Will he resign?

Just catching up.

Excellent post bluecat

Reading the Wakefield article made me feel a tad queasy now that we know the truth. How can these people live with themselves?

I think it is pretty clear to most now that Johnson is out of his depth and that Cummings is actually part of the elite he professes to defend the people against. So it is all collapsing around their ears.

I feel that the core question in this shambles has become "when did Johnson become aware of the Cummings journey". The foregoing was a question that the Prime Minister deliberately avoided answering yesterday when it was posed to him by the BBC journalist at the daily Covid briefing.

So, did Johnson know of the Cummings intention to travel to Durham prior to that journey taking place?

Indeed, did the Prime Minister give permission for his advisor to travel, for in the answer to that question could lay the future of Johnson as Prime Minister, such is the public anger over this matter, I feel

Morning all. Bluecat excellent post.
Have been awake since 4am listening to bbc world ? service and it’s been reported that many MP’s have been inundated with emails from angry constituents. They hope that this will quieten in the next few days so let’s pass the message on that this is a good time to write to your MP. Just google, it’s straight forward.

janipat; I get where you're coming from regarding the garden [don't blame you] but please be careful re hugging. The virus is still out there and no matter what Cummings has done we still have to safeguard ourselves. x

MaizieD, please go ahead and use what you wish . I did do some writing for magazines in my younger days but that was fiction. I am tempted to say that you couldn't make up the current debacle but, given the morality of the present government, I fear it's all too predictable.

Up until now I have observed the rules to the nth degree. But now I know I should (like Dominic Cummings) trust my instincts and good family responsibilities more, I'm afraid I shall be diverting from the path. One of my sons had said he will travel to a local park (to us) tomorrow for an hour or so, so that his father can distantly socialise with him for 20 minutes, to be replaced by me, his mother, for another 20 minutes. Bugger that, I'm telling him to come to the house where he can access the back garden without going through the house, and all 3 of us can enjoy a visit together. Still vastly better than what Dominic Cummings has done but bet we will be criticised. I've not seen him in over 3 months, I may even indulge in a hug, sod social distancing, it's obviously not that important!!!!!!!!!

Me too.
Struggling off to work tomorrow. (Gave up my annual leave to do my bit)

It's ok though, we're all in it together.

Ah well! Time for bed! The Bozo Bong Doo Dah Band seem a bit quite!

I bet they were surprised, eh, merlot?

Callistemon: I hadn’t thought of that as I keep all sorts of packaging for the grandchildren to play with. But not polystyrene. It breaks up into small pieces and can’t be detected by x rays: I remember us not using it at playgroup. I’m sure there were problems with children shoving it up their noses etc. They are indeed a very odd family. I remember meeting Cummings wife’s father or grandfather at his stately pad and thinking how bonkers he was. I used to like living in a country that had eccentric people: didn’t even mind the odd one being an MP but never thought some of them would get to govern the country.

Just a tad merlotgran. It's not easy to appear in Durham five days after you've been spotted in London either.

Maizie there have been a number of articles about journalists home schooling their children and how difficult they've found it. I assume they're paid by the word they produce.

I usually skim through them and think "So now you know what it's like to bring up a child as a single working parent" or "Now imagine what it's like to teach 30 kids like yours and have management and Ofsted breathing down your neck".

Mary Wakefield is a commissioning editor for the Spectator. Presumably, she didn't need to write about her experience of Covid-19, so she chose to do so for a reason.

With hindsight, it seems that the reason was to cover her husband's back and, possibly, to gain sympathy for their situation.

I honestly don't know why she wrote it, but I assume the Spectator knows why it's taken it down.

After the uncertainty of the bug itself, we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown

Isn't that a bit difficult when you're in Durham?

I wonder if any of this has made it onto Twitter/Facebook, or into the papers.
I hope so!

That's a relief I was wondering if they were fit to look after a young child.

Don't worry, Cal, she was making it all up. In another of their stories they were in Durham and child was off with Auntie...

Who lets their child play with polystyrene packaging?

Sorry to sidetrack, but I cannot believe I read that!
It contains toxic substances which could be carcinogenic.

Agreed, excellent post Bluecat. I could use some of it when writing to my MP, if you don't mind.

Thanks for the Spectator article, growstuff. I really think that if you've done something wrong you be wise to keep your head down, not write lying articles about it.

Are you a professional write Bluecat? That post should be in every newspaper.

If you haven't read the article, the Spectator has taken it down, but the US edition is still online (or was last time I looked). Here it is …

Getting coronavirus does not bring clarity

There’s been much talk of the spirit of the Blitz, but there’s something of the spirit of East Berlin, too

Mary Wakefield

I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting the enemy, feeling its spectral hands around my lungs. No such luck. Uncertainty is the hallmark of COVID-19. Even its origins are murky: wet markets or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control? Who knows, and who would ever believe the Chinese government anyway? When you’ve got it, the sense of medieval unknowing only deepens. Is this definitely it? Will it get worse? Will it come back?

My version of the virus began with a nasty headache and a grubby feeling of unease, after which I threw up on the bathroom floor. ‘That’s disgusting, Mum,’ said my four-year-old son, handing me a towel with a look of patronizing distaste.

I’ve never known a bug treat its victims so differently. My friends have reported stabbing sore throats, a loss of taste and smell, and numbness in their fingertips. The Huazhong university in Wuhan has just updated its list of official first symptoms which now includes: headache, dizziness, muscle inflammation, fever, diarrhea, vomiting and coughing.

