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Call me a cynical old sod, but tbh i dont see anything whatsoever coming from this.
Those are the top where the buck supposedly stops will be yeah yeah we made mistakes waffle waffle blah blah and the inquiry will say recommend lessons that must be learned and how next time they'll take note and do things differently.
Fraud committed, corrupt practices, culpability - No continuing action. Will the police or the law courts look to prosecute anyone,? no of course they wont.
Yeah, same as the Chilcot Inquiry, I think the final result came out just days before the Brexit vote, which obviously had an impact, but by the time they'd finished, most folks were pretty much "Yeah, whatevs"
Depends on the ToR but I suspect like most enquiries its intent is fact finding, and the report will be full of recommendations, but stop short of blaming. However, depending how the narrative is written it can very much point to wrongdoing (of eg: a criminal nature) which can subsequently prompt further action to be taken by others.
If people expect the enquiry to convict anyone, that won't happen - it's not in their power to.
Fraud committed, corrupt practices, culpability – No continuing action. Will the police or the law courts look to prosecute anyone,? no of course they wont.
There are suggestions that at least one high-profile fraud case is getting slowly unravelled by the police, although the sheer volume of fraud going on (perhaps at a lesser scale) means that most of it will just be ignored.
I don't see criminal-level culpability in anything else I've heard about the decision-making process, just a lot of incompetence and negligence. Closest so far to 'misconduct in public office' would be the recklessness and lack of scientific consultation prior to 'Eat Out to Help Out', but even that won't amount to anything. And there doesn't seem to be much shame or contrition in politics any more, however many faux apologies they dish out.
Call me a cynical old sod, but tbh i dont see anything whatsoever coming from this.
Those are the top where the buck supposedly stops will be yeah yeah we made mistakes waffle waffle blah blah and the inquiry will say recommend lessons that must be learned and how next time they’ll take note and do things differently.
Amen brother
MOne is being pursued for her fraud. One of the biggest frauds of the whole thing
The Liar in Chief is up today.
Ever the coward...
The man who is late for everything snook in through the back door, 3 hours early, at 7am this morning to avoid the bereaved families protesting outside and the press
Entirely in-character shithousery from the fly-tipped sofa. I doubt he'll be able to dodge everything else today as easily
https://twitter.com/campbellclaret/status/1732317233244766347?s=20
Boris Johnson does even know what a factory reset is on a mobile phone. He's never heard of the concept.
Lying ****.
It's pointless him being there today given how predictable his answers have been so far. Utter sc#mbag.
And yet,he will walk away with a shrug of the shoulders,no shame,then move on to the next grift/gig,where he will hope for an upgrade from useless.
What an absolute (abandoned) shitehouse of a human.
Listening to the live coverage while working.
You can hear the cogs whirring as he tries to squirm his way out of actually answering the questions.
I hope we're not going to be disappointed with the KC skewering him today.
Of the SAGE minutes; Johnson admits that with hindsight, it might have been better to have read them more than once or twice "to hear the Sage conversation"
Coverage needs a 'Lie Counter' in the top left corner so we can keep track.
Where’s the live coverage pleas?
Coverage needs a ‘Lie Counter’ in the top left corner so we can keep track.
There is not a counter fast enough to keep up. The string of numbers would need a very wide screen monitor.
He's getting pretty tetchy already.
He still doesn't think he should be answerable to anybody, does he?
@Kryton57 - live feed on the BBC here....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67634545
Poopscoop
Full Member
Boris Johnson does even know what a factory reset is on a mobile phone. He’s never heard of the concept.
Exactly this. On top that, WhatsApp messages are backed up to the cloud, and on top of *that*, you don’t have a WhatsApp conversation with yourself. At this point it’s about time that everyone who was in these groups surrenders their messages. They can’t all have forgotten the passcode.
The irony is that the Government would be quite happy to ban WhatsApp entirely due to the end-to-end encryption, but it seems incredibly convenient for making poor decisions and covering the evidence.
This needs to end. All internal communications should be permanently archived for situations just such as this, and allowing critical decision making to take place on third-party services is dubious from the beginning.
