XXL
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How coronavirus hypocrisy is tarnishing Boris Johnson's government
(CNN) When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fighting for his life last month, his chief adviser Dominic Cummings was dealing with his own Covid-related battle.
Now the circumstances of Cummings' case, and in particular how and where he chose to deal with it, pose a challenge to the health of the British government and may even threaten the UK's capacity to swiftly fight off the virus.
Johnson has proved staunch in his defense of his close ally since the latter was accused of breaking the UK's strict lockdown by driving 260 miles with his wife, who he admits was displaying some symptoms of coronavirus, and young son to be near his extended family. He suggested the adviser followed "the instincts of every father..." in seeking help with child care in the event the couple became too ill to care for their son.
In quarantine-fatigued Britain, however, where many have agonized over the command to stay away from frightened, sick and dying relatives, the Prime Minister's words have not gone down well. Highly unusually, several of his own Conservative MPs are now calling for Cummings to be sacked, and even the government-friendly Daily Mail asked: "What Planet Are They On?" of his decision to stand by his man.
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6 hours ago, Kim said:
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BBC's Simon McCoy slams colleague Gary Lineker for 'abusing his position'
The Match of the Day host defended himself
Newsreader Simon McCoy has said that BBC colleague Gary Lineker is 'abusing his position' after he called Boris Johnson a liar in a tweet.
Match Of The Day host Lineker condemned the Prime Minister, asking him to 'stop lying' after Johnson stood by his adviser, Dominic Cummings.
The government aide is accused of breaking his own lockdown rules while the rest of the country sacrificed their own rights to see family and friends, after he drove 260 miles from to his parents' home in Durham.
After last night's coronavirus briefing, sport journalist Lineker called PM Boris Johnson out on Twitter.
During the daily press conference, which was led by Johnson, Lineker wrote: "Please. Stop. Lying."
Fellow BBC employee, McCoy called him out for breaking impartiality rules, replying: "Please. Stop. If you speak for yourself - write a letter. If you're speaking for BT Sport - up to you.
"But if you are speaking with your BBC hat on - you are abusing a position which puts BBC journalists in an impossible position."
But Lineker refused to backtrack, instead deciding to double down on his comments, responding to tell McCoy that he'd done nothing wrong.
He's not the only TV presenter to lash out at the government following the government's backing of top aide Cummings, after he apparently broke his own lockdown restrictions.
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5 hours ago, Kim said:
Yeah I deliberately left out the decimation of Iraq as that's always used to demonstrate how foul he is, but a lot of people forget about his domestic record.
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5 hours ago, Kim said:
Today's (Scottish edition) of The Sun. NOT the London edition of course, which has a completely different pro Cummings spin, yet from the same publisher.
I do sometimes wonder if those across the border even understand how much they get gaslit by the media. Tomorrow's editions again...
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On 5/25/2020 at 2:28 PM, karbatal said:
This is going to be the whole EU in 5 weeks.
I doubt it
It depends in any case
Particularly for those countries that actually do enforce the law or at the very least discourage any type of COVID related misconduct.
Measures are being taken in several countries to make sure only a certain number of people can access beaches, whether privately run (easier) or free access ones
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14 hours ago, karbatal said:
My city is in phase 2
Yay!
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8 hours ago, Kim said:
Blair had a huge majority - the opportunity to make major changes to the country and the institutions that run it, instead he split Labour in two as he dragged it to the right, killed the party completely in Scotland, paved the way for slippery Cameron and his eurosceptic acolytes and now this current freakshow of unaccountable clowns...
This
I've never liked him
It felt odd that someone from the Left would hold onto Thatcher's dreadful privatisation and deindustrialization policies to begin with. And let's not even go into the 2003 Iraq issue or his conversion to Roman Catholicism (power of the highest order)
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54 minutes ago, Kim said:
Nothing to see here chaps. Move on.
