Page 13 | If you were annoyed at Dominic Cummings before

NoMoreReluctantCustodians · 2020-05-26T06:41:35+00:00

How has his performance in the rose garden affected your opinion? YANBU it's made things worse YABU its cleared things up for me

Barnardcastle · 26/05/2020 11:03

"If people don’t take the lockdown seriously now, Dom only has himself to blame."

I think that is what he wants. At the very least the government message of staying in has worked and now people are afraid of going out and he wants them back at work and school.

tabulahrasa · 26/05/2020 11:04

“Did Scotland stop adhering to the lockdown after the Catherine Calderwood scandal?”

Well the prime minister didn’t repeatedly say that she hadn’t in fact broken the guidelines...Because reasons...

If I remember right, they never tried to claim she’d done nothing wrong, just aren’t wanting to sack her for it.

dancingshoex · 26/05/2020 11:04

I thought the speech he gave was very good, his tone was contrite but without actually apologising, he was calm and measured. Some very good speechwriting and coaching there.

He was shakier answering journalists' questions.

There has been a lot of focus on the Castle trip, what worried me more was the admission of going home to check on his covid-suffering wife then popping back to work. Eh?!

This won't go away, the hysteria that was whipped up about Covid has to find another outlet ... I think it will be indignation and rage about this.

derxa · 26/05/2020 11:05

That’s not childcare... Look I think DC should have been sacked but nitpicking over a situation we don't know the exact details of is a bit silly. But I wouldn't have sent a teenager down to London full stop. A completely ridiculous suggestion.

GetOffYourHighHorse · 26/05/2020 11:05

'Nicola and Jason Leitch supported her initially till the public outcry.'

Yes Nicola wibbled. She tried but could not stand by her senior advisor.

LoveIslandVirgin · 26/05/2020 11:06

DC’s biggest crime was not following the self isolate advice - or rather his wife didn’t. He deliberately put his child in a car where he picked up whatever illness his wife had and the child ended up in hospital. This may not have happened had the wife self isolated at home. It’s despicable to use the child as an excuse while putting the child in danger. How can he not take responsibility for that? He himself may not have picked up Mary’s illness if she’d self isolated and childcare would never have become an issue.

I have two children with special needs and if hubby and I fell ill we would be at the mercy of social services for support. Our usual emergency carers are all in the vulnerable/shielding category.

So far (touch wood) we haven’t had to invoke our self isolation plan. Perhaps someone as clever enough to help write the regulations as DC should have had his own family self isolation plan in place?

LondonJax · 26/05/2020 11:06

Barnard Castle is, apparently, west of where the Cummings/Wakefield car needed to be for the drive back to London. Why test drive at Barnard Castle?

If your eyes are affected and you feel sick coming out a car 30 miles from your temporary residence, why decide you're well enough to drive a few hundred miles home?

Why, if you can drive, would you allow your husband to drive with dodgy eyes (Mary Wakefield can drive).

Why go to Barnard Castle for a test drive to make sure you can safely come home, on your wife's birthday...oh wait....

itsgettingweird · 26/05/2020 11:07

Agree horse. For me this has nothing to do with Brexit. For me it has nothing to do with Conservative party. For me it has everything to do with someone who write the rules deciding to interpret them for their benefit whilst others followed his rules and suffered far more greatly than he did. And then after being to,d he was acting with integrity comes out with some utter cock and bull story and says a drive was to test eye sight and not even his idea.

StirlingWork · 26/05/2020 11:10

Thanks JeSuisPoulet - I don't know the finer detail of this case just the outline

tabulahrasa · 26/05/2020 11:12

“nitpicking over a situation we don't know the exact details of is a bit silly. But I wouldn't have sent a teenager down to London full stop. A completely ridiculous suggestion.”

A 17 yr old in a taxi, maybe not... but he said his sister, his 20 year old niece and his 17 year old niece were on hand for childcare if needed.

Staying in contact with them with a driver on standby to collect one of them to pick up a the child seems a lot more sensible than all of them driving up there. It’s not like he doesn’t have resources to arrange that.

Even if getting childcare in London was beyond him.

That’s why I’m nitpicking, because no - most people’s first thought wouldn’t be to get a 17 year old in a taxi, but it also wouldn’t have been to go up there. There were plenty of much more sensible options available.

sleepingpup · 26/05/2020 11:12

So far (touch wood) we haven’t had to invoke our self isolation plan. Perhaps someone as clever enough to help write the regulations as DC should have had his own family self isolation plan in place?

This. This. This.

A million times over. The man behind "strategy" for the entire country.

DippyAvocado · 26/05/2020 11:17

I thought the speech he gave was very good, his tone was contrite but without actually apologising

Why not just bloody apologise? Everyone knows he was in the wrong and people would be more likely to move on if he admitted it as a bad error of judgment and apologised.

Mrhodgeymaheg · 26/05/2020 11:19

His story stacks up like a load of greasy spheres. Blatantly lying. It's not so much the breach of guidelines that is bad for me, it's the failure to recognise other people's sacrifices, and the blatant, smug faced lying and treating the public like idiots. His eye-sight really does need testing, because he really isn't seeing what people think of him. Perhaps he needs another long drive somewhere.

