Johnson at the COVID enquiry

ElBurroSinNombre

ElBurroSinNombre

Well-known member
Having watched a bit of the evidence this morning, I can't help thinking 'How did somebody so unsuited to the role become PM?'

From what I have seen, there are not really any standout moments so far - just a general air of incompetence and of not taking the pandemic seriously (comparing it to BSE for instance). Johnson is his mendacious self, and seemingly fully confident in his limited abilities and his role in the crisis despite the many glaring mistakes that were made. 'I should have twigged sooner' when he saw the havoc taking place in Italy - some would call this a slight understatement.

Interested in others thoughts on this.
 
Yep, I found myself thinking of a description in the `Great Gatsby` (of the repellent Tom and Daisy Buchanan) which went something like:

"They were careless people - they smashed things up and retreated into their money and their vast carelessness and let others clear up the mess they had made.`

Johnson is very much cut from the same cloth.

By nature, Johnson has been a serial destructor in his personal life and in public office. His innate laziness and careless attitude to rules and responsibility is being subtly laid bare by Hugo Keith, who is taking advantage of the fact that Johnson is largely devoid of his usual defence mechanisms of bumbling obfuscation and casual lying.

Of all the people seen so far, he appears to be the least prepared and has the poorest recollection.

Well he would, wouldn`t he?
 
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Lytham_fy8 said:
Anyone who voted for this morally reprehensible duplicitous excuse of a human being is as culpable for all failings as he is, you ** morons, voting for this equivocating corrupt embarrassment, you can be as trusted with your vote as he can be with public office.

No wonder this thread is so quiet eh?
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Fcuk off🤪
 
Lytham_fy8 said:
Anyone who voted for this morally reprehensible duplicitous excuse of a human being is as culpable for all failings as he is, you ** morons, voting for this equivocating corrupt embarrassment, you can be as trusted with your vote as he can be with public office.

No wonder this thread is so quiet eh?
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One worrying aspect of this is that Johnson still has many powerful friends who would like him to get back into office.
His narrative has been trailed in the Times this week before his appearance at the enquiry putting him in the best possible light.
However as spud points out, in this section of the evidence he is being given enough rope.
For instance;
He said he couldn't remember the contents of a meeting with Independent and Evening Standard owner Lebedev in the run up to COVID (most think that this was to discuss Lebedev's prospects of a peerage). Johnson then said that he needed to keep newspaper proprietor's informed of the situation, however no other proprietors visited Johnson at this time. If there is a record of this meeting it will surely be requested by the enquiry and published.
 
Lytham_fy8 said:
Anyone who voted for this morally reprehensible duplicitous excuse of a human being is as culpable for all failings as he is, you ** morons, voting for this equivocating corrupt embarrassment, you can be as trusted with your vote as he can be with public office.

No wonder this thread is so quiet eh?
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fare enough F8 but the alternative was Corby, stuffed if we do, stuffed if we don't. I found myself unable to vote for either.
 
Interesting comment on twitter in the past couple of hours stating that Whats app messages can be retrieved from a mobile even if it has been reverted to factory setting. Apparently the person who posted this knows how. Her name is Jennifer Arcuri, sound familiar to anybody? How does the old saying go? ‘ a woman scorned’.
 
I think it has been reported that for Bozo to have completely lost 6 months of WhatsApp messages, he would have had to delete them from his phone, wait for cloud storage to also remove and then switch off cloud storage before factory reset. Quite a sequence.

However, the same report also said that they would bet large that Facebook\Meta or whoever owns WhatsApp would certainly have a method of restoring "lost" messages from various archives, especially for people identified as VIPs. However, that might reveal links with CIA requests etc and would certainly blow up the illusion that WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted and unreadable by anyone outside the group.

So maybe Bozo and his Covid behaviour is not a big enough fish to land for the Americans to expose that illusion. If Bletchley Park could do it with Enigma/Lorenz and Ultra in the 1940s then I too would bet that it is built into all these social media apps.
 
May as well ask him what he had for tea, he’d lie about that as well. Same as that gimp Hancock last week. Just bare faced lying.

This whole inquiry caper is the biggest waste of everyone’s time going whilst also costing multi-millions. There won’t be any repercussions or consequences from it, the conclusion will be that we should’ve locked down earlier and for longer as that’s the way the narrative is being played out.

A total and utter whitewash.

