29.5.20
“The Dim and Dom Show” is a phrase I came across on Twitter, and is apparently how the UK is being referred to in New Zealand.
The whole world has been laughing at us, as our Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed himself, more conclusively than ever, to be little more than an empty vessel incapable of any kind of leadership without his chief advisor — and effectively his only advisor — Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of the Vote Leave campaign, which, for those of us who can recall the world before the coronavirus, persuaded a small majority of those who could be bothered to vote in the EU referendum in June 2016 to vote to leave the EU.
Cummings — an alleged anti-elitist who is actually privately educated and an Oxford graduate, and married to the daughter of a Baronet — is routinely described as a brilliant political strategist, but if that is the case then it is only in the malicious, dumbed-down way in which politics has been conducted over the last decade in particular. He is credited with coming up with the winning phrase ‘Take Back Control’, to twist the electorate’s understanding of how EU membership worked, and was instrumental in the lie that leaving the EU would mean an extra £350m a week for the NHS.
Personally, I find that Dominic Cummings seems to be a particularly inadequate type of public schoolboy — permanently stranded in a crisis of his own making, a genius trapped in a world run by inferior people who must be eradicated. He has particular contempt for MPs, and for the civil service, and was, famously, described by David Cameron as a “career psychopath”, as I explained in an article last August, Brexit, Boris the Narcissist Clown and “Career Psychopath” Dominic Cummings, in which I first outlined my fears about the Johnson-Cummings premiership.
Since then, just after the clown Johnson became the leader of the Conservative Party — and our unelected Prime Minister — Cummings came up with another winning slogan — ‘Get Brexit Done’ — to help Johnson win the General Election in December, a dismal affair whose sole focus, sadly, was Brexit. Nearly three and a half years since the referendum, the rabid pro-Brexit part of the electorate — a minority of the total electorate, but powerful enough to win an election because of our dismal unrepresentative voting system — gave Johnson legitimacy via a significant minority.
To the dismay of all but the rabid isolationists — and a much smaller number of anti-EU lefties — the UK then officially left the EU on January 31, although leaving still meant very little, as the details of the divorce have still not been agreed.
Back then — an impossibly long four months ago — few people, it seemed, were awake enough to continue to express their concerns about Cummings, his power over Johnson, and the role also played by Michael Gove, who had first brought Cummings into the government, to throw eugenics-based tantrums at the Department of Education. To those paying attention, however, Cummings was intimately involved in the contempt for the electoral rules that Vote Leave had been fined for, and was also dangerously devoted to efforts to remake the entire administrative structure of British government, controlling it all from his lair in 10 Downing Street, with Johnson the puppet who would sell it all to the gullible public.
Then, suddenly, the world changed, as the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, began killing British people, and the reality of our political situation — that we were led by people who were completely unsuited to high office, having been elected, or chosen, solely because of their enthusiasm for Brexit — suddenly became a matter not of economic suicide and hubris, but of life and death.
Johnson, the ditherer-in-chief, disappeared once the virus arrived, missing meeting after meeting of COBRA, the government’s task force for emergencies, while the puppet master Cummings found ample reason to roll out his enthusiasm for eugenics across the whole country. Notoriously, he is credited as having outlined the government’s strategy, at a private meeting at the end of February, as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”, and there seems no reason to doubt that he was very much at the forefront of pushing “herd immunity” as official government policy.
When Cummings and Johnson finally realised that a lockdown was necessary, which was implemented on March 23, it was already disturbingly late. The UK now has the highest excess death rate in the world, and tens of thousands of people have died as a direct result of their arrogance and stupidity.
And yet, as the last week’s events have revealed, Johnson regards Cummings as indispensable, and is standing by him even though Cummings, in the early days of the lockdown, so spectacularly broke the rules of the lockdown that Johnson might as well have stood with a placard that read, “it’’s one rule for us, and another for you.”
Cummings flagrantly breaks the lockdown rules
On March 27 or 28, while his wife, Mary Wakefield, appeared to be suffering COVID-19 symptoms, Cummings defied the instruction for anyone displaying symptoms — and anyone living with them — to stay at home to avoid the risk of spreading the virus (an instruction he had played a part in implementing) and drove to Durham, where his parents live, and where he grew up, taking his wife and their young son with them. There was no provision in the lockdown for leaving home, except in cases in which there are fears of domestic abuse, but this didn’t concern Cummings, who, like Johnson, believes that rules are for lesser mortals.