Twillow · 26/05/2020 11:19

'The government are actively employing people to write on forums such as mumsnet in support of the government's CV management and now in support of Dominic Cummings.'

It wouldn't surprise me...but this is a tsunami of negative feedback which can't be wiped out by a few tory bots.

Horse your comment is strange "the welfare of a child when both parents are ill (or about to be and a spouse with CV pretty much indicates the other will get it) is an exception. Get over it."
Neither of them was tested for CV which in itself is very odd. Even CV had been confirmed, particularly in their privileged position, there would have been multiple options for dealing with the situation BY STAYING PUT just like so many of us have done, when in these times most things are exceptional for all of us.

derxa · 26/05/2020 11:22

There were plenty of much more sensible options available. Like what? His sister and nieces had to look out for the parents as well. I would have done the exact same thing as him but I'm not a government advisor. He has to resign because he was the architect of the rules.

Michelleoftheresistance · 26/05/2020 11:26

In the middle of lockdown:

Can I go to my second home? No. Here's all the reasons.

Can I drive to a beauty spot to exercise? No. Here's all the reasons.

Can I run my car ten miles around the main roads to stop my batteries dying? No, not really, and you may pass police who stop you and turn you around with a flea in your ear about non essential journeys.

If I'm a government advisor with an income most of the country can only dream of, can I drive 30 miles to a beauty spot to check my eyesight, play with my kid in a wood, sit on a river bank if I feel a bit sick and generally piss about? Yeah, crack on with that.

itsgettingweird · 26/05/2020 11:27

Derxa do we actually know the sister and both neices were needed to look out for the parents. It's not inconceivable as he is 48 so they would be older I'd think.
But the question is whether all 3 were required to stay in Durham to help the parents and why 1 or even both nieces couldn't have travelled to London. On the face of it many of the reasons are plausible.
On the underneath they are things we were told we had to manage and we had to make sacrifices.

And I agree with whoever said if he knew if this pandemic in March 2019 why didn't he already have a plan. He'd had a year to think it up

IntermittentParps · 26/05/2020 11:29

Police have issued a statement that driving to test your eyesight is an offence.
So will he face criminal proceedings?

tabulahrasa · 26/05/2020 11:29

“Like what? His sister and nieces had to look out for the parents as well.”

One of them going to collect the child as and when needed, or going to stay with them at that point... because that’s obviously what they’d have to do to provide childcare anyway. They weren’t going to do it without coming into contact with the child.

The only options weren’t a 17 year old alone on public transport or the entire family in Durham.

That’s leaving aside the fact that he said he didn’t even look for alternative childcare in London.

sleepingpup · 26/05/2020 11:30

*In the middle of lockdown:

Can I go to my second home? No. Here's all the reasons.

Can I drive to a beauty spot to exercise? No. Here's all the reasons.

Can I run my car ten miles around the main roads to stop my batteries dying? No, not really, and you may pass police who stop you and turn you around with a flea in your ear about non essential journeys.

If I'm a government advisor with an income most of the country can only dream of, can I drive 30 miles to a beauty spot to check my eyesight, play with my kid in a wood, sit on a river bank if I feel a bit sick and generally piss about? Yeah, crack on with that.*

Amen to that.

alloverthisnow · 26/05/2020 11:32

He has used getting abuse from his neighbours as an excuse? But I don't think he was getting abuse back then - he is only getting abuse now because of what he has done!

I remember that at the time he is claiming he got abuse, this was at the start when everyone was locked down, you couldn't go anywhere (bar exercise once a day or shops). It was very quiet outside at that time. I very much doubt there were hoards outside his house then. Besides, it wouldn't matter - he should have been isolating for 14 days and couldn't go out anyway! If there was abuse, he could have contacted his employers and arranged for security? One guard, isolated, outside his house?

I'm also sure that he could have asked his/her family in London to help. Or got someone at work to arrange for shopping etc to be sorted - surely he has an assistant?! He didn't need to travel to Durham. We were supposed to self-isolate at home, away from the rest of our households if we had symptoms. This wasn't open to interpretation. As a family, we made a plan for if we were ill and we would've have self-isolated and not asked family for help bar dropping off shopping.

I feel like we are being gaslighted by him - so many different stories and so much misdirection. His wife lied in her article too. She lied and she's in the media so she knows the score about the backlash, she isn't innocent in this at all. She didn't have to write that article and lie that they were in London the whole time.

derxa · 26/05/2020 11:32

It's not inconceivable as he is 48 so they would be older I'd think. I think they're teenagers. I first drove down to London from Scotland when I was 25. It was a bloody scary experience.

Sostenueto · 26/05/2020 11:33

He added a bit to his blog saying he knew about this pandemic coming a year ago. He openly admits he's always lied.

MarshaBradyo · 26/05/2020 11:36

Did Scotland stop adhering to the lockdown after the Catherine Calderwood scandal?

I like a pp have no muster left to give on DC, well almost, but his pc did help his cause for me. But CC did step down. So there was a big difference.

IntermittentParps · 26/05/2020 11:40

Or got someone at work to arrange for shopping etc to be sorted - surely he has an assistant?!
His closest aide lives near him in London.