Did Boris Johnson just call us all bad parents?!

[Hermagsjesty]

Having watched that briefing I am incandescent with rage, less at what Cummings did - I understand people might have needed to make difficult choices and compromises during lockdown - but at the excusing of it. Why not admit it was an error of judgement and apologise?

I have three children. When my husband and I both became ill with what we believed to be Coronavirus in mid-March, we took turns to watch the children whilst the other slept. I lay on the sofa, feeling the illest I have ever felt, while CBeebies played on loop. We relied on neighbours we barely knew to drop off essentials. We would have loved to lean on family but we didn’t because we believed to do so would endanger them and the wider community.

A succession of ministers - and now the Primeminister himself - have suggested that Mr. Cummings behaved as any loving parent would. But many loving parents did not behave as he did. We struggled and made sacrifices in what we believed was the National interest. Are they now suggesting we just don’t love our kids as much as Mr. Cummings loves his?

Nannies and agency workers had to stop work.

Simply not true. Now you're actively twisting the facts, @TabbyMumz.

Hole, stop digging.

The media have so much to answer for, hownthey whipped everyone up into a frenzy that we should be locked down, all the so called facts that have no substance, all the crap they put out what phasing out of lockdown would mean and then making it look like boris had done a u turn.

Now they just printing whatever crap they can throw at DC making it out that this is why he travelled oh now inhale source who says it for this reason oh look how he is lying.

When you put sift out the actual statements from the sheer volume if shite then it doesnt fit the narrative of an incompetent government.

Then they pushed news how we need to get out of lockdown economy crashing and then fear mongering about second wave and recently article after article coming in starting to question if lockdown was necessary

There is no balanced journalism anymore your either sucked into believing what they put out or you see through it and switch off and decided fuck it and just focus on living a life as best you can

Its mob justice, pure and simple. People dont care about the facts, they just want blood

Yes you've definitely run out of any defence of Cummings now lol!

I think people have seen the facts, as presented, and want a Govt to lead by example and not treat us with total contempt.

People dont care about the facts

You've certainly shown a disregard for the concept.

"JudyCoolibar

"Nannies and agency workers had to stop work."

"Simply not true. Now you're actively twisting the facts,@TabbyMumz."

Of course it's true. My own childminder had to stop work for that very reason. This was early days where you couldnt provide childcare. That's why thousands of people have been working from home and looking after their kids, because noone else could.

@cyclingmad I know our media is far from perfect but when papers at the opposite end of the political spectrum like the Daily Mail and the Guardian are in agreement, surely there’s something in it?

Its mob justice, pure and simple. People dont care about the facts, they just want blood

Let's say this was a prominent Labour adviser who had left London because his wife was ill and drove 250 miles with an ill wife and his child to a part of the UK which didn't have much Covid-19.

And then self isolated, whilst his wife wrote an article which seems to suggest different self isolation went on

And then went on non essential exercise to Barnard Castle

And then the Labour Leader defended his actions and his senior Shadow Cabinet also tweeted their support.

What would happen?

He probably questioned what would happen if both him and his wife were seriously ill and the child would then be at risk.

@TabbyMumz - Gosh if only every other parent in Britain had had the wits to have the same thought and taken this wise and appropriate action. How much better off we'd all be.

Bloody hell.

His sister lives two streets away from him. His brother in law also lives in London. The only reason he drove to Durham while he was supposedly at death's door was because he wanted to.

Just putting that there again.

Also think all second home owners who went to their second homes were completely in the wrong. They shouldn’t have done that and they shouldn’t be there.

But Dominic Cummings wrote the bloody rules.

@TabbyMumz, genuine question, what are the facts please?

I just don't know.

"I think people have seen the facts, as presented"
But they arent the facts are they? It's what the press has whipped up. Like some man who supposedly wrote down the number plate of his land rover, because it was unusual? How ridiculous is that? What is he, a land rover spotter!? How silly. When we saw him leaving his house on tv and putting a bike in the back, he wasnt even in a landrover. And the people who saw him on a beach, in a castle and in a wood. Got about didnt he? What a load of utter crap. How could he be in all those places.

@TabbyMumz I don’t think people are baying for blood. But I do think people are angry and upset and frustrated. They miss their loved ones. They have made massive sacrifices to their personal freedom because the government told them that was the right thing to do. And now the government seems to be suggesting that, actually, they could have driven to stay near their parents - even when ill - all along? The government should have recognised people’s anger and confusion and acknowledged it in their response. Instead I think they’ve poured petrol on it and for what?! Dominic Cummings’ career?!

"randomer

@TabbyMumz, genuine question, what are the facts please?

I just don't know."

Exactly my point! Nobody knows, because they are private to that family. In the absence of knowing the facts, people have made them up.

Time to take off your tinfoil hat, I think, TabbyMunz.

Hermagsjesty

@TabbyMumzI don’t think people are baying for blood

They are, they absolutely are. What we have here is mob justice. Pure and simple. No better than when people pulled out what they thought were desserters after the war and killed them.

You seen the poll results tabby ? Might show you how out of step you are with general thinking.

TabbyMumz - there is no good reason for two relatively young, healthy people to suppose they will be simultaneously so badly affected by Covid 19 that neither of them will be capable of caring for one 4-year old child and that they must therefore confine themselves to a car together for several hours to drive somewhere where they can get close to people they assume do not have covid 19.
As for Dominic Cummings getting a lot of criticism - I find it hard to have sympathy when his modus operandi is to attack others, denigrate them and manipulate the media.

They are, they absolutely are. What we have here is mob justice. Pure and simple. No better than when people pulled out what they thought were desserters after the war and killed them

Do you understand what is meant by “hyperbole”?

But they aren't the facts are they? It's what the press has whipped up

The basic fact is he drove to Durham, with wife and child, whilst his wife had CV like symptoms, that's completely against the rules, which are to self isolate at your home, the reason for this is to limit transmission.

If he had abided by the rules, there wouldn't be anything to "whip up"

As for the number plate thing, the guy saw a Cummings look a like and wrote down the car plate to confirm, his internet history shows the date and time he researched this, which is why he has now gone to the Police.

Please could you calmly tell me what you think the facts are?

My understanding is a person who made rules that we should stay at home, left his home.

@TabbyMumz I find that comparison deeply, deeply offensive. Maybe if that’s how people were treating their friends’ and neighbours for making compromises that breached the lockdown in the interests of their own little family, then you’d have some kind of a point. But Dominic Cummings is an influential man. He should be held accountable for upholding the rules that he himself was part of writing.

I am going to stop responding to you now because I don’t think you’re participating in this discussion in good faith. Sorry.

What we have here is mob justice. Pure and simple. No better than when people pulled out what they thought were desserters after the war and killed them.

That is histrionic over-exaggeration @TabbyMumz. No one is dead. No one is being lynched.

People are expressing justifiable anger at his double standards and asking for him to stand down, as he can't be trusted to live by the rules he imposes. That's not baying for blood. That's exercising a democratic right to be heard and to hold our politicians up to some sort of moral standard.

Mob justice? Don't be ridiculous. What we should have here is democracy, where those in power are answerable to the public.

I don't think @TabbyMumz is now taking any of this seriously now.

Given that Mary Wakefield writes about her child in The Spectator, saying that those facts are 'private to that family' sounds a bit bonkers tbh