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Under fire over lockdown trip, close aide to British PM Johnson refuses to resign

44 Comments
By Estelle Shirbon and Elizabeth Piper

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Utter arrogance, fabricated excuses after the fact, and disrespect for all the people who observed the lockdown rules and so were unable to care for their own loved ones and in so many cases unable to say goodbye before death. He needs slapping, but since that's not an option, he must be fired.

11 ( +12 / -1 )

However, driving ones car here and there is not at all risky!

The problem is the government’s message and police handling was overboard which led millions of Brits to become brainwashed.

One reason (I believe) that the virus spread to many in the UK is that mask wearing is not observed..

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

Hope he sticks around very prominently until the next election.

He should give a special televised press conference on the evening before polling day, just to make sure that everyone is entirely certain what the Tories are all about.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Then driving his car to test his eyes is very weak.

He looks to be on the shakiest ground with this one. I wouldn't say the rest was very strong, but this seems quite unlikely.

However, he might be able to see this one out of nothing new turns up.

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

The Reuters report is sparing on the facts which are: illegally leaving his lockdown in London and undertaking a long road journey to Durham with his covid-infected family (wife) and child, Scummings exposed others to the risk of contagion. Then to make matters worse, he, ill himself, drove his sick family to a beauty spot while the rest of the country had been strictly forbidden to leave their homes.

...he said his eyesight had been affected by his illness and they wanted to check he would be able to undertake the journey back to London.

To this preposterous explanation most would say that it was "all my eye", and the same goes for the flimsy excuses of the inveterate porky-telling PM who has a penchant for insulting the intelligence of the public:

"(it is) very very plausible that eyesight can be a problem associated with coronavirus", telling journalists he's having to wear glasses "for the first time in years".

As the Brits are wont to say: you couldn't make it up!

6 ( +7 / -1 )

Well this has to be a first..........

Dominic Cummings, senior aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, makes a statement at 10 Downing Street, London, on Monday.

Cummings is not, correct me if I am wrong, never been mandated or appointed to a position in high office.

Cummings is the flipping help, an “advisor”, a lackey.

View the photo, Cummings is akin to a *wash-room* attendant, afforded a platform to request the public's pardon, forgiveness for neglecting to notice the toilet papers run out.

Are we all trapped in the political equivalent of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits?

Either sack him or shut up.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

Cummings is little more than pompous panto. I wanted to be vulgar, however the JT indecorous detector is all seeing/monitoring my every key stroke

What is this Government thinking of, allowing this lying fool to make fork tongued statements from the Downing Street lawns of all places?

10 ( +10 / -0 )

I love how is refusing to resign. And nor should he! The BBC are going bananas!

-18 ( +1 / -19 )

Rather threadbare article.

I watched the whole thing, it was jaw dropping. Firstly he gave a long, rambling statement saying, yes he did break the lockdown but he didn’t do anything wrong because he decided he was doing the right thing. He sounded like a kid telling his teacher that a dog ate his homework. He contradicted himself many times while dully intoning this written statement.

During questioning he blamed the press for the anger being expressed by the public, not his actions, but the press for reporting them. He also admitted breaking lockdown when he, his wife and child were ill. Regarding the excursion to Barnard Castle, which coincidentally happened on his wife’s birthday, this was not a jolly for his family, oh no; his eyesight had been affected by the virus so he made the 60 mile round trip in order to TEST HIS EYESIGHT. Yes, I thought I heard wrong too, it he repeated again later.

He said he went to Durham to access child care, but never actually used any childcare. He said he never stopped on the journey to Durham, which is impossible as you’d need to refuel. There was zero need to go to Durham. In complaining about false media articles, he failed to mention the one telling the biggest lies of all, the one his wife Mary wrote for the Spectator in April which described how the family were coping with being on lockdown in London, to which contributed.

He insists he didn’t do anything wrong, citing as proof an exemption clause in the rules which was created solely to enable victims of domestic and child abuse to leave home and seek sanctuary elsewhere. Cummings also said, when asked about the sacrifices others made in lockdown, that maybe they should have used their instinct to interpret the rules like he did.

The man is a disgrace. Johnson and those Tories supporting Cummings are a disgrace. This has not ended here.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Even the Church of England bishops, invoking the wrath of god, tin divine chastisement

Must have gone something like this .....He  gave his people over to the sword and vented his wrath on his heritage. fire then devoured the Cummings

Far more straightforward just to seek his resignation.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Full Demonic Cummings Speech.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBZ8UowYnU

Ho Hum

1 ( +2 / -1 )

"Quizzed about a 30-mile drive he took with his wife and son from the family farm to a beauty spot, Barnard Castle, he said his eyesight had been affected by his illness and they wanted to check he would be able to undertake the journey back to London."

