HE'S GOING TO HANG ON, LIKE HIS HAIR.

I'd be more than happy to see the back of him, but come on, it's not exactly the crime of the century even if you do believe the dubious tale of some old bloke who says he saw some random bald bloke in a park.

>>89775
So he should be let off but the others shouldn't?

>>89776

The penalty for breaking the lockdown is a £60 fine, not losing your job.

>>89777
The bloke whose mistress came round during lockdown had to resign, and so did the Scottish woman who went to her second home. If they had to go so too should Cummings (or should that be Goings?).

>>89778
>had to

They chose to. Sturgeon was still backing Calderwood.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18359662.nicola-sturgeon-says-damaging-fire-catherine-calderwood/

>>89777
"Breaking the lockdown" means sneaking away to the beach instead of staying home. In this case, both he and his wife were infected and symptomatic. That's not something a fixed penalty is going to deal with.

This is the most boring trivial bullshit. Who gives a fuck.

I also don't give a fuck about that professor getting his end away or the Scottish women.

>>89781
Neither the professor nor the Scottish CMO were known to be infected.

>>89781

It should certainly be of your interest that government officials do not follow the advice they have set the police out to enforce on you/the rest of us.

No one gives a fuck, not about him or any of the others. So he broke lockdown, who hasn't? People are getting on with their lives because all of this is a whole load of nothing.

>>89787

I haven't. But then I wasn't involved in putting the law in place, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to stay away while their family members die alone. I'm also not involved in covering it up or lying about it to the country. I'm not fining tens of thousands of people for breaching it. Fuck you and fuck your passive, cud-chewing acceptance of corruption that causes needless deaths.

>>89785
>government officials do not follow the advice they have set the police out to enforce on you/the rest of us.

When has that ever not been the case? Of course they fucking don't. They're a bunch of self serving corrupt to the core mega cunts.

I'm more interested in how they're gonna try and unfuck the economy than this bullshit. It just feels like whipped up distraction from the actual ongoing handling of the pandemic and ensuing economic fuckdown.

What's the purpose of this thread other than a cunt-off? Both Cummings and Boris have confirmed he's not going so there you go. You might want to find something better to do with your bank holiday weekend.

>>89789
Go and have a lie down, Lily Allen.

>>89787

If that's true, why are the government enforcing lockdown for everyone else?

>>89791

So it's unreasonable to be annoyed that they're still corrupt? At what level of ongoing corruption do you expect us to stop talking about it and let it continue unabated?

>>89792
What a pathetic supplicant you sound like. I would expect that kind of submission from a court eunuch, not a citizen of a 21st century democratic nation.

>>89792

>You might want to find something better to do with your bank holiday weekend.

I've heard Durham is nice. Maybe a trip out to Barnard castle.

>>89792
What's the purpose of any thread? Why is it this one you have a problem with?

>>89793
>So it's unreasonable to be annoyed that they're still corrupt? At what level of ongoing corruption do you expect us to stop talking about it and let it continue unabated?

You can get annoyed at whatever you want. It just seems a bit futile to me to get worked up about this. It feels like a sideshow, a whipped up media/twitter "storm".

There is plenty to be angry at in the governments handling of the pandemic, and i'm sure there'll be plenty more in the coming months when the economy shits the bed. I don't see how wanting the bulbous head of cumbot on a platter is really gonna matter either way.

Anyways I shouldn't have got involved in this cunt off. I'm off for my daily government approved exercise.

>>89797

You could say the same about anything at all and sit idly by when you could be helping build momentum to actually do something about it.

He's not going anywhere. Bozza doesn't know what the fuck he's doing without this speccy little twat's hand up his arse.

It's a disgrace, and he should be sacked and sent to live in the Tower of London where crows peck his baldy little head in the baking mid-day sun, were we a better nation. But since when have the Tories ever bothered to even try cover up how it's one rule for them and another rule for everyone else?

Nothing surprising about it in the least.

