Much of the news this week has been taken up with Dominic Cummings and his decision to leave London with his four-year old son to drive up to Durham thus breaking the lockdown rules. Cummings said that it was because his wife had the Coronavirus, and he was hoping that his parents or relatives up there would look after the child. They didn’t. While he was there, he drove thirty miles and back to Barnard Castle, in order to test his eyesight as he was worried it wasn’t good enough for him to drive back himself. He also appeared to have made at least two, and possible three trips in breach of the regulations. These journeys and his account of them flatly contradict what his wife was writing in his defence in the Spectator. And in the words of the irate newsreader in Broadcast News, people are ‘as mad as hell’ and ‘not taking it any more’.
To the vast majority of the population, Cummings’ behaviour and his boss’ refusal to sack him is a massive insult and display of flagrant hypocrisy and double standards. The British people have made great sacrifices in order to maintain the lockdown and prevent the spread of the disease. People haven’t been able to be present at the deaths of their loved ones, or attend their funerals because of the restrictions. And they have been very definitely prevented from driving anywhere as far as the 240 miles it is from London to Durham, except for the workers that haven’t been furloughed. It’s very definitely one law for the rich and politically connected, and another for the rest of us.
The result has been that Boris’ personal popularity has taken a nose dive. Last Tuesday, the same day that Britain booed the malignant buffoon, Zelo Street put up a piece about an article in the Independent. In the four days from the previous Friday to then, Boris had plunged in the polls from a rating of +19 to -1. It had dropped 35 points since the start of May, and 48 points from its peak on 8th April. Starmer’s ratings had fluctuated from +35 to +3. It was then at 12. And the government’s overall approval rating was at -2.
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/boris-no-longer-popular.html
It’s a massive embarrassment to Boris, who is, like Trump, colossally vain. Boris wants to be loved and popular, like Winston Churchill (who certainly wasn’t as universally popular as the hagiographers try to make out). And so the Tories have been trying to redirect attention away from this affair through working up bogus stories in the press about the EU and Michel Barnier. Gove and the Attorney General Suella Braverman have been wheeled out to give their support to Cummings. In the case of Braverman, this has violated he duty to remain impartial, and is properly a matter for her resignation. Which, as a good Tory aiding her boss, she won’t do.
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/brexiteers-wibble-at-barnier-letter.html
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/polecat-broke-rules-braverman-is-bust.html
And now Boris is doing his best to silence any questioning or criticism of the matter. Emily Maitlis was censured by the BBC for her absolutely reasonable comments about it on Newsnight after a complaint from Downing Street. She was then replaced the following day by Kate Razzall. It’s another clear breach of the Beeb’s duty of political impartiality in favour of the Tories, following so many cases of bias against Labour by other Beeb news people like Andrew Neil and the odious Laura Kuenssberg.
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/bbcs-shameful-surrender.html
And at a press meeting Bozo stopped the media from asking the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Officer, questions about Cummings’ conduct on the grounds that they were political, not medical or scientific. But they were medical and scientific, because Cummings had placed other people’s health and lives in jeopardy. He also stopped Laura Kuenssberg from asking a follow-up question about Cummings. As Zelo Street remarked, this is conduct worthy of a dictatorship like Kim Jong-il’s Korea.
https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/press-briefing-bozo-channels-kim.html
And that boiling popular anger all came out last night on Have I Got News For You. Nearly the entire programme was taken up with the issue. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was particularly irritated. When asked by host Martin Clunes how his week had been, he replied that he’d been busy trying not to get too angry, and had been getting masses of letters from angry people, with whom he agreed. And the programme went on to tear gaping, bloody shreds off Polecat Dom and his tale. They asked how credible it was that Cummings could take a four year old child on a journey of that length without the lad wanting the toilet, as well as the obvious point that if you’re blind, you shouldn’t be driving. And they also brought up the Durham dialect term, ‘Barnard Castle’, as meaning a pathetic excuse. Given how swiftly the Beeb caved in to Boris’ complaints against Maitlis, this programme probably won’t have pleased Lord Hall-Hall. But I think it may well reflect how some Beeb programme makers and news crew feel about the scandal and the way Maitlis was treated, whatever she, Razzall and the producers may say to the contrary.
Everyone I know despises Cummings for this breach of the public’s trust, including Tories, who feel he’s let BoJob down. Well, there’s no danger of that, because BoJob’s standards are so low anyway only Britain’s few remaining miners and underground railway engineers can find them.
Cummings is making Johnson more unpopular by the day. And the longer it goes on, the worse it’ll get. Which is good news for Britain!
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