[Britse politiek] #114: Lockdown and out

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mrjamesob twitterde op maandag 25-05-2020 om 14:06:49 Vote to get rid of 'unelected bureaucrats', end up giving them televised press conferences. reageer retweet

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Op maandag 25 mei 2020 17:40 schreef VoMy het volgende:
https://news.sky.com/stor(...)us-symptoms-11965644

Dat rennen dat ie hier deed, was dat om naar zijn vrouw te gaan die ziek was? En vervolgens naar Durham? Ik heb de tijdlijn niet helemaal in mijn hoofd zitten.

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Op maandag 25 mei 2020 18:35 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:
Een "unelected aid" die een persconferentie geeft in de tuin van Downing Street 10...

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Op maandag 25 mei 2020 18:41 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Jongens, gedoe om niets. Cummings ging gewoon even een stukje rijden om te testen of zijn ogen nog wel goed waren:
https://www.independent.c(...)speech-a9531766.html

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Op maandag 25 mei 2020 18:46 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Nou ja, wat ik vooral hilarisch vind is dat hij dat testritje dus doodleuk deed met kind erbij. Sowieso, als je je ogen wilt testen, dan hoef je niet in een auto te stappen. Maar als je bang bent dat je ongelukken gaat veroorzaken en daarom maar even een iets van 45-50km gaat rijden om dat te testen met gevaar voor eigen leven, dat van andere weggebruikers en je kind nota bene dan zou je toch ook niet sporen? Dan is niet in zelfquarantaine gaan nog een stuk minder ernstig.

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Op maandag 25 mei 2020 18:57 schreef Szura het volgende:
Lachwekkende persconferenties van een arrogante ongekozen kwast die meent dat hij boven de wet staat. Hopelijk komt er de komende dagen nog meer naar buiten.

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Government minister resigns over Dominic Cummings' lockdown trip

Minister for Scotland, Douglas Ross, says vast majority of people disagree with actions

A government minister has resigned over Dominic Cummings’ decision to drive across England with his sick wife during the lockdown, saying many people did not share the adviser’s interpretation that he had stuck to the rules.

Douglas Ross, the MP for Moray, stepped down as a Scotland Office minister, saying he accepted Cummings felt he had acted in the best interests of his family but these were “decisions others felt were not available to them”.

“While the intentions may have been well meaning, the reaction to this news shows that Mr Cummings’ interpretation of the government advice was not shared by the vast majority of people who have done as the government asked,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“I have constituents who didn’t get to say goodbye to loved ones; families who could not mourn together; people who didn’t visit sick relatives because they followed the guidance of the government. I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”

[..]

Police, medics and scientists continued to say that Cummings' actions risked undermining the lockdown and public health advice.

Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said officers were frustrated by the case, which made it difficult to see the future role of the police in controlling lockdown.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There's a lot of confusion and it feels like there's quite a gap between the public narrative and narrative of ministers about the lockdown and what's happening on the street.

"I think it's quite hard to see the role the police have in the future - the rules about the reasons for travel are now very confused, when you see the crowds on Bournemouth and Southend beaches and other places yesterday, it's hard to see what role the police have in trying to control that."

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The Scottish conservative leader, Jackson Carlaw, has finally called for Dominic Cummings to resign, after coming under intense pressure while a number of his own MSPs expressed their strong support for their colleague Douglas Ross, who resigned as a UK government minister earlier today in protest at the Cummings row.

After an earlier equivocal statement, in which he said that “this is a difficult situation for many, and people will arrive at different judgements,” Carlaw told STV this afternoon:

"It is absolutely a matter for the prime minister himself who serves him and for how long they serve but given the furore, given the distraction we are now in, given the distraction to the prime minister onto this issue if I were Mr Cummings I would be considering my position."

A number of the Scottish Conservative MSP group called directly for Cummings to quit as they expressed their solidarity with Ross.

Adam Tomkins described his resignation as “a disaster”, stating: “His was one of clearest voices for the Union in Government. It shows exactly why Cummings should be sacked.”

A number of senior Holyrood colleagues followed suit, privately expressing frustration at Carlaw’s weak initial statement.

With Holyrood elections only 12 months away, Scottish Tories are all too aware of how this plays to Scottish voters in terms of the apparent entitlement of distant London elites.

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Christian Wakeford (Tory MP for Bury South) said Dominic Cummings should have been “reprimanded” for his actions which broke the “spirit – if not the letter – of the guidance”.

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former minister Harriett Baldwin (MP for West Worcestershire) calling for Dominic Cummings to resign.

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Philip Davies, the Shipley MP, has called on Dominic Cummings to “do the honourable thing and resign”

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The Tory former attorney general Jeremy Wright QC has added his name to the growing list of Tory MPs to call for Dominic Cummings to go.