They could have just told everyone this at the start and sent the money it’s going to cost to Michelle Mone for fuck all, just for old times sake 🤝🏼
 
He's a totally disorganised, shambolic serial liar both privately and professionally and has been all his life but it was either him or Comrade Corbyn in the GE in December 2019 and that’s why he romped home with a huge margin!
 
Grandad John said:
Interesting comment on twitter in the past couple of hours stating that Whats app messages can be retrieved from a mobile even if it has been reverted to factory setting. Apparently the person who posted this knows how. Her name is Jennifer Arcuri, sound familiar to anybody? How does the old saying go? ‘ a woman scorned’.
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Only way it can be retrieved is from WhatsApp’s own servers if they’ve kept the data.

It would take court powers to force them to provide that. Definitely can’t retrieve from a wiped phone
 
spudgun said:
Yep, I found myself thinking of a description in the `Great Gadsby` (of the repellent Tom and Daisy Buchanan) which went something like:

"They were careless people - they smashed things up and retreated into their money and their vast carelessness and let others clear up the mess they had made.`

Johnson is very much cut from the same cloth.

By nature, Johnson has been a serial destructor in his personal life and in public office. His innate laziness and careless attitude to rules and responsibility is being subtly laid bare by Hugo Keith, who is taking advantage of the fact that Johnson is largely devoid of his usual defence mechanisms of bumbling obfuscation and casual lying.

Of all the people seen so far, he appears to be the least prepared and has the poorest recollection.

Well he would, wouldn`t he?
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Your Gatsby comparison is right on the money.
 
Johnson wasn't around much in the first quarter of 2020, he spent January in Mustique, February sorting out a messy divorce and March moving his pregnant floozy into Downing Street.
Too busy to attend five COBRA meetings so whilst Italy and other countries were going into lockdown Johnson was sitting on his hands allowing the Cheltenham festival to go ahead and 3000 Spanish football fans into Anfield.
Then instead of sitting on his hands he emerged from his sabbatical shaking everybody's hand and contracting COVID himself.
Shambolic Premiership.
 
Adams Kebab said:
May as well ask him what he had for tea, he’d lie about that as well. Same as that gimp Hancock last week. Just bare faced lying.

This whole inquiry caper is the biggest waste of everyone’s time going whilst also costing multi-millions. There won’t be any repercussions or consequences from it, the conclusion will be that we should’ve locked down earlier and for longer as that’s the way the narrative is being played out.

A total and utter whitewash.

They could have just told everyone this at the start and sent the money it’s going to cost to Michelle Mone for fuck all, just for old times sake 🤝🏼
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What conclusion would you like them to come to?
 
Adams Kebab said:
May as well ask him what he had for tea, he’d lie about that as well. Same as that gimp Hancock last week. Just bare faced lying.

This whole inquiry caper is the biggest waste of everyone’s time going whilst also costing multi-millions. There won’t be any repercussions or consequences from it, the conclusion will be that we should’ve locked down earlier and for longer as that’s the way the narrative is being played out.

A total and utter whitewash.

They could have just told everyone this at the start and sent the money it’s going to cost to Michelle Mone for fuck all, just for old times sake 🤝🏼
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I don't agree.
You are somebody who has constantly challenged government action, policy and the vaccine program.
This public enquiry is where the decisions made can be examined in detail and recommendations made (based on experience) if the country was ever to face a similar situation again. Lessons can and should be learned - that is what this enquiry is about. A few millions thrown at this now could save billions in the future, it's definitely a worthwhile exercise IMO. The enquiry also serves a purpose for the relatives of victims and people who now have long COVID.
 
glasshalffull said:
What conclusion would you like them to come to?
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After spunking countless billions, selling out our kids, enriching cronies, and destroying our nation's mental health, I think it would be good to establish the rationale for all of the above, whilst also mentioning the vaccine roll-out and the thousands of people who have suffered side effects and in some tragic cases lost their lives when they were at little risk from the virus.

Vast swathes of the population, including an overwhelming majority of the youngest in our society, were at almost zero risk. This is factual.

Our lockdown response posed far more of a threat to their wellbeing than the virus itself. At no point was dietary and nutritional advice given to the nation or the importance of physical exercise, Infact the total opposite with gyms closed and fast food takeaways open and encouraged to open whilst small businesses were hampered by nonsensical rules and restrictions.

Total madness.