So, not having hit any other cars, cyclists or pedestrians Cummings concluded that he was indeed fit to drive.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Cummings is not above the law and must resign to protect the integrity of the government he is serving. Johnson should say that to his advisor instead of trying to protect him. In Australia, the NSW Art Minister Don Harwin resigned after breaching Covid-19 health order.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

As Maria, says, this guy sounded absolutely arrogant. I can't believe that all he and BoJo could come up with was the excuse of trying to "test out his eyesight". You need to drive to a castle to do that??!!

The absolute callousness of his past remarks and the way he has of controlling JBoJo in a Rasputin/Svengali sort of way gives off vibes of Stephen Miller in the Plump administration. Evilness, ruthlessness and  ̶b̶a̶l̶d̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ boldness. Is it any wonder the US and UK are two of the worse-off countries when it comes to COVID-19 stats? Look at he other two, Russia and Brazil, and you can see a correlation between the pandemic and "leadership".

I hear he was the one who came up with the idea of the NHS getting an extra 350 million pounds per week because of Brexit. I'd be laughing if it wasn't so sad.

People have died, others didn't have a chance to say goodbye, and most people have done what the government has asked them to do. BoJo may have had one foot in the grave, but people will remember this absolute shambles at the next election and won't have any more sympathy. And now we definitely know who's running the show, and it's not the PM.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

i really wonder why Japantoday is so interested in writing the news about Dominic Cummings??

This is irrelevant news for japan. Howmany people know about Dominic Cummings in the uk?

Howmany people know about Dominic Cummings in japan???????

And Howmany people are intersted in the news about him in the uk??Howmany people are intersted in the news about him in japan??

Just, uk media is exaggerating the new,As they always do in the uk and all over the world.

-17 ( +1 / -18 )

Has he got something on Johnson?

4 ( +5 / -1 )

andy:

In that case, get rid of all the articles related to US only. In fact, get rid of the world news section. And articles related to Trump. How many people in Japan know who Mike Pence is? How many are familiar with NFL. Israel, Brazil and France? I'm just looking at what JT has reported on recently.

And Howmany people are intersted in the news about him in the uk??

Well, you don't hold a press conference in the UK's rose garden if you've just broken your finger nail, so I guess a lot of Brits were interested in what he had to say.

12 ( +12 / -0 )

Has he got something on Johnson?

He knows the names of all of Johnson's kids!

(Shamelessly copied from the one of the comments on yahoo news).

9 ( +9 / -0 )

All Government websites removed the Stay At Home messages at the weekend. Co-incidence? Not as laughable as Cabinet Ministers and other Tory MPs all posting the exact same messages on social media saying he didn’t do anything wrong apart from loving his family, now saying he explained everything adequately, now move on. Do they think we won’t notice they are copy and pasting the orders from Conservative Central Office. Fobbing off angry constituents with the exact same messages too.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Has he got something on Johnson?

Undoubtedly.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

 Howmany people know about Dominic Cummings in the uk?

Most, I imagine.

Howmany people know about Dominic Cummings in japan???????

Not many perhaps, but they can read about him in the news. Then they will know a bit more. That's what the news is for.

And Howmany people are intersted in the news about him in the uk??

Most, I imagine. Many are not only interested, but fuming.

Howmany people are intersted in the news about him in japan??

I'm in Japan and personally I'm more interested in the state of play in the UK, including the machinations of its unelected leaders, than I am in the endless round of reports on what Trump is tweeting, what's on US TV, recipes for ingredients not available in Japan and with archaic measurements, like cups of carrots, that tends these days to be daily fare on JT.

The BBC obviously has more on the whole infuriating debacle. Nearly 37,000 people have died in the UK because of Covid19. How much worse would the infection have been, how many more people would have died, if the rest of the population had taken the same cavalier 'it's all about me and mine, st∞ff you and yours' attitude that Dominic Cummings took? He's just one man, a family of three; what if thousands, millions, of others had thought like him and scooted around the country as they saw fit, 'protecting their family' and spreading the virus wherever they went?

It's OK for one man to do it, not OK for everyone to do it.

One law for him, another law for the plebs.

Do as he say, not as he do.

Slimy hypocrite.

Invalid CSRF

7 ( +8 / -1 )

The word is that the place libertarian eugenicist Cummings decided to get his eyes tested at just happens to be GlaxoSmithKline's factory near Barnard Castle.

Two days after Cumming's "eye test" GlaxoSmithKline announced an agreement to develop a vaccine for Covid-19.

Just a coincidence, right?

3 ( +5 / -2 )

"Palpably false"

Lying Johnson's joke government has to go. It really is a terrible Churchill tribute band.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

"Palpably false"

By blustering that some of the allegations against him were palpably false, Bozo is of course tacitly admitting that some of the allegations were not false, that Rasputin Cummings did indeed break the spirit and letter of the lockdown rules in ways that Joe Bloggs-under-lockdown was instructed not to do under pain of a hefty fine.