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Op woensdag 27 mei 2020 09:33 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:

The Tale of Dominic Cummings

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More than 40 Tory MPs have now called for Dominic Cummings to go. With Downing Street continuing to defend him, the senior government minister Penny Mordaunt also said there were “inconsistencies” in Cummings’ account of his actions and apologised to her constituents for how recent days were distracting from key public health messages.

Boris Johnson said an independent inquiry into Dominic Cummings’ actions wouldn’t be a good use of official time. The PM was grilled on the Cummings affair and his government’s response to the pandemic by the powerful liaison committee. Under forensic questioning and several times facing the charges of putting political concerns before the nation’s health and of underestimating the public’s anger, the prime minister said it was time to “move on” from the “very frustrating” episode. He also didn’t give a clear answer on whether he was saying that if people don’t have access to childcare they could do what Cummings did.

Officers are reporting people breaking lockdown rules and using Dominic Cummings as an excuse, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner said. David Jamieson told the BBC in the last few days the public has pushed back and the police’s ability to enforce the rules has been undermined. He said people are telling officers that “if it is OK for Cummings, it is OK for us”.

twitter:

_JD_Black twitterde op woensdag 27-05-2020 om 22:14:46 @PhilBreading The BBC deleted it.

But we still have it — Emily Maitlis on Newsnight last night. https://t.co/CjbM0g3se7 reageer retweet

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Op woensdag 27 mei 2020 23:28 schreef rubbereend het volgende:
relletje in aantocht

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Emily Maitlis replaced for Newsnight episode after Cummings remarks

Emily Maitlis was replaced as host of Wednesday night’s episode of Newsnight by another member of the programme’s team after BBC bosses reprimanded her over a monologue in which she attacked the government’s handling of Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Durham.

News bosses at the corporation said the BBC2 programme’s lead presenter breached impartiality rules with her opening remarks on Tuesday night. She had been due to host the show on Wednesday night, but the Newsnight reporter Katie Razzall presented it instead.
Amid growing criticism of the reprimand, Newsnight’s editor, Esme Wren, wrote on Twitter that Maitlis “hasn’t been replaced tonight in response to the BBC statement”.

In the monologue Maitlis told viewers: “Dominic Cummings broke the rules – the country can see that and it’s shocked the government cannot.
“The longer ministers and the prime minister insist he worked within them, the more likely the angry response to the scandal is likely to be … He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools, and has allowed many more to assume they can flout them.”
Talking of Johnson’s “blind loyalty” in the face of plummeting poll ratings, she expressed bafflement: “The prime minister knows all this and has chosen to ignore it.”
Maitlis finished the programme by telling viewers: “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Clips of the sequence went viral on social media, attracting millions of views – many more than tune in to Newsnight on a typical evening. However, it caused fury among both Conservative politicians who have largely parked their longstanding criticism of the BBC during the pandemic, and also some journalists in and outside the public broadcaster who felt it went against the corporation’s approach to journalism.

BBC news bosses agreed with the criticism of its own show , swiftly issuing a statement distancing themselves from the monologue. BBC sources said Newsnight’s editor, Esme Wren, worked on Tuesday night’s episode.
“The BBC must uphold the highest standards of due impartiality in its news output,” the corporation said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the entirety of last night’s Newsnight, including the opening section, and while we believe the programme contained fair, reasonable and rigorous journalism, we feel that we should have done more to make clear the introduction was a summary of the questions we would examine, with all the accompanying evidence, in the rest of the programme.
“As it was, we believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality. Our staff have been reminded of the guidelines.”

Keith Brown, SNP deputy leader, said: “This statement is a gutless capitulation by BBC bosses. Newsnight should be commended - not slapped down - for their serious investigative work on Cummings, that’s not something you could say about the BBC News at 10.
“Pandering to 10 Downing Street by curbing journalists from being able to hold the UK government to account is of serious concern.”
An SNP spokesperson added: “It’s ironic that the only apology over the whole Dominic Cummings lockdown breaches scandal comes from the BBC.”

Maitlis’s profile, already high, has risen further since she was made lead presenter of the nightly current affairs show last year, shortly after publishing her book Airhead on life as a television presenter. She received global acclaim after confronting Prince Andrew about his connections with the deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In April she had a viral hit with another monologue of hers which dismissing the idea that coronavirus is a “great leveller” given its disproportionate impact on poorer people .

The BBC has faced heavy criticism over the issue of maintaining impartiality in its news coverage, particularly over its handling of complaints about comments that BBC Breakfast’s presenter Naga Munchetty made about Donald Trump. It also struggled to deal with the enormous levels of criticism from both Labour and the Conservatives during the 2019 general election.