From yesterday:-
- Regularly breaks or flouts the law
- Constantly lies and deceives others
- Is impulsive and doesn’t plan ahead
- Can be prone to fighting and aggressiveness
- Has little regard for the safety of others
- Irresponsible, can’t meet financial obligations
- Doesn’t feel remorse or guilt
Scenes & Promises from a Rose Garden
--oo00oo--
As I write this Dominic Cummings is still in post and has the full backing of the prime minister Boris Johnson. This is entirely predictable and in my view excellent news. It confirms beyond doubt that Johnson cannot manage without his mate 'Dom' and that therefore in a reckless 'all or nothing' gamble he must do anything it takes to hang on to him because if Dom falls or slips on his sword, Boris will be toast in fairly short order.
The fact of the matter is that without the 'Brexit' bollocks and absence of Parliamentary theatre, Boris post-Covid cuts a pathetic, shambling figure, obviously not up to or interested in the job any more and now completely out-shone and out-gunned by Keir Starmer. We know Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay brothers are more than keen to use their normally loyal Tory newspapers to oust Boris and enthrone Gove, so by stubbornly hanging on to Cummings, Boris is just ramping-up the hostility and inevitably of his ignominious defenestration. I gather his popularity has already dropped 20 points and for the first time is in to negative territory.
The beauty of all this is that it's not a 'Westminster bubble' story that doesn't resonate with the public - on the contrary it very much does and all those chickens are coming home to roost - all those blanket bans on 'unfavoured' media outlets; regular abuse of disliked media types; the 'dissing' of civil servants, experts, respected middle class professionals; the routinely-insulted Tory back benchers and former ministers are all united in determining that this story will not go away. Career psychopath Dom has made lots of enemies - because that's his MO as a 'disruptive' - and they are now united in making sure he does go - eventually. And if he goes, so does Boris.
I'm pretty sure there won't be many probation officers who watched that astonishing No10 performance without it bringing flashbacks of memorable interviews of yore and similar convoluted attempts at explaining matters described in the CPS bundle! Didn't it remind you of Jim the washing-machine guy? In my experience many a PSR has had to carefully address similar inconsistencies, obfuscations, minimisations, embellishments, omissions and inaccuracies. They are all the stock-in-trade of someone facing allegations and desperately needing some innocent explanations. By supreme irony a pathetic excuse is what's known in the North East as a 'Barney Castle'.
His case in full as seen summarised on Twitter:-
1) We had to drive to Durham because we had a childcare emergency but it was safe to do so because neither of us had COVID-19 symptoms at the time but it was definitely an emergency but...
2) Our normal childcare options in London weren't available so we had to go to Durham but I didn't ask anyone in London because my niece in Durham had already volunteered to do childcare for us but...
3) I felt sick in Barnard Castle so I had to get out of the car and go for a walk but I was also well and didn't have any symptoms any more so it was safe for me to be out and about and to drive back to London but...
4) I had to take my wife and child when I drove to Barnard Castle to test my eyes because if my eyes failed my wife would then have to drive but it wouldn't have been safe to try to drive to London because my wife couldn't have driven instead of me but...
5) I thought my wife had COVID-19 so I ran home from the office but she felt a bit better so I went back to work in the office at the centre of government even though I'd just been with my wife who I thought had COVID-19 but...
2) Our normal childcare options in London weren't available so we had to go to Durham but I didn't ask anyone in London because my niece in Durham had already volunteered to do childcare for us but...
3) I felt sick in Barnard Castle so I had to get out of the car and go for a walk but I was also well and didn't have any symptoms any more so it was safe for me to be out and about and to drive back to London but...
4) I had to take my wife and child when I drove to Barnard Castle to test my eyes because if my eyes failed my wife would then have to drive but it wouldn't have been safe to try to drive to London because my wife couldn't have driven instead of me but...
5) I thought my wife had COVID-19 so I ran home from the office but she felt a bit better so I went back to work in the office at the centre of government even though I'd just been with my wife who I thought had COVID-19 but...
6) We had to stop on the way back from Barnard Castle because my four year old needed a wee but we definitely didn't stop on the 260 miles drive to Durham because none of us needed a wee and my ill wife didn't need us to stop either but...