So has Cummings got something on the government and/or the PM? He can't be that vital to its existence. Is he the only one with a key to the photocopier room? Does he know how many kids Johnson actually has? Or have they simply gambled on his presence being something of a lightning rod for all the muck that gets flung their way? Or is it just government strategy to never be shown to be bending at all on anything ever? It just seems a little odd to be so enamoured with a man who's only truly radical credential seems to be being a Tory who wares trackies in public. Although perhaps that just speaks to the limits of the Conservative Party's imagination.

>>89800

Cummings is the brains of the operation, believe it or not. BoJo can't govern without him and they both know it.

>>89800

Have you ever watched The Thick Of It?

He's this guy.

>>89799

>Nothing surprising about it in the least.

So what? It's possible to disapprove of something even if you expect it.

>>89802

Almost, Tucker is actually nice to reporters.

"It's cooked in ghee. I fucking love ghee. It's like fucking freebasing butter. Have some more wine. Come on, get quaffing."

>>89803

And what part of

>It's a disgrace, and he should be sacked and sent to live in the Tower of London where crows peck his baldy little head in the baking mid-day sun

suggests to you that I don't disapprove, lad?

>>89802
Is Cummings really the government's spin doctor? I always took him as more of a policy direction kind of guy.

>>89807

Who do you think told Boris to say all those nice things about him?

A few people have commented on how Keir Starmer seems awfully restrained on this. What they're forgetting is that when a barrister sees their opponent proceed to hang themselves, they find it best not to get in the way.

>>89802
So he's unfuckable?

>>89811
I wouldn't touch him with yours.

Even the Mail is pretending to be angry with him. I can't imagine this will have any long term consequences, but is an interesting measure of public opinion on the thing.

>>89813
Of everything else this makes me the most suspicious or ready to believe that something nasty is up. What's Murdoch up to now?

>>89814

I didn't even think of that at 5am but yeah - why?

Even money on Cummins having something on BJ but enough of a national press effort will force his hand anyway? Seems a bit last decade.

>>89815

I'm currently of the opinion that it's not blackmail, Dominic just does Boris's job for him as he's lazy or stupid or a combination of the above and that makes him indispensable. Doesn't explain Murdoch though.

It's really not hard to grasp why he's keeping him.

The man engineered vote leave using data in an effective way, he was able to cut through the noise and develop slogans and campaign literature that appealed to people and he did the same with Boris' reelection.

He's a very accomplished, very smart man, with a bit of a persona. Like him or leave him he plays by the rules he wants and doesn't kowtow to what other's think should be done. I think this is why it enrages people.

He's like one of those star footballers who is a bit unpredictable, eventually he becomes bigger than the club and it upsets a lot of people, but he's bloody good.

>>89817
Couldn't agree more - I don't much like him either, but like Alistair Campbell - he is just fucking good at his job and people don't like that.

>>89818
Unpopular opinion incoming but I think some people do have more leeway in breaking the rules. He's an incredibly important person and removing his work from Government means it will be much less likely to achieve it's broad, data driven aims and this isn't comparable to removing a shop worker who chose to flout it.

Whether we like it or not, some people are just more important in life.

>>89818
He can't be that good if he didn't do this on purpose. His moving goalpost excuses* are pretty pathetic too.

*https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/1264662832018337792

>>89807

BoJo wanted to be Prime Minister, but didn't want to run the country. Classic Dom wanted to run the country, but didn't want to be Prime Minister. It's a match made in the ninth circle of hell.

Johnson hasn't sacked Cummings because Cummings is the one in charge.

>>89821
This isn't really true is it though? It's just nonsense spouted from Twitter.

He advises the PM on his goals and provides options to him and advice like all SPADs and Johnson takes the decisions. Such A-level tier views on this by so many people.

>>89822

>like all SPADs

Cummings has direct authority over all the spads - not just the PM's spads, but the entire cabinet's. He enjoys a level of influence and control that is completely unprecedented in modern times.

If he were merely another advisor, why hasn't he been sacked by now? Why is the PM enduring so much grief just to keep him in a job?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/25/dominic-cummings-role-provokes-alarm-inside-civil-service

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/23/dominic-cummings-vote-leave-svengali-has-made-untouchable-downing/

>>89823
>Why is the PM enduring so much grief just to keep him in a job?

I don't get why this one is so difficult to understand - Boris keeps Cummings around because he is extremely effective.

