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I think she may walk for other reasons… they ignored the advice of her and her team to get people to isolate properly when coming into the country when it mattered most… to the extent that she hid as best she could to avoid questions about why it was not happening… she is clearly frustrated with being minister in name only (ask her civil servants how that frustration manifests itself) and will walk at some point… just like Javid did.
They are all ministers in name only by the way… the powerlessness of Raab and Hancock when they had to front the instructions coming from Cummings, while the PM was fighting the virus himself, came to the surface whenever they were asked questions by journalists.
I might mister a smidge of respect for her if she went before she was pushed and blamed Cummings, the way Javid did.
To lose one BAME minister might be a misfortune, to lose two looks like....
she is clearly frustrated with being minister in name only
But surely that applies to the lot of them? This isn't cabinet government. There's not even the pretense that it is.
The Guardian was reporting weeks ago about the simmering anger with ministers that they were not being consulted about anything, that all decisions were being taken by Cummings in number 10, then they were literally handed a piece of paper listing his latest dictat, then shoved in front of the cameras to sell it at the daily briefing
Mind you, they're not exactly a bright bunch, are they? Poor little Matty Handjob hasn't even realised that he's being set up as the fall guy. Everyone else could see it months ago
My MP has replied, I'm not going to type it out in full here because its VERY similar to all the others above except a bit more curt and dismissive.
Basically......
I dont know any more than you
The police haven't charged him therefore he hasn't done anything wrong
Nothing to see here
Move on
powerlessness of Raab and Hancock
'Powerless' is too charitable. It is like saying I was 'powerless' to stop a tide of lava.
They are inept, arrogant and have been chosen for their belief in 'the project'.
When you select people for their adherence to a main policy that is manifestly stupid, it is no surprise that the characteristics that rise to the surface quickest are arrogance but most of all, stupidity.
QED.
Letter from Rees-Mogg. Blah, blah. Trip was under the rules, child care, test drive was the right thing to do. Cummings is very intelligent and the country needs him, Johnson is loyal.....
Letter from Rees-Mogg.
Ten weeks too late when you consider that toilet paper was being panic bought and the shelves left empty.
Dave Atkinson (Road CC and member of my cycling club) is doing a charity ride:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cummingsandgoings
So, we didn't believe all of the lies anyway.
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1270687016150274048?s=19
Another from the "I'm sorry you think I did something wrong" department.
Stop telling me I'm wrong as you are upsetting the few people who still believe me.
Nothing to say anymore. I just don't want to see his name drop too far down.
And nothing that will stick here either... Any breaches are seemingly outwith the time limit for enforcement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-53001428
Plus the chief prosecuter may get prosecuted.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/10/uks-top-prosecutor-threatened-with-legal-action-if-dominic-cummings-not-investigated
this is getting into Alice in Wonderland territory if we are not already there.
So he* breached planning application. My understanding is they are still investigating whether he* has been evading council tax.
*DC listed on deeds as I understand it so jointly liable wit his parents.
Well, I have received a comprehensive written reponse from Antony Higginbotham, MP for Burnley.
And I'm actually quite impressed.
Basically, he would have acted differently to Cummings and has made his views known, but has supported constituents who have contacted him in regards to exceptional circumstances regarding child care.
All in all, quite a balanced response.
I shan't be voting for him, but am somewhat reassured by the content of his reply.
Alastair Campbell has been analysing mps replies or rather cut and paste replies from No10 bunker.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-george-floyd-protests-dominic-cummings-coronavirus-downing-street-a9560331.html
Can we all go and stay with our parents now? If it is instinctively in the best interests of our children? I think we need clarity… Cornwall is calling me…
I still haven't even received my copy and paste reply from my shithouse of a Tory MP. And neither has anyone else. He's properly gone to ground.
It's now getting quite funny though. He does love his photo ops trying to make himself look like an actual human being. He's a habit of popping up at food banks etc having his photo snapped, then promptly disappearing. Then it'll be all over social media 'here's me working hard at the food bank helping disadvantaged families. The ****!
But now everything he posts is just immediately swamped with comments like 'do you actually have any intention of answering any of your constituents letters and emails regarding Dominic Cummings?'
Our former Labour MP (and candidate for the next election) has been having an absolute field day with it 😀
If I could pass a law it would be to have mps expenses displayed in food banks.
The horse has bolted though, Starmer, whilst not ideal would be an infinitely better PM Than Dominic Cummnings, cannot prevent a no deal brexit in a few months, they still have a huge majority unless you expect a bunch of tory MPs to cross the floor.