Simon Case being 'off sick' is actually a problem for Boris. It prevents him (and other top civil servants like Sedwill) from being conveniently chucked under the bus, which no doubt was the plan, because he'll now testify after Boris, and I'm sure he can bring the receipts to skewer him if necessary.
They could plot it using a log scale, which would be fitting for the inquiry.
What's the doubling time for his lie count? Because I suspect the more flustered he gets, the more exponential it will become.
The irony is that the Government would be quite happy to ban WhatsApp entirely due to the end-to-end encryption, but it seems incredibly convenient for making poor decisions and covering the evidence.This needs to end. All internal communications should be permanently archived for situations just such as this, and allowing critical decision making to take place on third-party services is dubious from the beginning.
It's a sackable offence at mine to be using personal mobiles/emails for any business decisions.
Not even allowed to keep stuff on the laptop drive, it has to be on the cloud server in case you leave/get run over by a bus etc.
Yet Government can make or break those rules almost with impunity.
Astonishing coincidence that they all seem to have lost/reset their mobiles at about the same time. And all these people who have access to global finance, nuclear codes etc can all "forget" their PIN.
I've been quite puzzled by the whole Whatsapp thing. When I worked in security cleared environments, it was a serious offence to transact any business on a personal device or using public comms. Yet ministers have casually been using Gmail, Whatsapp, probably Hotmail/Outlook to run the country. Why was that even allowed?
Because it's a convenient, plausible, cop-out?
Because it’s a convenient, plausible, cop-out?
Well, obvs, it was a way to avoid scrutiny and accountability. Also, working in a secure environment is necessarily more difficult and things can take longer. But it's another demonstration that these charlatans do not even understand the rule of law or how our constitution works (was supposed to work).
It's also plausible to their electorate, the one's that don't care much for details, experts or following the rules when it doesn’t fit. Losing a password, losing a phone, ignoring a few scientists - it's what normal folk do, in their minds.
Why did he put so much into getting a job he clearly didn't want to do? What a vain lazy negligent arsehole. How long will it take the UK to recover from his time as PM? Of course there are families that will never really get over what happened to their loved ones while he avoided doing his job.
Well, obvs, it was a way to avoid scrutiny and accountability.
right up to the point where you give all your WhatsApp’s to a journalist 🙂
Why did he put so much into getting a job he clearly didn’t want to do
same reason as Trump. He wanted to be thought off as the person doing the job
Same with Sunak.
Sunak could be sitting on some paradise island somewhere never having to work again but he wants the power of the top job.
They're all vain shallow narcissistic morons.
Why did he put so much into getting a job he clearly didn’t want to do?
He did want the job.
Its just he wanted the perks of the job and to be in the history book and not the downsides of being responsible for a country.
same reason as Trump. He wanted to be thought off as the person doing the job
I am semi convinced by the argument that Trump didnt really want it. He was just using it as a PR opportunity.
Although now he has been defeated he wants it this time round to use it to get revenge.
He did want the job.
Absolutely he did. He was driven. He just didn't want to do the job once he had it.
> add in something about serial adultery here <
All this stuff about "not twigging" about the importance of Covid, while all the Cobra meetings were happening, and even we, a loose collection of ignorants on a forum with only bikes in common (a few notables excepted), could see the danger and the possible measures required. What a...
Why did he put so much into getting a job he clearly didn’t want to do?
Daddy issues - he's spent his entire life being groomed for glory, whilst also being drip fed approval through horrendous parenting. If your dad is beating it into you that one day you'll be prime minister and you're not a success if you don't make it then that will drive you. Especially if you're embedded into the system that provides the best route (Eton, Oxbridge, tory party). Having competence or ability doesn't come into it
He did want the job.
It's not a case of wanting or not wanting it, he just thought he was entitled to it. Cameron was the same. Both thought it was their birthright and they we're simply 'fulfilling their destiny' or some other bollocks they imprint in the overprivileged minds of these six-toed pony-*ers at Eton
I doubt either of them gave a second thought to what they'd do once they actually got into number ten, as their toxic legacies both prove.
And it doesn't matter anyway. They always fail upwards however much they * up. Like the Bullingdon Club they were both part of, they just waltz off and leave the little people to clean up the smoking wreckage they leave in their wake.
