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?

NailsNeedDoing the main point about the driving is that if he was well enough to drive he quite clearly didn't need childcare help

Another point, which I haven't seen raised anywhere, is that during a 260-mile journey they probably stopped and his wife may have gone into a service station to use the toilet. One of them would've have had to have taken the 4-year-old to use the loo on such a long journey - probably more than once. DC knew he was likely to come down with Covid, because his symptomatic DW was sitting next to him in the car. He did get it. Was he also shedding virus all the way up the A1 from London to Durham? Probably. That's why we were all told to STAY AT HOME if we were showing symptoms and for our families to isolate for 14 days alongside us in case they also had it.

FamilyOfAliens firstly there is a castle there and secondly it’s not the castle aspect of this that’s an issue, I wasn’t concerned that he put the castle itself at risk

@Irnbroothenoo
Do you not understand the difference between some random almost certainly healthy random reporter breaking a rule for a fraction of a second ... and one of the most powerful people in the country who was crucial in formulating the rules blatantly breaking the rules they've been preaching at us for months - while probably actually sick with coronavirus. And the consequence of which action could be thousands more people flouting the rules, as it seems the government cannot be taken seriously.
I think you probably do

The reason it's so offensive, OP, is that he made one rule for himself and another for us. That mentality, in leaders, is extremely dangerous. It's entitled. The peasants can struggle with their Covid symptoms, trapped in small inner city flats with autistic children and they must not go out. If they do they are jeopardising the NHS and the country. They must not visit elderly parents or institutionalised family members, even if those people are scared, confused, alone, unwell. Those people's needs mean nothing in a time of crisis. It's hard but the peasants must just cope with the frantic phone calls, the tears of distress, loved ones dying alone.

I however, feel a little off colour so shall drive 300 miles to see my parents and visit the seaside because my needs have higher intrinsic value than those of the peasants.

He lacks the emotional maturity to reconcile his own behaviour with the at times extremely tough measures his government have inflicted on society as a whole. He has placed himself above society. In a time of international crisis we really don't need to be led by self-serving egotists with double standards.

Does that make sense to you? (Not being sneery - I want to get through to you. Too many members of our government rely on the fact that people are softer and more biddable than them, will try to see the best in others and excuse rank self-seeking behaviour.)

Are.we to assume that his ill wife managed a drive from London to Durham without a wee?
If so where? Service station or behind a Bush.?

If I was in DC's position, I would choose
No one was allowed to “choose” anything, though. We were told what we had to do.

Cummings needed to be truthful from the start hold his hands up , apologise and be fined.
He should not be sacked , he is an integral part of the government, not John from Tesco where someone else can cover his shift.
The media and public need to let this go and get on with the important stuff , you know, this national emergency.
It's not up to Piers Morgan and his followers to tell the PM who they can and cant employ .

I think the thing is that we all did it!

Didn't see our families, struggled with childcare, WFH while looking after children, some poor people had relatives die alone, didn't go to funerals, made sacrifice after sacrifice, because we were led to believe that those were the rules!

As soon as things got even slightly tricky for him, he basically thought 'nah, bollocks to this' and tootled off up the road, possibly infecting people as he went.

It's the attitude of 'look at all of those idiots doing as they're told. I'm too VIP, the rules don't apply to me, I'm far cleverer than them.' And then for the PM to say 'he did what any responsible father would do' with the subtext of unlike you stupid fuckers, you're clearly not as intelligent as us.

Argh, I'm getting absolutely furious about it again!!!

@NailsNeedDoing You can't blame the press for the actions of the government. They just needed to say he's really really sorry excuses excuses. Yes you do still need to stay at home if you get coronavirus.

Actually while they were at it they could have published some sensible guidance for people on what to do about their children if they became ill with coronavirus.

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

To be clear, Nails, you’re saying press and government should hush up potential scandals, work together ‘for the greater good’?

I’d rather live in a free democracy, thank you all the same.

NotEverythingIsBlackandWhite but one suspects you wouldn’t also be telling everyone they can’t see their dying parent or bury their dad child?
Would you not care about infecting others on the journey?
Or taking the virus into other towns when you go shopping despite being symptomatic?