Then the shit will really hit the fan, and the conservatives will be laughing all the way to the bank.
game
set
match
You would think that with all JRM's money he could afford a functional spellchecker, but that letter posted above has a clear mistake. We all know it's not spelled [CONT.]
You would think that with all JRM’s money he could afford a functional spellchecker, but that letter posted above has a clear mistake. We all know it’s not spelled [CONT.]
Spelling didn’t get formalised until the latter half of the nineteenth century so he can be forgiven for at least that. Although his grammar is a bit out (He missed Total).
He does love his photo ops trying to make himself look like an actual human being
To be fair he is just taking a leaf out of his predecessors book
Dominic was made a saint for burning down a cathedral full of mixed Catholics and Albigensians... I'm sure Cummings must at least deserve a knighthood
Well this just keeps on giving.
You can’t “back Cummings” while also telling people to do their civic duty and isolate at home if they suspect they, or those they share their home with, have the virus. Unless you have the special powers of a politician that is.
Shock horror, the Tories censoring news briefings.
You can’t “back Cummings” while also telling people
to do their civic dutyhe is acting in their best interests whilst he is actually selling them and the country down the river for a massive payout from his outsourcing and disaster capitalist spiv mates
Well, not with a straight face. Unless you are in on the joke, obvs.
I received a letter from my MP replying to my complaint against Cummings, Name with correct spelling and my full address.
Has my email been hacked or has a company with my details been complaining on my behalf?
Former Chief Prosectutor is going after him:
https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1272228792057180164
I finally got a reply from Matt Hancock (or staff of)! .... no answers but an individual reply!
I mailed to voice my views on Cummings but then also added a question regarding his actions at the time of the Forestry sell off that I had asked him at the time (how long ago?!) and a couple of times since, with no answer each time other than the standard copy/party line.
When they sent a reply to the original Cummings issue it was not attached to my e-mail (due I guess to them harvesting the addresses and bunging out the blurb!), so I replied again stating I knew that was all flannel and what about the other question (without asking 'the question').
The Reply this time was on subject (so therefore had made the effort to look back and read), bigging up all they have done for the Forestry but still have not answered 'the question'.
My response to the Cummings reply:
Dear Matt (or whoever is reading or scanning!).
If you really think a non reply is going to continue to appease your constituents who you supposedly represent is going to cut it, I’m afraid you will be disappointed! You have obviously not read my original e-mail, just classified it and replied back with a covering e-mail!
If you really feel you can honestly stand behind the likes of Mr Cummings and Mr Johnson, I believe you to be a fool!
In my e-mail I asked another question (the same one I have asked you a number of times), to which you have never replied.
Regards,
The Reply:
Dear Martin,
Thank you for your email. I want to assure you that I carefully consider the views of all of my constituents when voting, and I join you and many others in recognising our woods and forests as invaluable national assets. I believe the Government has acted over recent years to preserve and extend British woodland and to support forestry.
One significant action was the introduction in 2015 of Countryside Stewardship, which included a new Woodland Creation Grant Scheme. This has funded farmers, land managers and foresters to create new woodland, while protecting existing woodland and restoring tree health.
Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) schemes, as well as the Woodland Carbon Fund (WCF), offer further support to plant large-scale productive woodland and to do so in an environmentally beneficial way.
I am also pleased that, alongside the Forestry Commission, Defra has launched a £50million Woodland Carbon Guarantee to help boost tree-planting rates in the fight against climate change.
The Agriculture Bill will build on this approach. For example, it will empower the Secretary of State to fund measures that improve and protect the health of plants and reduce the risk of pests and disease that could negatively affect forestry. Powers are also being devolved to the Welsh Government, providing greater spending leverage for supporting local forestry.
More generally, between 2010 and 2015 we provided £7.5 million to establish 12 Nature Improvement Areas, created 150,000 acres of priority habitats and planted over 11 million trees, with a further 11 million permanent trees due to be planted.
The Government also has ambitious plans to create a new Northern Forest along the M62 corridor with the aim to plant over 50 million trees over the next 25 years, as well as plans to create a new forest project in Northumberland to help improve our natural environment and respond to climate change.
I’m really glad that since 2010 we’ve been able to do all this for forestry.
Thank you again for taking the time to write to me.
Regards,
Matt
I have replied again .....
"The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself - it's the lack of global solidarity and global leadership."
Second reply:
Dear Matt,
Thank you for your reply and although all you claim to have achieved with this government is all very laudable, you still have failed to answer the question I put to you originally and a couple of times since.