>>89823
Yes, the PM often appoints a SPAD that acts or is the Chief of Staff. They take different roles and titles dependent on how they want their team set up but this is generally what happens.

This also happens in work places. My boss is the big boss but leaves another member of the team to basically act as the details person whilst they pick up the big issues and provide direction.

It's obvious why the PM isn't sacking him, because he's good and he calculates the benefits he brings outweigh the negatives of him being in the news for a few days.

This man single handedly turned the referendum around and helped Bojo to a thumping majority (regardless of Corbyn's attempt to damage Labour as much as possible).

I would keep on with him too. Nobody who votes tory is going to stop because of this and the other parties want him out to do damage and stop Bojo's goose that lays the golden eggs.

I am starting to wince every time people think there's some grand scheme where Dom calls the shots. He's doing what a good advisor does, finding the practical route map for the boss to achieve their aims and providing suggestions and evidence on how to get there.

It's 'but Cheney told Bush what to do!!!' all over again.

>>89825
>>89824
Maybe I'm being thick but I'm not sure how him being "extremely effective" means he's not calling shots. If Boris is keeping him around because he's telling him things that work and Boris is doing them, that's the same thing.

>>89826
Do you think all policy advisors and SPADs are calling the shots then too? All tens of thousands of them?

Ministers and prime ministers are far too busy to look into detail at everything. Think about the sheer amount of decisions, reading, research and everything they'd have to do if it was all on their shoulders.

So it will go something like this

>Minister X has just been put into office, he has a general set of goals set by the PM, but also has his own twist on it.
>Running a section of the country is quite big work and has lots of things your average person might not consider
>Get experts in each of those areas and tell them your goals
>They go away and think about ways to do it
>They do some research, weigh in the pros and cons and add the evidence then present it succinctly
>Minister X then reads these suggestions and goes, I'll have option 2 please, get to work
>They go away and carry this out

Congratulations you've just enacted some govenrment policy.

Spads are different as they are allowed to take political considerations into account. Civil Servants can say, option 1 is better than option 2 because it's better for the country and meets the aims of X. They can't say, it will also make your position more palatable to the swing seats in Durham so you should do this, whilst also sticking it to Labour. Ministers are clever enough to deduce that but SPADs basically go all in and highlight that.

Dom is like the big cheese of these people, when he comes up with these ideas, they're at a very high level and are using his obscure skills and interests. He puts them to Bojo, probably hundreds, Bojo picks the ones he wants and sends him to work doing them.

>>89827
That should say thousands not tens of thousands*

>>89827
>Do you think all policy advisors and SPADs are calling the shots then too? All tens of thousands of them?
Any given one of them might be if Boris routinely takes their advice above all others, especially when it comes to high stakes decisions. For example: in turning the referendum around and getting a majority and going for the herd immunity angle.
I'm pretty sure we're in agreement about most of what's actually happened, the difference is you're saying Boris is choosing to do what Cummings says because otherwise he'd flounder and some of us are saying Boris has no choice but to do what Cummings says because otherwise he'd flounder.
I think. This particular sub-debate is entirely meaningless.

>>89829
No, what you're seeing is the outcome of Boris picking the right decisions (usually) and not seeing all the site that Boris has ignored or said 'not a fucking chance.'

It's just lazy a-level twitter shite trying to paint big Dom as some scary boogeyman that secretly controls the country and plays to the narrative Bojo doesn't really know what's going on.

Of course he does, of course he is making those decisions, it's also hilarious as it works because the blame for things is completely deflected from the person in charge and focused on an advisor instead.

>>89830
That makes sense. Fuck the lot of them really. All of them who have circled their wagons while obviously knowing it was around a lie would be sacked if there was any sort of real accountability.

>>89830
>It's just lazy a-level twitter shite

I think in general discourse is becoming more infantilised. Everything has to be viewed in black or white, broken down into overly simplistic one-liners or gotchas.

>>89832

No it's not and if you disagree you're a Nazi.

I see the Tory simps have shown up over night.

It's pretty fucking simple lads. It's not because he's some fourth dimensional super intellect who single handedly engineered leave and BoJo 2019.