I would like Bozo to elucidate exactly which ones were false and which were not false, and then explain why he is not going to do anything about the ones which were not false.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Then driving his car to test his eyes is very weak.

Zichi,

I could not agree with you more.

I presume that when someone got run over by Cummings' car during his long trip, this pathological liar might have said that he would like to test how Covid affected his ability to drive.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

No BusinessToday  09:27 am JST

love how is refusing to resign. And nor should he! The BBC are going bananas!

It's quite telling that defenses of Cummings don't get a whole lot better than this.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

It's actually bizarre how blatant of a 'storm in a teacup' this story is from the outside looking in.

It's quite telling that defenses of Cummings don't get a whole lot better than this.

Because it doesn't require much defending. If he was flouting the rules for personal gain you might have something to get angry about, but only political partisans are going to get upset about someone travelling to ensure they had childcare in case they got sick. Aside from that, it's frankly alarming how authoritarian these news articles and many posters have become during this pandemic. You have people talking about this like the man committed a felony, when all he did was break the 'advice of the government' which has no legal meaning and shouldn't prevail over common sense to begin with. Hell, you have the same posters that were ragging on masks a couple months ago now acting like if you don't wear a mask in public you're committing murder. The public's eagerness for authoritarianism during a crisis has never been more blatant.

-8 ( +0 / -8 )

His refusal to resign is an insult to the people of the UK who did the right thing, even when they had to miss visiting loved ones and attending their funerals.

Even the Church of England bishops, invoking the wrath of god, tin divine chastisement

Yup. And it seems that doesn't sit too well with some folk - from the Daily Record:

Bishop of Worcester John Inge tweeted that he received an email warning "stay out of politics or we'll kill you" after he criticised Boris Johnson's "risible defence" of Mr Cummings on Sunday night.

Then there's the very interesting story, currently just bubbling under the surface, of how DC allegedly changed his blog on April 14th, to include a warning on coronaviruses on the day he returned to work after that eyesight drive...

3 ( +3 / -0 )

It's actually bizarre how blatant of a 'storm in a teacup' this story is from the outside looking in.

It's actually quite bizarre how certain elements will try to downplay this.

It's a huge story, about un-elected officials having a say in how a country is run, sneering at the press and the public and then coming unstuck in a mire of hypocrisy and one rule for the elite...

Those who think it's going to just go away have misjudged the situation.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

You have people talking about this like the man committed a felony, when all he did was break the 'advice of the government' which has no legal meaning and shouldn't prevail over common sense to begin with.

Actually, it wasn't just advice, it was legally enforceable. Also, Cummings is totally entwined with the government - no policy is released without him reviewing it, so we are looking at the hypocrisy of the man.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

This is irrelevant news for japan. Howmany people know about Dominic Cummings in the uk?

andy - it appeared in the World section of JT, so it does not need to be relevant for Japan.

This may seem like a very localised story in the UK, and it probably reflects the readership of JT but also the fact that the UK has suffered worse than many other countries, partly because if the incompetence if its leaders.

Everyone in the UK will know about Dominic Cummings. He is better-known than many government ministers and is seen as being one of the most powerful men in the country.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Everyone in the UK will know about Dominic Cummings. He is better-known than many government ministers and is seen as being one of the most powerful men in the country.

That’s true. He’s recognizable and gets heckled a hell of a lot these days when he’s out in public.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

IllyasToday  03:04 pm JST

Because it doesn't require much defending. If he was flouting the rules for personal gain you might have something to get angry about, but only political partisans are going to get upset about someone travelling to ensure they had childcare in case they got sick.

What, you think that the most influential figure in the UK Prime Minister's circle couldn't arrange childcare in the UK's largest, most important city?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

cleoToday  02:49 pm JST

I would like Bozo to elucidate exactly which ones were false and which were not false, and then explain why he is not going to do anything about the ones which were not false.

Me too. It would make for a very interesting PMQ's tomorrow with Keir Starmer.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Cummings has said he last year predicted the pandemic in his blog, when in reality he edited it last month not realising everything you do is time stamped. He just can’t stop lying.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Humans take seriously and indeed live by symbols. Cummings is a bad apple that belongs in the garbage can of history. That's not an "authoritarian" view, just common sense and decency, innit?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

That man is Evil incarnate.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

As political a campaign strategist, Cummings has an impressive proven record of success, coupled with a skilled media/data analytically centric approach.

The opposite side of the coin, Cummings has numerous character flaws, his persistent problem relating to communicating policy, a propensity to project discourse over empathy. All toxic and unworkable.

The rose garden charade is an example, composed yet disengaged, distinct lacking of chemistry to understand or even comprehend the sensitivities and concerns of the electorate/public.

Johnson seem to be welded to this, may I suggest sinister svengali, possibility in the mistaken belief that Cummings is the route to that mythical political pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

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