OH LOOK, THERE’S A MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY…OH AND A SQUIRREL
I’m no fan of Dominic Cummings, as Munguin will tell you, but some of his testimony in today’s hearing is rather damning, especially for Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock. And it is difficult to believe that he would risk making it all up. Unlikeable he may be; reckless he may be, but stupid, I suspect, he is not.
I’m also at a loss to know why the BBC terminated televising the session before its end?
“Murder She Wrote” rerun, maybe?
It is, however, a great relief to know that that no lesser a person that Grant Shapps (some of you may know him by other names such as Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox) tells us that the British public are more interested in the success of the vaccine roll out.
It’s comforting to be informed how we feel about such important matters by “people” of such distinction.
There was me being all cross and concerned about all the dead bodies.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Ian Dunt
@IanDunt
What a day. Four straight hours of of testimony from a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood challenging the record of a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Actually, the whole thread is worth a read. Language warning for those of sensitive nature.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmm, Wonder what will happen next in the English governments’ deadly saga, da da da…
So Grant Snapps says no one should bother their little heads about all the people who died last year because of a Tory ‘fck up’. All those people who lost loved ones, terrible.
People should be very angry and demand the removal of Johnson at least, but they won’t.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I think he was trying to say that no one IS worried about that. They are all so full of awe and admiration for the brilliance of the roll out, which i admit across all four countries has been spectacularly good and, at least initially, pretty unique.
LikeLike
Very entertaining to see Cummings having a go at those in charge at Westminster. However, some of the things being said about the approach, in England, of sending people from hospital to care homes to free up beds was pretty damning – no sensible plan and lies about testing. Sadly, I’m not confident things were any better on that front in Scotland.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was the same across the UK, I think, John, although, as far as we know, our health secretary didn’t lie her backside off about it.
The question at the time was surely how to get people who could barely breathe into hospital and into isolation and treatment with oxygen.
The answer was to move people who were really only receiving nursing care but stuck in hospital, into care homes.
It was also safer for these people to be out of hospitals where large numbers of covid patients were being treated.
This goes for all four countries. And all four, as far as I can see, did it.
Was their time to test? Probably not. Were there even sufficient tests available? Probably not.
So all governments here are equally culpable.
Cummings highlights here that Hancock told everyone it was all under control. It was not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Check out Professor Robertson at the Tusker (Talking up Scotland), he’s been all over this for months on end.
Here’s a relatively recent piece on this very topic, but you’ll find links to more:
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2021/04/08/disgraceful-nick-robinson-returns-to-lie-in-our-faces-about-care-home-deaths/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Drew, off to read.
LikeLike
… links to more at the bottom of the linked article.
—
Woohoo, WordPress actually published a link for me!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I might add that the Tories in Scotland then made a great big deal of the fact that the Scottish government spent a lot of time vaccinating people in care homes, which took up a lot more time than having people turn up at vaccination centres or doctors’ surgeries.
“Oh, the pathetic Jock government is miles behind our magnificent English government in vaccinations, they screamed.
Until we have finished saving lives in care homes and caught up with them and overtook them. Then they found something else to talk down Scotland about.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I seem to recall also, Tris, that the Tories in Scotland also raised (tried to raise) a ruckus about the Scottish Government not administering millions of doses of vaccine which had been allocated to it – which it hadn’t yet received.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They really would do anything, Ed, to try to make our government look bad.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Doncha just lurrrve the way They constantly quack on about how the cause of Scottish independence is founded on anti-English racism, Tris? It never seems to occur to Them just how bloody, obnoxiously, ignorantly anti-Scottish They’re being when they do, as well as being just plain wrong.
Just like the hoo-ha over the possibility of Scotland closing the Border to establish a cordon sanitaire against COVID, when we all knew without a nanosecond’s hesitation, that were the situation reversed, Westminster would close the Border in an instant and without a second thought. On previous showing, They wouldn’t even bother to inform us first.
Where was I? Oh yes – can you imagine the hoo-ha if the English wanted to end the Union and we Scots said “Ye cannae, because we voted against independence in 2014”? Oh well – in the absence of a constitution, a tyranny of the majority is only to be expected, I suppose.
LikeLiked by 3 people
LOL. Very true, Ed.
Remember Mr Jacob Rees Mogg said the WAS no border to close … but strangely had no objection to the Welsh FM placing police at the border and turning people away.
What a strange old equal partnership we have…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aye Edd, the famous doses “sitting in a warehouse”, presumably conjuring an image of gathered dust!
No mention that said doses hadn’t left, said warehouse, for Sunny Scotland.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I heard that Michale Gove has just said that Dominic Cummings in a man of honour.
Please, stop. I can’t take any more.
First we have a lying bas***d calling a lying bast**d a lying bast**d, now a slithering little snake calling a slithering little snake a man on honour.
What next?
Prince Andrew sweating?