Cummings claims that he was visiting his parents to try and find support for his son if both he and his wife fell ill, but that’s not an excuse for breaking the lockdown, as, up and down the country, ill couples did as they were told, and stayed at home with their children. Moreover, although he claims that they stayed in a property in the grounds of their parent’s house, it was just been revealed that Cummings is on the title deeds, meaning that it is in fact a holiday home — and visits to holiday homes were also completely forbidden, under any circumstances, during the lockdown.
And then, as if this wasn’t damning enough, on April 12 — recently revealed as Wakefield’s birthday — the family drove to Barnard Castle, for what was very clearly a birthday outing, although Cummings, like an inadequate teenage liar, used the press conference he called last weekend — which, incidentally, shouldn’t have been allowed under the code of conduct for special advisors — to concoct an unbelievable story about how he made the 60-mile round trip because his eyes felt a bit funny, and he wanted to test them out before driving back home. As if Cummings taking us for fools on national TV wasn’t sufficient, Michael Gove then appeared on TV the day after to claim that, on occasion, he had done the same.
The final nail in Cummings’ coffin ought to have been that, having broken the lockdown so shamefully, he promptly went back to work on returning to London, despite the threat the virus posed to his fellow workers and anyone else he came in contact with.
Throughout this whole sorry spectacle, Cummings also remained unconcerned that the lies and spin he was peddling to the British people didn’t even tally with the account his own wife had written for the Spectator (only available to subscribers, but see Guardian analysis here and here), and yet we are all supposed to bow to his right to do whatever he wants, while telling us — the little people, the nobodies, the sacrificial lambs, if necessary — to do exactly what he tells us to.
I don’t want to overplay Cummings’ role as Machiavelli. To my mind he is an inadequate little man with chronic delusions of grandeur, and, like the loathsome Steve Bannon in the initial administration of Donald Trump, a would-be destroyer of bureaucracy with no coherent notion of how to replace it. Seeking to control the whole of Parliament and the civil service via an office in 10 Downing Street doesn’t genuinely seem very feasible, and Cummings’ first efforts to realise it — through a bizarre call for “weirdos and misfits” to apply for new jobs within No 10 — not only added to his general creepiness, but also led to him hiring, and then having to fire, a eugenicist, Andrew Sabisky.
Sabisky had previously written that, as the Guardian described it, “politicians should pay attention to ‘very real racial differences in intelligence’ when designing the immigration system”, that “black people on average have lower IQs than white people”, and that “benefit claimants ‘tend to be less conscientious and agreeable’ and should be encouraged to have fewer children than people in work with more ‘pro-social personalities.’”
However, whether Cummings’ ambitions are genuinely to be feared, what matters now is that his arrogant flouting of the rules he himself played a part in creating are not only making the UK an international laughing stock, but are also endangering public health, as anyone who wants to breaks the rules in any way is citing him as an example of why they too can feel free to do whatever they want, rather than what is for the common good.
Cummings and Johnson already have blood on their hands — the tens of thousands of people who died as a result of their refusal to implement a lockdown before March 23 — and as it stands now, if Cummings doesn’t resign, or isn’t sacked, his continued presence will not only create a situation in which there will be more deaths, via an increase in unsafe behaviour; it will also permanently reinforce the dangerous notion that our leaders are not bound by the same rules as us, even when those rules led to numerous people not even being able to be with their loved ones as they died.
More and more Tory MPs call for Cummings to be sacked or resign
Today, the Guardian reported that over a hundred Tory MPs have now called for Dominic Cummings to resign or be sacked — or have levelled serious criticism at him. A Guardian analysis of 117 MPs “found they have received a total of 31,738 emails” since the Cummings story broke a week ago, most of which are critical of his behaviour.
Richard Fuller, the Tory MP for North East Bedfordshire, wrote to constituents, explaining the depth of feeling in the emails.
