To think if Boris won't sack Dominic Cummings then Boris should go?

[madroid]

Boris Johnson will have known Dominic Cummings broke all the rules of lockdown and self-isolation by taking his covid-19 wife to County Durham 260 miles away to his elderly parents' home.

Boris will have known that Dominic Cummings then went back again two weeks later.

Boris has told the rest of the cabinet to defend Dominic Cummings now he's been found out.

AIBU to think Boris should go too?

Strong opposition is a subjective term particularly when so much damage has been done (brexit still to come) over the last 10 years and at least another 4.5 years of "boris".

There's genuine criticism, which is all good and fair. Then there's petty, pathetic, sniping attacks at everything and anything! It's demeaning on those that do it and just makes those that are targeted more popular with many people. This spoilt child behaviour is exactly why Labour were destroyed in the last election and will continue to lose any attempt at reelection for a very very long time.

Can you explain, specifically, what it is on this thread that you take exception to? Do you think that Dominic Cummings behaved reasonably and within the law? If so, do you believe that we were all entitled to behave in the same way? Do you not see an issue with preventing families from being at the bedside of dying children (not just children who died from COVID, but children who died in hospices etc) due to lockdown restrictions whilst DC was driving 260 miles to visit his parents?

It would be refreshing to see a Boris Johnson supporter actually engaging in some debate and facing down these issues. All I ever hear is "don't be petty"/"stop politicising the pandemic"/"you're just mad about Brexit"/"OMG can you imagine if Corbyn was in charge". None of these are relevant. All of it is just deflection. It's absolutely insane how passionately people feel about defending this government when they can't even form the very basic foundations of an argument to explain why. The mind boggles.

@MintyChapstick typical attitude of a left supporter 🙄

@IWantT0BreakFree yes I believe he acted perfectly legally and morally. I believe that people have every right not to agree with me, but just because you don't agree with his actions that doesn't mean he should lose his job. The press and liberal left acting like a bunch of rabid dogs and making a massive drama over this is making them look even more pathetic than they already do.

And to be perfectly frank your average working person has bigger things to worry about at this time. Just because the press is feeling the need to hang, draw and quarter someone, most normal people just don't care!!

@pontypridd The COVID twitter bots: Appear to be aimed at Americans, I can't find anything about UK-pointed ones, but it'd be frankly astonishing if there weren't any - I've seen dozens of what look very much like bot accounts commenting positively about Boris/Cummings/reopening (always "for business", yes).
www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/21/1002105/covid-bot-twitter-accounts-push-to-reopen-america/

My word wewillmeetagain, you really have drunk the kool-aid. I'm sure the Cumming's family day trip to Barnard Castle for a walk through the bluebells was also entirely justified, while he was supposed to be completely isolating inside the house with symptoms?

I wouldn’t be too sure about people worrying about other things. The tension on Dominic’s own street, with his neighbours is bad. It will be worse outside of his £1m + enclave of homes.

@wewillmeetagain I think the only rabid one here is you.

I always imagine “liberal left” being said in a Rees Mogg accent.

@wewill meet again. The law at the time was clear and unequivocal. If someone showed symptoms then they had to stay at home and self isolate for 7 days. The rest of the family had to self-isolate for 14 days.

He lived in London. Even if he couldn't have managed to get a supermarket delivery slot, one of his wife's siblings could have brought him some shopping as they live in London. The need for childcare was just a post hoc justification and rationalisation. There was no moral justification.

If Cummings and his wife really believed that they had done nothing wrong, then he would have mentioned the drive to Durham in the article he wrote for The Spectator (published 25th April) and she would have mentioned it in her article for the same magazine (published 24th April). They wrote in great detail about their experience of self-isolation, so why omit that it took place in Durham if they had nothing to hide?

Re PP above saying nobody voted for Cummings, ime anyone who voted Tory in the last election did exactly that, as he was already Johnson's advisor.
And while we couldn't foresee the pandemic election time, it was clear that this govt had no understanding of the way most people live, and that they were prepared to lie to get what they wanted.

yes I believe he acted perfectly legally and morally

The rules were: don't leave your home except for work (where this is absolutely necessary and cannot be done from home), buying essential groceries and medical supplies (only as often as absolutely necessary) or for a short period of daily exercise close to home. Excepting the reasons above, we were told to only leave home with a "reasonable excuse". When pushed to define this, Jenny Harries said that "extreme risk to life" would be the circumstances she would deem acceptable. We were also instructed NOT to lean on grandparents for childcare. We were told that the government understood how tough it would be, but that parents should not send their children to childcare facilities unless it was not possible to safely care for them at home and parents were keyworkers. We were instructed to self isolate if we or someone in our household had symptoms. We were expressly told not to mix with anybody from another household. We were told not to stay away from home overnight.

