to think Margaret Ferrier is WAY worse than Dominic Cummings?

[WhereAreMyAirpods]

Margaret Ferrier - MP for an area just outside Glasgow. Was SNP, got chucked out now sitting as independent.

Went for a Covid test because she had symptoms (in Sept 2020 well before anyone was vaccinated. Told to self-isolate until result came through.)

Ignored the legal requirement to isolate.
Went to church and gave a reading.
Went to a bar in Prestwick and stayed for 2 hours.
Got a taxi to Glasgow central.

Got a train to London.
then received a positive result and...
Got a train back to Glasgow because she didn't fancy isolating in a hotel room for a fortnight.

Stupid and irresponsible doesn't even START to cover it. The only positive is that she has had the decency to please guilty. But she is SO selfish, and SO stupid that she's not even prepared to step down as a MP.

Everyone went daft about Cummings and his behaviour wasn't a tenth of what Ms Ferrier did. So why isn't this getting more coverage?

Oh definitely worse! There was an outcry at the time but she was hardly at the heart of government.
The fact that it’s almost two years ago shocks me. It shows what a state the justice system is in. It also presumably prevents the process for a constituency to kick out its MP from coming into play.

Shocking behaviour. At least Cummings was in his own car and didn't bother anybody else.

Everyone went daft about Cummings and his behaviour wasn't a tenth of what Ms Ferrier did. So why isn't this getting more coverage?

Because she was an elected SNP back bencher, and not an unelected chief advisor to the Prime Minister of the government that made the rules in the first place.

And also because she was booted out of the SNP upon admitting to what she'd done, whereas Cummings kept his highly-paid job. The Cummings thing wasn't scandalous because of the magnitude of what he'd done, but because of his position of great power and influence in a role that the public, or even the Conservative Party, had no say over. By contrast, the public absolutely can decide to boot Ferrier out of office by not voting for her again.

Similarly, an assault case involving Ryan Giggs is all over the news right now while equally awful cases (and far worse cases too) fail to make the news because the defendant isn't famous. The public interest isn't always dictated by the seriousness of the crime itself.

Well she's not a tory so it's of no consequence really is it? Like Keir Starmer and his beer gate . All gone quiet

Not really the same as Starmer, since the police have determined he did nothing wrong, which is clearly not the case it's Ferrier.

@10HailMarys she still has her job. She is still an MP, representing the people of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, whether they like it or not. She has not stepped down and has no intention of doing so.

All that happened is that the SNP said she can't call herself a SNP MP any more. She's still a MP, drawing her salary.

It’s all gone quiet because there was no case to answer. The case was only stirred up by the Daily Mail so you can hardly claim the media are unduly harsh towards the Tories and soft on everyone else.

At least Cummings had a valid excuse for his behaviour, leaving London due to a security threat. I have no time for him at all, I detest him, but the outrage against him was mainly because it was the Tories again. When you look at the shit other parties get up to it's pretty clear that the media generally has an anti-Tory bias. Whether it's Labour MPs threatening constituents, censoring name of party so this doesn't get deleted MPs in child sex abuse scandals or the SNP calvalier attitude to Covid, you can guarantee they will receive less coverage than perceived wrongdoing by the Tories.

If she had been suspended from Parliament for 14 days a recall petition could have gone ahead.
That would have been a better outcome.

I'm pretty sure there was outcry at the time, and like you said, she was suspended from the SNP when she was found to be breaking the rules. Action was taken. Whereas the Tory MPs were lining up to defend Cummings, saying he did what any decent father would have done as I recall.

Very different to Beergate. Starmer was categorically and thoroughly investigated and hadn't breached the regulations as they were at that time.

“you can guarantee they will receive less coverage than perceived wrongdoing by the Tories.”

Well, the outcry about Keir Starmer, who hadn’t actually done anything wrong, shows that’s not true.
When the people who make the law break the law (ie the government) then it is more newsworthy than when anyone else does.

Yes, I know that - but the point is that she was elected to that role by the public. The public can effectively sack her at the next election, because that's how democracy works. MPs can't be 'sacked' as MPs (unless they get a prison sentence, I think?), only as ministers - the only way an MP can be 'sacked' as an MP is by the public at an election. That is a shit state of affairs, but it's what we're stuck with. That's why it doesn't trigger a by-election when an MP switches from one party to another - my MP crossed the floor a while back, so the people who voted Tory, only to find that they'd effectively voted in a Labour candidate by mistake, have got to wait until the next election to do anything about it. I didn't vote Tory myself so I'm actually delighted that he's crossed the floor, but I'd have been furious if it had happened the other way round!

Whereas the public would not have had any option to that with Cummings, hence the massive outrage about his behaviour. He was at that point probably the second most powerful man in the country, arguably the most, in fact, and he'd behaved appallingly, and none of us had even voted him into that position in the first place and had no power to vote him out. That was a major element in the reaction to his Covid breaches.

Of course, if Ferrier had a shred of decency she would have stepped down voluntarily straight away and forced a by-election. But she hasn't. I'm certainly not diminishing what she's done - it was awful and disgraceful. But I can certainly see why Cummings was the more newsworthy offender at the time.

Like Keir Starmer and his beer gate . All gone quiet

It's 'gone quiet' because he was cleared of any wrongdoing, not because there's some sort of cover-up going on.