Et tu Dominic? Political loyalty that didn’t last.,,

[VaVaGloom]

So Johnson and Cummings are at each other’s throats. Anyone else think that it’s karma for them being such self serving, conniving, utter shit weasels last year? It’s so fitting that they are self destructing their own abominable empire.

United they stood, divided they fall.

I'm not sure what the problem was with suggesting rich party donors pay for a government's flat refurb. Blair used tax payers money, at least Johnson did pay for it himself after considering donor funds.

I'm surprised all the Cummings fans that have suddenly appeared when his name has been mud for months. He has been a liar since BC yet now the Left are excitably cheerleading. Wonder what else he'll reveal, the next few weeks will be interesting,

It's really transparent isn't it? Gamekeeper turned poacher and all the naughty journo's are clamouring for their share of the gossip!

"I'm not sure what the problem is . . ." @JaniieJones. And that is a problem in itself. If you think it's acceptable that PMs wealthy mates can hand him a bung on request then you may want to ask yourself what they expect in return. These are people in whom the milk of human kindness does not flow freely. Quid pro quo. I think you'll find that's illegal in these circumstances.

Johnson's untouchable though isn't he. It doesn't seem to matter what he does, it seems his "loveable" buffoonery still keeps the public enthralled

Judging from the FB residents group for where I live, the general consensus is that every single of us would claim as many expenses as we could if given the chance so "Bozza" is just doing what any normal person would do

'And that is a problem in itself. If you think it's acceptable that PMs wealthy mates can hand him a bung on request then you may want to ask yourself what they expect in return. '

Well you're making up your own story there. If they have a pot of donor funds I can't see what is wrong with using it to refurb gov premises. If he was using it buy a holiday home in the Caribbean then yes that would be unethical. Anyway he considered it and then paid himself, unlike Blair who used taxpayer's money. It is a non story. Not saying there isn't more to come of course.

@JaniieJones

I'm not sure what the problem was with suggesting rich party donors pay for a government's flat refurb. Blair used tax payers money, at least Johnson did pay for it himself after considering donor funds.

I'm surprised all the Cummings fans that have suddenly appeared when his name has been mud for months. He has been a liar since BC yet now the Left are excitably cheerleading. Wonder what else he'll reveal, the next few weeks will be interesting,

The problem is that those rich donors than have (or think they have) Johnson in their debt. Of course he's so two-faced and duplicitous that I'm surprised anyone would trust him to connive with them reliably. They would presumably, become one of the people with his personal phone number so they can ask him to sort out their tax problems. There is no such thing as a free refurbishment.

I'm not sure what the problem was with suggesting rich party donors pay for a government's flat refurb. Blair used tax payers money, at least Johnson did pay for it himself after considering donor funds.

It's really worrying that people can't see a problem with inviting private donors to pay for stuff that personally benefits the PM. Do you not think that "favours" of this nature are quite dangerous?

Personally, I'd rather that public money was used for this kind of thing, in a prudent, limited and transparent way, rather than having wealthy donors trying to buy influence or create obligations.

It appears to be that the Prime Minister has attacked his former advisor Cummings first, by accusing him of the various leaks.
Now it was reported in the paper a few days ago, that there are many many people privy to these various texts as the Prime Minister (I cant bring myself to use his name), would forward things on, including a whole email chain, etc, thus everybody and anybody could have been the leak.
Cummings made lots of enemies while serving as chief advisor ( a big mistake in my view)
However, I think it unwise to accuse Cummings without loads of evidence. He WILL know lots of insider information.
The truth is, he made an enemy of Carrie Symonds - Big mistake

Get over yourself. They had £30k of public funds for their 2 bedroom flat. That wasn't enough for them. The personal donations were sought to cover their excessive spending as they didn't want to spend their own money. Greed. Just greed.

It appears to be that the Prime Minister has attacked his former advisor Cummings first, by accusing him of the various leaks. And who did shoot JR? Which came first, chicken, egg, egg, chicken?

Who cares?

@longwayoff

Get over yourself. They had £30k of public funds for their 2 bedroom flat. That wasn't enough for them. The personal donations were sought to cover their excessive spending as they didn't want to spend their own money. Greed. Just greed.

Not sure if this was directed at me or someone else?

To be clear, I think that the £30k of public funds was more than enough, and I agree that they should have paid any surplus themselves. If anything, I think that £30k is excessive.

My point was merely that any expenditure that isn't paid for out of personal funds needs to be completely transparent and above board, and should come from public funds rather than private donors who might have ulterior motives. I am not suggesting that we give them a blank cheque!

It’s 30k a year isn’t it? And I don’t see any suggestion that the money he ‘borrowed’ is instead of taxpayers money, rather than on top of it.