Tens of thousands of parents have found themselves in the same situation as Dominic Cummings throughout this pandemic, diagnosed with COVID and with children to care for. They have followed the instructions that Dominic Cummings was part of creating. They asked family and friends to help by dropping off shopping and medication. If they didn't have family and friends locally (unlike DC, who we know has a support network in London) then they have leant on the NHS Responders service and local volunteer groups. They have struggled through, caring for their children when they were very unwell, because that was the instruction we were given in order to protect people. If they were extremely unwell, no doubt some people have had to have family members move in with them and then self isolate afterwards.

What these people haven't done, is travel 260 miles to another town, knowingly taking the virus with them, in order (we are led to believe) to secure childcare from their elderly parents (overlooking all his family and friends in London, and the vast amount of childcare settings in the city). He quite clearly broke the rules.

If everyone had followed the rules in the same way as DC, we wouldn't have had a lockdown would we? It would just have been life as normal. Unless you are saying that we should have cherry picked from the instructions and only followed a portion of them. I don't really understand your position here.

I believe that people have every right not to agree with me, but just because you don't agree with his actions that doesn't mean he should lose his job.

Someone who is part of the team responsible for designing and implementing what is essentially the removal of liberty (temporarily) of an entire nation should absolutely be held to account for failing to follow their own rules. I can't believe that this needs explaining. It's not a minor or petty grievance. This is a HUGE deal. To have a government that believes it is above its own laws should be very concerning to you. Not to mention the fact that this is likely to affect public cooperation looking to the future of the pandemic.

The press and liberal left acting like a bunch of rabid dogs and making a massive drama over this is making them look even more pathetic than they already are

This seems a bit of unnecessary name-calling if you are genuinely here for a discussion. There's no need for rudeness.

See, the Code is more what you would call guidelines than actual rules.

I used to love that film. Didn't expect to find myself living in it.

Bloody pirates...

Not to mention the phrase "the press and liberal left" represents an alliance that simply has not been seen in the past, not before now.

Regarding disinformation bots, I'd be interested in where that research came from too. There's certainly a lot about. I tend to take mumsnet posters at face value, until something obviously doesn't add up or contradicts my knowledge, and try to judge the way people have always judged on or off the net, by working things through and seeing if things anything at all in this crazy world makes sense.

For instance, there have been suggestions that this whole episode has been engineered as manipulation to make us all want to break lockdown and get back to work. It's possible, and certainly our government manipulate us when it suits them. But if so it's certainly misjudged the anger raised over this: would Johnson really have put his advisor, home he depends on and seems so close to, on the line for this? I'm more inclined to think it's genuine out-of-touch elite privilege.

who he depends on, not home.

@IWantT0BreakFree very well explained.

@IWantT0BreakFree. I agree 100%.

It bothers me that some people are minimising this like it's some piffling little mistake.

@IWantT0BreakFree have you ever looked at Cummings' blogs?
dominiccummings.com/an-index-of-blogs-articles-papers/

They are interesting in places (I've read one properly and skim read two) but the whole tone is breathless, convoluted and incoherent.

It's hard to imagine how he can provide cohesive advice to the PM, who himself sometimes seem to have such clarity he comes across as naive.

DC's certainly a disrupter, and evidently enjoys entertaining new 'cutting-edge' thought. Whether he's capable of bringing any sort of ethical evaluation to those novel concepts is the question that shouted out to me as I read.

That's what he is renowned for .... thinking o/s the box.
But he is a nihilist, quite open about his desire to smash the Westminster machine and totally without remorse for any collateral damage.
In his world view, rules are there to be broken and certainly don't apply to one of his brilliance.

@madroid I haven't. Thanks for the link - will check it out. I totally agree though; he does not possess any of the qualities that one would think would be necessary in a chief political advisor. Boris Johnson would sell his own grandmother so I'm not sure why he feels such a strong sense of loyalty towards Cummings. Very curious.

If the breaking of rules that he created have caused a lot of heartache, and far-from-ideal circumstances for a great many people isnt bad enough, it's the huge cover up, and hypocrisy that is what is upsetting.
To effectively say we were all too stupid to understand a 2 word slogan - stay home...And that getting (allegedly) emergency childcare from the other side of the country from people classed as vulnerable was always within the rules...
At least the Scottish minister and Neil Fergusson eventually apologised and resigned

I saw on Ian King show on Sky News that the eye witness who says he saw DC and family in Barnard Castle on 12 April on a day out and noted down the car reg was right on that the car reg DOES belong to DC

Quite frankly it's refreshing to see a PM standing by one of his team. rather than rolling over and letting the press tell him who he can and can't have.

I'm not supporting Dominic Cummings but Boris is our legally elected PM so as far as I am concerned it's his decision to make not the Sun or the Mail or twitter. Apart from anything else when did we start expecting politicians to be perfect? They're just men doing a job the same as the rest of us and like the rest of us they misjudge things sometimes.

Apart from anything else when did we start expecting politicians to be perfect? They're just men doing a job the same as the rest of us and like the rest of us they misjudge things sometimes.

Very telling use of the word ‘men’ there.