To ask if your essential meetings involve sitting around in the garden with wine and cheese, with your spouse in attendance?

[AlexaShutUp]

So the justification for the pictures of Boris in lockdown is that they were essential work meetings and therefore allowed. The wine and cheese was apparently because people were working long hours. I have seen no explanation of why Carrie was present.

Do you have essential work meetings of this nature? I don't.

AIBU to think that, in the midst of a pandemic, I'd rather that our decision makers stayed off the booze while carrying out their essential functions? And that unelected individuals who are not employed by the government in an official capacity have no business sitting in on such meetings?

@kitkatsky

I want to know where the laptops, the pens and paper, dictaphones, work meeting stuff is!

Being charitable they might have held the meeting indoors and come out afterwards for refreshments, but in that case it no longer counts as a work meeting.

As a PP said, I’m looking forward to seeing what worse pictures there are to come. It’s like a sort of scandal advent calendar, with enough of a pause between doors for the excuses and lies to go on record - before being contradicted by the next picture. What will be behind the big Christmas Eve door?

Carrie being there isn't a surprise - she probably directs the Government more than Boris.

I've had cheese at meetings when I worked in dairy. No wine sadly.

'Being charitable they might have held the meeting indoors and come out afterwards for refreshments, but in that case it no longer counts as a work meeting.'

It's a workplace. Meetings indoors, breaks outdoors. So what.

I'm still waiting for the 'party' footage because a zoom quiz or a few people sat in a workplace outdoor area is nowhere near a party in my book.

Our tax payers money likely paid for the wine and cheese.

The staff in the NHS, care homes etc all work incredibly hard on long shifts. This news re the ‘meeting’ in the garden at number 10 obviously heralds a new era. I’ll look forward to joining my NHS colleagues for our tax payer funded cheese and wine fuelled meetings. Whoop whoop.

The more I see/read of Carrie, the more she is coming across as possessive/paranoid. Checking in on Boris? Why? He's 'working'.

The point that she lives there - almost fair enough. But DH and I are both currently WFH; we manage to stay out each others way, and don't feel the need to join in with each other's meeting (and I have previously met my DH's boss, and think Boss is a very nice man, I still don't need to go and chat to him during a meeting).

I can guarantee that my living quarters are a lot smaller than Boris and Carrie's, and yet we still manage to not interfere with each other. In fact, the most DH and I see each other during the working day (despite being in the same building) is occasionally a very quick, "I'm popping the kettle on, would you like a cuppa?"

I must have been doing meetings wrong all this time ....

@JaniieJones

'Being charitable they might have held the meeting indoors and come out afterwards for refreshments, but in that case it no longer counts as a work meeting.'

It's a workplace. Meetings indoors, breaks outdoors. So what.

I'm still waiting for the 'party' footage because a zoom quiz or a few people sat in a workplace outdoor area is nowhere near a party in my book.

But it's clearly not a meeting is it?

@SickAndTiredAgain

Like with the Christmas parties, it’s the lying that is so annoying. If it was a business meeting, what about the group of people standing around in the top of the pic, is Downing Street short of tables for meetings? And business meeting or not, they should be spread out. Ditto Johnson’s table, maybe a meeting can have wine, but they have no notes/paper/laptops/tablets or anything. And a work meeting was only allowed if it wasn’t possible to do it remotely and everyone there definitely had to attend. Carrie + baby did not need to attend a business meeting. Does she sit in on a lot of government business? Don’t remember her being elected, is she an employee?

It’s not the most awful of breaches, but back in May 2020 people were sitting at the end of the parents’ driveways on camping chairs just for a little chat with a parent sitting in the doorway.
If this was actually allowed (it wasn’t), then all the rules were considerably laxer than suggested. Not that that’s an excuse to break them now, but if I’d been fined by the police I’d be seriously fucked off.
People were stopped from sitting on park benches on their own. But this grouping of people who actually do not all work together, and who weren’t distancing was actually allowed? It fucking wasn’t, so don’t say it was.

Exactly. What I find concerning is that if this is a work meeting, and I can see that it might just qualify under the legislation at the time, why is Carrie there? As it's her home, her presence is legal. But that's not really the problem. She shouldn't be involved. If she wanted to use her garden, that's fine, but the work meeting should've been elsewhere in the property.