There won't be many police officers or Crown Prosecutors not thinking the same way as probation officers either judging by this tweet from former prosecutor Nazir Afzal:-
'Every criminal lawyer will have heard a version of the Cummings’ Barnard Castle story. It’s when a suspect creates a story around the known facts. Nobody believes it. PS: wasn’t it his wife’s birthday that day? Happy Birthday.'It drew this response:-
'So, as a juror who for the moment thinks it's a plausible story, I'm now waiting for the cross- examination which destroys it. None of the journos there got close. As a hard-bitten prosecutor, what are the weaknesses you'd question him on? Genuinely interested. 'Nazir:-
- coincidence of his wife’s birthday - Why he didn’t mention it in first press release - why he didn’t mention it in 2nd press release - why he denied it when the witness was first mentioned by Guardian on Sunday - “false” they called it - why he didn’t just drive round the large estate? Why didn’t she drive? Why if the London house was so unsafe for the wife & child did he drive them back there. Why did they take up hospital capacity which is what lockdown was designed to prevent? Why did he do all the driving when there were 2 helpful nieces & he was so ill? Why? Why?
I'm clearly not the only one who was thinking along this line:-
I'm clearly not the only one who was thinking along this line:-
"Dear JB
Using a BBC iplayer recording of Dom's interview yesterday, write an offence analysis and risk assessment of Dom's transgression paying particular attention to:
(i) any pertinent issues of mimimising, denial and dissembling
(II) Whether his lack of contrition has any impact on his possible culpability re: current offence or his future level of risk Or is this irrelevant? Use results of the latest criminological research of the consideration of an admission of guilt or not when Parole Board members are considering release.
(iii) In your risk assessment include any pertinent safeguarding issues and any risks to the public.
(iV) Discuss the impact of this type of transgression on the public's future adherence of government lockdown measures (if any).
In your answer you will disregard the official Civil Service Twitter account message:
“Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”
--oo00oo--
Finally, this from Twitter and subsequently taken up by the New Statesman:-
"Cummings said he warned about a corona virus in 2019. Thing is, he didn't. References to SARS and corona virus were added to his blog post on pandemic risks sometime between April and May of this year."
"half of his statement today was about how important he was and why that meant he had to get back to London as soon as possible. On 14 April he finally gets back to London, and the most important task that awaits him is editing past posts on his blog to make himself look prescient."
From Guardian:-
ReplyDeleteDominic Cummings is facing questions about his claim in Monday’s press conference to have written last year about the “possible threat of coronaviruses” after it emerged that a blogpost published in March 2019 was rewritten last month to insert a reference to “Sars coronavirus”.
The post, published to his personal blog on 4 March last year, is largely a lengthy excerpt from research published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warning about the risks of viruses escaping secure laboratories.
In April 2020, the excerpt was edited to add a quote about a “well-publicised incident in China in which ‘two researchers conducting virus research were exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) coronavirus samples that were incompletely inactivated. The researchers subsequently transmitted Sars to others, leading to several infections and one death in 2004.’”.
The article is the only mention of the word “coronavirus” on Cummings’ personal blog.
First spotted by Jens Wiechers, a data scientist, the edits are verifiable through periodic snapshots of the blog saved by the Internet Archive, which shows the change occurring between 9 April and 3 May this year. A hidden record on Cummings’ own site shows the post was edited at 8:55pm on 14 April, the day he has told the public he had returned from his trip to Durham.
Downing Street was asked at 8am on Tuesday to explain why Cummings, Boris Johnson’s principal adviser, had said at the press conference that he “last year wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses”, when his only apparent blogpost on the subject was edited this year to include a reference to coronaviruses for the first time – after the current pandemic had hit.
No 10 has not yet replied to the request for comment. At the morning press briefing, Johnson’s official spokesman said: “I don’t personally know anything about that.”
Rather than warning about the threat of coronaviruses, the post was in fact a specific warning about the threat of a “lab release” origin for a future pandemic. The excerpt added by Cummings does not refer to Sars-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, but to the original Sars virus, now known as Sars-CoV-1.
There is no evidence that Sars-CoV-2 originated from a lab release, though the theory has been pushed by a number of influential sources, including the US Republican party. Donald Trump has claimed he has seen evidence the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, but has not publicly shared the source. Pressed to explain what he had seen, Trump said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/26/barnard-castle-means-pathetic-excuse-durham-dialect-12757215/
DeleteFrom BBC website:-
ReplyDeleteOf the many details about travel plans, eye tests, and drives made at Dominic Cummings's Rose Garden press conference on Monday, one thing stood out to me that does matter, and will matter well beyond the future of one adviser.