But nah, let’s carry on asking where his What’s Apps are and when Matt Hancock said we should lock down. Total farce.
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
I don't agree.
You are somebody who has constantly challenged government action, policy and the vaccine program.
This public enquiry is where the decisions made can be examined in detail and recommendations made (based on experience) if the country was ever to face a similar situation again. Lessons can and should be learned - that is what this enquiry is about. A few millions thrown at this now could save billions in the future, it's definitely a worthwhile exercise IMO. The enquiry also serves a purpose for the relatives of victims and people who now have long COVID.
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I can only apologise for challenging government action that involved isolating people who had nothing actually wrong with them and stupid and barmy rules and restrictions. Let’s all listen to a bunch of serial liars who don’t give a flying fook about you. Brilliant. You talk about the relatives of victims, I actually feel sickened they couldn’t say bye to loved ones properly or were allowed 8 people at funeral on the basis of “science”. What a load of inhumane dogshit.

When you’re thinking about the long Covid people, spare a thought for the families who lost loved ones due to suicides due to stupid lockdown rules and to the thousands who have suffered from the “safe and effective” vaccine programme.

None of the above will be covered at the inquiry, it’s the biggest whitewash since that Ashed tour we got drilled 5-0.
 
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Adams Kebab said:
I can only apologise for challenging government action that involved isolating people who had nothing actually wrong with them and stupid and barmy rules and restrictions. Let’s all listen to a bunch of serial liars who don’t give a flying fook about you. Brilliant. You talk about the relatives of victims, I actually feel sickened they couldn’t say bye to loved ones properly or were allowed 8 people at funeral on the basis of “science”. What a load of inhumane dogshit.

When you’re thinking about the long Covid people, spare a thought for the families who lost loved ones due to suicides due to stupid lockdown rules and to the thousands who have suffered from the “safe and effective” vaccine programme.

None of the above will be covered at the inquiry, it’s the biggest whitewash since that Ashed tour we got drilled 5-0.
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You sound like you know the conclusions before the enquiry has finished.
I think the things that you mention are precisely what is being covered at the moment. In fact Johnson is talking at the moment, the conversation is about risk of death from COVID during the pandemic, damage to the economy, the behavior of the public in response to restrictions etc. The example that you give of the arbitrary 8 people at a funeral is precisely the sort of decision that is being discussed at the enquiry. I'd be far more concerned if we tried to forget what happened and nothing was learned from the situation.

Can you give evidence of the thousands that have suffered from the vaccine?
The overwhelming evidence is that the vaccine saved millions of lives.
Anyway if such evidence exists, it is exactly the sort of thing that will be discussed at this enquiry.
 
Adams Kebab said:
I can only apologise for challenging government action that involved isolating people who had nothing actually wrong with them and stupid and barmy rules and restrictions. Let’s all listen to a bunch of serial liars who don’t give a flying fook about you. Brilliant. You talk about the relatives of victims, I actually feel sickened they couldn’t say bye to loved ones properly or were allowed 8 people at funeral on the basis of “science”. What a load of inhumane dogshit.

When you’re thinking about the long Covid people, spare a thought for the families who lost loved ones due to suicides due to stupid lockdown rules and to the thousands who have suffered from the “safe and effective” vaccine programme.

None of the above will be covered at the inquiry, it’s the biggest whitewash since that Ashed tour we got drilled 5-0.
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The COVID enquiry is not a soap box for anyone's partisan views. It's an enquiry that hears evidence from a range of people and arrives at conclusions.
 
Anybody listening this morning.
He is getting rattled, he just about managed to reign in his self righteous indignation without getting too angry.
How on earth could he have been PM?
 
Vallance and Whitty should be in the chair not this utter bell end who couldn't run a bath.

There the ones for the sheer stupidity of some of the rules which seem to change weekly and made it up as they went along.
 
I'm not sure what the alternative to the Inquiry is.

There are polar opposite views in society as to whether we should have locked down earlier and harder (e.g. NZ) or not done so at all. Despite opinions of the personalities involved, it must have been seriously difficult judging how to balance the health of the people versus the economic impact versus freedoms, particularly against the backdrop of a fast developing situation and approaches being taken by other countries.

I actually think that at the time our government got the balance about right, although I didnt agree with everything.

It's important that the lessons are learnt for future situations (which won't be the same) and a better governance process is designed for dealing with them and it's clear what preparedness should be in place.
 
poolseasider said:
Vallance and Whitty should be in the chair not this utter bell end who couldn't run a bath.

There the ones for the sheer stupidity of some of the rules which seem to change weekly and made it up as they went along.
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You do know that Vallance and Whitty have previously been "in the chair", don`t you?