One slight but sad effect of this great variation in symptoms is that it makes phoning friends to share COVID stories peculiarly unsatisfying. ‘Weren’t the muscle aches awful? Oh, you didn’t get them. Nope, no sore throat for me. Oh well.’

That evening, as I lay on the sofa, a happy thought occurred to me: if this was the virus, then my husband, who works 16-hour days as a rule, would have to come home. I let myself imagine two weeks in bed with ‘mild symptoms’, chatting to Dom and son through an open door. More fool me.

My husband did rush home to look after me. He’s an extremely kind man, whatever people assume to the contrary. But 24 hours later, he said ‘I feel weird’ and collapsed. I felt breathless, sometimes achy, but Dom couldn’t get out of bed. Day in, day out for 10 days he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs. He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way.

After a week, we reached peak corona uncertainty. Day six is a turning point, I was told: that’s when you either get better or head for ICU. But was Dom fighting off the bug or was he heading for a ventilator? Who knew? I sat on his bed staring at his chest, trying to count his breaths per minute. The little oxygen reader we’d bought on Amazon indicated that he should be in hospital, but his lips weren’t blue and he could talk in full sentences, such as: ‘Please stop staring at my chest, sweetheart.’

When do you go to hospital? Do you really wait until the lips go blue? Cedd, in his doctor’s uniform, administered Ribena with the grim insistence of a Broadmoor nurse, and this might be my only really useful advice for other double-COVID parents or single mothers with pre-schoolers: get out the doctor’s kit and make it your child’s job to take your temperature. Any game that involves lying down is a good game. My other corona tip is to order at least a quart of PVA glue. As Dom lay sweating, Cedd and I made a palace out of polystyrene packaging. I’ve laughed in the past at men who obsess over model railways. I won’t laugh again. In a chaotic and unpredictable environment, there’s nothing more comforting than having total control over your own tiny world. Long after my son lost interest I was busy gluing on towers, and cutting colored acetate to make window panes.

When Dom finally made it into the kitchen, he found me manically applying cheap plastic stick-on gems to a toilet paper tower. ‘Mum’s busy playing,’ I heard Cedd tell Dom, as he trotted off to fetch the oximeter.

Just as Dom was beginning to feel better, it was reported that Boris was heading in the other direction, into hospital. I’ve been a slack Christian during this era of biblical plague. Churches are shut, even Catholic churches, and somehow that makes more of a difference than I thought it would. One of the reasons I converted was because the doors of Catholic churches were always open, the sanctuary lamp lit, and now they’re closed it feels as if someone’s turned off the spiritual stopcock. But what’s there to do for the sick now except pray? I left my polystyrene palace and got to my knees for Boris, and found to my surprise that my prayers flowed easily, as if carried along in a current of others.

After the uncertainty of the bug itself, we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown. Everything and its opposite seems true. People are frightened and they’re calm; it’s spring and it’s not. Standing in line’s a pain in the ass and the most fun you’ll have all day.

There’s been much talk of the spirit of the Blitz, but there’s something of the spirit of East Berlin, too. Social distancing is supposed to be a helpful and communal act, but people smile noticeably less. I think it’s guilt by association. Because it’s natural to steer clear of someone you dislike, when you keep your distance for other reasons, you feel instinctively hostile. There’s a woman jogger I’ve seen a few times now who runs around scowling with an arm held out horizontally to keep everyone at bay. If I didn’t have a child in tow, I’d be tempted to walk straight into her.

But then there are the birds, which are chirpier now there’s less noise to compete with, and the strange and wonderful feeling of returning to a world in which waiting is a thing. It’s like the 1990s all over again, people leaning on walls, staring into the distance, scuffing their trainers for something to do. And when you do meet a friend by chance on the street and stop for a guilty, distanced chat, it feels utterly joyful.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s 10,000th UK magazine.

Bluecat I think your post needs to be read by the PM and the Cabinet.
It sums it up so well.

Some people don't seem to grasp how important this is. It is not "a witch hunt". It is not even about an individual personality. It is about the way we function as a society.

The lockdown has only worked because people have put the well-being of the community before their own convenience. It would have been unworkable if the population had decided to disobey. Instead, people realised that they had to make sacrifices to save lives.

We all have gone through a long and painful separation. Many have had to bear terrible losses without the closeness and comfort of their families. Many have had to cope with very difficult situations. Many have missed precious moments they will never get back. Why? Because we are trying to follow the rules to stop the pandemic.

Dominic Cummings' actions are a symbol of the opposite mentality. He helped to create - too late, in my opinion - the rules of the lockdown. Apparently he created the "Stay home" slogan. For a person in his position to decide that the rules do not apply to him is not only insulting, it is immoral. He is breaking his own rules. What could he more anti-social? He does not have to think of the greater good. That is for ordinary people. He is not ordinary.

He had other options - we are all aware of them - options that many less fortunate people didn't have - but he chose to do what he wanted to do. Then other powerful people step in to defend him and start to twist the rules, those very same rules that society was supposed to follow. Can anyone deny that there is a profound division here between the ones who make the rules and those expected to follow them?

I think people are a bit gobsmacked MissAdventure. I don't think they really know what to do. They can't go on a massive demo, but I don't I don't think I have ever known public opinion to be quite so united about any single issue.

growstuff, apparently Mary Wakefield says in her article that the child looked after Dominic, feeding him Ribena and advised others, perhaps single parents, or both parents who feel ill, to get their children involved by letting them take the patient's temperature, getting out their doctor's kit to help.
And they emerged into a London lockdown.

Lie after lie.

Beggars belief.