One of the absolutely core issues in assessing the government's early performance in combating the pandemic, is whether it left it too late to impose the lockdown.
Scientists involved in pandemic planning have pinpointed a specific error - that it was too reliant on existing mathematic modelling of the pandemic based on influenza. They say it had not accounted for the fact that coronavirus was a different virus.
This had two principal vital differences.
Coronavirus is far more contagious than the influenza models, and, unlike flu, there are no approved existing vaccines or treatments.
This rendered the available pandemic stockpiles of treatments and pre-purchase of tens of millions of vaccines unusable. So only testing, tracing, or forms of social distancing and lockdown were going to work.
So for the PM's chief adviser to claim, in the middle of his defence, "only last year I wrote explicitly about the danger of coronaviruses" is worthy of some inspection. Such prescience would indeed have been impressive and helpful, and he does have a long-standing and well-known interest in mathematical modelling and big data.
Looking at his blog, there is one reference to coronavirus, and it was indeed in a blog written in March last year. But it wasn't quite as billed. It is a blog about the risk of a pandemic starting from a leak from a biological lab.
The point of it is that governments should pay money to "Red Teams" to try to break security at such institutions, including £1m to "honey trap" the security bosses.
If this is the writing that "explicitly" warned of the danger of coronaviruses, then it rather suggests that a key No 10 figure believes that biolab security is the relevant issue.
But then things get even stranger.
The internet archive Wayback Machine, which tracks the changing versions of publicly available websites, shows that the blog was edited some time between 9 April and 3 May this year (after the pandemic started) to insert the reference to coronavirus and Chinese labs. This was first pointed out by a data scientist Jens Wiechers on social media, and can be seen here.
It is in the form of a new quote from an article already linked to in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It was not in the original blog.
And the sitemap of Mr Cumming's blog corroborates this, showing that this post was indeed edited at 20:55:20 on the evening of 14 April this year, still available here. This happens to be the day Mr Cummings returned to work from his Durham trip.
It is a mystery why he felt the need to burnish his credentials as a coronavirus sage so much that he pointed to having explicitly warned about something that was only added to his blog after the event.
DeleteThere is no other reference to coronavirus or Sars or Mers on his blog. There is a page on the mathematics of pandemic modelling and "herd immunity" in a long essay written on the education system in 2013, but no references to coronaviruses.
It is difficult to see why editing a year-old personal blog would have been on any list of priorities for any No 10 official on a day like that - in the middle of the period where hospital deaths had peaked the previous week, but care home deaths were still mounting.
But Mr Cummings clearly felt the need on Monday to point to examples of prescience on this specific issue.
The context of his quote on coronavirus was to help disprove the allegation, first made in the Sunday Times, that he had backed a so-called "herd immunity" strategy.
I've asked No 10 for a response on the change to his blog, the reference to Chinese biolabs, and whether he stands by the idea he explicitly wrote about the dangers of coronaviruses.
A source acknowledged that the blog was updated and pointed to the fact that the original blog from last year linked to the separate article [in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists] which did discuss coronaviruses.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/26/boris-johnson-to-face-minimal-questions-on-cummings-conduct
DeleteBoris Johnson is expected to face only a few minutes of questioning about the conduct of Dominic Cummings at his first appearance before the Commons liaison committee since becoming prime minister.
DeleteA briefing note from the controversially appointed Conservative chair, Sir Bernard Jenkin, prepared for the senior MPs shows that at 4pm on Wednesday, 20 minutes have been allocated to discuss Cummings plus three other coronavirus topics.
There is also unhappiness that there is no opportunity for questions about China or any other aspect of national security or foreign affairs – and some members have complained Jenkin is “going soft” on the prime minister.
The note, sent out on Monday lunchtime as the Cummings affair was dominating the news, says the first phase of the meeting will discuss “Dominic Cummings, roles and responsibilities, Covid-19 ‘war cabinet’, coordination with Scot/Wales/NI”.
It is the only immediate parliamentary opportunity to grill Johnson over Cummings as the meeting is taking place during recess. No prime minister’s questions are being held earlier in the day.
Jenkin will start the questioning – he has remained silent on the Cummings affair on his Twitter feed over the weekend – followed by Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the home affairs committee, the most senior opposition member.
