduled for 11am today (September 21) but platforms like Twitter have already been filling up with attacks on Chris Whitty and – notably – Patrick Vallance.
The attacks don’t make much sense.
In fairness to the advisers, we don’t know what their advice to the government has been. Their meetings have taken place behind closed doors and when they have faced the public it has always been under the shroud of shared responsibility – a line has been taken by Johnson government ministers and the advisers are obliged to support it.
“Bent science”? We don’t know that the gentlemen concerned have been bending science in any way at all.
We do know that the politicians have been as bent as the figure “8”, trying to delay lockdown to keep the economy going, trying to shorten lockdown to prevent the economy from being harmed more than it already has been… trying to continue making money for their party donors while people die (or suffer serious health consequences).
And it’s the politicians who have been misusing emergency procurement procedures to funnel vast amounts of public money into the hands of private firms – some running companies that have been dormant for years – that happen to be run by friends of theirs; the socialism of the very rich.
So This Site tends to come down on the side of those who have been standing up for the scientists:
The #SackVallance hashtag trending just shows that Boris' tactic of ducking responsibility and letting others take the blame works. The chancer who blusters, lies and avoids any responsibility Is throwing the scientists under the bus #Covid19UK
Woke up to see #SackVallance trending. Another early morning affirmation of how doomed we are with this nations rejection of science. Boris’ team has another scapegoat I see 🤦🏼 #covididiots
The scary thing is that if we don’t listen to top scientific advisers who do you want to get your guidance from? Jim Davidson? Karen on Facebook? A bloke down the pub who told you Covid is definitely a scam as he heard it from a bloke in the pub too? #SackVallance
Let's all rage against the scientists, it's all their fault! Absolutely nothing to do with the complete & utter failure of @BorisJohnson who, by pushing Vallance & Whitty out onto the stage first, is trying to shift the blame! Really? #SackVallance & #SackWhitty#Covid19UK
Whitty takes over: the chief medical officer – with chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance – will be making a televised address to the nation because nobody trusts the Tories any more. From the state of this image, not even Whitty.
Trust in Conservative ministers has eroded so badly that they have been forced to hand over a televised update to the UK’s chief scientific and medical officers.
Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty – who was last seen shouting at performing monkey prime minister Boris Johnson and his boss Dominic Cummings in a photograph published in The Spectator – will make an appeal to the public to stick to new rules on Monday (September 21).
Whitty and Vallance are likely to compare the UK with other European countries such as France and Spain, which have seen a sharp rise in cases translate – after a lag – into increasing hospitalisations and then deaths. The UK saw 3,899 new cases and 18 deaths on Sunday.
The scientists will set out the latest data on the spread of the disease, and urge people to exercise caution. Whitty is expected to warn: “We are looking at the data to see how to manage the spread of the virus ahead of a very challenging winter period.”
Their intervention comes after ministers were accused of eroding trust, from failings and broken pledges on testing and tracing to scandals such as Dominic Cummings’ lockdown journeys.
Covid-19 is now on the rise across the UK, among people in all age groups. Cases are doubling each week.
The Tory ministers – like Johnson and Matt Hancock (also seen recoiling from Whitty in that Spectator shot) – are said to be hoping the scientists’ broadcast will help bring home the message that tough new restrictions will be unavoidable if the situation fails to improve.
So it is the Tory mailed fist behind the velvet glove: comply with restrictions, including the “rule of six” limit on social gatherings, or see stricter measures imposed.
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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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