Boris is just too thick and/or lazy to do his job without the guy, who has been his advisor for years, and as far as either of them are concerned it's a very beneficial arrangement.

As for why the mail is suddenly against him? Pretty simple too. All Murdoch's papers are trying to wear down the corona lockdown narrative. They have business interests that need the peasants to resume tilling their fields.

>>89834
>the mail
>All Murdoch's papers

Laaad.

>>89835

What, I'm saying their motivations are the same, not that they are the same.

>>89836
What are the business interests behind the owners of the Mail that require lockdown to end?

One thing we must remember in all of this: Cummings is the government, which is why #10 has gone to these extraordinary lengths to revise (admittedly very ambiguous, contradictory and confusing) lockdown rules months after being implemented, and even openly contradict Durham Police.

He can do as he pleases while the rest of us have had to miss god knows what important visits to ill or upset friends and family for the past 10 odd weeks. The entire thing stinks. Cummings is the PM.

>>89830
>it's also hilarious as it works because the blame for things is completely deflected from the person in charge and focused on an advisor instead
In this instance it's the opposite. Johnson had nothing to do with Cummings' decision to flout lockdown rules, and yet instead of firing Cummings, as is standard practice when an advisor becomes a source of controversy, he has decided to attach himself to the controversy by personally coming out to defend his advisor. It's very fucking weird.

>>89837

To get people to buy more of their newspapers.

>>89840
Yeah it must be terrible for Mail Online if people are stuck at home with little to do except go on the internet.

>>89842
The vast majority of their revenue still comes from print sales.

#CumGate

>>89837

That's the opposite of what I was suggesting their motivations to be, dullardlad.

>>89842

A return to normality would also expand the scope of potential subjects. They can start filling pages with candid slebshit, footy and holiday offers again.

This press conference boils down to So what? Fuck you dirty peasants.

>>89847
the 'test drive' excuse is laughable, apparently he was testing his ability to drive with his wife and child in the car?!

He's crossing the fucking Rubicon with this crap.

I like how the party keeps spouting this "media reports that aren't true" line without any specific examples too, very Orwelian, real skin crawling shit.

I think the recent american political tactic of "yeah I did something shitty but I'm going to carry on and there's fuck all you can do" has inspired our lot. The part of my brain that plays the chords to There is Power in a Union on loop perpetually really wants to imagine people will remember this sort of thing in the polling stations, but I know they won't.

He sat and squirmed for a bit until Laura and Robert came to pat him on the back.

What he did come out with was stating multiple times he had broken the rules, and then suggested he was being calm and rational, and not having an extreme panic reaction, despite his actions being an extreme panic attack. It's all very confusing. Which begs the question: why didn't he just ring up his boss and say there's a serious problem, that casa Cummings might be Covid infected and he'll have to self-isolate again? Everybody who was considered a key worker and was out working followed those rules.

I'm finding it hard to process what just actually happened.

>>89852

>why didn't he just ring up his boss and say there's a serious problem, that casa Cummings might be Covid infected and he'll have to self-isolate again?

His boss was laid up in bed, shortly before going into intensive care.

The remaining pro-Cummings lot have decided the media are being too mean to him and this makes him the good guy again.

>>89853
Right, because there is no one else in number 10 that he could have talked to.

>>89850
I noticed the BBC didn't push back on the claim that poor old Dom was effectively being bullied by the media because he didn't give them enough regard. The BBC themselves even described the reporters as 'hostile' which feeds in nicely to the governments preferred narrative - shit is pretty dark right now.

>>89854

Cummings is a dick, but the media haven't exactly covered themselves in glory on this one. I don't see how this coverage is serving the public interest in any meaningful way.

>Dominic, do you think the thing that we've been shouting about for days might undermine the lockdown?

>Dominic, what would you say to the outraged people who we told to be outraged?

>>89857

I haven't watched the thing they're talking about but "the media" isn't a gestalt entity and not organised in the same way with specific policies and cross-publication team meetings. That both the left and right wing rags made combined hashes of questioning him doesn't exonerate him in any way.

>>89856

The BBC itself might not be inherently biased, but Laura Kuennsberg definitely is.

>>89859

Absolutely agreed about Laura, but it wasn't her pushing that message forward back in the studio.

