To not understand the outrage at Dominic Cummings?

[Wow123]

Please don’t flame me for this. I’m not posting this to be controversial. I am someone who always tries to see the good in people which has been to my detriment at time’s in the past so I’m very well aware that maybe I’m missing something here and being too kind when he possibly doesn’t deserve it.

My understanding is that Dominic Cummings is saying that he only returned to Durham on one occasion which was because he had fears about potentially being unable to look after his child if him and his wife both ended up too unwell with Covid. I can understand the logic in that.

I appreciate the government advice at that stage was to stay home but if he genuinely didn’t have anyone to help with his son, then I can understand his fears and that he was trying to put his child first as any parent would.

My understanding is that a matter of days after, the government did clarify that travelling in the event of needing support with children if you had caught covid was an exceptional circumstance and that travel in that instance was acceptable.

I personally live hundreds of miles from family and don’t have anyone I could ask for help in the local area was I to become unwell with Covid so this does resonate with me.

I understand that there were sightings of Dominic Cummings on other dates in Durham which indicate that he travelled back up there. If this is true, I definitely agree that he needs to be sacked, but at this stage, there is no proof of this.

Am I missing something here?

The advice at he time was to not travel at all. The advice for if you or someone in your household have symptoms was even clearer, stating you should not leave your home for any reason and you should have food and medicine delivered to your door. Yet he drove hundreds of miles, highly likely he stopped for petrol on the way too, for what? Reports say he has family in London too.

I have friends on the front line who have come down with covid and they've had to lock themselves and their kids in their home to isolate, relying on charities and local volunteers to drop off food. My friends two year old survived on toast and being sat infront of a TV for a week. Not ideal but they survived and they pushed through with this as that is what they have been told to do, over and over again.

So yes it's frustrating to see someone in his position flouncing around the country "for his family" when thousands up and down the country are putting their health at risk attending work, juggling childcare throughout this and coping alone.

Oh yeah and bigger picture is if he or his wife needed hospitalisation they would be crushing a smaller hospital when they don’t even live there. They should have stayed at home as most of we lesser folk did.

What people find galling OP is the double standard. At the time that Dominic Cummings, his wife and DC made that trip up to Durham, we were all being told by the government for which he works to stay at home, not make any non-essential car journeys and to protect the NHS. Yet he decided, knowing full well that his wife had Covid, to take the virus from London, an area with high numbers of cases, to Durham, 260 miles away. Their family could have single-handedly been responsible for spreading the virus to a new area by what they did.

Millions of people up and down the country have struggled to cope with illness, work and childcare without any support from their families - and the government were the ones asking us to do that. To manage on our own, with no help, in order to contain this virus. Can you not see the hyprocrisy in what Dominic Cummings did?

He was part of the committee that wrote the rules, and it was repeated every day to stay at home, especially if you had symptoms.
I'm not sure if, at the time of his journey he did have symptoms or was predicting he would get it.
Either way, his wife did have symptoms so he shouldn't have been taking her somewhere different to spread it.....if he did have symptoms they were now both spreading it.
How did he know they would both be so unwell they would definitely be too incapacitated to look after their child, even in the most basic way? If his wife was completely incapacitated she possibly wouldnt have been ok to get in and out of the car, he was obviously not seriously unwell at that point to be able to drive....
AND they had (younger) relatives living close by in London.
I'm amazed he didnt even do a scripted half arsed, insincere apology "it was an error of judgement, I regret any actions that may have caused risk to others, I thought I was acting in the best interest of my child etc etc " and even more appalled at the amount of people defending him!

Now he’s saying that although they went for childcare, the gps did not look after the kid ( someone must have pointed out that that looks worse as they are elderly).
It’s all crap. He just fancied isolating somewhere else - and lots of us wouldn’t have minded that.

At the time, people were told if they were symptomatic, to stay at home, self isolate and use local support networks rather than leave the house

This is true, but if you were ill and you needed someone to look after your child, would you really have handed them over to some random person in a "local support network"? I think I would have asked my DM to help (she would have been about 65 when ds was 4) though probably asked her to come to use to get him, as driving long distances when ill isn't very clever.

I don't know if he or his wife have relatives in London - that would make a difference.

Not keen on Led By Donkeys blasting out stuff outside his house. Why should his neighbours have to put up with that sort of indirect harassment?

whereas it appears he didn't want to be ill in charge of a child. Something most of us have no choice but to crack on with

There's a difference between having a cold and having to get on with it, or having something akin to, or worse than, a very bad flu. When my son was 3 my husband and I had flu at the same time and my mum and her partner came to help us then because we just couldn't look after him.

The point is, other people have resigned when they've been found to have broken the rules, but he'll just brazen it out because it's him and he's special.

It's also not just about what DC has done. It's about what's happened afterwards. It's the fact that the cabinet and Boris are basically gaslighting the nation by saying no rules were broken when they clearly were. And Boris saying DC behaved with integrity and was a particularly good parent for doing what he did. The implication being that good parents are allowed to break the rules, which kind of makes a mockery of all the millions of people who muddled through not breaking the rules because they thought they were being asked to make a sacrifice for the public good. So it's also about hypocrisy and one rule for Boris's friends and another for everyone else. It turns out were not all in this together and if you're Boris and his mates, you can do whatever you want and noone holds you to account. And then also there's this nagging worry around is why on earth is this man ( this unelected man) being defended so robustly to the point where the government prepared to gamble losing such huge amounts of credibility. And the answer lots of people are coming to is that it's because DC ,( remember, unelected) is basically running the show. Which ties in with all the stuff around the power of unelected elites. So all in all a complete shitstorm.

