Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Covid-19

I do not interfere in the domestic politics of another country, I am only appalled at the human level:

Klara Halpin, 29, said locals had been “outraged and disappointed” by Cummings’s actions. The community support worker said her family were not able to attend her grandfather’s funeral when he died during the crisis.
She said: “I have not even been able to comfort my mother through the death of her father as we live in different households. How is Cummings therefore allowed to travel 250 miles with symptoms to Durham. Then a further 30 miles to Barnard Castle … just for a stroll, against guidance. „The town has such a community spirit and the people have gone above and beyond to follow guidance and support one another. Yet we get tarnished by Cummings who risked spreading the virus through our town, which has a lot of vulnerable residents. This town deserves so much better.”

I think the young woman's words speak for themselves, I copied it from the Guardian. It shows the extent of Mr Cummings' ignorance and contempt. There may be people like Cummings in every country But that does not make it any better. I would never write publicly if I thought someone was a giant as..ole.

It's obviously all speculation, but there's some interesting stuff floating around the t'interweb about Glaxo Smith Kline and recent awarding of government contracts,

And guess which company is based in Barnards Castle.....

A brilliant video Richard. I have known locals block in cars parked across their drives in Paignton near the beach. Somehow the grockle brain cell vanishes in the urge to go to the beach.

On Cummings I hope the fuzz follow through hon the highway code violation of driving whilst you think your eye sight isn't good enough. Odd he took his child & wife on the drive to Barnards castle . did he not drive to his parents for the child care? Oh I forgot it was his wife's birthday.

He needs to go now, he has already seriously damaged faith in number 10. People now think they can do as they want based upon his leadership and arrogance.

Yep. I'm very happy to support small businesses, and the smaller and localer the better. I'm quite relaxed about chipping in a few quid wherever I can to help them out.

The only big company I regularly buy from these days is Ocado, even before this mess their service was good, but throughout it's been extremely impressive. As an ex IT guy I'm mightily impressed by the quality of their systems, and whoever's providing their cloud services has been bloody good at spinning up extra capacity when needed. I'd love to see one of their robot picking warehouses in action. They seem like a decent company to work for too, all the drivers I speak to are very happy indeed. I've heard "Best job I ever had" from more than one of the guys.

Lying isn't that unusual is it for a Politician/Govt advisor . Every Govt lies surely , you will get this from the next lot whoever they will be and the next and the next ........lets get rid of them all ? Then what do we do ?

I thought you would really appreciate that one John as did my son and his girlfriend that live off grid in Cornwall.

Doris and his cronies may have had an overwhelming majority but they might well be surprised how quickly that will vanish once you totally destroy the publics confidence in their leadership. By bottling out of doing the right thing and firing Cummings he has at a stroke distanced (no pun intended) the whole of the electorate and made the police forces job untenable, not to mention the total disregard shown to the massive efforts of the NHS via his arrogance in making that decision.
It's time for a change already .

Of course they're going to lie, but if they know their job is at risk if they get found out, then they might think twice about it.

It's not a race to the bottom. We deserve better.

My concerns are for the vulnerable as we have quite a few in our area on very low incomes that unlike us don't have toys to play with and every week is a battle to survive.

Although we help out were we can they need all the help that can be afforded during these times.

So the Cummings affair has delivered.
Police reporting numerous cases of the English public flouting the guidelines using the "if its Cummings can ignore them we can" excuse. Track, trace and isolate is effectively a lost cause before it even starts.
Members of the clergy who spoke out getting death threats.
Junior minister resigning
Medics threatening to resign
Police valuable time being dragged into the affair.
Ministers being sent out on a daily basis to fight the fire.
The PM having to make an unplanned speech to defend his staff member (whilst not answering any questions).
An unheard of briefing at Downing Street by an advisor.
4 days and counting of the government dealing with the issue that should have spent on more important issues
All of which appears to be more preferable to BJ than suspending/sacking his mate

Why have we had all that?
Cummings has refused to interact with the media since he was appointed and they have loved the opportunity to take him down a peg or two.
Downing Street press office and Cummings have mishandled the whole affair.
The PM has shown to totally fail to understand the publics perception of the whole affair and is struggling when put under pressure on the issue. Other than the farcical back to work tomorrow, sorry I meant Wednesday, quarantine except Eire, sorry Eire and France, sorry just Eire speech BJ has been invisible other than PMQ's, now he has had to publicly defend his advisor two days in succession.

So what do we know?
Cummings went to County Durham without trying to find any chidcare support.
Cummings had childcare support when he got back to London.
He left London partly to try and avoid the media outside his house (during the lockdown?)
His trip may or may not have coincided with his mothers birthday
His drive to Barnard Castle happened to be on his wife's birthday.
He drove to Barnard Castle to test his eye sight (enough said) where he took a short walk by the river.Small print or not he clearly broke the rules twice on that one issue alone
He sought medical advice before returning to London, that advice was seriously flawed. No medical advisor in their right mind would have approved the drive in full knowledge of the facts - "Dr, I have recently had Covid or been with a Covid sufferer as a result of which I think my eyesight has been affected and I am still feeling sick, is it okay to drive back to London and leave lockdown?"
Both he and his wife wrote articles for The Spectator erroneously leading the reader to believe they had followed the guidelines.
He did speak to the PM about it but conveniently neither can remember the conversation although strangely he doesn't appear to have told the Deputy PM when BJ was out of action.

In my opinion
BJ has been made to look weak and very poor under questioning.
The majority of the public has lost faith in the PM, Cabinet and many MP's
The one rule for them and one for us is firmly in place and defended.
The stay at home message means stay at home unless you know the loopholes (anyone else read the small print?)
The Welsh, NI and in particular the Scottish Assemblies look well governed in comparison to the UK government, this may well to lead to an increase chance of the breaking up of the union.

Agreed. We need a bit of Keynesian economics. Pay them more money, and they'll spend more money which will help fill the traders and Government coffers,

I accept however, that it's not the Tory way, I see another great period of austerity measures designed to impact only the worse off in society.