Cummings evidence today

[Dirtystreetpie]

Anyone listening?

@everythingthelighttouches

I smell Gove.

Yup.

@BeastfromtheNorthEast

I hate the fact the Tory MPs answer to everything now is 'vaccine rollout' put your hands up to what you got wrong you fuckers

Cummings is a nasty spiteful vindictive piece of work. He should never be in any kind of influential position agsin. He is also a liar who twists the truth for his own ends. Like Specsavergate.

There’s DCs perspective, BJs perspective... and somewhere in the middle we might find the actual truth.

@Viviennemary

Cummings is a nasty spiteful vindictive piece of work. He should never be in any kind of influential position agsin. He is also a liar who twists the truth for his own ends. Like Specsavergate.

He's vindictive, he's undoubtedly lying about some things, but too much of what he says has been corroborated by other people - especially about the utterly chaotic way Johnson runs anything - for him to be lying about everything.

I believe the parts that line up with everything else we know. Which is most of it. I’ll wait and see on the rest.

“It is I agree, but sadly in a pandemic there will be an appalling death rate in densely populated countries. My point was Italy and Belgium have more per million and the rest of Europe including us are pretty similar”

Incorrect. Italy is pretty similar. A little more for now, a little less in Feb but very similar. Other European countries have significantly fewer deaths per mil.

@NeonMist
I found this on YouTube

You could watch/download from parliament tv as well.
www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/d919fbc9-72ca-42de-9b44-c0bf53a7360b

Worth noting Italy snd many countries don’t discount deaths after 28 days. Our true figure is far higher.

Compliance in this country was a problem

It really wasn’t. Compliance exceeded the government’s wildest dreams.

I’m not a fan of Cummings but it all rings true - but surely everyone must know this by now that everyone was incompetent t critical stages?

The herd immunity was horrific. I am a health professional and it was immediately obvious to me and everyone I knew that this was a terrible plan.

The UK have one of the highest death tolls on the world. Why do you think Johnson is repeating ‘but we vaccinated everyone’ so loudly? And he didn’t anyway. A separate task force and the NHS totally managed that and made all the decisions.

For me today I was hoping that a few more people would see how incapable the current government is and has handled the pandemic. Many of us saw this from last March and looked on in disbelief ever since.

They also weren’t talking to the right people. They don’t even know who the right people are. Sage didn’t have the right people. They didn’t learn from their mistakes and were still meeting with leads from the no masks / herd immunity ‘experts’ (Johnson and Rishi) in number 10 in September!

@Drawcilla

“It is I agree, but sadly in a pandemic there will be an appalling death rate in densely populated countries. My point was Italy and Belgium have more per million and the rest of Europe including us are pretty similar”

Incorrect. Italy is pretty similar. A little more for now, a little less in Feb but very similar. Other European countries have significantly fewer deaths per mil.

And to be fair to Italy, they were pretty much caught unawares in their first wave. It was still being seen as a 'Far Eastern epidemic'. Whilst their grave situation gave us prior warning about what to expect in the rest of Europe, especially seeing that we had thousands of travellers return from there during February half term.

@Drawcilla

“It is I agree, but sadly in a pandemic there will be an appalling death rate in densely populated countries. My point was Italy and Belgium have more per million and the rest of Europe including us are pretty similar”

Incorrect. Italy is pretty similar. A little more for now, a little less in Feb but very similar. Other European countries have significantly fewer deaths per mil.

Yes incorrect. Lockdown one or two weeks earlier last March 2020 for example, would have saved thousands of lives AND they lockdown would have been a whole month shorter.

Many European countries fared better however most did not close early too. However we had a huge advantage as we are an island. That doesn’t mean we get away with costing lives because others were awful too!

Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Iceland, so many countries had very few deaths per population.

@bumblingbovine49 Actually there have been plenty of absolute cunts who have kept telling the Hillsborough families that they should move on and calling them "professional grievers"

[quote MercyBooth]@bumblingbovine49 Actually there have been plenty of absolute cunts who have kept telling the Hillsborough families that they should move on and calling them "professional grievers"[/quote]
How awful and disgusting of them .

Urgh. Do not binge watch DC give no evidence before going to bed. It’ll literally give you nightmares.

Interesting that MH is interested in saving lives now, when the Department of health has spent the last week and a half in court trying to defend it’s record on PPE contracts given that the complete shambles that was procurement led to the deaths of hundreds of healthcare workers.

Cummings is dead right that emergency planning (especially in the cabinet office civil contingencies unit) is poor and underfunded in the UK. This is not a new problem, its basically been this way since the end of the cold war. He is right that the UK is ill prepared for any large emergency that impacts on the whole country.

@Roussette

I too am sick to death that every single tricky q is answered with vaccine rollout success

And Hancock saying he hasn't seen this today (yeah right) because he's busy saving lives .
WTAF

I really agree with this. You would think that Boris and Hancock jabbed the adult population single handedly.

I believe Cummings is right to the extent the government was ill prepared, focused on other things, and very slow to come to terms with the pandemic risk. Some of the details (such as no technology in the cobra room which hampered discussions) I found interesting.

We were just totally unprepared for this sort of threat.

Our obesity levels have no doubt affected number of deaths.
I'm not saying it's a major contributor but it made a difference, but that isn't something a politician dare say.
Also the 10 years austerity which probably affected everything - again instigated by the Tories so not going to be mentioned. I don't know why only the UK seemed to need this austerity period post 2008 financial crash. Other countries didn't. I'd be interested to what effect it had, I read somewhere that thanks to the austerity we were in a better position than other countries for payouts etc but haven't seen any more said about that.
Brexit - causing everyone's eye to be off the ball

I don't understand the point. We all know they acted too late but it was over a year ago. Surely we need to move on and leave it in the past?

@Girlmama3 yeah let's just vote those fuckers in again hey? It's not like 112,000 people died or anything...🤷‍♀️🙈

My understanding is that this DC chap was once what is known as a special advisor.
Was the point of the exercise to demonstrate that there is nothing remotely special about special advisors and that he wasn't even allowed to advise?

Compliance was overwhelmingly good, with people making real sacrifices until Cummings and his Barnard Castle trip and the eyesight testing nonsense. Then when people realised they'd been taken for fools they wondered just why they had bothered.

The U.K. pandemic preparedness plan which was created years ago was pretty well regarded internationally. There were considerable changes made to it in 2007/8 and 2011 after pandemic simulations. Although it seems that since then it’s been left to slide slightly and looks like some of the recommendations from the 2016 simulation were never put into place. Generally we were considered to be one of the best prepared countries for an outbreak.

The big problem seems to have been underestimating the risk of a coronavirus outbreak and thinking it would be more easily controlled. But I don’t think the U.K. was alone in that. I agree we ought to have been looking at what the countries who’ve had experience with dealing with SARS were doing and asking why. The really awful behaviour advice about compliance didn’t help.

defend it’s record on PPE contracts given that the complete shambles that was procurement led to the deaths of hundreds of healthcare workers.

I know to many it won't make a difference, but I do think it's important to distinguish that unacceptable clusterfuck which they should be investigated on with the tireless work procurement teams on a local level made to try and liaise with local companies to see if they could shift their production, and to acquire whatever they could. I know it's slightly off topic, but....

Cummings is a manipulator and he's following his ( and Murdoch's) script. Out with Johnson and in with Gove or Sunak. It'll be the same old shit show with a new branding. Smash and grab politics. The end goal is destabilize Europe, convert uk public assets into a few private hands. Get rid of all those pesky rules protecting our rights and impinging on the profit margins. Covid has prepared us well for authoritarian rule because let's face it, the Uk is now a one party state !