LikeLiked by 3 people
I thank all the gods that I some Milk of Magnesia to hand to settle my stomach, Tris.
The word “unedifying” comes to mind. Even Kevin is looking a bit green around the gills.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow… sorry Kevin. (I thought he was in the oubliettes?) Didn’t mean to upset you.
(And I note my misspelling of Mrs Vine’s drudge’s name, but I can’t be bothered to change it, becasue he’s not worth the effort!)
LikeLiked by 1 person
He’s in the oubliette right enough, Tris, but I haven’t forgotten him, and because I am such a nice person I’m letting him see what I’m seeing on the interwebs. I know he was green around the gills because the security camera I installed does colour and gives me picture-in-picture…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Give him my fond regards then, Ed. Although I didn’t know he had gills.
LikeLike
It’s one of my father’s phrases, Tris, “green around the gills” meaning viridescent around the neb. I’m not at all sure how common it is, or even it was peculiar to him … alas, you have sown a seed of doubt in my quivering, fragile psyche, a seed which may germinate into a mental kudzu vine and strangle … aaaaaarghhhh!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Um… at the risk of causing another catastrophe… I didn’t know you grew vines?
LikeLike
Only mental ones, Tris.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No vines, but I grow hops and kiwi fruit. Not on the same plant, mind…
LikeLiked by 2 people
Now, that would have been clever, even for a Munguinite! Kiwis ripen?
LikeLike
Not enough. Too small and hard to eat; the really hot summer a few years ago produced fruit with an edible belt around the middle, but it still tasted bitter. South of France is the kind of climate needed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve had exactly the same problem. Great flowers, fruit grows but rock hard.
Oh well, I’ll just have to move back to the South of France.
LikeLike
It maybe my dyslexia Tris but “slithering little snake” looks ok.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s more than perfect.
If ever there was a lad that belonged in Slytherin, it is he!
LikeLike
The only redeeming feature that Boris Johnson has is that he’s not Micheal Gove.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL
LikeLike
I just don’t care if Dom says bad about boris etc I want to believe it and will do 😝
LikeLiked by 2 people
It would be a whole lot better if Cummings hadn’t blown his credibility, or insulted our collective intelligence, over his trip to Barnard Castle.
It’s obvious from the bull that Cummings expected us to swallow, that he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Probably thought he played a blinder, dishing out the dirt, today; just wait ’til the Tories rally round and retaliate.
He’ll need a thick skin and asbestos/teflon undies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think he has a thick skin, but I suspect that there are some Tories (Gove included) who might be glad to see the back of Boarus and might take old Cummings’ side.
But yes, as Mr Dunt said… “a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood challenging the record of a self-interested narcissist who has weaponised falsehood.”
Interestingly if Cummings had just kept on the right side of the one day to be Mrs Johnson, none of this would have happened.
But he wasn’t bright enough to see that NutNuts had a bigger hold on Johnson than he did… and she had hiom removed.
We should be watching for her. She’s one dangerous person.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From the BBC, re Cummings:
“…One morning, he claimed, the “national security people came in” and said “[US President Donald] Trump wants us to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East tonight” and this “totally derailed” meetings about quarantine and the coronavirus.
At the same time, he said, “the prime minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers” over a story in Times newspaper with the headline “Downing St dog to be reshuffled”.
The article reported a Whitehall source as saying they were not sure Carrie Symonds’ dog Dilyn would “make it through the next reshuffle” due to the mess he had created in her and Mr Johnson’s No 11 flat.
Mr Cummings said: “So, we have this sort of completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying, ‘are we going to bomb Iraq?’, part of the building was arguing about whether or not we’re going to do quarantine or not do quarantine, the prime minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.”
So Princess NutNuts’ priority, in a pandemic, was greetin’ aboot Dilyn the dug’s bad press!
That suggests she’s more self-centred that the odious oaf?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, and I suspect, more dangerous.
No one could dislodge Cummings, until she heard that he called her Princess NutsNuts… then he had to go.
If she decided tomorrow that Gove was an evil little toad, I suspect that he would be next.
I wonder if we could get it to her that Johnson is having an affair with Priti Grim?
LikeLiked by 1 person
How very Machiavellian, Tris! I like it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Forsooth…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2S2LD3WYAMZISb?format=jpg&name=900×900
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
LikeLike
Wow! That deserves a medal… who is the author.poet and is there any more of it? Craig Brown is a master of parody but I don’t detect his hand here. (But could be wrong. Mastery is being non-detectable.)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Matt Hancock incapable of doing the job? What a shocker. Nobody could ever have worked that out after listening to him for 10 seconds. It’s a good job we’ve got ‘top people’ 🥴 in government, wise enough to spot this sort of thing and err… do absolutely bugger all about it.
Bob Dylan wrote “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.” If we could get that to work the other way round we’d be on easy street with our politicians.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, I was shocked when I heard that.
