Weekend Rage

I didn't expect to spend the pleasant bank holiday weekend raging on twitter, but I did. On Saturday twitter told me that Dominic Cummings, special government advisor, had not self-isolated when his wife was ill, but had instead first, gone to work, and second, driven 250+ miles with his wife and son to Durham to stay with his parents.  And had potentially gone on other trips too.

His explanation for this trip was that with his wife ill and potentially with the illness too he might become unable to look after his son.  Although there are systems in place to help with this, he had friends he had known for decades living close to him, and other friends who were willing to do this.  It's bullshit, he knows it, and thinks we're buying it.

To say I was angry about this is an understatement.  The government has done some pretty abhorrent things in the past 10 years - sanctions on benefits, bedroom tax, starving the NHS of funds, selling off public property like section houses and fire stations (mainly to their own friends), cheating by lying on buses, telling lies, using funds they ought not to have done, using robots and twitter farms, masquerading as individuals or independent groups... the list goes on and on.

But for the last couple of months they have peddled the lie that we are all in this together, and have imposed strict guidelines on the populace which meant that even if we were not infected with the virus, we were not allowed to leave the house or make unnecessary journeys, even if our nearest and dearest were at death's door, or we were.  And in general, the vast majority of people have respected those rules.

There was a lot of weaselly word manipulation on Saturday among those who defended Cummings, it wasn't illegal because they hadn't made journeys illegal.  Tell that to people who have been fined by the police if they haven't explained a second journey to the shops or whatever, and the people who have desperately wanted to visit mothers and grandmothers and haven't.  Tell it to people who haven't been able to go to hospital with their children.

Twitter was furious and so was I.  I read the Guardian articles on the furore, and was profoundly upset.  This man is employed by government to advise on just these guidelines, and he sat on the SAGE committee too.  The MPs were characterizing the episode as "just a father protecting his son" because the excuse given was that Cummings "might" be infected and therefore "might" become too ill to look after him.

This completely overlooks the fact that thousands of people have been in a similar situation and have avoided going anywhere else, even if a single parent.  Faced with the same situation, they have stayed at home and if necessary asked someone else to look after their children.  They have not gone on a long car ride north.

Government issued a short statement claiming that misleading stories were appearing in the paper. They have failed to point out any single example.

On Sunday I was still furious.  And more details had emerged... that he had taken his family to his parents house and it had been his mother's birthday.  That he had not, in fact, needed help with the child, just shopping delivered to his door.  That he had possibly been seen out of the house on April 12, which just happened to be his wife's birthday.

It was announced that Cummings would be holding a press conference the following day to make a statement and take questions.  This is unprecendented for an unelected government advisor.  In fact it breaks the code for government advisors.  The fact that he was allowed to use the garden at 10 Downing Street, gave no real explanation for his actions and seems to have thought that saying he took his wife and child on a 30 mile drive "to test his eyesight" was a reasonable thing to say, seems to mean he is considered special and thinks us all more stupid than he is.

He also claimed to have warned about coronavirus last year, although when people rushed to check his blog, the wayback machine indicated that his premonition had come to him on his return to London after having the virus.

He said that he was being hounded by inaccurate press, but the most inaccurate press of all seems to have been the fictional account by his wife, Mary Wakefield.  Who also had the audacity to retweet government advice not to go out even if the weather was nice...on her birthday and the day they went out to "test her husband's eyesight" in Barnard Castle.

It seems extraordinary that Cummings and his political cronies believe the country is swallowing this rubbish.  I don't hate the man, but I abhor what he did when so many of us were sticking strictly to the letter of the guidelines and the spirit.  Many people have suffered extreme hardship and heartache due to the guidelines that he was instrumental on inflicting on the public and he seems not to see what he did wrong. 

Although his friends are now saying that they probably didn't have coronavirus, despite the fact of his close working relationship with Boris Johnson and others in the cabinet who clearly did have coronavirus.  They need to decide which story they're sticking with, really.  Because if he didn't, there was no justification at all for any of the journeys.

I don't think he can survive this, but if he does, I predict Boris Johnson can't.