>>89859
I really fancy her though, is that so wrong?

>>89834
>I see the Tory simps have shown up over night.

Go back to 4chan.

>>89862

That famously left-leaning website.

>>89863

4chan actually was quite left-leaning in its early days during the Bush administration, they were very anti-Bush and would often organise "raids" on far-right figures and white nationalists. They're basically edgy contrarians who oppose whatever the current mainstream political zeitgeist is.

>>89864

Different people used 4chan in those days. If you visit boards other than /pol/ the difference is quite stark, but you can still tell the old userbase from ten years ago is almost entirely absent now.

>>89865
I can't remember the last time I visited at all, nevermind the last time with some form of regularity. Probably the last time there was some form of happening.

I guess it may be a different story if I was into the more niche boards, but there's only so many times you can see a screenshot of some randomer posting bollocks on social media before it wears thin.

I wish that something would happen so that we've got something else to talk about. Everyone's gone through all of their Barnard Castle jokes and their #CumGate puns and now it's just people shouting at a man with a head like a badly shaved bollock.

>>89867
Just because you're finding it all very tedious doesn't mean it's none issue, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives is saying he should go now, and I'm informed they have upto fifteen members. That figure was the from before lockdown mind you.

>>89864
>4chan actually was quite left-leaning in its early days
No shit Sherlock.
>They're basically edgy contrarians who oppose whatever the current mainstream political zeitgeist is.
Not any more they're not.

>>89867
Mr baby new potato head

>>89868 What can he resign / be fired from? He's not part of the government, is he? He's just a paid adviser. He could trivially quit, wait three weeks and reappear with a slightly different job description / hide behind a company.
I'd always assumed he just wanted to be the supreme overlord, and didn't really care about the title, but either I was wrong, or he's changed now he's had a bit of recognition, or he's monumentally stubborn, or something else?

>>89871
I think he just fundamentally doesn't get what the problem is at all. As we are talking politics, public mood goes a long way towards finding him guilty and giving him a Rasputin status for as long as he's skulking around Downing Street, his lack of any contrition hasn't done anything to shift focus away from him, and neither did his leaky story that went every which way and broke a few elements of continuity.

It's a bit like Corbyn over the Anti-Semitism thing, if he played the game and apologised in the way he was expected to, it would've kept the wolves at bay a while longer and might've shifted public opinion.

If you care whether or not this man loses his job, you really need to get a hobby.

I know life is a lot more boring without your workplace dramas but fucking hell.

>>89873
Isn't it past your bedtime, Darren?

It seems to be a part of politics, so I'll like to ask why the optics of that press conference were utterly bizarre. Why was he sat at a rubbish school table seen only at exam results time? Why did he opt to not wear a suit? Why did he spend most of the time, when the camera was panned out, squirming and wrapping his legs around the chair leg - why wasn't a cloth for the table seen as necessary?

It seems that the entire visual display, ignore the closing of ranks behind him for a moment, was to say to the public "I am a liar and I really don't care about any of you." That's not even mentioning not even trying to hide verbal tics and clarifying by making things muddier. Nerves and making things up on the spot?

Sage, because political optics are a strange thing.

>>89875
He's encouraging people to break the lockdown, the sooner we do the sooner we go back to work. That makes it "us" who've decided to let this https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-death-toll-rate-world-map-tracked-a9532286.html be acceptable.

This lockdown is fucking annoying. Can't stay healthy and go to the gym because it's dangerous, can't get your haircut so your mental well being is fine and you don't feel like shit.

You can go to a car showroom though, or go to another random non-essential shop where you definitely don't need to be.

Fucking bored of it now, at what point does the scale tip and we realise it's doing more harm to people than good through economic upset etc?

>>89875
It's to remove his power. A lot of people say he's the one really in charge, so he is dressed like a run of the mill, unthreatening person. He hasn't got an expensive suit, or an aggressive red tie, he is just a normal bloke havinga discussion about a decision he made.

>>89878
I understand what you're saying, but I think you're also being disingenuous. You are obviously going to be more at risk of infection, or spreading infection, at a gym or getting your haircut than you are at a car dealership. It's shit that that's how it is, but that's how it is.