You are unlikely to ever find a politicians who just tells the truth.
Actually, in my experience you can strike politician and replace it with person.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes but now and again or occasionally telling the truth shouldn’t be too much to expect from politicians. There’s so much double speak/think that there’s no clarity. This is barely adequate normally but has proven lethal during a pandemic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My problem is that Cummings is an unlikeable person who probably lies through his teeth, and he’s having a go at Johnson who must be one of the least pleasant people in Westminster, but Cummings is being backed up by Michael Gove, the typing of whose name makes me feel slightly sick.
Seriously, I can believe some politicians, from all parties, but that three… and Handcock…Jeeez not for a second.,
LikeLiked by 2 people
Tris, I was just toying idly with the idea of matching the a*rseholes in the Westminster cabinet to Stalin and the members of his inner circle: Stalin himself, and Beria, Kaganovich, Kirov, Molotov, Shcherbakov, Voroshilov… I keep coming up with the closest analogue to Stalin himself as Priti Nasty Patel, rather than Beria; Gove as Beria, Bawris himself as Shcherbakov, maybe. I guess Grant Shappless would have to be Kaganovich.
The thought of Patel becoming the Dear Leader is enough to send a cold stab of terror through the bravest heart, I think. How ambitious is the woman anyway? She has a practice of doing whatever she damn well pleases, that’s for sure – and it is all too easy to imagine her using force to achieve her ends, without compunction. That’s a conclusion backed up to her evident desire to put people like the Kenmure Street protestors in chokey for getting in the way of her will and her minions. Her attitude to immigrants reminds me of the post-WWII attacks on “rootless cosmopolitans” (Soviet code for Jews, but the same principles apply). One Britain, One Nation…
…
Hm. I expect a vanishing few Munguinites may want to look further into what I’m wittering on about. So… engage peerless googling… OK, from a website called Russia Beyond, “5 of Stalin’s closest comrades – and what happened to them”, https://www.rbth.com/history/332961-stalins-closest-comrades. That one is about Beria, Kaganovich, Kirov, Molotov and Voroshilov.
From the same website, Shcherbakov is the subject of “The man who enjoyed Stalin’s absolute trust”, https://www.rbth.com/history/333214-man-who-enjoyed-stalins-absolute-trust. I chose him for Bawris because of Bawris’s constant lies, whereas Shcherbakov was responsible for propaganda. I think it was him who informed the Sov Union’s writers in 1936 at their All-Union Congress that they must be “engineers of souls”. I doubt if Shcherbakov would have been stupid or bonkers enough to address the captive audience of scribblers in Classical Greek, though. I do wonder vaguely what the Hansard makes of Bawris when he does it, especially when he gets it wrong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think you’re probably right, Ed. Priti Ghastly is almost certainly the very worst of them, and I’d not be at all surprised if she though that she might one day get her claws of the keys to Downing Street.
I imagine her like one of the Bond villains, with a white cat on her lap, probably in the shape of Gove.
LikeLike
Hm. Perhaps with Princess Carrie Antoinette Nut-nuts as – who? Not Rosa Klebb. Helga Brandt?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I rather liked Rosa Clebb.
LikeLike
Deliberate lies and non-fact-based attitudes and policies are inimical to democracy. For democracy to function properly, you need an informed electorate, not one that is misinformed, whether by accident or design.
I estimate that the wall-to-wall pro-Union bias pumped out by the Great British Meeja Machine – and even the general lack of proper understanding of the issues, and the pervasive misconceptions, so common among the Metropolitan chattering classes and passed on by them into our poor, silly, wide-open wee Jockanese minds – costs the cause of Scottish independence a good 10 percentage points in support among the public.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s an H.M. Bateman print at my mum’s that I bought from Green’s the legal bookshop years ago; “the witness who told everything”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2Tq0ZPXIAYhJsK?format=png&name=small
The Daily Express obviously on Pluto today.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hm. A corollary of the authoritarian mindset is a cultish attachment to the authority figure. The Daily Heil and its owners have form when it comes to admirations for far-right authoritarian ideologies and ideologues.
Didn’t I hear recently about a TV channel (and various other media outlets) in some country or other being slavishly devoted to amplifying and glorifying a far-right, obnoxious, lying, incompetent toad of a leader who refused to accept results of elections when he didn’t like them, and didn’t give a damn about ordinary people? It’s on the tip of my tongue… Faux News, something like that… Oh yes, and because of his ignorance, incompetence and sociopathic lack of concern for others, was responsible for the avoidable deaths of thousands upon thousands of helpless victims of a pandemic disease? Not that Faux News would ever say such a thing, of course. Kinda like the Daily Fail would never trouble itself about Bawris denying the import of the 6 May elections to the Scottish Parliament, but would instead approve, egg him on, and call it patriotism.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s someone agreeing with Cummings.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2X_MS8XMAAaNbJ?format=jpg&name=900×900
LikeLike