As he stated, “I have been struck by just how many emails I have received from constituents about the actions taken by Mr. Cummings and the strength of sentiment. Most emails contained strong criticisms. The words used by constituents to express their feeling — ‘disgust’, ‘incensed’, ‘disgraceful’, ‘shameful’, ‘anger’ — convey clearly how deeply hurtful this revelation has been for them. Many constituents included personal stories of sacrifice and loss; a number sharing the searing pain of bereavement in this extraordinary period of isolation and confinement. I have read fully each of the emails sent to me.”
He added, “The explanation of this human dilemma has not been communicated in such a manner as to heal the hurt that has been felt. An apology is not always needed as a concession that you did something wrong but sometimes to show that you understand the pain to others that may have been caused.”
Perhaps the veteran Tory MP — and Brexiteer — Sir Roger Gale, who represents North Thanet, expressed MPs’ concerns most thoroughly in one of the first public messages calling for Cummings to be sacked or to resign. On May 24, Gale tweeted, “While as a father and as a grandfather I fully appreciate Mr. Cummings’ desire to protect his child, there cannot be one law for the Prime Minister’s staff and another for everyone else. He has sent out completely the wrong message and his position is no longer tenable.”
And while Dominic Cummings clearly must be removed from his position of power, so too must Boris Johnson, as the inadequacies of this clown who always wanted to be king have been been laid startlingly bare since the crisis first blew up. Without Cummings, Johnson has nothing, and that is not a position in which any genuinely functioning Prime Minister would ever find themselves. Like Cummings, Johnson has blood on his hands, and there is no room for clowning when the reality is so dire and so deadly.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or here for the US, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.55), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from seven years of bike rides around the 120 postcodes of the capital.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the resistance continues.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
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Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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29 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, in which, after several relevant posts here on Facebook, I have pulled together all my thoughts about Dominic Cummings’ shameful flouting of the coronavirus lockdown rules back in March and April, and Boris Johnson’s craven defence of his chief advisor.
As I note, the outrage – from the public in vast numbers, and from Tory MPs, over a hundred of whom have now called for his resignation, or have criticised him publicly – shows no sign of diminishing, and this is is entirely appropriate.
Cummings has shown contempt for all the people who observed the lockdown rules, even when it involved great sacrifice and personal loss, and his refusal to resign – and Johnson’s defence of him – shows how both men believe, very fundamentally, that there is one rule for them, and another for the rest of us.
Both of them must go.
...on May 29th, 2020 at 8:10 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Wendy Stevenson wrote:
A slap in the face for the shielded vulnerable, especially as social distancing now seems to have been abandoned. And I see now that South Korea has closed its schools again because of a flare-up. We should not under-estimate this virus.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, we absolutely shouldn’t underestimate it, Wendy. I was shocked on my bike ride through London today – out to Wandsworth and back – at how absolutely packed the parks were, and how people were very very clearly not social distancing. I know we have learned over the last two months that the virus transmits much more seriously indoors than out, but what I’ve seen happening today – and, indeed, going back to last weekend’s prolonged Bank Holiday partying – will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the infection rate. And as scientists are warning today, the infection rate is already increasing, so this is no time at all to be loosening the lockdown. What a criminal waste of space this entire government is.
See: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/29/covid-19-spreading-too-fast-to-lift-uk-lockdown-sage-adviser
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:14 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ruth Gilbert wrote:
Dangerous times, and we’re led by the most despicable people you could ever imagine.
We need them gone – yesterday!
Thanks for writing this, Andy x
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
You’re welcome, Ruth. Good to hear from you. I was up early yesterday morning, and it poured out of me. Must’ve been fermenting over the last few days. Like so many others, I really do take the arrogant superiority of Cummings and Johnson very personally.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesday wrote:
Great article, and magnificent pic of the two dodgy dealers, who look like a pair of caught out crims in a cheap Batman remake.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:15 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Anita. Yes, I found the photo on an Indian news website – it was credited to “social media.” It leapt out at me, as they both look so furtive, so guilty!
