Awol

I think the gist is that if you deviate from a certain line (the government are crap) by pointing out and discussing the Chinese cover-up, for example, it’s interpreted by more partisan posters as somehow seeking to distract from things the UK has got wrong. Like saying “voting to leave the EU was voting to be ruled by China”. The two things are artificially joined together to try and make a political point. It’s pretty inane stuff.

Eh? The point was about being allowed to post something that wasn’t the same as 60% of all posts on this thread. I don’t disagree with the attacks on government incompetence at all, but they’re not the only thing related to Covid worth discussing.

Fine. The UK government isn’t doing very well. Lots of people have died. If they’d acted sooner it’s likely fewer people would have died. Boris is a bad man. No one has posted this information before so it shouldn’t resemble 60% of other posts in this thread, with slight alterations in grammar. Permission to post about something now, Sir?

“Generic”.

Some post-pandemic progress in China: the Communist Party has got its enslaved Muslim population back to work!

Stockings? Spot the unmarried man... Top tip though, cheers.

On masks, wifey has knocked up a couple of good ones with a sowing machine and we’re using large paper coffee filters as the, er, filters. If anyone wants the instructions PM me an email address and I’ll send them over tonight.

Not strictly virus related, but there was a Parliamentary hearing on 5G this morning at which both experts mentioned the NHS coming under massive and sustained cyber attacks during the pandemic. That’s pretty dark.

Kids...

I do think that yes, I tried to say so explicitly. The animus between Davis and Cummings is well known (Tim Shipman’s books on Brexit give a full account of this) and this forum, including your good self have never held him in very high regard. However, I believe the general consensus is that Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College is a competent, unbiased and reliable source? The video below is really worth watching for a detailed update on the general situation, but at 32:30 he directly addresses the issue of SAGE, observers and Cummings. *spoiler* You’ll be pleased to know he states Cummings has attended “and not interfered with the business of those meetings at all.” So you could take the word of a man who’s mostly respected on here, or the word of a man who is despised, has no actual experience of the situation and is therefore speculating. Up to you.

What relevance does him being a Brexiteer have?! I think he’s wrong, for all the reasons already stated. Other people disagree, that’s fine.

Some of it, yes.

I don’t think anyone is saying they shouldn’t be questioned, just having a disagreement about whether the minutes of SAGE should be made public now (I’d say no); whether the PM’s advisor should be able to follow the scientific debate (yes, of course); whether the government were too slow to react (unarguably yes) and whether the PM should’ve been chairing COBRA meetings on the spread of the pandemic in China? Based on what we know now you’d say yes, based on what we knew then and the official scientific advice? More debatable, imo. Problem is that demands a degree of nuanced discussion, so when “Leave man bad” is the answer to every question it’s hard to get at the actual issues.

Well you could do that given no evidence to the contrary. Or you could weave together a narrative of what you imagine him to have done, based on the things you don’t like about him, then we can all proceed on the basis that’s what must have happened and go mental about it.

About as well as I’d expect the pandemic response to go if Cummings chaired Sage. That’s the point though, everyone’s getting their knickers in a bunch because the PM’s advisor is listening to the scientists. Not making decisions - he couldn’t even if he wanted to - just listening to experts on behalf of his boss. Seems like the most confected outrage possible, imo.

I’m backing up your point. Also highlighting the qualitative difference between Cummings listening to dozens of scientists having a debate On behalf of the PM, and in a previous era, his equivalent guy actually chairing the forum that includes the heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Chief of the Defence Staff and others. I’d love to see the reaction here if ‘Dom’ was doing that!!

Alistair Campbell used to chair the Joint Intelligence Committee!!

James O’Brien has never consciously made a good point in his life and this is no exception. It is normal for PM’s only to chair COBRA meetings when it involves many departments and/or major strategic decisions need to be made. We have Cabinet government with Ministers responsible for running their departments. It’s not a Presidential model. O’Brien probably knows that but it suits his agenda to pretend otherwise - another one for whom Cummings is the personification of evil.

The reason they don’t publish minutes or the full membership is precisely to remove pressure from the contributors. If an individual scientist thought they’d be named and their advice published publicly it may limit their desire to speak freely, especially around sensitive issues - of which this crisis covers many. To use a fashionable term, the current format provides a ‘safe space’ for full and frank discussion. Too often people confuse the right to know with a need to know.

Trimming advice? Where is the evidence that he was doing anything other than observing? Even if he was asking questions of the scientists I see no harm in that whatsoever, in fact it seems sensible and reasonable given his role. Cummings is a pantomime villain for the progressive left and his presence is like a thorn in their foot, a reminder of their serial political failure - hence the whining about his Brexit connections. It’s why even the mention of his name triggers so many people, and why I find it so amusing.

Watching people losing their s**t because the PM’s chief advisor actually attends meetings about what’s going on is hilarious.

It’s not a secret. The threat posed by pandemic flu has been No.1 on the national risk register since 2010 - so that includes the Arab Spring, the entire life-cycle of ISIS, Russia’s chemical weapons attack within UK and and buckets of international nastiness. This is not a black swan event, more like a neon mammoth.

Even so, less harmful than his musings on ingesting fish pond cleaner - or even jacking up with bleach. ”there was an old lady who swallowed a lie...”

The Tony Blair Institute of authoritarian socialism, on the wrong side of civil liberties since 1997.

Failure to comply with social clapping. Scandalous.