And you do know that advisors advise and ministers decide, so Vallance and Whitty didn`t implement any of the "rules"?

Apart from that you are spot on: Johnson is indeed a "bell end".

Facts matter...
 
Delfino said:
There are polar opposite views in society as to whether we should have locked down earlier and harder (e.g. NZ) or not done so at all.
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Being pedantic, but in the first wave NZ locked down slightly after us, it wasn't any harder, and they came out of it sooner. Subsequent lockdowns were also less severe than the second and third UK ones.

The main reason for NZ's Covid outcome was that they're over 2,000 km from anywhere, and over 18,000 km from Italy, so they simply never got the same number of cases seeded in the first place.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Being pedantic, but in the first wave NZ locked down slightly after us, it wasn't any harder, and they came out of it sooner. Subsequent lockdowns were also less severe than the second and third UK ones.

The main reason for NZ's Covid outcome was that they're over 2,000 km from anywhere, and over 18,000 km from Italy, so they simply never got the same number of cases seeded in the first place.
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Yep, probably best worded as what became NZ style...ie closed borders, etc
 
Its a sad Britain when we need inquiry after inquiry, report after report when the dust has settled after things go wrong. Lets hope when I vote Labour and get them into power this sillyness stops at once.
 
todayistheday said:
Its a sad Britain when we need inquiry after inquiry, report after report when the dust has settled after things go wrong. Lets hope when I vote Labour and get them into power this sillyness stops at once.
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That's our media for you, particularly the left leaning sections, who want to convince us all that everything that goes wrong is someone's fault, that we're somehow uniquely bad, and everything this government in particular does is motivated by callousness and greed.

Interesting comment from the Telegraph:

“Writing from Europe, I have to say the general view over here is the UK did fairly well with Covid. Best in class for vaccines. In the pack for the rest. Why all the hand-wringing?”
 
Lost Seasider said:
That's our media for you, particularly the left leaning sections, who want to convince us all that everything that goes wrong is someone's fault.
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It's like the Daily Mail never existed........

It's more interesting that some posters on this forum think there is something inherently wrong in examining your past performance to see how you can improve. Even in circumstances where huge numbers of people suffered death or long term illness as a result of what was (or was not) done.
 
poolseasider said:
Vallance and Whitty should be in the chair not this utter bell end who couldn't run a bath.

There the ones for the sheer stupidity of some of the rules which seem to change weekly and made it up as they went along.
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They were there two weeks ago. Good to know you're paying attention.

In any case, Johnson said he ignored the science and went with his 'instincts'.

Think that's the definition of making it up as you go along.
 
Think Mr Johnson used the no comment/ can't remember defence 19 times yesterday, Idiot in charge of a bunch of idiots at the worst time, all putting money ahead of people. Mood music at time on the daily briefings we are following the science one problem he could not understand the science (a simple graph or the concept of expodential growth was beyond him) UK had advance warning of what was coming from the impact in Italy but he chose to go missing in action and focus on his personal affairs. A complete dereliction of duty.
 
Its a bit OTT, can someone do a short summary once its over and forward it to Sir Starmer just incase we have another strain which is untreatable at first.
 
Matt Hancock and the scientific advisors didn't know about 'Eat out to help out' in advance. They didn't have a chance to tell the PM about the potential risks. But Johnson claims he didn't know they didn't know. WTAF.
Absolutely mad.
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
Matt Hancock and the scientific advisors didn't know about 'Eat out to help out' in advance. They didn't have a chance to tell the PM about the potential risks. But Johnson claims he didn't know they didn't know. WTAF.
Absolutely mad.
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That will be discussed at another inquiry lasting several months.
 
todayistheday said:
You think this inquiry will see to that?
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That is the point of it. And it will to a certain extent. What is coming out of the evidence that I have seen is that different parts of the government did not communicate with each other as they should have.
Systems can be designed to stop this happening in future
 
basilrobbie3 said:
It's like the Daily Mail never existed........

It's more interesting that some posters on this forum think there is something inherently wrong in examining your past performance to see how you can improve. Even in circumstances where huge numbers of people suffered death or long term illness as a result of what was (or was not) done.
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It's a comparatively small amount of money which might make a massive difference in the future.
 
Eat out to help out is Rishi " let em die" Sunaks doing. kept the science of the table and I read somewhere that his officials advised him they could not sign off on the cost benefits because it was not possible to measure spend and attribute it to increased economy activity. So no science or finance support and we went ahead anyway - guys a clown
 
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