Just look where 'Lord' Dave is now. I'm sure Johnson will follow a similar trajectory. Would anyone bet against him ending up in the Lords? It's when not if.
regardless of the advice that Vallance (and others) gave, there was a reluctance to accept it, to deal with it and to plan a response to it by the folks who’s job it was to do that.
But this claim isn't supportable once you acknowledge that the scientific advice was strongly against taking stiff action. This advice (against suppression) was given very explicitly on the 13th, then on the 16 and 18th SAGE advised a measured ramping up of interventions (which happened immediately) and finally on the 23rd they had an "oh shit" moment, realised they had got it wrong, and the lockdown happened that night.
I know the govt did plenty else wrong and the inquiry is covering a lot of things, but one of the specific topics is the decision making around the initial stages of the pandemic, and you can hardly consider that without taking account of the scientific advice available at the time.
So we are November to March and all I’m getting is “maybe”, “I forgot”, “don’t know” and wasn’t at any Cobr meetings.
I assume he listened to his lawyers warning about being under oath and the risk of documents proving the opposite of any active defence.
I'm not sure Johnson did want the job, but he definitely wanted to be able to say her was a former Prime Minister and that he'd done the job though. So he was happy with the bit before it, being noisy in the back benches, writing columns and swanning around looking important, and he definitely wanted the bit afterwards with the book tours and after dinner speaking. But the job itself, less so.
The issue for him is that he could of perhaps got away with doing the job in a period when not much was going on. He would have made a lot of noise, threatened to change a few things and then headed back to America without having done much damage (or much good). But timing wasn't on his side, he ended up with Brexit and a pandemic, both of which needed skills to navigate that he clearly doesn't have.
So we are November to March and all I’m getting is “maybe”, “I forgot”, “don’t know” and wasn’t at any Cobr meetings.
Industrial quantities of coke and booze will do that…
But timing wasn’t on his side, he ended up with Brexit and a pandemic, both of which needed skills to navigate that he clearly doesn’t have.
Whilst he could claim circumstances on the covid front the brexit mess was in large part down to him. So he is completely responsible for the timing there.
Industrial quantities of coke and booze will do that…
My source into Tory HQ has said there were pics of senior figures doing drugs in lockdown. He's usually pretty accurate, but somehow they’ve never been made public, which surprises me now
'Should never have shaken hands with covid patients': he didn't. I've posted the newspaper several times on here where the staff at KGH said they had no cv patients at the time of his visit. Plus there's been a detailed analysis flying around the net challenging the idea that he was ever close to death. He is, however, a terminal liar.
Whilst he could claim circumstances on the covid front the brexit mess was in large part down to him
He got ****ing elected on getting Brexit done so he can never dodge that one.
Haven't listened to all of it, but it feels like the KC hasn't really started going for the jugular yet.
Part of the problem is that the evidence and the data the government needed was already out there as northern Italy took off but being disregarded because of English exceptionalism and bravado, the culture he brought into no.10. So we waited for British cases to emerge, at which point it was too late.
There were plenty of voices in February and March looking at the curves and saying there was no way we were four weeks behind Italy, more like 10 days. There were plenty of voices from Jan onwards making it clear that it would be highly abnormal if there was no asymptomatic transmission, so the precautionary approach should be that this was happening.
But the inquiry has tended to hear not from the international epidemiologists and viral experts who were shouting from the rooftops at the time, but from the scientific advisers who were buying into the more optimistic numbers and assumptions being bandied about, and were more vulnerable to having their views further softened by the PM chuntering on about how we'd sail through.
Haven’t listened to all of it, but it feels like the KC hasn’t really started going for the jugular yet.
He's getting an incredibly easy ride.
He just wriggled his way out of the fact that Manchester was given a 'punishment beating' for purely political purposes, for being arsey. When he was asked if that was the case, he totally ignored the question and just went off on one with a load of waffle about Liverpool
Can't believe he was allowed to get away with that
So we are November to March and all I’m getting is “maybe”, “I forgot”, “don’t know”
That worked for Nicola Sturgeon (though that might unravelling as a result of the Court of Session decision today)
I vividly remember a phone call with an Italian colleague who was incredulous that the Champions League match was going ahead (Liverpool?). He was describing friends and neighbours who had died or were dying, meanwhile we were happily allowing hundreds of Spanish people to nip over to mingle with a load of Brits for the night.
