To be fair to Cummings, referring to Hancock as a “useless F*ckpig” doesn’t seem to be unreasonable given the evidence that we’re hearing.
Not much of a defence though.
Its like me calling someone a bit of shit rider whilst also talking about how I could win the tdf and the downhill world champs if only I wasnt busy fighting against the singletrack media elite and writing lengthy articles about how to win on substack.
Whereas it is more the "they are a bit shit" would be followed by "but still a bit better than me" or maybe "christ. they are worse than me?"
Johnson and his team laughing at what the Italians were going through when it hit them? What utter c****. They are God damned sick sociopaths. I remember watching the news each night and feeling desperately sad for them and knowing a similar COVID wave would be coming our way very soon.
In other news...
Don't worry! If you were old when COVID hit you had nothing to fear... As long as you read the right news paper! Huzzah!!
According to these two rags, it's was Cummins being a bit sweary that was the real concern... Not your PM saying you should be 6 feet under to save the economy and be glad to help out.
"Die Out to Help Out" That's what I'm calling this policy.
... and they will still vote Tory. 😆
Not sure about all of those examples of "more male pursuits" from MacNamara.
Football yes.
Fishing maybe.
Shooting and hunting though?
Think thats more about a specific pressure group in the tories as opposed to men in general.
binners
Full Member
It takes some front for Boris Johnson to accuse someone else of an ‘orgy of narcissism’Pot kettle ****!
I hope that makes the Italians news. I hope they remember that when he goes over there on holiday as he inevitably will at some point.
Is it the fly tipped sofa's turn tomorrow?
According to these two rags...
Nice to see they've got the poppy and the "we shall remember them" on the front page already.
If you die in a war, that's fine and we'll have a couple of minutes silence for you; if you die in a pandemic due to the incompetence of those in charge, well that's your own fault.
Has there ever been a group of people who’s ludicrously overinflated idea of their own abilities is so howlingly different from the reality that was so glaringly obvious to everyone around them.
Yes, they usually describe themselves as 'Risk Professionals'.
I work with them and have to listen to utter b011ocks every single day, but at least they aren't up for letting folk die left, right & centre.
I'm on the sound desk today and I've got Chris Witty here. What does STW want me to ask him 😂
I hope that makes the Italians news. I hope they remember that when he goes over there on holiday as he inevitably will at some point.
Funny you should say that, there was a snap of him* yesterday on a Ryanair flight to Italy.
*well, allegedly him
https://twitter.com/Ryanair/status/1720046153444610100?t=U50YI3gcMRd36iZdBbIDmw&s=19
I have to say, I do not have much sympathy for Matt Hancock, but the way that it is being reported about the decisions about hypothetically who should have lived and who should have died is being really unfair to him.
My understanding is that he said that if it came down to having to ration resources, then he felt the responsibility of that decision should (quite rightly IMO) lie with the minister and not clinicians.
It's being reported as "Matt Hancock wanted to decide who lives and who dies."
I do not like the man, but that actually strikes me as a rare example of an elected politician stepping up to take responsibility for something.
I think a lot of what is being reported does depend very much on context - my own first contribution to the Covid thread is cringingly awful now, looking back, but I would expect the government who have to make decisions having to have a conversation about "how many people would it cost us if we didn't have a lockdown", and who should decide the criteria for who is not going to be treated and left to die.
If they hadn't been having those sort of debates - which should be properly on the record, based on the best current scientific advice*, and not on disappearing WhatsApp posts - then they weren't doing their jobs properly. I'm not sure if Hancock wanted to play God or was trying to take the overall responsibility away from clinicians, but those are the kind of decisions any government may have to consider in times of crisis.
*Worth remembering that despite what we may want to happen, this enquiry is aimed at learning lessons so we are better prepared for the next pandemic.
Hancock was always going to be the fall guy for everything. Thats what Johnson appointed him, then kept him in place for and he was just too thick and egotistical to realise it
The bloke is an utter ****!
If you've not seen this, then its well worth a watch....
*Worth remembering that despite what we may want to happen, this enquiry is aimed at learning lessons so we are better prepared for the next pandemic.
According to those at the sharp end we had a really good plan in place and the resources for it were dissipated by the 2010 government in their first couple of years in charge.
Worth remembering too that scientific consensus was that it wasn't an airbourne disease until someone checked the assumptions and discovered that the WHO had been using unproven 'facts' from the 40's (see https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2022-069940.abstract ) Prof. Greenhalgh is worth a follow on social media for a similar level of detail to @TiRed
Doubtless BJ will spew out even more porky pies about bravely shaking hands with Covid victims and being at death's door himself. It was reported that Kettering General Hospital had no CV patients when he visited and I read someone had done a detailed analysis of the treatment of a patient suffering severely and it was a million miles from his account. Now if there's anyone whom I would have liked to have seen come out feet first...