I’m not sure listening to Cummings means you are a fan. They are both liars with a lack of integrity, but it’s completely plausible that DC knows where all the skeletons are and will reveal them if it benefits him and doesn’t implicate him.

And I don’t see any suggestion that the money he ‘borrowed’ is instead of taxpayers money, rather than on top of it.

No, I think it was instead of money from his own pocket.

Exactly.

No, @paralysedbyinertia, not you but janiiejones, my apologies to you for not making it more clear. I agree with you completely. Private money, lacking both paper trail and tax paid, into the pocket of any PM is corruption, pure and simple. And I am no supporter of Cummings either. They are both proven liars.

Yet again no-one seems unduly bothered by the revelation that despite all the evidence (yet again) that we were entering the second wave (from Sept) Johnson was the main culprit dragging his feet again, until the rest of the inside team had to give him a reality check to call lockdown. He clearly hadn't learnt the lesson from March. Perhaps it's because we all saw him open the primary schools for a single day in January, when we were at the peak of the wave, that expectations of him are so low meaning people are unsurprised when they hear how badly he has handled everything?

@VaVaGloom

Yet again no-one seems unduly bothered by the revelation that despite all the evidence (yet again) that we were entering the second wave (from Sept) Johnson was the main culprit dragging his feet again, until the rest of the inside team had to give him a reality check to call lockdown. He clearly hadn't learnt the lesson from March. Perhaps it's because we all saw him open the primary schools for a single day in January, when we were at the peak of the wave, that expectations of him are so low meaning people are unsurprised when they hear how badly he has handled everything?

Again, I think people just don't care.

Sadly, I think a lot of people would probably have agreed with him about letting the bodies pile up instead of lockdown. There have been plenty of people on MN who seem to think that the rest of us should have been allowed to get on with our lives without regard for the lives of the vulnerable or the elderly. Boris will probably win brownie points from these people for trying to block lockdown.

@longwayoff, thanks for clarifying!

I think that's becasue some, me inlcuded, see that decisions were taken and then more data became available. I was more grateful he listened and did a u-turn on schools opening than angry. And the September was again a matter of trying to do what could be done with the data available.

It was most obvious at that point that health and commerce were most at loggerheads. Then again, I still firmly believe that laying blame at this point is a bit useless. All involved have learned from the process and are acting differently having learned. I don't imagine anyone would have necessarily done better, differently yes, better? Who knows?

And no, I won't look at N Korea, Singapore, New Zealand etc. For reasons thathave been done to death here over the last year!

To me, Johnson being torn apart because of the flatgate affair is a bit like Al Capone being imprisoned because of tax evasion and not because he murdered hundreds of people. Johnson is at the head of a deeply corrupt government, and his decisions (or lack of) has caused thousands of deaths.

@LizzieSiddal

Also the Red Wall will not like all this Cameron stuff, it’s all “old boys” elitism. The May local elections will be interesting.

This.

I live in a Tory stronghold local seat and town seat.

I'm very interested to see what local elections pull up this time.

@noblegiraffe

I loathe, loathe, loathe Gove with every fibre in my body. But....In charge of education, as he was a thousand years ago (memories are short) he introduced the new standards in GCSE, untested, unpiloted, with a complete disregard towards educationalists et al.

Those weren’t Gove’s education reforms, they were Dominic Cummings’ education reforms, implemented by Gove.

Yes - I've mentioned this many a time over the last year as Cummings came more to the fore and a above takeover was suspected.

There's much more public schoolboy common room to their behaviour than people seem to realise.

It's not being onside for the greater good. It's taking the side of the person who is top dog at the time.

Allegiances change more often than their socks

Tory campaigning locally seems entirely focused on mud slinging at Labour. Two of our candidates, one Labour and the other Tory, used to work at the same school. They had a public (FB) spat where the Tory candidate made insinuations about the reasons the Labour candidate left her job at the school, information she could only know from her own work at the school. It's pathetic. Our MP is no better, he has his own paid employees, wife, and daughter standing in our local elections and they all join right in with the mud slinging.

My town MP (Tory) has actually been really good. He's a sociology lecturer and actually was very in Tory for a Tory. Doesn't look like he's standing this year.

Our Tory town MP is a Boris arse licking idiot who couldn't give a shit about the little people in her town. We are a very split WC/MC area and she just listens to the voices that support her.

I even tested this plan once. Sent an email from my name and address.
Sent identical one (friend did it) for friend in her name and her address.

She got a reply in 24 hours.

3 years later I still don't have one!

@Miasicarisatia

But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now And I can put you back down too Don't You want me baby🎶

@Miasicarisatia I thought the same thing!

What I find amazing about the whole Dominic Cummings thing is that he has recordings, phone records etc.

Surely, contractually, he would be obliged to return these on departure. It seems really incredible that he was permitted to hold onto this stuff.