Cummings evidence today

[Dirtystreetpie]

Anyone listening?

I expect some members of the cabinet are consulting their lawyers and updating LinkedIn.

@Girlmama3

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?

Yes I'm sure the potentially thousands of families who lost loved ones because the government had no plan and ignored suggestions that might have avoided deaths are happy to leave it all in the past.

The PM offered to be injected with covid on tv. I am hoping that Chris Whitty just laughed at that one!
Remember Trump at the press conference suggesting people could be injected with disinfectant?

@the80sweregreat so sorry for the circumstances you lost you Dad in.

A lot of care homes locked down / parents were keeping children at home from school/ businesses had told employees to work from home before the Government officially got their act together.

I can only watch intermittently.

We did not lock down early enough, I remember Facebook friends coming back from Italy and commenting that they were near Lombardy on their ski trips.

@GoldenOmber

And NZ locked down when they needed to. We didn't. THAT's the difference between the two.

We ‘needed’ to lock down in late Jan/early Feb to get that kind of control over it, though, and that would have been an incredibly tough sell to the public.

I do wish we’d locked down earlier than we did and it would have saved a lot of lives to lock down in eg early March, but I doubt we could ever feasibly have been New Zealand.

No, we needed to restrict foreign travel to covid hotspots in early Feb.

The UK could have completely avoided a lockdown if we'd acted sooner as it's MUCH easier for us to implement border controls.

What has the 2019 Christmas election to do with this? J C wouldn't have had him on the payroll. It's stupid to say this as he didn't win or have to deal with this.
Dominic was happy enough to work with the PM and others before all this.
He would still be there if this pandemic hadn't happened. This is about revenge , but it's not anything we don't already know.
Plus we know that Boris Johnson doesn't sack people.

I think there has to be an acknowledgment of western countries just not learning from or asking advice from those with the most recent experience in these matters, Far Eastern countries. Even now. This wasn't just the UK. Also WHO didn't help matters either.
I remember feeling horrified after that first press conference ('just wash your hands and many more of your loved ones will die before their time'), phoning my CEV parents asking them not to go out anywhere and told my kids they were not going to school. People just started their own lockdown before the actual lockdown so the Government was forced to act.

.

Is anyone surprised at the thought of Boris offering to get injections with the virus on live TV

Seems perfectly Boris like to me

@Girlmama3

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?

Absolutely not, the government should always be held accountable it's called democracy. Examining past mistakes is how lessons are learned and I doubt this will be the last pandemic we see in our lifetimes.

Plus I want to see Tory heads roll.

Yes, I remember people not sending their children to school etc. the last week before lockdown had about twenty children in!
I'm glad the care homes locally did lock down before the 23rd March.
The herd immunity question is muffled.
I wonder how much he kept in the way of recordings and emails etc.

@GoldenOmber

Agreed that realistically we could never have done what NZ did.

But you have to remember that at the beginning of the epidemic, MOST of the UK's actions in combatting the virus were driven from the bottom up. You had care homes acting independently to try to protect their residents. Sporting organisations cancelling events. Businesses sending staff home, etc etc. This should all have been government led....

He really hates Hancock!
His idea of a dictator with absolute authority to take charge, powers to do whatever and hire and fire sounds good in theory but we do not live in a dictatorship and I would never want to see such an individual ever, even to save lives in a pandemic.
It’s too authoritarian in my view.

It’s fascinating!

It’s one thing him saying he felt outnumbered and unable to say anything- but he wasn’t worried by Covid enough to isolate himself and not travel, and he didn’t resign when all this terrible wrong doing was going on. So while I believe what he’s saying was probably true, he was as much a part of it as anyone.

I think he was the puppet master of Boris for so long he got a shock when the puppet turned and fired him. This is about revenge, not guilt. He thinks he’s the smartest man in the country and that he can throw all this shit at others without getting any on himself. I really hope he can’t. While I’m glad this is coming out and I hope it’s not brushed under the carpet, I think DC should be held responsible too. If he, and Boris for that matter, get away with this I will be disgusted. I pretty much expecting to be.

As for those saying why does it matter, it’s in the past. I despair! Of course governments need to be held to account for greedy decisions that kill people!

I always imagined that governments had plans in place for all these things. A pandemic was spoken about years before hand.
Goes to show that they just hope it doesn't happen!

The UK could have completely avoided a lockdown if we'd acted sooner as it's MUCH easier for us to implement border controls.

It isn’t though. We have a land border with the EU, and we rely heavily on food imports via lorry freight.

By the time we knew where covid hotspots in Europe/elsewhere were, there was already far, far too much of it in the UK.

The government could clearly have done a lot better and we definitely need a public enquiry to establish why our pandemic planning didn’t adapt to the actual virus we faced and why earlier recommendations from pandemic planning weren’t implemented. We could have done a lot better. But the idea that we could have escaped all of this if only Johnson wasn’t incompetent is just wishful thinking.

This won't affect anything.
If he thinks any of this will topple anyone then he is another deluded soul I'm afraid.
He burnt his boats by flouting lockdown rules himself and lying to everyone in May last year.
This won't do anything at all

@BeastfromtheNorthEast

He's right that Corbyn v Johnson offered the public no credible or competent choice.

Proporotional representation please.

He is absolutely correct about that. And the fact that Jeremy Hunt, a vastly more capable person than either Johnson or Corbyn, is asking the questions today illustrates his point very well.

I think they are all glossing over the negative impacts of lockdown. They are talking about it like it an easy thing to impose on people and it doesn’t mean panic buying in supermarkets and lack of food, schoolsclosing as no teachers, no public transport, people unable to meet , upending everyone’s lives and livelihoods etc etc etc, the chaos of it all.
Of course it needs careful consideration and notice imo

Maybe if COBRA and Cummings were reading mumsnet they'd have had a better plan. honestly I have got more from this forum through this whole thing than govt, the nhs, or any other media outlet. hats off to all those people working on the data threads and on the mad preppers forum back in January.

@tenredthings

He's in league with slimy Gove, it's all theatre.

Well Gove would be a fool to expect loyalty!

Cummings is coming across as a petulant child, zero credibility.

@the80sweregreat

This won't affect anything. If he thinks any of this will topple anyone then he is another deluded soul I'm afraid. He burnt his boats by flouting lockdown rules himself and lying to everyone in May last year. This won't do anything at all

You never know. Boris may quit(after the wedding is paid for) in a blustering 'I did as well as I could' and gets to head off into the sunset claiming to have got brexit done, not have to do any more work and finish his book. Glass cliff applies again to deal with the carnage and Patel gets in charge.

I wish the injection comments and the rest of it surprised me but nothing would at this stage I don't think.

@sashagabadon

He really hates Hancock! His idea of a dictator with absolute authority to take charge, powers to do whatever and hire and fire sounds good in theory but we do not live in a dictatorship and I would never want to see such an individual ever, even to save lives in a pandemic. It’s too authoritarian in my view.

I don't know. I think during a crisis such as coronavirus you need an authoritarian in charge,or at least someone who understands detail and big picture.

Move on and leave it in the past??
Are you kidding??
democracy is about making our leaders accountable not turning a blind eye

we needed strong leadership

we were failed badly