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Dez Mundie wrote:
Thanks Andy, very thorough analysis.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Dez. Good to hear from you.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Knopfler wrote:
You missed the piece de resistance – the cherry on the shitcake – that Cummings when he got back to London falsified his 2019 blog with a modification so he could pretend he had warned early about the risks of coronavirus. As I said elsewhere Johann Hari was sacked for less.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It seemed a bit tangential, David, as it relates so much to the weird world he still lives in with his blog, but on reflection it’s also very revealing as an example of Cummings’ relationship with the truth.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:19 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Anna Giddings wrote:
What a joke we are. Why would you have a 4 year old in a confined space if you think someone has the virus? Very well written. Thank you Andy.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Anna. I appreciate your support! As you say, the entire basis of the alleged drive up north is simply implausible. If I thought I was coming down with the virus, the last thing I’d have done is lock the whole family in a car together and take a trip up north.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 4:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Marina Caird wrote:
What I’m picking up on is a bunch of people who consider themselves utterly exceptional. They never wanted lockdown. If the virus kills those in our population that are compromised then so be it! I heard it time and again. I heard Jonathan Sumption say as much today on radio 4. Cummings’ father in law has the same dodgy views. There are a lot of them. Boris has surrounded himself with people like this.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 9:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, that’s exactly right, Marina. To them it’s about survival of the fittest, and if our hospitals had enough capacity, and if they thought they could have got away with it electorally, I suspect they would have avoided a lockdown, and let 100,000 people die.
...on May 30th, 2020 at 9:21 pm
Andy Worthington says...
So this is a rather encouraging development – ‘Tory poll lead collapses as voters say Cummings should go’: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/30/tory-poll-lead-collapses-as-voters-say-cummings-should-go
...on May 30th, 2020 at 9:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And medical experts turn on the government too – ‘Dominic Cummings has broken Covid-19 policy trust, say top scientists’: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/30/dominic-cummings-has-broken-covid-19-policy-trust-say-top-scientists
...on May 30th, 2020 at 9:23 pm
Anna says...
Thanks Andy, I was hoping and expecting you’d write about this abomination. I’m going through a phase of needing some rest from the state of the world, but this is one of few things I have been following closely, hoping to find a glimmer of hope that these two dangerous nincompoops will fall, so far wishful thinking. A few of my own comments on Cummings, having watched his rose garden performance.
Usually dressed at 10 Downing Street in jogging gear that would not be tolerated in most other offices – whether governmental or commercial – and a disdainful smirk on his face, here – with a clean white shirt – he had groomed himself as the dedicated family man, sooo worried about his child’s wellbeing … after having locked that same child into a car for four or more hours together with his mother, whom he supposedly suspected of having – as we all know extremely contagious – Covid…
While children seemed to be less vulnerable to Covid itself, by that time reports had already emerged that they were very vulnerable to potentially lethal Kawasaki-like ailments, probably related to Covid.
Similar comment about the birthday outing’s ‘justification’. Testing whether your eyesight is adequate to drive safely by driving, is as bright & responsible as testing whether the wild mushrooms you picked in the forest are safe to eat, by eating them. Except that in that case you endager only your own life, he endangered also that of others.
Apart from the absurdity of that ‘reasoning’ he broke the law when driving 60 miles while supposedly not sure he could do that safely …
As for him donning glasses (only after driving 260 miles back to London ?) and even Johnson suddenly wearing reading ones to support this ludicrous claim, it’s beyond childish.
All the while the real tragedy being the countless Brits who are going through enormous personal suffering while responsibly adhering to necessary rules. Corbyn must now more than ever regret that he agreed to elections in December. If only they were still ahead …
...on May 31st, 2020 at 2:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Bernard Sullivan wrote:
Are you aware that the cottage he stayed in appears to have no planning permission and no allocated council tax?
https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2020/05/31/cummings-spare-cottage-without-planning-permission-and-pays-no-council-tax/
...on May 31st, 2020 at 5:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It just gets more damning, doesn’t it, Bernard?