Here's the tale of how the WHO was moved from contact spread to airborne spread https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/
According to those at the sharp end we had a really good plan in place and the resources for it were dissipated by the 2010 government in their first couple of years in charge.
That was quite widely reported at the time, but hopefully this inquiry will result in even better plans bring put in place and future governments will remember what happens of you are stupid enough to run it down.
It would be good if the enquiry resulted in *a* plan; as for good plans, that's too much to expect.
I can only hope that Hugo Keith is sharpening his stiletto in readiness for johnson, hancock and sunak.
That was quite widely reported at the time, but hopefully this inquiry will result in even better plans bring put in place and future governments will remember what happens of you are stupid enough to run it down.
Or even some protocols that make trying to do so without some kind of crossparty consultation very very difficult.
binners
Full MemberHancock consistently assured everyone that there was a plan in place to cope with the pandemic
There wasn’t.
I was thinking about this earlier... People are saying "Hancock displayed supreme confidence" "He said there was a plan and people believed him". But I can't remember ever once looking at Hancock in this period and thinking he looked like a man with a plan. At best he looked like a man who's just worked out he's in the shit and has no idea what to do about it, at worst he seemed completely adrift. Plus, he was one of the most incapabable of following the guidance, except that it looked less like ignoring it, it just seemed like he couldn't keep up. Remember him coughing and sneezing away in the commons, or the social distancing blindness, it didn't look like "I'm above such things", he just looked confused and lost and incapable. He only seemed to have any real confidence when he was making it all about testing.
I remember saying at the time, if it were Hunt he'd ben rubbing his hands at the opportunity, the perfect crisis to break the NHS with, but Hancock looked like the only thought in his brain was ohshitohshitohshit.
But apparently other people were looking at him in the same window and going "Yes, THERE's a man with a plan, I don't even feel the need to ask for details or reports, I'll just trust him completely"
If it was anyone else but Johnson and the gang of fourth-rate clowns he surrounded himself with, you’d scarcely believe it
But it is, so you do
That in the face of a looming global pandemic, you’d take at face value an idiot like Hancock saying ‘don’t worry, I’ve got a plan’ without at least asking for the detail of what this alleged ‘plan’ actually was
It defies belief, but after what we’ve heard over the last few days, apparently not. They were all just winging it and nobody questioned anything for fear of hearing something that might shatter the game they were all playing of pretending to be a government
but Hancock looked like the only thought in his brain was ohshitohshitohshit
I use a very simple question as a litmus test for effective crisis leadership:
"Does this individual display the required attributes to make me went them alongside me in a gunfight?"
If there's a 'no' or a 'yes, but' in there then I'm afraid in the big RM book of leadership you're not fit to lead the queue in B&M let alone hold a position that has influence over others lives.
Simple, unambiguous and fairly easy to map even if you've never been in a gunfight.
I rather sadly feel this way about many MPs of all tribes.
Quite surprised that people are saying " its worse than we thought" for me its "better than i thought"
its pretty much exactly what I thought was going on. It was obvious that decisions on restrictions were too slow each time thus meaning they had to go on longer. Its was obvious that centralising test and trace and sidelining expertise in local authorities was going to be rubbish. it was obvious hancock was out of his depth and that Johnson did not take it seriously
Incompetent shower of corrupt bastards
Incompetent shower of corrupt bastards
I'd expect little improvement from any person who has never really had a proper job for any period of time and spent their entire life in politics.
Would really like to see more laypeople move into politics as a second career, can't be any worse than it currently is.
Well we either figure out a way to change that or this is it for the foreseeable, a bunch of self-serving mid-wits who'll lead us to our collective demise.😂
But then, we do fall for their bullshit as it speaks to our own agendas and ideologies, so maybe there's something in us getting the political class we deserve not the one we need...
The expertise is supposed to come from the Civil Service. Sadly this lot hate them, mainly for telling them the reality rather than just fluffing their egos.
I’d love to see a new “People’s Party” emerge, run by real workers. Sadly I think the population at large is too stupid and selfish to vote for realistic policies instead of unicorns.
But then, we do fall for their bullshit as it speaks to our own agendas and ideologies, so maybe there’s something in us getting the political class we deserve not the one we need…
The thing is that now everyone, bar the wilfully blind like Dorres and Rees-Mogg, can see Boris Johnson for the callous and clueless incompetent that he is. I think (hope!) that the 'lets vote for him, because he looks like a bit of a laugh' has well and truly run its course. What we're hearing over the last few days just confirms what we all knew... that he was the very last person on earth to be sleeping at the wheel in a national emergency.