@NailsNeedDoing
The media is doing its job for once. The Government has decided it is above the law and above criticism, in quite a dangerous manner. Literally dangerous at this time of pandemic. It is trashing its own law and guidlines to save the job of one man - not even an elected MP - who flagrantly broke the law. People may very well die because of this. The media, at least, is holding them to account.

So where is his kid now. Did DC bring him back to London or is the kid still in Co Durham?

Because we knew deep down it’s 1 rule for them another for us
and he regards the public as something to be manipulated for his own means. We accept this behaviour as politicians being politicians.

However Behaving like this means he’s not even hiding the contempt he has for us , we don’t matter.

In every country including Sweden which hasn't locked down you have to stay at home if you actually have coronavirus.

It's fundamentally important. Obviously a fundamental threat (fire, medical emergency etc) should induce you to leave. But it would still be better for others to come to you if possible e.g relative to collect a child.

By twisting this to include hypothetical scenarios of things that haven't happened yet ahead of the most important public health message that they have BJ has shown he doesn't care about our safety.

I would have been less cross if Boris had said. He's really sorry he broke the rules but excuses excuses, excuses ..... and I don't want to fire him because he's brilliant etc etc

But by pretending he did follow the rules he is fatally undermining the whole thing for the sake of one man.

Very disingenuous OP. The outrage about this is real and justified. Many people have suffered and sacrificed to follow this lockdown. Then one of its key architects ignores it when it becomes inconvenient for him to follow.

The file DC must have on BJ and the others must be pretty damned scary for them to gaslight us like this.

Exactly Neolara - that is the point really. I don't really care when DC did, but I care that the government is supporting him when the others had to resign.

If he was ill, he was meant to self-isolate not just in his own large house with garden, but in one room, alone, separate from even his immediate family.

@Hadenoughfornow
Yesterday he stood and in a few minutes has killed many more people
This is hyperbolic bullshit. You're making yourself look ridiculous.
As a Government advisor Cummings should not have broken the rules.
As we've all seen on here people can convince themselves of the rightness of their actions. Looks like Boris can too.

If it’s really that terrible to drive around when you have symptoms, why is the main method of testing people who have symptoms done in their cars that they have to drive to test centres in?

Are the test centres 250 miles away, nails?

I am far less annoyed at his actions than I am at the government lying to us about it.
Saying it did not breach the regulations is a complete lie.
At least one of them believed themselves to be symptomatic and they left the house.

I’m also laughing at the media demonising him while all stood outside his home clearly nowhere near 2 metres apart. They’re breaking the rules as well then

His blatant disregard for the rules is bad enough.

The desperation of government to state that what he did was.not only understandable but right has given me a white hot anger. The cabinet have undermined the message they have been demanding everyone follows.

For what? Just what power does Cummings hold? What does he have over them?

Two other advisors resigned because they broke rules. What makes Cummings so special that he doesn't have to apologise and keeps his job?

If there is a second wave of CV19 in the next few weeks then we can probably.pinpoint exactly the time when the British public said "fuck it".

Two words: emergency nanny. They exist and in business even with covid. No excuse.

There’s a lot of ‘if’s in your post, OP.

A spokesperson for the government went on record to say he was ‘isolating at home’.

His wife published an article in the Spectator (and read it out on BBC Radio 4) heavily implying they were at home together in London.

The defence of his story is riddled with holes like Swiss cheese.

The prime minister and the cabinet continue to support him, despite the fact it’s clear he broke the rules.

In doing so - rather than just issuing a heartfelt apology in an effort to make us shut up - they’re risking public health by undermining their clear guidance and saying ‘Actually, act in your own personal circumstances how you see fit’.

It’s not so much that he went and isolated once there (although why should we trust that account, they’ve lied about it already that’s clear) but that in the government defending his actions they’re making a personal misjudgment into a political scandal that has real consequences to lives in the middle of a pandemic.

It is indefensible.

@puffinandkoala
If you are very sick with a contagious illness you can not and do not pack suitcases and cram into a car with your young child for hours on end, driving 150 miles. Hugely irresponsible and breaking lockdown rules.

People may very well die because of this. The media, at least, is holding them to account.

People wouldn’t die from it if they didn’t know about it. This isn’t the media holding them to account, it’s the media doing what they always do and creating drama where there doesn’t really need to be one. I’m not agreeing with what DC did, but if this causes a problem it will be because of the fact that it was reported, not because it happened.

"He has two close family members in London, one lives very nearby, so people don't believe there was no alternative childcare."
If I was in DC's position, I would choose to live in a self-contained part of my parents' property 264 miles away in case we became unwell enough to care for our young child rather than with relatives close by who probably don't have a separate self-contained area. If we both became very ill, I wouldn't want to risk my asymptomatic child passing a deadly virus on to other family members.