If I was getting that message (as the obligatory STW IT working middle-manager), surely the gov were getting a clearer picture.
Listening to johnson, could anyone say...prime ministerial right there; competence exemplified.
Inept, dissembling, obfuscation, deliberately waffling more than usual; attempting to shed as little light as possible.
Much as I would like to see Hugo Keith 'go for the jugular' - as I think he would if this was a criminal trial - this is unlikely to happen in an enquiry but he certainly has a 'verbal stiletto' which he uses on occasion.
surely the gov were getting a clearer picture.
That would be a big, fat, no, according to our Boris. Nobody told him anything.
If ever we needed a prime minister with an enquiring mind, capable of understanding science and maths at a basic level, and prepared to observe and learn from the experiences of other countries, this was the time. None of that applies to this wretched fake. But we get the calibre of politician we deserve, I suppose.
And worse than that, covid clearly occupied little of his flabby mindspace until we were already well down the road. Every waking moment should have been spent driving his government to tackle the crisis. But he couldn't even be bothered to turn up to COBRA.
But he couldn’t even be bothered to turn up to COBRA.
Finalising his divorce and trying to write a book wasn't he?
Probably shagging at least one mistress on the side.
Can't interrupt these important matters for minor things like a pandemic.
He’s getting an incredibly easy ride.<br /><br />
probably when to school together
We were in the same hotel as the Madrid side (Holiday Inn, Manchester). It was nuts, bad news was coming out of Spain and there was 2 coachloads of them, wives and girlfriends etc too. Trying to weave around/away from them to get a buffet breakfast was a challenge. We went into lockdown the next day, 10 days I think before the national lockdown was called.
I vividly remember a phone call with an Italian colleague who was incredulous that the Champions League match was going ahead (Liverpool?). He was describing friends and neighbours who had died or were dying, meanwhile we were happily allowing hundreds of Spanish people to nip over to mingle with a load of Brits for the night
It was in Liverpool and the match was against Atletico Madrid. 5000 Atletico fans flew in from Madrid. Most of them made a weekend out of it. At that time Madrid had the highest covid infection rate in the whole of Europe. La Liga had stopped all football matches weeks earlier
I don’t know about your Italian colleague, but i was completely incredulous that it was going ahead.
Then the Cheltenham Gold Cup weekend went ahead too
Absolute insanity!
Well… totally reckless criminal negligence actually
I agree the big events in March 2020 seemed ridiculous. But the scientists were actually worried that if we acted to suppress the spread of the virus, we'd put it off to the following winter when the NHS would be under more strain. so they wanted to get it over with through the summer.
Johnson could have over-ruled them and shut everything down sooner, certainly some advisers were arguing for this. But the whole point of SAGE was to provide the best scientific advice.
Then the Cheltenham Gold Cup weekend went ahead too
Amazing what you can do when you chuck a few hundred grand at the Health Secretary.
I was at the Italy / Scotland rugby match a week or two before lockdown. That really should have been cancelled as well but as far as I am aware did not turn out to be a spreader event.
Part of the problem is that the evidence and the data the government needed was already out there as northern Italy took off but being disregarded because of English exceptionalism and bravado
He keeps saying 'with the benefit of hindsight' as if thats something we only have now. He had at the time, and we all had, the benefit of Italy's hindsight. We could all see directly into our own future and know exactly what would happen if we did, or didn't, act.
He had at the time, and we all had, the benefit of Italy’s hindsight. We could all see directly into our own future and know exactly what would happen if we did, or didn’t, act.
MrsMC was leading a Scout and Guide ski trip in Switzerland that February half term. I was at home watching the disaster unfold in Italy and the first reports of it spreading via school ski trips in the UK.
I wasn't sure if they'd get back before we closed borders, or would go into quarantine, or come back with Covid. All seemed valid and justifiable possibilities at the time.
