Cummings evidence today

[Dirtystreetpie]

Anyone listening?

@sashagabadon

Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same

I think most of the anger was because parents in the exact same position were told to stay at home if positive (threats of fines, police stopping drivers) and really struggled to look after their DC whilst similarly unwell. The childcare bubbles came later.

Him buggering off up north completely undermined the government's message. It did untold damage and derailed the lockdown.

And he said he drove all that way without stopping, don't believe it for one minute.

I think most of the anger was because parents in the exact same position were told to stay at home if positive (threats of fines, police stopping drivers) and really struggled to look after their DC whilst similarly unwell. The childcare bubbles came later.
Exactly this. One rule for him, another rule for everyone else.

Cummings is an absolute snake. Vile little man.

Ian Dunt has nailed it in that live-tweeted thread linked earlier.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1397460989277261826.html
What a day. Four straight hours of of testimony from a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood challenging the record of a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood.

The real poetry will come when the self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood realises he cannot inflict damage on the other self-interested narcissist who weaponised falsehood, because he undermined truth-telling as a functional quality in political discourse.

It's like Aesop's Fables for cunts.
[...]
"I wasn't the only one telling the PM that [to fire Hancock]. The Cabinet sec said directly to the PM: 'PM the British system is not set up to deal with a secretary of state who repeatedly lies in meetings'."

Reminder that Johnson just said explicitly in the Commons that this did not happen. Either he is misleading the House or Cummings is misleading the select committee.

You'd never have guessed that by electing liars who hired liars we'd find ourselves completely incapable of discovering the truth.

'Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same'

Yes I didn't have a problem with the original story, I'd have done the same. However in the rose garden interview he was unrepentant yet in this one he was all grovelling apologies. Why the about change?! oh wait he was sacked..

That tweet from Ian Dunt is class!
So true.

Yes I was just thinking all he had to do in the rose garden briefing was be more apologetic

In this one it was a flip

I think he does care about his media story as much as anyone

I think he probably does lack complete competence but he makes up for it with resilience and cheeriness and positive thinking and those imo are important characteristics too. Imagine if Hancock was. Gordon Brown type, yes competent but stressed and anxious under pressure and rude/ bullying to staff

Yes, fewer people would have died, how awful.

self-interested narcissist
he likes his tautologies!

Don't forget there was the suggestion that we were all thick plebs for not breaking the rules if it suited us.

@sashagabadon

Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same

Seriously? You’d have taken Covid to grandparents? Most people I know did everything possible to avoid giving Covid to grandparents and that includes looking after babies when they were sick

Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same

Presumably you weren’t parading around telling everyone to stay home, and threatening people with fines if they didn’t?

And then saying “well clearly lockdown was just for the stupid plebs, not for important people like me. Only a fucking idiot would think people like me should obey the law, don’t you know how important I am?”

And Boris and the rest of the cabinet jumping up and down saying “yes, yes, Dom is far too important to obey the law!”

It’s that that got up people’s noses.

we are slipping further down - now 17th on the list of deaths per m/population. Celebrate the good too

Is that because some of those people have been resurrected? If not, there’s nothing good to celebrate. I can’t get my head round someone thinking thousands of people dying in other parts of the world is something to celebrate.

I bet Boris Johnson wishes he had sacked him last May! He clearly needed him around , so he stuck by him while other people were fined for doing the same things. It is all very bizarre.

@Walkaround

Surely Dominic Cummings is nationally known as the corrupt liar who arrogantly kept the nation waiting to hear him explain how his superior judgement led him to test his eyesight by driving his car to a tourist destination?! To be believable, his evidence should be that the Government must have something to hide for ever employing him in the first place and then keeping the tosser on when he had proven himself to be a bare faced liar on national television.

The government's problem there was that at the time of the notorious eyesight test virtually every minister and spokesman obediently trotted out and said what an honest, truthful man Cummings was.

Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same

Really? At a time when we were being told NOT to do this for fear of spreading infection, overwhelming the NHS etc? What would you have done if you had had a breakdown or accident during the journey, would you have merrily allowed anyone helping you to risk catching Covid? Despite being well able to afford a nanny? Would you still have done it if you were heavily promoting a policy that told people they must not travel?

@SpindleWhorl

Why was Carrie Symonds called Princess Nut-Nut? Is it as simple as being an insult meaning 'spoiled crazy girlfriend'??

Is was explained at the time as: the nut is because she looks like a squirrel, and the nuts is because she's crazy.

Cummings drove a private car from one part of the UK to another.

Didn't matter whatsoever.

Not whilst hundreds of thousands of international arrivals travelled (often on public transport) all over the UK.... straight from the airport, no tests, no quarantine.

Like Cummings says, the lockdown was pretty meaningless - thanks to the lack of border control.

@Belindabelle

Watching on Sky Listening to LBC Following on Twitter On here

Whilst trying to work and get the Waitrose food order done by 12 noon.

Reminds me of the days of The Brexit indicitive votes.

But they keep making the same mistakes. Until they have owned the mistakes they made originally they will continue to do so. They e just done it again with the Indian variant.

I think I read somewhere that she was called Princess Nutnut because she has Johnson by the nuts.

Personally I had no problem at all with his trip to Durham. Two parents with Covid and a four year old child , going to grandparents was the most sensible thing to do. I’d have done exactly the same

You’ve also forgotten that today he said covid had nothing to do with it, it was death threats. But then in the same statement, he said that two days later he was so sick with covid that his wife thought he might die, so he decided to get back in a car and drive a couple of hundred miles home again and go back to work.

He can’t even stick to one story during the same speech. It’s clear it was neither covid nor the death threats, and actually just a jolly for his mum’s birthday (have we all forgotten they were seen having a party in his parents’ garden on her birthday?).

Do you honestly support travelling around the country for birthday parties in the middle of lockdown?

@Bluesheep8

I think they all know they were too slow. I don't think constantly dragging it up helps, it reminds the families of those who lost lives that it could have been avoided.

What about accountability? Would you say the same of a murder trial? The perpetrator knows he was wrong to do it, it's just going to upset the family of the victim if we bring it all up again court. Given that we are talking about many thousands of lives lost, I think it's important to hold the people responsible accountable.

we are slipping further down - now 17th on the list of deaths per m/population. Celebrate the good too

How is it remotely good that we are 17th on that list? Bear in mind that those above us on the list include countries like San Marino, Gibraltar and Montenegro which have such a small population that one death is a much higher percentage that one death here is; and countries like Brazil who are there because their leader has no problem with sacrificing the population for his personal glory. For a supposedly civilised country, our figures are shameful.

Why on earth would we celebrate 128,000 deaths just because some more people are dying elsewhere?

have we all forgotten they were seen having a party in his parents’ garden on her birthday?

Exactly.
I think we forget how scary it all was back then. How it was all so unknown. How we all abided by the lockdown.

Yet he drove 300 miles for a jolly with his family. I dont believe security threats (that could've been dealt with easily) OR covid.

That lockdown was different. There were no cars on the road, people stayed at home. But not him and his family.
It was appalling.