How many letters/representations voicing against the Forestry Estate sell off did you receive and how many letters/representations voicing support for the sell off of the Forestry Estate did you receive?
Apologies but cynically perhaps your words ‘I want to assure you that I carefully consider the views of all of my constituents when voting,’ I cannot help thinking that’s a polite (?) way of saying that although you consider their views if they don’t fit your agenda, you will ignore them and vote regardless of the views and wishes of your constituents!
Actually thinking about this, I’d like to know the answer to this in terms of how many from your constituency and the numbers in total from all geographical areas of the country.
Regards,
singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/dominic-cummings/page/52/#post-11250536
That's a good statement.
Didn't note who it was, but someone on BBC Breakfast news mentioning how poorly the government dealt with the Cummings situation and what a bad message it sent out.
Good to see it hasn't been forgotten.
So let me get this straight, an unelected bureaucrat has decided to do this:
I’ll take an axe to planning laws, says Dominic Cummings
I’m sure it has no connection to this:
Dominic Cummings' lockdown cottage breached planning rules
Anyone still yet to receive a reply from their MP responding to disgust/outrage/questions about Cummings? I got an email from an assistant asking for my address two weeks after writing to my MP Chris Clarkson. I'm still waiting.
Just for a blissful few seconds, when I saw this thread back near the top, I thought Cumstains might have driven past a book depository or similar in a convertible.
Is disappoint.
Interesting conversation with my Tory voting parents this morning.
My mum is still adamant that Brexit is the best thing ever, and the government is doing it's best with the virus - media propaganda to suggest anything else or present facts to the contrary. Boris is getting it done. But she's terrified of whatever Cummings is up to in the background.
My dad can now see the downsides of Brexit, thinks Boris is an incompetent idiot and the governments handling of the crisis has been a disaster. And he's terrified of Cummings in the background.
At last, something we all agree on again!
So let me get this straight, an unelected bureaucrat has decided to do this:
I’ll take an axe to planning laws, says Dominic Cummings
Looks like dangerous times ahead with the Cock-Up King. Unfortunately with massive funding shortfalls from covid across the charity sector I can't see how they are going to have the resources to respond to what ever hair-brained scheme he comes up with next. Although I am assuming that some form of consultation on change will happen - which seems to be going against the form book. What was that about being freed of unelected unaccountable people.
SAS, SBS, Porton Down.
Soooooo many opportunities. And a threat:
"On Tuesday, the Conservative backbencher Mark Francois warned the head of the armed forces that Cummings would “sort you out”, after a lengthy complaint about the MoD’s procurement processes.
Speaking at the defence select committee, the influential Brexiter told Gen Sir Nick Carter, the chief of the defence staff: “Can we just make a plea to you. You are the professional head of the armed forces. Please nip back to the department and ask them to sort their bloody selves out, because if not, Cummings is going to come down there and sort you out his own way, and you won’t like it.”"
Please put him in the killing house, pretty please.
I'm sure there's a perfectly honest and reasonable explanation that they're declining to discuss.
Who am I kidding. Quack quack quack.
Word of advice to those writing to their constituency MPs. Don't make it obvious you didn't/won't vote for them. Instead, tell them you did but would need reassurance to again, given xyz issue....
Otheriwise they couldn't give a toss about you.
Has Dominic Cummings got the necessary security clearances to visit "sensitive MoD sites"?
More over could a man with a history of leaking information to Journalists, who has arguably helped to subvert key national votes and elections really be given such access...
He’s the Prime Minister. He can do what he likes.
He even got one of his garden gnomes to warm the MOD what they’ve got coming from the boss
https://twitter.com/jayjay08752584/status/1280524194867019782?s=21
The reaction is brilliant! Clearly not everybody is as terrified of Dom as Joris and the cabinet clearly are
It's genuinely staggering that a general/major/whatever that guy is just took a lecture from that kit kat expensing Ponce, and the mask slipped revealing that they're terrified of Cummings. Utterly insane.
...and yet many have wandered into the undergrowth of defence procurement and never emerged. At least it should keep him busy for a bit, unless they're dismantling NB HS England and PHE first.
And his progress towards being our Glorious Leader marches on...
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1286230634478829575?s=19
We're even more doomed !!
The Guardian are reporting today that having failed to get Failing Grayling appointed time head the Intelligence and Security Committee, he is now attempting to noble the civil servants attached to it and make his own appointments instead.
