Strange times.
What we have witnessed over the last few days could not make it up if tried.
Mirror and Guardian break story of Dominic Cummings trip from London to Durham by car in clear breach of lockdown. In the car, two adults with covid-19, a small child.
Lockdown rules were clear, stay home, only go for exercise and essentials, food, medical reasons. if covid-19 symptoms self-isolate away from others in the household, no one in the household permitted to leave the house.
A small child in a car with two people with covid-19. or suspected covid-19
Did they stop en route, for fuel, a break to stretch legs, toilet, bite to eat?
At the time London was recording high number of covid-19 cases,and should have been cordoned off, County Durham relatively low number of cases.
Tories demonstrating their lack of integrity, falling over backwards to defend Dominic Cummings, without being in position of the facts.
We then learn, seen at Barnard Castle. Seen again at a later date after return to London.
The story changes. It was in seek of child care. Mother of Dominic Cummings says an uncle had died.
Ordinary people had people they were close to, could not be with them when they died, could not attend their funerals.
I had a family friend die, a veteran of WWII Bomber Command. Very sad he had died, very sad no one could attend his funeral.
Cabinet Office tweet they are to investigate a mischievous tweet. Investigate Dominic Cummings for Breach of Civil Service Code of Conduct? Er seemingly not.
Sunday Pepsi Trump gave a stomach churning press conference, defends Dominic Cummings, did what anyone would have done in the circumstances.
Actually he did not, he broke the rules, other people complied with the rules, hard as it was, as they did not wish to spread covid-19 around the country.
Fired by Theresa May for lying, Gavin Williamson does the rounds telling all who would listen, Dominic Cummings telling the truth. How does he know. Er, Dominic Cummings had said.
When press camped outside home of Dominic Cummings, he made very clear his position: I don’t care what you lot think.
Having completely fucked up his own press conference, the following day Dominic Cummings to give a press conference.
The press conference was given in the back garden of Downing Street, and no, it is not the Rose Garden.
He was almost contrite, he admitted breaking the rules without admitting he had.
At times somewhat bizarre, a 30 minute drive to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight was ok.
But what was telling, and does not appear to be picked up on, he had so much to do and had to get back to London. And what he outlined was an executive role not that of an adviser and very much what one would assume would be the role of the Prime Minister.
Should he resign or be fired? No, it would not achieve anything
He gave an account of what he had done, and why, from his perspective reasonable, but if everyone had, not reasonable.
And that is the dilemma. What is reasonable for an individual in their best interest is not reasonable for society. We are seeing lockdown breaking down, and the fear now is complete breakdown.
But on the plus side, he was not evasive he answered questions politely.
I would rather see Dominic Cummings once a week head the Downing Street briefing and give straight answers not what we normally get, and I would rather see him on the record than off the record briefings, sources said.
If this is the guy calling the shots, than |I would rather hear him tell us why and be open to scrutiny, not the incomprehensible waffle we get from Pepsi Trump.
As an anticlimax later, we later heard from Pepsi Trump, a timetable of how lockdown will ease, From 1 June car showrooms and street markets. Street markets fine, but car show rooms. Mid-June all shops to open. Nothing yet on coffee shops, restaurant, hairdressers.
Indie coffee shops, restaurants should be open at the same time as street markets if able to spread their tables into the streets, restricted to outside seating only. It helps kick start the High Street, improves the ambience of city centres, but is being held back by backward councils living in the Dark Ages. [see Reclaim the Streets]
There is still no track and trace app available. With each phase of relaxation we need to be able to monitor what is happening.
Adapt the German app, open source, destroy app post-pandemic, anonymise data for research.
Our High Streets are not going to recover through chains. Several have collapsed, M&S and Next have junk bond status. People can shop on-line for the crap found in High Street chains. We should not waste the opportunity to re-imagine, reinvigorate the High Street.
With our focus on Dominic Cummings we are in danger of missing the bigger picture. We risk Dominic Cummings being made a Tory scapegoat to distract from the failings of Pepsi Trump. It is the Prime Minister who should resign.
We have over over 26,000 covid-19 deaths, close on 27,000 covid-19 deaths. Had UK acted a week earlier on lockdown we would have a quarter of this number of deaths.
Chima bought us time, we squandered it. We saw what was happening in Italy and Spain, we sat back and did nothing.
Germany, when death toll was less than a hundred, implemented lockdown. UK waited until measured in hundreds. Germany had in place track and trace. UK nothing. Deaths in Germany several thousands, not tens of thousands.
Greece, total number of deaths 170. Less than UK records in a day.
In UK, thanks to insanity of Stay Alert, lockdown is breaking down, UK heading for a second wave.
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