Obviously the wrong thread to start a conspiracy theory, but the Hillsborough response comes out the day Boris gives evidence, and then Honest Bob resigns to deflect from Boris.
Lord knows what they'll need to announce today!
Johnson claims today that all of his "let the virus rip" comments were designed to challenge the consensus.
So in other words he's a tactical 4D chess genius, thinking of options where no-one else could.
Or a ****ing idiot...
It’s the new Edinburgh defense.
KC for the bereaved families is really needling johnson and he's deflecting/squirming/obfuscatinng but the KC is doing well to drag him back to the question; he is telling johnson '...you're deflecting - again'.
Convenient memory loss is something of a theme with the politicians; is there something in the water at Westminster?
johnson is completely not credible; doesn't answer clearly, cannot lie consistently, disputes facts, has created an alternative reality, is now relying on alternative facts.
is now relying on alternative facts.
Ah, are we rebranding lies as "alternative facts"?!
Johnson claims today that all of his “let the virus rip” comments were designed to challenge the consensus.
I wouldn’t deny it was a scenario that needed to be discussed and considered before we had the vaccines, just to rule it out, but there's a right and wrong way to have those conversations.
crazy-legs - in johnson's mind he doesn't lie, he sees things differently; he's dangerously deluded.
Johnson claims today that all of his “let the virus rip” comments were designed to challenge the consensus.
So in other words he’s a tactical 4D chess genius, thinking of options where no-one else could.
Or a **** idiot…
It's really not the role of the PM to play devils advocate against scientific consensus during a lethal pandemic, at least not to that extent.
Except he wasn't, everyone knew he was fiercely opposed to shutting down the economy to save your gran. And you know this is why all his, and Sunak's, whatsapps are 'missing', because they are plastererd with this sentiment, and worse, and probably expressed in terms that would horrify even us.
What an embarrassment.
He is, predictably, failing to adequately answer any questions from KCs representing special interest groups and the KCs are showing increasing irritation.
I don't remember or that's not my recollection or I don't believe that's quite correct are pathetic responses from an individual who has had months to prepare for his appearance which - for any reasonable, fair minded person - would ensure they had the fullest possible command and understanding of the facts.
His preparation appears to have been focussed on...how can I evade responsibility, provide non-answers to the questions and generally say nothing to (further) damage my 'reputation'.
He is showing himself to be even more odious, reprehensible and repulsive than I thought he was.
He was handed his arse on a plate by the representative of the Northern Irish bereaved who was clearly genuinely angry as his constant evasion and just made him look like the lying clown that he is
Hearing johnson say '...let me answer that clearly' must have tempted the KC to respond with '...yes, that would be helpful - and a first'.
Could this be awkward for Sunak on Monday?
However, he is also set to be confronted over his claims that he could not deliver WhatsApp messages covering a crucial period because he had changed phones several times and the messages had not been backed up.
There have subsequently been reports that pranksters were able to access a longstanding phone number for Sunak, which rang before playing a voicemail recording. Questions are now being asked over whether Sunak has handed the inquiry access to material associated with that number.
Maybe the phone in question is sat in the "Man's Drawer of Many Things", the same as every other household?
I got a response to my letter to the inquiry, inside their self-imposed 3 week deadline, but it was just some general blah together with "your correspondence has been passed to the relevant team for consideration" so whether I get a substantive response from Vallance or anyone else about the mid-March timeline is still very much up in the air.
It's amazing.
Basically not a single Tory seems to be able to use a mobile phone.
How convenient.
The latest is Penny Mordaunt, she seems to be unable to grasp the massively mind bendingly complex app that is WhatsApp... That pretty much every kid in the country is able to use.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67780595
Soneone, somewhere, knows where the messages went and how to get them back.
There seems to be a concerted effort to conceal the decision making around the start of covid, which conveniently covers the period of awarding those huge covid PPE contracts.
I suspect we will likely never know the conversations that went on as there is absolutely no desire to do so. Or someone will leak them years from now once they are out of the political sphere, at which point it's already too late.
Utterly incredible.
no shit sherlock it's like deciding that crossing a mainroad backwards blindfold is perhaps not the best plan of action after you've been run over.