Clive Lewis has gone public with this and told him to get his tanks off his lawn.
Julian Lewis warns Dominic Cummings not to politicise ISC inquiries
I just can't understand why Eye Test Cummings who lived and worked in Russia for some time, could possibly want control of the committee who are supposed to be investigating dubious Russian influence in British politics. It is like he has something to hide, or stands to make a fistful of cash in backhanders if the mafia can continue washing money here.
My god, what is it that Cummings has to wield so much power? He’s an advisor for ****s sake!
Boris doesn’t do policy, or thinking, so he’s effectively outsourced it to Cummings.
I would imagine that this level of paranoid control-freakery will ultimately be the downfall of both of them. John Crace noted in the Guardian that while they’re doing this, they are making powerful enemies within their own party.
I can’t see Julian Lewis being particularity cooperative on the security and intelligence committee, for example
He’s an advisor for **** sake!
Aye, right...
they are making powerful enemies within their own party.
If I had a Tory MP I'd be asking them to resign the whip. Boris's thumping majority simply have to take their rosettes off if they're that bothered about Cummings
Boris’s thumping majority simply have to take their rosettes off if they’re that bothered about Cummings
Will never happen. Not openly and en masse. You don't piss in the trough you eat from.
If anything is done it will be through discussions in back rooms and nods and winks. The problem will be that these are precisely the types of machinations that slippery shits like Cummings excel at.
Who is this scumbags biggest critic in the Tory party? I’d like to write to them with my support.
If Farage can mobilise angry tories I’m sure my gammon alter ego can as well.
Speaking of which....what is farage’s thoughts on scummings?
My god, what is it that Cummings has to wield so much power?
Half a brain, which puts him head and shoulders above most of the Tory party. Honestly though, he's the sort of bloke who can't help overreaching, he'll be the architect of his own downfall soon enough, these blokes always are.
Yep, and the 'behavioural scientists' are keeping their heads well down and names out of the press in anticipation of the effluvial implosion, they're playing the long game.
Who is this scumbags biggest critic in the Tory party? I’d like to write to them with my support.
I doubt they'd break cover. They'll all be briefing 'off the record' and strictly anonymous, but when it is time to shit or get off the pot, the first thing they will do is look around to see who is with them after all the non-binding nudges and winks. And because only a select few would ever risk it, Cummings will have been doing some nudging and winking and threatening of his own behind the scenes. I would bet that every potential rebel Tory MP has a few rules of thumb in their head around what % of the support they think they might have will actually be there on the day of the battle. I doubt it is >50% in any sensible reckoning.
You don't shit where you eat.
“People were actually using the word ‘Cummings’ in encounters with the police to justify antisocial behaviour.”
“If the public don’t think the police are operating in a fair and impartial way, you won’t get their trust and you won’t get their support. People who make the rules shouldn’t break them. Otherwise, you can’t expect the little people to do it.”
^^^^
I used it when some officious gammon prick had a pop about riding on a footpath.
The fact is that whatever anyone says about the Eyetest Incident be it flagrant flouting of rules, hypocrisy, undermining of the most important public health message of our time or the fact he was demonstrably lying through his teeth.....
It was all true then and it is all true now, but the brass necked shitbag brassed it out and got away with it due to his 'connections' and position. For the current bunch of amateur Putins in our government it doesn't exist because it is 'yesterdays news'.
They didn't give a **** then and they give even less of a **** now.
Utter ****
Seems that while Gollum steers the ship,Boris the Bluffer needs a bit more help hiding.
Front of house speaker
He wants a blond Trumpet just like Kaleigh McEnany, Boris must be getting bored of his latest wife by now.
He wants a blond Trumpet just like Kaleigh McEnany, Boris must be getting bored of his latest wife by now.
Did you miss an ‘S’ off trumpet?
He would love that if Gollum approved,she may be looking for a new job soon if Trump gets dumped.
So he's been endorsed by Steve Bannon now. Which is like the Emperor endorsing Darth Vader.
You’ve got to love Jim’ll’paint it
"That lad from pans labyrinth..." :):):):):):
8
grum
Member
So he’s been endorsed by Steve Bannon now. Which is like the Emperor endorsing Darth Vader.
That is a thoroughly depressing article
Indeed.
What’s his plan for after he’s smashed the current civil service? Fill it with ‘political’ appointments? Or just run it all himself until he finds a successor? The son that it was so vital to protect, perhaps?
He was lying in the statement he gave from number 10
If he lied about editing his blog, why would you believe anything else he said?