When I had the virus, DH isolated with me and the children for 14 days, took care of them and me. Had he fallen ill as well we would have managed. We were both 100% clear that using family members for childcare was out of the question.

The problems are that:

a) he didn’t follow the rules - and he absolutely didn’t, that’s not up for debate

b) our PM lied and said what he did was okay

The result is that people are seeing what many of us have known all along, that the current government sees themselves as more important than the rest of us and will pick and choose which rules to follow.

He did what he told us not to do.
People were unable to be with dying family, attend funerals for loved ones in following his advice. Plenty of parents and single parents would have had to suffer through. But oh no not for him he’s special. And yet he’s the one helping to set the rules.

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

He has close family living within a couple of miles of his house in London. This has been mentioned quite a few times on this thread.

Hello Mary, your advertorial for brave St Dominic on in the R4 religious slot sounds a bit hollow now doesn't it?

But great to see you on MN. You might want to convey to St Dom that if he had even had the humility to say "I fucked up, I was worried, I'm sorry" it would probably have blown over because we are all past expecting this government to take any accountability.

However the sheer arrogant disdain for the rest of us was breathtaking. It may be four years until the next election but trust me - I won't have forgotten what happened to my mother, my DC and other family and friends enduring trauma in isolation whilst this government continued to be above the law.

I'd also say the position of the Attorney General is untenable.

It’s all very well talking about ‘local support networks’ but how many people would honestly be able to call on friends/neighbours/any local relative, both willing and able to take on full time care of a child or children, who’d been living with parents now far too ill with the virus to look after them?

I’m not defending Cummings, but IMO there’s been an awful lot of uber-pious outrage about this, esp. given that so many non-public-figure people have been gaily ignoring the rules. Including our NDNs, who’ve been having family round in their very small back garden on a regular basis, inc. the other day - presumably for the start of Eid.
And no, I haven’t even thought of reporting them.

The mainstream media are going for the throat because he's a brexiteer who treats them ( the media) with the absolute contempt they deserve. Labour Party members have done worse yet not a peep from the media! Disgusting hypocrites

"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"

Exactly. If Boris Johnson had said "DC accepts that he made a bad judgement call and set a terrible example, but I'm not going to sack him over one incident", I'd be annoyed on behalf of everyone who has been fined or sacked for breaching the lockdown but that would be the end of it. What infuriates me is the pretence that the lockdown was always about personal interpretation and going with your instinct.

Yes, you definitely are missing something.

He did exactly what the government had told the rest of the country that they absolutely must not do. And he's not even vaguely apologetic about the hypocrisy of it. He just thinks it's different for him. And so do his mates in the cabinet. That's why people are so furious.

It’s all very well talking about ‘local support networks’ but how many people would honestly be able to call on friends/neighbours/any local relative, both willing and able to take on full time care of a child or children, who’d been living with parents now far too ill with the virus to look after them?

Two of my colleagues, whilst ill with children (pl), one a single parent, managed with help from the Islington support network available to Cummings. He and his wife also both have family nearby in London.

Everyone who has had the virus with children has had to manage this.

Oh and also the said child is actually autistic, hence going to carers that the child was comfortable with.

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.

Eh? How would your relatives look after your child if they were in a self-contained unit with you?

The household should have been isolating. No chance they drove 260 miles without stopping especially for 4 year old.

Also why would you expose family "in case" you become so ill you cannot watch your own child. My sister would watch my children in worse case scenario which is both parents at point of hospital or physically unable to do the most basic childcare. I would never expose her household because one of us had a cough.

If the reason is true why did the sick wife go to? Why didn't family who were willing to expose themselves to help not drive to collect the child?

Even being in the car for hours with wife is stupid as Dominic and child less exposed if she isolated as much as possible in house.

The story is not true, if it was then it is selfish to child, family and the public.

He has relatives living near in London, so he wouldn't have been using strangers for childcare. Plus he's not just anyone, your next door neighbour, he wrote the rules, he set them. Therefore breaking them in a genuinely dangerous way, with a symptomatic person is indefensible. This is not the same as non symptomatic people having a socially distanced catch up in a garden.