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On 5/24/2020 at 10:57 PM, karbatal said:
I know it's silly but for so many years, in my teens and my twenties, I saw the UK as some kind if light of hope. These past 5 years my perception has changed so much
Same thing for me
My teens and early twenties coincided with the turn of the century. I remember being 13 mid 90s and all you could hear was the phrase @Kim mentioned, Cool Britannia
Oasis, Blur, the Spice Girls, the Blair years, Madonna shortly after moving there
I know it sounds shallow but as I've said I was 13 and back then pre social media and digital age television was still very powerful and instrumental in shaping people's perceptions, particularly kids perceptions
Suddenly the UK that up until that point seemed to many continental Europeans stiff and cold appeared instead colourful and full of possibilities
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3 hours ago, Kim said:
It really was a load of gaslighting bollocks from him. Particularly the part about driving 30 miles to a local beauty spot to "test his eyesight". How fucking dumb does he think we are?
IKR
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3 hours ago, Kim said:
Well the seeds of the deal with Trump were sown last week when the tories voted against an amendment that would have guaranteed high standards of food/drink entering the country post Brexit (shafting British farmers in the process) That, combined with the US insistence that food origin labeling be removed, will leave us not knowing what the fuck we're consuming. Made hardly a ripple on the news of course.
I hear you
They have been trying to do that to Italy as well (and are still trying), having the country renowned for his many and varied culinary traditions, wholesome Mediterranean diet and certified products get flooded with cheap genetically modified crap from Monsanto and the likes.
Namely with that ghastly, highly controversial TTIP deal the US government was trying to impose on the EU a few years back
Of course Italian farmers, entrepreneurs and some noble politicians were having NONE of that
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3 hours ago, Kim said:
Even the Daily Heil are gunning for him this morning, so No.10 will be in major panic mode...
Says it all
Watching him now giving a press interview in the rose garden adjacent to the Downing Street building
Stuttering all the way through his lies and contradictions, trying to reassure the many journalists present in total grilling mode
Judging by his clutching at straws and really poor answers that have already been made into memes, this will make the current government sink even lower with public opinion's perception
I've read that under regulatory laws aides are not supposed to face the press directly or give out any type of statements ... Well out the window with that too.
I don't know much about his background but he seems a truly powerful figure behind the curtains of British politics, a truly powerful figure period in fact
The most ironic if not downright absurd thing for somebody who's masterminded the whole Brexit campaign since 2016 and secured Johnson's success in last December elections is that his father is a former oil company executive who bought some land and set up a winery or farming activity thanks to EU grants
Everything doesn't make sense about this Cummings guy for sure and in the most sinister possible way
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People outside Dominic Cummings' London residence shouting "hypocrite". Yet he still won't resign
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Sturgeon's BBC Interview this morning
I say this with a very heavy heart - I really do fear that Boris Johnson has decided to put political interest ahead of the public interest
The consequences of that are potentially very serious. Trust in public health messaging is very important, and arguably as we go into the phases where we start to lift lockdown that becomes even more important because we rely less on the letter of the law and much more on guidance and appealing to people’s good judgement
Word
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13 hours ago, GOD said:
I pray to San Kylie Minogue up in the skies to save the UK from this mess and find a cure to the corona
Have you got a case of the @Jitterbug ?
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Brexit / British politics thread 🤡
in Politics and World Events
Posted
As a sign of the strength of feeling, more than a dozen Church of England bishops have condemned both Johnson and his adviser. One, Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds, asked on Twitter: "[D]o we accept being lied to, patronised and treated by a PM as mugs?" -- implying he took a dim view of the Prime Minister's claim that Mr. Cummings had not broken the letter or spirit of the quarantine laws through his actions.
In one of the more moving responses, Helen Goodman, until December the Labour Party MP for Durham, the northern town Cummings visited to stay in a property belonging to his parents, said she was "appalled" by his behavior, given her own father had died alone from Covid-19 in a local care home after she obeyed the rules and did not visit.
In an unprecedented event in a political arena where unelected advisers usually remain behind the scenes, Mr. Cummings held a press conference Monday in the Downing Street garden in which he sought to explain his actions. Saying he had no regrets, he added: "I believe in all circumstances I behaved reasonably and legally. The legal rules do not inevitably cover all circumstances - including those I found myself in." Also on Monday, Johnson expressed "regret" for the "confusion, anger and pain" experienced by the British people as a result of the controversy; when pressed on whether he believes Cummings' decision has compromised the government's coronavirus message, Johnson doubled down on his support for Cummings, asserting, "I do not believe that anybody at Number 10 has done anything to undermine our message."