...on May 31st, 2020 at 5:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Jane Ecer wrote:
Excellent article Andy. Looking in from the outside I find their behaviour both appalling and despicable. I actually feel disgust at their dismissive attitude. The ludicrous press conference by Cummings from the number 10 Rose Garden, the even more ludicrous claim about driving because his eyes were a bit dodgy … but the worst thing is that no-one seems able to stop them. The pair of them need a punch in the mouth and to be told to stop being so f..king ridiculous. In any case I would have thought that Cummings and his wife have childcare already when in London … they both work full time. The endless, pathetic excuses and somehow the UK are supposed to swallow this and ‘move on’. As for Michael Gove repeating the ridiculous claim about driving somewhere to test his eyesight … don’t get me started. I just hope one day the pair of them get hoist by their own petard …
...on May 31st, 2020 at 5:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jane. Yes, it’s a very British coup, isn’t it, all facilitated by Brexit. The sacking of the 21 rebels last autumn was a key development, really, because suddenly a whole bunch of experienced Tories, including prominent moderates like Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke – were gone, leaving Johnson and Cummings largely unchallenged, especially when the election delivered that thumping ‘Get Brexit Done’ majority.
Our only hope now is if the Cummings scandal continues to make him more unpopular, as the Tories will unite behind everything except a loser, and the signs are good, as Johnson’s poll lead has plummeted in the last week, but given that he’s prepared to open up the country so unwisely just to stay in power and bribe the populace with “freedom”, we’ll have to wait and see if that “liberation” is enough to offset the considerable outrage that still exists.
The other solution is that the British people get organised and rise up – oh sorry, I suddenly can’t stop laughing uncontrollably …
...on May 31st, 2020 at 5:18 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Nick Cohen on blistering form: “Too many liberals see Cummings as a manipulative demon with supernatural powers, when the most frightening thing about him, and Johnson, is their pathetic inability to control events. They are not evil geniuses but lazy, dogmatic and incompetent men, whose shabbiness is revealed as much by their little deceits as grand blunders. Don’t inflate them into monsters, who can never be beaten. Draw courage from their littleness.”
See: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/dominic-cummings-boris-johnson-evil-geniuses-hardly-lazy-incompetent
...on May 31st, 2020 at 7:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
In response to 18, above:
Good to hear from you, Anna, and yes, it’s extraordinary how Cummings concocted such a shameful and inadequate story, and how Johnson’s total emptiness has now been revealed, but how there doesn’t seem to be any way to get rid of them if they don’t want to go. We can only hope that the scandal refuses to go away, which is possible, because there are so many stories out there of people who didn’t break the rules, and who suffered as a result – so many unable to see their loved ones at the end of their lives, while Cummings simply didn’t care. There’s an intensity to that that simply isn’t matched in normal, everyday life.
It also seems to me that something is cracking as a result of the lockdown, as can be seen from the parks filled even more than usual here in London, the packed beaches, and the ostentatiously pointless car use. People want lockdown to be over with a kind of quiet indignant determination that has nothing to do with the medical reality – especially here in England, where it shouldn’t even be contemplated, and is clearly all driven politically and economically.
And what of the US? Clearly there are provocateurs involved in the rioting, but the outpouring of anger in so many places looks like the understandable revulsion and anger at yet another police murder as filtered through intense bottled-up emotions related to the lockdown. Perhaps it’s something to do with both the UK and the US having been unable to provide a coherent response to the crisis, or to convince their populations that we are genuinely all in it together.
How’s Poland? I’m sure Krakow is now, finally quiet, but I presume it’s also difficult to imagine the city functioning without tourism – a predicament currently faced in so many places around the world.
...on June 1st, 2020 at 12:02 am
Anna says...
Poland is about to squander its so far amazingly positive situation, achieved thanks to an early lockdown and people adhering to self-isolation & social distancing. It started going wrong when a few weeks ago we were told to wear ‘masks’ – basically anything that covers your face – when out, rather than just in shops, public transport etc but strictly continue social distancing. That was again relaxed two days ago, now masks only in crowded places, but in the meantime distancing had become a thing of the past and there’s no enforcing of any kind. Yet our admittedly modest (about 300 odd new cases a day) curves keep rising at roughly the same pace, no flattening yet, so I’m really worried where that’s going to lead us – especially as we finally are getting some warm weather.
This is an excellent site on which you can choose from many different parameters and then add to the graph whichever countries you want to check for it. Sweden – which basically adopted herd-immunity which both you and I will now start facing – also still has not flattened, like the UK and Poland, albeit on very different levels.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?
As for tourists, I do hope they’ll be wise enough to refrain from flying, which should keep their numbers down a bit …
I got myself one of those perspex shields for my face, far more comfortable than cloth and easier to keep clean. Hope your monthly ‘updates’ continue safely ?
