As The Guardian notes this morning:
After four months of hearings, the official Covid inquiry reaches a week of hugely significant and potentially damning testimony, evidence that could shine a deeply unforgiving light on the inner workings of Boris Johnson's government.
They add:
Among the witnesses are Dominic Cummings, Johnson's former chief adviser, and Lee Cain, his ex-communications chief, plus a string of other senior aides and top civil servants of the time – several of whom first became known to the public because of illicit Covid parties.
Is it just me thinking this, or is someone at the inquiry with a dark sense of humour trolling Cummings by demanding that he present his evidence on Halloween? The evidence will be under oath and discussion can cover his trip to Barnard Castle.
More importantly, it's widely thought that his WhatsApps are daming. There is much on in the world, but it's worth keeping an eye on this.
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Will the inquiry get a trick or a treat?
Both?
I thought Cummings has had his treat for the year Boris Johnson losing his job as prime-minister!
I’m hoping that people turn off GB News once they’ve seen what Johnson thinks of them through this inquiry. Hope he loses that job, too. Never watched it, but I imagine all the tory MPs on it will be queuing up to interview Johnson now.
No, they’ll hang on until 5th Nov, much more fitting.
What I find fascinating about Cummings is that he and many others thought they were getting into by throwing their lot in with the Tories who not only being nasty are also rather incompetent – the sort of incompetence that can only be generated by those who have it all too easy I’m afraid.
My impression is that Cummings was convinced of his own genius and his ability to manipulate Johnson and, through him, the whole of society. Mistakes like this have been made throughout history, but when you’re a genius you don’t need to learn from history!
Read the front page of the Telegraph, it claims that Professor Gupta said that Johnson had a round table discussion with a Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell about the Swedish approach. It says all the scientists present broadly agreed bar one. Professor Gupta has not yet given evidence but shared this because of frustration from scientists critical of the lockdown that they were nit being given a fair hearing.
The meeting was in Sept 2020 but a lockdown was imposed some weeks later. I get the impression the more we know, the more questions arise.
The delay in the recommended ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown in Autumn 2020 cost lives. The Gupta / Tegnell people were part of the Great Barrington Declaration – funded by the US Ultra Right – an utterly false ‘herd immunity’ theory (let people catch covid).
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-31/sweden-covid-policy-was-a-disaster
They had wholly inappropriate access to Downing Street – who were ignoring their own advisors. The official advisors (Sage etc. ) were trying to follow the science and the principles of public health ……
Agreed
Thanks Andrew
I didn’t have that context
The Telegraph seem to be using it to push their idea that things should have been open for business, whatever the consequences for the workforce.
The worldmeters website shows we have the highest number of deaths per million in western Europe. Rates were often higher in the east of the Continent. I hope the question ‘why’ is going to be asked soon.
I only watched the first hour of today’s inquiry because my grandson was here for the rest of the day. Going to watch more tonight.
Martin Reynolds was on this morning. He actually set up a whatsapp group between Johnson and other people involved, so he kept all the whatsapp messages that Johnson said went missing. Reynolds was the one who set up lots of parties. He was the PPS to Johnson at the time. He really tried to wriggle out of proper answers this morning.
Lee Cain was supposed to be on this afternoon, but he’s first tomorrow morning. Then the rest of the day is Cummings.
Why shouldn’t Cummings be on tomorrow? Someone’s got to be.
Last week we were told that Cummings was not in charge but Carrie was. That will be interesting to find out.
The trip from Durham to Barnard Castle “may have been a minor breach of the regulations” according to the local police.
The trip by the Cummins family who were seriously ill or pending serious illness from London to Durham clearly was within the Coronavirus regulations as written.
We’ll see what Keith manages to get Cummings to say tomorrow on oath. He was definitely getting fed up of Reynolds today, going on about how he apologised unreservedly and was very sorry for his part in being found out. There was no emotion in his face as he said that today. Even the judge was getting fed up of him, although couldn’t say so.
Anyone else listening to Cummings at the moment?
Can’t count the number of times he has been asked to slow down for the stenographers. Doesn’t think it counts for him.
It is….graphic
Why on earth is it not being recorded?
It’s on you-tube and all past meetings can be viewed.
https://www.youtube.com/@UKCovid-19Inquiry/videos
Today’s will be on tomorrow, or you can watch live.
You can actually watch in order of popularity. I imagine the Cummings one will soon be at the top of that list. I liked the way that Hugh Keith was not going to let him get away with obfuscating about why he had to take his son and wife with him to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight. If Barnard Castle is ten minutes down the road from his farm in Durham, he must have been breaking the sound barrier let alone the speed limit.
The farm is about 15 minutes drive from where I live. It’s also about ten minutes walk from a pub called The Honest Lawyer, which he would have had to drive past to get to Barnard Castle!