The only others listed as being able to participate in this section are Stephen Crabb, the former Conservative minister who chairs the Welsh affairs committee; Pete Wishart, the SNP chair of the Scottish affairs committee; and Simon Hoare, the Conservative who chairs the Northern Ireland committee.
Of the Conservatives, Crabb was also silent over the Cummings affair over the weekend, although Hoare did call for Cummings to “consider his position” because of the damage he was doing to the government’s reputation. Hoare, however, is listed for two questions only.
The agenda, lasting 90 minutes as a whole, says that Johnson will then be questioned on coronavirus science, testing, tracking and testing, plans to reopen schools and restarting the economy – all substantial topics in their own right.
The liaison body is the only Commons committee that has the power to question the prime minister and used to meet twice a year before Johnson became prime minister last July.
Johnson had repeatedly cancelled his appearances before the liaison committee – normally made up of all the other select committee chairs – and only agreed to attend after Jenkin was appointed this month.
The pro-Brexit Conservative grandee was appointed at the behest of the government, even though he is not a chairman of any select committee. “I already feel he is going soft on the prime minister,” a Conservative member said.
DeleteIn his briefing note, Jenkin said he wanted to adopt “a topic-based approach” rather than allocate a specific amount of time to each questioner in each segment of the meeting, which typically last 20 minutes.
“If it can be made to work, this will demonstrate that the committee is focused on the issues of most public concern,” he said. The Conservative added that he wanted “to prioritise chairs with a domestic remit”.
A fascinating tv commentary has just happened - (don't know who or what channel, just heard it through a partially open door).
ReplyDeleteIt went along the lines of the person speaking describing how Cummings' account was very much centered upon himself & his own importance, how *he* 'had to get back to work', how *he* had discussed the pandemic last year (as discussed above), how *he* broke protocol & spoke to the press directly & held court in the Downing Street garden, how *he* controlled the timing by delaying the scheduled 3pm event for well over an hour, how *he* was the only driver (does Mrs Cummings drive?), how he is now the centre of the world's attention...
My partner walked into the room yesterday when I was watching Cummings working the crowd and described being catapulted back 30 years to work with a predatory sex offender who targetted very specific adult female victims: "those dead fish eyes, the lack of emotion, the thrill of running a high risk strategy & keeping complete control."
I have no difficulty with differing viewpoints, but as is now sadly routine, all illiterate rubbish has been been deleted and comment moderation is back in place.
ReplyDeleteJim, Off topic completely but did you post in favour of Brexit in the days leading up to the vote? I recall being surprised at the time and briefly questioning my own stance.
ReplyDeleteA very good question and I can't remember. I'm pretty sure I was careful to avoid saying how I intended to vote and the search facility shows I never used the term 'Brexit' in a blog post. From time to time I have strayed on to the topic and have certainly argued strongly for Electoral Reform. My thoughts after the result can be found here:-
Deletehttps://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2016/06/making-sense-of-it-all.html
I voted against joining the Common Market, from memory because it effectively meant 'dumping' our historic Commonwealth trading relationships. I felt strongly that the EU had become autocratic, bureaucratic, anti-democratic and unaccountable and required urgent reform. Post 2008 and the economic crisis its treatment of Greece was appalling and Italy would have been next. A policy of 'ever-closer union' was a terrible prospect and completely counter to grassroot moves towards increased localism. Unfortunately the arrogant men in suits would not countenance reform and a horribly polarised campaign plagued by lies, together with a working-class revolt fostered by both Tory and Labour gave us a perverse result. It was mad to have a referendum based on a simple majority. Commonsense said it should have been a two-thirds majority decision. Unfortunately anyone who wanted EU reform was forced to either abstain or vote for Brexit. Voting to remain would have merely given the men in grey suits the belief that reform was not necessary and the EU project could carry on regardless.
Meanwhile I thought this from the Guardian yesterday was rather good:-
ReplyDeletePerhaps on Sunday you watched the entire nation being lectured on what constitutes fatherly responsibility by Boris Johnson, a man who won’t even say how many children he has, and leaves women to bring up an unspecified number of them. Perhaps on Monday you watched the Guardian’s Rowena Mason being lectured in journalism by Johnson, a man sacked from a newspaper for fabricating quotes from his own godfather, and who blithely discussed helping a friend to have another journalist beaten up. Perhaps today, you heard Michael Gove tell LBC he has “on occasion” driven a car to check his eyesight.
