Why I'm angry about the May parties at Downing Street - share your stories

[ThirdTimeIucky]

No agenda, just a whinge to demonstrate rhe millions of individual reasons people are angry about BYOB parties in Downing Street whilst the rest of us were in Lockdown. I've heard so many stories of loved ones dying alone, loneliness and heartbreak.

For me, when the party took place on the 20th, I had been struggling in a domestic abuse situation for months. In lockdown. I'd been on my own trying to deal with this situation. I felt like I was trapped. It was an incredibly painful and difficult time of my life. Three days later, feeling terribly guilty, and despite the restrictions, if went to my sisters as the situation had become so bad. But because of those restrictions, I stayed in that situation for so much longer than I should have done.

People have been unable to say goodbye to loved ones, have had major surgery delayed, been unable to escape domestic violence incidents, give birth alone etc. Yet your gripe is your child couldn’t have a party?????? Do you realise quite how pathetic you sound? If that’s been your biggest issue during this whole pandemic then you want to consider yourself f*ing lucky!

Bugger off. It's not a competition, and the poster didn't say her distress was the same as someone who'd had to give birth alone or say goodbye to a loved one over Zoom.

[quote LadyPenelope68]@Hedonism
People have been unable to say goodbye to loved ones, have had major surgery delayed, been unable to escape domestic violence incidents, give birth alone etc. Yet your gripe is your child couldn’t have a party?????? Do you realise quite how pathetic you sound? If that’s been your biggest issue during this whole pandemic then you want to consider yourself f*ing lucky![/quote]
@LadyPenelope68 no love, it's not my biggest gripe. It's the reason why I am angry about the May party in Downing Street, which was the original question. The juxtaposition of a 5yo accepting it, and a bunch of adults not being able to stick to the rules. It is far from my biggest issue, but if swearing at me makes you feel better then crack on.

DD's dad was on life support , she was told to expect the worse, the nurses did their best with my dd trying to talk to her dad over zoom but the connection kept dropping. All she wanted was to be by her dads side. I will never forget her sobbing and just repeating 'I love you dad' .

@FrecklesMalone

Who do you think made the rules that allowed the horrors above? It was all about reducing transmission. If wankers like BJ had actually stuck to the rules then we could have allowed people to be with their dying loved ones as it was the NHS couldn't cope because people were having fucking drinks in the garden.

Exactly.

The reason for the outrage here is that Johnson's actions absolutely did cause great pain and suffering. Just not the ones specifically relating to the party.

It's the hypocrisy, one rule for the peasants and one for me attitude that bites here. It would've been within Johnson's power to allow the rest of the population the opportunity to sit outside, socialise and enjoy a drink with people from outside their household, and would've reduced some of the suffering people experienced. He didn't, even while he was doing it himself. That's why people are so pissed off, and you'd need shit for brains to think that's a solely left wing thing.

I was looking after a 10 week old baby and 3 year old all day every day on my own, with no support, nobody to help and nowhere to go (DH working full time out of the house).

We'd carefully planned our age gap so the 3 year old would be at pre school, then the pre school closed due to lockdown pretty much as soon as the baby was born and never reopened.

We didn't spend Christmas 2020 with our wider family, as per the rules. My youngest DD only met her grandfather a couple of times as the in laws live 100 miles away. By Christmas 2021, he'd died - suddenly and unexpectedly, at age 66. So 2020 was his only chance to spend Christmas with his granddaughter but he missed it because we followed the rules.

My dad died a few weeks after that party. I hadn’t seen him for months because I was following the rules and being safe, and trying to keep him safe. I knew he didn’t have long left, he had long outlived his terminal cancer diagnosis. His eventual decline and death came on so quickly I couldn’t be there with him, or with my mum and brother. Not spending time with my dad in the months before he died is something I will never ever get over and to even write this makes me so emotional. He couldn’t have the funeral he wanted and we were only allowed 15 people at the crematorium. The interment of his ashes didn’t take place for another year because of subsequent lockdowns so my mum had that hanging over her for so so long. I am enraged at the arrogance of this government.

The electorate knew what Boris was like when they elected him and can’t go all hand wringing and mournful when he behaves true to form! What did they expect!

@Bordois

Here we go... 🙄

Why did you post that? I mean, really why? What on earth made you think that was a good idea when people want to write down how they are feeling.

Hope you are chuffed with yourself.

Look at the post before mine...

Another side effect of the last couple of years is people being so eager to put the boot in...

I agree @Bordois one thing this government has succeeded in is fostering an aggressively divisive culture in Britain, COVID, Brexit. Everyone seems to be on the attack now.

@MsTSwift he was not votes for unanimously, and I think his actions have been too much for even the most staunch Conservative supporter to stomach. Does any of what you have said make any of the above stories any better? Does it make it any more correct that while people were dying alone, our government, who had informed those rules and ensured people could be prosecuted for not following them, and were telling is every night on the TV to not do these things, went ahead and did them anyway. So yes. People have every damn right to be angry. I just hope it shows in the next GE. I think people will not be which to forgive this.