...on June 1st, 2020 at 5:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Interesting, Anna. It sounds like here in the sense that the messages have got confused. I saw a woman on a beach interviewed who basically told a reporter that she’d given up on trying to understand what the rules are.
The tourism issue seems absolutely central to whatever economic recovery takes place. I’m amazed that central London is still so empty. Perhaps when the “non-essential” shops re-open in two weeks, it’ll get busy, but my feeling is that most of its pre-virus, insanely packed, hectic activity was related to tourism – both international, and Brits from across the country coming to shop and watch musicals.
I don’t want that old world back, although of course I understand that the gutting of tourism will also mean the collapse of numerous businesses, and increasing unemployment, but would you get on a crowded plane right now? I wouldn’t. And if the airlines introduce social distancing, how expensive will flights have to be to enable them to keep operating? I wouldn’t put it past our governments to contemplate subsidising them, but that would end up being ruinously expensive quite quickly. So hopefully tourism as the world’s No. 1 industry won’t be back in quite the same deranged form it took before, which will be a huge relief environmentally.
...on June 2nd, 2020 at 1:13 am
Elderly Pete says...
In January I idly speculated – as a near-80-year-old whose demise will recycle £K100s – that a policy to hasten the premature deaths of non-productive, resource-gobbling citizens would benefit the British economy by £billions. Seems the same thought was stewing elsewhere, with the golden opportunity offered by an obscure Chinese virus. And lo, this thought coalesced into a policy which would support the promises then made in the February Budget, and whose full benefits would appear post-actual-Brexit and in time for the next General Election.
Of course, there is and will be no direct evidence for this, courtesy of, for example, the use of the ‘Signal’ app which deletes e-messages. However, look at what has happened, and what will probably happen.
1. Encourage virus spread widely throughout the UK via uncontrolled importations, cessation of screening programmes, delayed lockdown measures, allowing public transport, refusal to encourage wearing of face masks, etc.
2. For political purposes, ‘protect our NHS’ by diverting most NHS resources into COVID-19 wards, including the as-yet unused Nightingale Hospitals. (This takes nothing from the success of the NHS in dealing with infected and dying patients.)
3. Encourage infection of target population #1 by sending infected patients from hospitals to care homes, by depriving workers in care homes of protective equipment, and by allowing workers to move between patients and workplaces.
4. Encourage infection of target population #2 by (from 1 June) allowing family meetings and obliging tens of thousands of grandparents to take children to school.
5. Fiddle the figures by denying care home deaths, then the ‘non-COVID’ deaths, and we don’t know what else, but probably in the near future home deaths of previously fit grandparents.
The cringeworthy performance of most Ministers, and the red herring of ‘herd immunity’, should not debase the success of the Cull Policy – 60,000 excess deaths to date, mostly non-productive citizens (plus a few collaterals), and a ‘sustainable’ few hundred similar deaths per day. Perhaps 100,000 by the end of the year, releasing £bns in inheritances, pensions, care and NHS costs. with less requirements for foreign care workers, and elevation to sainthood of the blessed Dominic.
...on June 6th, 2020 at 1:16 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Pete. That definitely seems to be a good precis of what Johnson and Cummings’ “herd immunity” plan involved, although I do wonder exactly how much it was thought about in any detail. The report, by someone present at an event in February, that Cummings’ position was “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad” looks to me like an outline rather than a detailed plan, although I’m sure that there were some people in government thinking about the opportunities that would arise if old and/or medically vulnerable people were to die in significant numbers.
...on June 6th, 2020 at 9:22 pm
COVID-19 And Economic Meltdown: Was Global Tourism Only Thing Keeping Us Afloat? – OpEd | NOQTA says...
[…] No congratulations should be extended to Boris Johnson and his government for the achievements of the lockdown. Johnson dithered for far too long at the beginning of the crisis, and the deaths of tens of thousands of people are, as a result, his responsibility, although not his responsibility alone, as the last few months have also shown us that, sadly, this empty windbag of a Prime Minister is largely manipulated by his senior adviser, the sneering eugenicist Dominic Cummings. […]
...on July 3rd, 2020 at 9:01 pm