If you did see these things, I can only direct you to the slogan flyposted all over Paris during the 1968 civil unrest. “DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND – THERE IS A FAULT WITH REALITY.” The term “gaslighting” is much overused, but let’s break the glass on it for the events of the past few days. As for “indefensible”… well, I don’t think that word means what you thought it meant.
Anyway. I see the latest science Dominic Cummings knows more about than you is optometry. Half an hour late on Monday afternoon – like he’s Mariah Carey and not some spad in inside-out pants – the Islington-dwelling humanities graduate took to Downing Street’s rose garden. There, he delivered the most preposterous address to a nation since Tiger Woods stood in front of an audience, including his mother, and apologised to his wife and sponsors. The difference is that Woods had a problem with cocktail waitresses, while Cummings fucks entire public health messages in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Also, he’s not remotely sorry.
By now, you may be dimly aware that his wife showing coronavirus symptoms saw Cummings first return to Downing Street, then embark on what we might call an Odyssean project: a heroic 260-mile quest all the way to County Durham, breaking the spirit and letter of lockdown rules he helped to write. I guess he just wanted to be a rule-maker, not a rule-taker. Then, he explained, he embarked on a 60-mile round trip to Barnard Castle, with his child in the car, to see if his eyes were so banjaxed that it was unsafe for him to drive. Which is … but no. I’m sorry, I just can’t with that one. Maybe later. Hopefully he’s at least nuked his car insurance premium.
Apologies for having to get tough with a guy who has always cultivated an image of himself as the Roy Keane of Westminster, even if that is like being the Clint Eastwood of the DVLA. But if Cummings and his wife didn’t know what they’d done was wrong, why would they choose to write a lengthy article last month about their virus experience – full of personal family information – which omitted all of these dramas, all of these material facts. Or as Cummings addressed these questions of what is unredeemable in the rose garden: “I stress to people that they should not believe everything in the newspapers.” And I stress to people that by far the most inaccurate account of the period in question was in the Spectator, bylined Mary Wakefield and Dominic Cummings. As for his querulous domestic exceptionalism, you’d think they were the first parents ever to get properly ill in possession of children. Or child, in this case. God knows, it’s not much fun. But, dare millions of us say, it is kind of what you sign up for – a reality not lost on the ICU nurse couple I heard on the radio, explaining about both of them being hard hit by Covid-19, and having to isolate with their own three children without help.
Cummings’ university history tutor once described him as “something like a Robespierre”, “determined to bring down things that don’t work”. Five years after his revolution, Robespierre himself was deemed to be something that didn’t really work, and was “brought down”, to euphemise the business of being relieved of your head in front of an ecstatic mob. I must say I found the footage of Cummings being screamed at in his street on Sunday distinctly disturbing when set alongside his account of his family’s house having become a target for threats of violence. This is never right.
DeletePart of what’s disturbing was the vignette of a Britain Cummings himself did much to foment: grimly polarised, reflexively aggressive and running with an undercurrent of menace. His crowning triumph – the successful campaign to leave the EU – was a masterclass of stoking and exploiting divisions, unpleasantly emotive half-truths or untruths, and evidently considered itself above the law. I wrote last year about the dangerous folly of whipping up people versus parliament narratives, and how quickly those who imagine themselves on the side of the people can suddenly be reclassified as an enemy politician. But even I would have thought it too neat, too written, for Cummings to find himself on the wrong end of his sorcery as quickly as he has been. The thing about playing to angry mobs is that eventually they get angry with you. They came for Robespierre in the end, too.
For all the draw of the Cummings character, though, the last few days are ultimately a terrible story about Johnson. “Wash your hands, wash your hands” the prime minister kept gibbering last night. He’s certainly washing his hands of it all. All populists secretly hate their people, and Johnson is no different. But that “secretly” is key. His decision to keep Cummings brings his contempt for those he is meant to serve into the open. He would rather endanger their lives by compromising a vital public health strategy.
But why? The thing about Johnson is that he desperately wanted to become prime minister, and he desperately wanted to have been prime minister. It’s just the bit in between he struggles with. With Othello, it was jealousy. Macbeth: ambition. Lear: pride. Johnson: career liar, hollowed out by narcissism, who not even his friends would joke was motivated by public service. I guess it’s the little things that trip you up, isn’t it?