DH shared this with me earlier

The hierarchy of problems whereby you’re not deemed entitled to comment unless your problem is the worst has been a particularly nasty thing to come out of the pandemic. Women who are scared of giving birth alone or in a mask told “at least you’re not in a refugee camp “, the constant comparison to World War Two and “it would be worse to be on a ventilator “. It’s like someone posting because their DH has forgotten their birthday and being told “at least he doesn’t hit you “. All of the circumstances described on this thread have caused distress to someone to a greater or lesser extent and no one has claimed that their pain is trumps anyone else’s.

My mum turned 85 and I sat in her garden 2m away with a mask on while she opened her presents. It was just two of us because that was the rule. She was trying to be brave but was so sad.

Of course it’s awful not defending it but the majority voted for him if they looked at how he had behaved in the past this is true to form. This is him.

@Bordois
Yes, it does make my blood boil when someone is moaning about their child not having a party when others on this thread have experienced so much heartache. Clearly I’ve more of a heart and compassion than you clearly have.

Clearly 🙄 you are demonstrating it so well too.

@Chessie678 I absolutely agree. Personally, having to deal with a domestic abuse situation, the comments of 'how hard is it to just watch TV all day' really hurt. I wasn't watching TV. I was living under constant stress. I was working from home, I was looking after a young child and dealing with an abusive marriage. So staying home was bloody hard. In fact the worst possible outcome at that point was being shut in my own home.

Then later on, when I was on my own, and entitled to form a support bubble, I did with my parents. Then later on in 2020 there was a huge amount of criticism of people travelling too far for their support bubble, and that people should be staying close to home. But I had nobody close to home. I'd formed a support bubble early on, and then the rules and advice seemed to change, and I was again terrified I would be stopped by the police when driving to see them. Just in the same way I was terrified I would be stopped by the police when I left my home back in May.

The shaming of people who were struggling, by people who sat in suburbia, able to order weekly veg and meat boxes from their local farm shop, made me so bloody angry. People in family units, who said, how hard can it be to just stay at home. Had no idea.

Reading through this thread, the mental health impact on everyone, from young to old, jyst goes to show how bloody difficult it actually was to stay at home. We all needed to comfort of our Mums, our family, our friends. But we stuck to the rules. We missed experiences, we missed saying goodbye, saying hello, giving comfort, receiving comfort, getting diagnosis', getting treatment, seeing our GP. While the people who made the laws had BYOB parties. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.

But the, 'how hard can it be to just stay at home and watch Netflix' brigade are still around. It shocks me.

In May 2020, I was heavily pregnant and frequently in hospital, alone, due to complications. No partner or visitors allowed, despite my anxiety being through the roof. The sacrifices we all made actually stagger me in retrospect - such strength and selflessness really without any hesitation at all (in most cases!!). But those fuckers couldn’t even sacrifice their crappy after work drinks!

People couldn't marry, even with just 2 witnesses present.
People with dementia deteriorated due to lack of social contact.
Many elderly people lost mobility due to staying home and not getting out and about.
People started new jobs and careers working from home and having all their training and contact with new colleagues over zoom.
People worked from home sitting on their bed because their kids were doing zoom lessons at the table.
So many people trying to do their best for everybody and suffering in their own way.

This is worse than Barnard Castle which did for Cummings. Imagine your career being ruined by something as daft as going to a party. What an arrogant prat.

I'm not angry I'm just so sad.Sad for my mum who died alone in hospital, only having a 2 min 36 seconds phone call with her the day before. Sadness of wondering if she thought we didn't love her enough to be with her in her final days.Sad that only 10 of us could go to her funeral and we had to sit 2 metres apart but at least we got to go in according to the funeral director the crem refused to let the mourners in for a funeral the day before so we also had the uncertainty of wondering if we would actually be allowed to go in. It's just constant sadness of my darling mums final days.

@LadyPenelope68 I will say it again. I am not moaning about my child not having a party, and I would absolutely not even begin to compare that to some of the other situations that people have described on this thread, which are utterly heartbreaking.

I was talking about the direct contrast between a child accepting the rules and not having a party, versus the adults who are supposed to be running the country being apparently unable to do that, and explaining that that has made me angry. Please try to get your head around that nuance.

I find it completely unbelievable that people weren't allowed to be at their relative's side when they died. I hope this isn't the case any more. It's completely inhumane.

Especially when pubs etc are open and loads of gatherings and so few mitigations in society at large. I know it creates more work for the staff and they have been magnificent and are hugely overstretched, but we're utterly failing as a society if our NHS is falling over to the point that they can't allow closest relatives to say goodbye in person.

My deepest condolences to all who have lost loved ones and were unable to be with them.