27 May (Part 1) - The last straw for one of the awkward squad
My mother used to say I was born part of the awkward squad and I suspect I am
going to prove her right again. I simply cannot get myself worked up over the
Dominic Cummings affair. It was probably ill-advised to claim that the short
trip to Barnard Castle was to test his eyesight, it would have been better to
say he took his wife out to give an opinion on his driving ability after being ill.
What he did doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me especially at a time when
most of us were in a bit of a panic over the scientists’ scary and, as we now know,
exaggerated warnings. Whether DC broke the rules is of course another matter;
they were probably stretched to the limit at the very least but if I had a
father who owned a large estate with three houses and a bluebell wood and at
home in Islington I was being pestered by a hypocritical press mob I think I would have done
the same. One difference, my car would easily get to Durham and back without a refuelling stop beyond the 13 amp socket at the destination address.
Where this whole business goes wrong for me is that Boris Johnson’s rules have
been largely nonsensical from the outset. You must take note of my probable
bias, I don’t like the man beyond his ability to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of No. 10.
I am pretty sure that when he was Police Commissioner for London he was not
unacquainted with dishonesty and corruption. I have no proof beyond the
circumstantial but I would happily eat my hat etc.
If Cummings broke the rules it was because the rules were and continue to be stupid.
It used to be the case that you could exercise by walking around a golf course
but it was illegal to take a ball and a stick with you. You could go for a walk
down the road, as I did, but you couldn’t sit on a wall when your legs began to
ache for lack of use. As mine still do.
You can’t invite your girlfriend round to your house
unless your name is Neil Ferguson but you can if she comes
armed with a feather duster and you slip her a fiver or anything else you might have in mind.
You can now sit on a park bench with a friend if that bench is in a public place
but not if that bench is in your back garden. The latter is deemed to be unsafe
but because of the inadequacies of the NHS I have recently had to meet
approximately 20 of their staff indoors and queue at various poorly stocked pharmacists.
That is perfectly lawful.
Boris Johnson appears to be oblivious to the state of the economy and timid
and illogical with the lockdown and currently annoying the hell out of me. If I never vote
for him again it won’t be because Dominic Cummings may have acted outside the
spirit of the lockdown but because of that vicar (Martin Poole) from Brighton’s question at the
press briefing yesterday. Will the government review the fines levied on people
who have done the same thing as Dominic Cummings? That Dominic Cummings who
Boris says has done nothing wrong.
The official answer came a few hours later. No they would not. Now that really
is one rule for the elite and another for us plebs. Every man has his limits.
For me that decision was mine. Boris Johnson truly is a prat - to contrive the use of Councillor
Davey’s favourite Twitter word. Except that unlike him I know how to spell it.
For balance, that other hypocritical prat Kier Starmer has done nothing about
his MPs known to have broken the lockdown rules, instead he promoted one of them.
And Ian Blackford the SNP Covidiot drove all the way to Skye to break the
lockdown, not even an electric car can go that far in one hop.
It’s a Brexit thing isn’t it?