Anyone who imagines his defence of Cummings is born of loyalty is unfamiliar with the concept “Boris Johnson”. This is actually a simple story: man with no ideas is too terrified to sack his ideas man. Or to put it in the complex intellectual terms it deserves, some street heckler once shouted at David Hasselhoff: “Oi! Hasselhoff! You’re nothing without your talking car!” Cummings is the talking car to Johnson’s Hasselhoff.
So here we are. Cummings stays, and only irresistible external events will make Johnson do the right thing. He is not himself capable. We have the highest death toll in Europe, we left the care homes to their fate, our test-and-trace blunders are an international embarrassment, and we didn’t even save our economy. Johnson takes daily runs, but appears only once or twice a week in a crisis to fail at leadership.
This is the utter smallness of the man, and the tragedy for everyone stuck being governed by him. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the acceptance. It would be nice to think we’re not so beaten that we don’t expect better than what he’s given us. After all, lives literally depend on it.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
I think it's very apt to mention Brexit amongst the Cummings row. There's a lot of similarities with the politics of both.
ReplyDeleteShould he stay or leave is the question that requires answering, and the amount of tripe and bullshit being spread about is shocking, insulting to the nations intelligence, and very representative of how the EU referendum was fought.
Actually, I think the current problem with Cummings is demonstrating just how much the Brexit argument has changed and damaged the way our politics are done. Again, just like Brexit, the arguments for and against Cummings is designed to polarise people and make it tribal, with us or against us, no middle ground.
Johnsons flat refusal to sack Cummings has led however to some very interesting debate. Why does Johnson fear losing Cummings so much? Who's really running the country? Is Johnson a capable PM or just the figurehead of an Old Etonian elitist club?
I think Johnson has exposed himself as the jester he is. He wanted to be PM only to add the achievement to his trophy cupboard. He had no real ability or even desire to go beyond achieving the position. The Tories schooled with more political knowledge understood that too. Johnson was elected leader of the party solely to win the election and make sure we left the EU. His job is done. His importance to the party is now hugely reduced, and the way he's handled the Cummings row, has to my mind, made him pretty vulnerable in his position. If Cummings and Johnson come as an inseparable pair, could the only way to remove Cummings in the end mean removing Johnson aswell?
There was a fascinating peice on Newsnight yesterday which really threw down the gauntlet to Government. Very clearly and with no ambiguity it stated that by any stretch of the imagination Cummings broke lockdown rules regardless of what the Government are telling us. The peice provoked two questions. Did Cummings breach lockdown rules because he feels part of the elite and believes the rules don't apply to him?
Secondly, does the Governments response and explanations for Cummings behaviour demonstrate that our Government sees the general public as thick as two short planks?
'Getafix
It's not the peice I referred to in my previous post, but Newsnight gets a thumbs up from the Independent for its approach on reporting on the Cummings saga.
Deletehttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/emily-maitlis-newsnight-dominic-cummings-lockdown-coronavirus-durham-a9533956.html%3famp
Interestingly too, Liz Saville Roberts has accused the Government this morning of announcing the reopening of schools as an attempt to distract from the Cummings row. Therefore the decision to reopen schools is based on political tactics to save Dominic Cummings and not on a decision of national safety.
Already some regions have stated that they will not be reopening schools regardless of Government advice.
Dominic Cummings defence has been all about the concern, safety and wellbeing for his child. Such concerns led to his instinctive decision to protect that child by driving from London to Durham.
I just wonder how many parents will make the instinctive decision to protect their child by not sending them back to school in accordance with Government instructions?
I wonder too if any of the usual sanctions for keeping your child off school will be applied?
Surely, as with Cummings, you shouldn't fear penelty when you act with an instinctive nature to the safety of your child?
It's what any parent would do, right?
'Getafix
As far as I'm aware the penalties for not attending school will not be applied. BUT... it seems there might yet be a Cummings Clause!!
DeleteBoth of the following are dated 11 May 2020:
London Evening Standard: "Parents will not be fined for refusing to send their children back to school due to safety concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Government has said.
The announcement came as new guidance detailing Boris Johnson's roadmap for exiting the Covid-19 lockdown was published by officials on Monday."
Anthony Collins Solicitors: "What will happen if parents refuse to send their child back to school?
Sadly, this is something that there has not yet been guidance issued on and it is unclear whether or not schools should record and report absences in the usual way when schools begin their phased return next month... Ministers have yet to make clear whether these rules would apply post-lockdown and it is unclear whether the potential return to school on 1 June would be optional or compulsory."