I work in a hospital and some meetings have involved coffee while freezing our arses off outside. Wine? Nope … can you imagine Hospital execs sitting round a meeting drinking wine… actually, I think we’ve just had permission for that so I guess from now on I’ll take a bottle!

I had an essential meeting on zoom around that time, I'm deaf and struggled through for 2 hours only catching every other word,

@Plantsandpuddlesuits - for future reference there's a facility on Zoom to transcribe the discussion - like subtitles. It's by no means perfect and comes up with some howlers but better than nothing . It may be something the meeting host has to enable.

I've not read the full thread yet, but I've worked in the public sector for 20 odd years now, and drinking while on duty is a disciplinary offence. So is it work? Or is it a social gathering?

And for Raab to say it was a well deserved drink after a tough time at work?! Sorry what? So no one else was having a tough time at work? What a load of shit.

@BarbaraofSeville

I'm a civil servant. We're told that alcohol must never be consumed on the premises, even in social occasions. Fair enough.

In the days gone by it was acceptable to have the odd glass during a Christmas lunch or if a longstanding team member was retiring, but that's been banned for about 10 years now.

I have a long list of things we aren't allowed to do, that Ministers do daily. It's infuriating that they don't adhere to the standards that are imposed on the ordinary workers.

Exactly this.

to think how worried we were in may 2020

@kungfupannda

As a PP said, I’m looking forward to seeing what worse pictures there are to come. It’s like a sort of scandal advent calendar, with enough of a pause between doors for the excuses and lies to go on record - before being contradicted by the next picture. What will be behind the big Christmas Eve door?

MI think the next picture will be Carrie having a candlelit dinner with Dominic Cummings ... Now that would be surprising!

DH and I have our own business so technically we could have meetings like this but we didn't because we were so worried that we had lost all our income that wine wasn't even in our budget.

I'm so angry with this government and their constant lies

But it's clearly not a meeting is it?

Exactly - I think this is the crux of it. If they said ‘we were having a break in the garden having worked inside for the last 12 hours’ I think a lot of people would be far more sympathetic to that. It’s the fact that ‘it was a meeting’ is such a barefaced lie!

They all work together all day in a small building, and they'd all already had Covid. There is no threat here.

Who cares? Just a bunch of people faux moralising.

Prof Neil Ferguson went round to see his lover, using the excuse that he'd already had Covid, so there was clearly no issue with this.

@MintJulia

During lockdown last year, I had a team meeting in my garden. The office was being deep cleaned. I don't have a partner but my ds was there. It was hot, certainly people had drinks although not alcohol.

Much less smart, no suits, no chess board.

The only thing that makes me think this might have been work, was on a hot summer evening, what sane person wants to sit around in a sweaty uncomfortable suit, when instead they could go home, have a shower, relax and be with their family?

Unconscionable, over-ambitious career tigers, that is who.

Those informal moments really matter to impress the boss with a fun anecdote or two.

I used to work in a very testosterone-fueled environment, and all big decisions were taken when the 'boys' (excluding the women) went for their after-work drinking session (several times a week). Us women would arrive in the office the next morning with all the nice tasks already gone to the drinkers and all the decisions already taken. It was absolutely infuriating. Nobody amongst them wanted to go home and miss out to see their family, shower, and relax, as it was a huge professional benefit to be at these gatherings.

Don't be silly @AlexaShutUp I have ALWAYS taken my kids, and a bottle of wine to essential work meetings, and a tube of pringles and some sausage rolls. I often take the cat too, and the goldfish. Why wouldn't you?

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If it’s a meeting at the end of the working day where Government issues are still being discussed dare I ask what is Mrs Johnson’s position with regard to vetting/security clearance?

If she is not suitably cleared then being charitable one must assume it wasn’t a meeting….in which case what was it?

If it's a work meeting, why are there 3 separate groups in the picture?
Where are the note pads or laptops or pens?
Why is Carrie there?
Why do they have wine?

This must have been a few short weeks after Boris was discharged from hospital - they knew how dangerous the disease was, and how it could spread (hence the rules).

Everyone else had to work from home.
Why can't they meet over zoom like the rest of us?
Why are they DRINKING ON THE JOB!!!

Carrie has a huge input into how the running of the Government and is responsible for many firing and hiring decisions.

Some really misogynist views on here suggesting she should have been shut up inside the house whilst the men discuss the important stuff.