andym

So from what he's saying on contact tracing, if you're contacted, you must stay at home self isolating for 14 days. If you don't and leave the house you may be sanctioned , e.g. fined Is anybody going to ask the obvious - what happens in that situation if you have a young child and are worried about actually getting Ill and being incapacitated? Presumably you can leave isolation to get help with care without being fined?

not one of the liaison committee has explicitly asked which bits were false. Meg Hillier got close but still let him off the hook

So we should be all grateful really, it was all so he could focus was on getting back to work for the good of us! What an arrogant, arrogant man

Directly asked about the story that Cummings went to Barnard Castle. Could easily have said it wasnt true, but didn't answer the question at all. Which means it is true

I found it interesting how he had that constant desire to show how much better he was than everybody else, yet he could then be pretty unpleasant at times to his team mates for not being up to his level. I also liked the footage around the lock room pre or post game, just the amount of attention from media, fans etc, he was constantly swarmed. It must have got annoying at times.

I really don't get the argument about the 'currently no transmission in community' caveat somehow completely undermining Starmer and exonerating Johnson and the Government. Starmer's initial point was that the advice that it was unlikely that people in care homes would become infected remained in place until 12th March. Johnson said the advice didn't say that, which is simply a lie. But even if he tries to justify the advice as appropriate on there being no current transmission 1) it was in UK by the 12th of March so the no current transmission point is highly dubious 2) why are you waiting until its in the community to warn care homes that people are likely to become infected? This isn't something out the blue, we had prior warning of how virulent it is from other counties, we knew it would hit us at some point and care homes are obviously highly vulnerable places to things like this. It's like knowing there's a hurricane off the coast and its definitely going to hit, but then saying its not actually here yet, so the advice is your house is unlikely to be damaged and don't bother taking precautions.

I believe although Starmer referenced section 7 in the commons, his letter then quoted the bit from section 1, which obviously has the 'intended for current position' bit. However, surely the key points are that 1) Johnson said 'it wasn't true the advice said that', i.e it didn't say 'it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected', when it did, and he's now actually quoting that in his rebuttal. 2) the defence from No.10 appears to be reliant on the apparent context provided by the 'intended for current position' bit, i.e. that the advice to care homes that they were unlikely to be infected was appropriate because there was currently no transmission in community. That advice remained until 12th March, when people were questioning why Cheltenham was going ahead that week, why Liverpool vs Atletico had gone ahead, when the severity of the situations in other countries was clearly apparent along with the fact it was heading our way. And yet the government position was, well it actually hasn't happened here yet, so no need to worry, and no need to do anything that might prevent the spread in the most vulnerable communities. And now tens of thousands are dead.

Interesting image to go with the announcement, almost like a campaign poster... IMO the way he has gone about things, even the way he presents himself and speaks, have definitely been with one eye on his future. Hancock was doing the same, but then the whole testing target thing backfired on him. Sunak has managed to avoid anything like that so far. I wonder how long before Boris's current blind faith supporters realise his incompetence will also drag them down, and look to someone else.

Aren't some of these supposed relaxations things that are technically already allowed (or you could argue are) under the actual regulations? Seen quite a lot been made online about how from wednesday you will now be able to meet one person from outside your household if you stay 2 metres apart, e.g. go to a park with a single friend but stay 2 metres apart. Current provision 7 says you can't participate in a gathering in a public place of 2 or more people (with certain exceptions). Provision 6 just says you can't leave where you are living without a reasonable excuse, then provides a non exhaustive list of reasonable excuses. So technically you could already walk around a park with a friend? Exercise is a reasonable excuse to be out of your house, and if its just the two of you is not breaching provision 7. Same with the 'unlimited exercise' announcement. There's technically no restriction on number of times per day at the moment. So the so called easing is a bit of an illusion, its just moving the guidelines more inline with the actual law (unless they change the regulations this week as well).

A blog post where it was 90% just quoting an article from a month earlier talking about how human error leading to potential exposure to pathogens actually occurs frequently at high security labs, and its effectively a ticking timebomb that isn't taken seriously enough by those in power? His words are just a conclusion summarising the article and then saying that the government doesn't care about the potential issue like it should. He's not exactly unique in saying that, and you could say the same about government on a wide range of potential issues, its basically a standard blanket statement. Of course given his concerns and all his supposed clued up knowledge on viral threats, you would have thought he'd have been advising Boris to take steps earlier when all this first started surfacing in China before Christmas, and not waiting until a few weeks ago to take it seriously... Anyway, we really need to stop treating Cummings as this supposed polymath who's secretly running the whole show. He's smart, but not that smart. His actual genius is his blog; its often just a summary of the stuff he has read, and tbf he does read a lot of scientific papers, journals etc gaining superficial knowledge of a wide range of subjects (and obviously you need to be smart to some extent to do that). But then (whether its his intention or not), his blog and other writings are basically used to promote him as an expert, almost a guru type figure across all areas. That he's not is clearly the big danger with the whole SAGE meeting issue; if he's actually taking part and trying to push his own ideas on the science then clearly he shouldn't be involved, although you would think the people with the actual knowledge would just tell him to **** off anyway. If he's there just to listen then i guess its not a massive issue, ultimately i assume SAGE would just prepare a report anyway to give to the government, so he's just getting the outcome of the meeting firsthand and then reporting back rather than waiting for it to be written up. Time is critical in these situations.

They should all be for the chop frankly, but interesting that you see Cummings as an outsider, when he's been involved in politics for 20 odd years. I guess his break the system approach or however he styles it puts him at odds with traditional politics, although i think his self-promoted maverick tag is more style than substance, there's more than a whiff of 6th form 'railing against the establishment' politics about him. There's various analysis of his blog out there, and the gist seems to be that when people dig down into it, its basically a lot of half-baked thoughts and ideas; he reads a lot of very technical stuff and gains enough superficial knowledge, but then thinks he understands the whole subject as well as the original author. I would say that's his real genius actually, although he is obviously smart, he's managed to convince a lot of people he's much cleverer than he actually is. The problem is when you get events like those happening now, and you've worked your way into a position of power as some sort of all knowing guru, people think you have the knowledge to fix everything, and if you don't...

Got stopped just outside Tescos in Warwick earlier, about 5 police stopping all cars. Just asked where i'd been and was i heading straight home, all very courteous. They weren't exactly adhering to the 2 metre distancing though.

I'm going tomorrow On Fiddlerontheroof, abracadbras and edwardstone in the supreme (sky money back as cash if lose very handy in this race, and william hill paying 7 places), then Supersundae in the champion hurdle, Kildistart in the Ultima and Hold the Note in the northern trust novices chase

I assume he will be crowdfunding to cover his legal fees, in full knowledge that he will be able to rake in enough to easily exceed those costs... Nice little earner while people are still dumb enough to fall for it

I don't get you SGC. Given your propensity to label nearly every young player who comes through as the next big thing, your negative attitude to a player who is actually that is very confusing.