Perhaps Mr Cummings could advise???
https://www.gov.uk/school-attendance-absence/legal-action-to-enforce-school-attendance
DeleteParenting Order
This means you have to go to parenting classes. You’ll also have to do what the court says to improve your child’s school attendance.
Education Supervision Order
If the council thinks you need support getting your child to go to school but you’re not co-operating, they can apply to a court for an Education Supervision Order.
A supervisor will be appointed to help you get your child into education. The local council can do this instead of prosecuting you, or as well.
School Attendance Order
You’ll get a School Attendance Order if the local council thinks your child is not getting an education.
You have 15 days to provide evidence that you’ve registered your child with the school listed in the order or that you’re giving them home education. If you do not, you could be prosecuted or given a fine.
Fine
Your local council can give each parent a fine of £60, which rises to £120 each if you do not pay within 21 days. If you do not pay the fine after 28 days you may be prosecuted for your child’s absence from school.
Check your local council’s rules on when you can be fined.
Prosecution
You could get a fine of up to £2,500, a community order or a jail sentence up to 3 months. The court also gives you a Parenting Order.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-can-parents-keep-children-home-once-schools-return
DeleteSays the Government: "The welfare of children and staff has been at the heart of all decision making"
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers/reopening-schools-and-other-educational-settings-from-1-june
DeleteYet another unclear moment from this guidance - surely a parent or legal guardian must give permission before a child can be tested?
"Can children be tested for the virus?
Once settings open to more children and young people, staff and pupils in all settings will be eligible for testing if they become ill with coronavirus symptoms, as will members of their household. This will enable children and young people to get back to childcare or education, and their parents or carers to get back to work, if the test proves to be negative.
A positive test will ensure rapid action to protect their classmates and staff in their setting."
We must not be distracted from the fact that Cummings' chums were granted the contract by NHSX - outwith the usual tendering procedure - to provide the UK Track&Trace app:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/blog/twenty-questions-about-the-nhsx-contact-tracing-app
Some very good questions that haven't yet been answered by HM Govt.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/05/06/whitehall-analytica-vote-leave-firm-tied-to-cambridge-analytica-will-configure-nhsx-contact-tracing-app/
DeleteAn artificial intelligence firm previously hired by Dominic Cummings to work on the Vote Leave campaign has been intimately involved in R&D for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) contact tracing app. The app, launched by NHSX, a NHS subsidiary focused on digital innovation, is currently being trialled in the Isle of Wight before national rollout across the UK.
On Friday 1 May, Faculty AI’s co-founding chief executive Marc Warner wrote in The Times that “despite claims by some, we are not working on the contact tracing app”.
However, a paper published by Oxford University’s Big Data Institute appears to contradict this flat denial, confirming that Faculty is directly involved in the modelling research that will “configure” and “optimise” the NHSX app.
Marc Warner’s brother, Ben Warner, is currently a No. 10 advisor on digital solutions who as a former principal at Faculty (previously known as ASI Data Science), worked closely with Dominic Cummings on Vote Leave’s modelling. At the time this modelling was being overseen by Canadian data firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which in turn was working for notorious data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
DeleteLast year, the final report of a Select Committee parliamentary inquiry concluded: “The work of AIQ highlights the fact that data has been and is still being used extensively by private companies to target people, often in a political context, in order to influence their decisions.”
Both the Warner brothers and Dominic Cummings have attended meetings of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE).
https://tech.newstatesman.com/coronavirus/palantir-covid19-datastore-coronavirus
Delete"Faculty is responsible for turning the data Palantir collates into actionable insights for hospitals, as well as government officials and ministers. Its services may not need to be retained to keep the project running afterwards. NS Tech understands that the data is playing a central role in the decision-making around when the government will allow the NHS to start performing elective care again."
Might a concerned father use his instincts to protect his child & wife from such data intrusions at a time of crisis?
Police broke up a bank holiday party at a Conservative MP's house amid the coronavirus lockdown, according to reports.
ReplyDeleteThe Daily Mirror says two visitors were asked to leave the house of Rob Roberts, MP for Delyn in north Wales, and balloons and banners were seen outside.
Police said "When we called at the property, two people visiting the house left following advice and no further action was taken."
want a distraction?
ReplyDeletehttps://spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/27/falcon-9-crew-dragon-demo-2-mission-status-center/
Live nasa feed available