The only bonus that can come of this is that the Tory party can now hopefully have many years in opposition to ponder the error of their populist experiment with low rent Trumpism that led them down this political mop-headed cul-de-sac.
I expect that all this weeks car crash is just the warm up act to the multi-lane pile-up of Hancock, Johnson and Sunak having to testify under oath. 'Rats in a sack' is the likely outcome as they desperately try to deflect blame onto one another. Hopefully that will be the final nail in the coffin of this gang of grifters
I expec5 Johnson’s testimony to just be waffle and lack of memory, sprinkled with “vaccine rollout” and self aggrandisement.
I expec5 Johnson’s testimony to just be waffle and lack of memory, sprinkled with “vaccine rollout” and self aggrandisement.
He'll go into full PMQ mode, I fully expect him to accuse the inquiry KC of being Jeremy Corbyn's biggest fan, beholden to his union paymasters and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Vaccines, waffle, waffle, vaccines.
The expertise is supposed to come from the Civil Service
I agree with Cummings (and others) in the view that the way the CS is organised, run, and perhaps more importantly how people get promoted through it is probably no longer fit for purpose. They (the CS) still champion the "all rounder" and they're suspicious of their own people who stay in depts. too long, and the only way to get promoted through the upper echelons is not to become expert in your field, but to have broad experience.
You can see the result of this when folks from HMRC find themselves recruited to become 'poachers' in the City for salaries 10 times what they can get working for the govt. and the same thing happens in every govt specialism.
If anything the COVID enquiry should at least focus on this failing.
Wasn't the standout quote from yesterday, from Simon case, with regards to the cabinet:
"I've never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country"
In an exchange of private messages sent before he became Cabinet Secretary in July 2020, Mr Case described Downing Street staff as "mad" and "poisonous".
No surprises there then, eh?
I agree with Cummings (and others) in the view that the way the CS is organised, run, and perhaps more importantly how people get promoted through it is probably no longer fit for purpose. They (the CS) still champion the “all rounder” and they’re suspicious of their own people who stay in depts. too long, and the only way to get promoted through the upper echelons is not to become expert in your field, but to have broad experience.
Ministers and their political appointee aides have moved so far away from rational thinking and logic that it was almost impossible for civil servants to moderate them on many issues. The fallout from Brexit left the cabinet full of people addicted to magical thinking, as this was the only way to reconcile their responsibility for one of the dumbest ideas in British political history. Anyone remotely sensible could not stomach it, and resigned or were purged.
You were left with a gang of grifters, idiots or head-in-the-sand merchants (mostly a combination of all three), sprinkled with some cynical disaster capitalists and conspiracy weirdos. Led by a liar and fraud with no interest in detail, preferring vacuous bullshit and boosterism.
You couldn't have a worse crew lined up to deal with a public health emergency on that scale.
What Martin says.
Also, the FCO (as it was called) definitely favoured internal experts not floating generalists... you can only imagine the problems that caused as they were sent out to find the Brexit unicorns for their ministers.
They (the CS) still champion the “all rounder” and they’re suspicious of their own people who stay in depts. too long, and the only way to get promoted through the upper echelons is not to become expert in your field, but to have broad experience.
And they never stick around long enough to deal with the consequences, or learn from, their mistakes. The only thing I agree with Cummings on.
Yes, I spent quite a few years working in Whitehall with a few departments - most ‘working grades’ of civil servants have very limited scope in their work are trammelled by budgets and policy and so have limited scope to wriggle in their swim lanes. With the Con/Lib administration the concept of collaboration was discarded in favour of market liberalisation and a Treasury mantra of competition delivering value - this is fine if you have people well versed in project and contract management but the Carillion failure was a precursor to the blatant PPE frauds - departments lacked the sensible heads as they’d been increasingly replaced by political poodles due to Brexit. Much of the decision making had been contracted-out to the big 4 consultancies that there were relatively few heads left to wake up and smell the coffee. Brexit was also such a huge distraction diverting absolutely massive resources from across all departments - pandemic readiness planning as featured highly in the National Security Review risk register was sacrificed for “getting Brexit done”. Throw self-serving chumps like Hancock into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster - even as a junior minister he was often out his depth in a puddle. I was once at an event at the FCO and there was palpable embarrassment at Johnson as he tried to wing-it in front of a knowledgeable audience. He failed there and was still appointed as PM.
Humphrey
It's uncanny isn’t it?
