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The Dominic Cummings file

Humberto said:
And I know it's elbows here doing the hard work and nailing down the facts as best as any of us
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It bothers me that others dont get more credit, just because I am especially persistent and gobby. People are going to get quite a rest from my pandemic thoughts in June (at least relative to normal, since even in June I wont be gone completely, especially if any shit hits the fan in new ways), and plenty of other people will keep everyone informed. Plus I have certain narrow fixations, often stemming from the fact I'm prepared to spend time reading really dull establishment documents, where the same themes pop up again and again. But this reminds me, there is one sort of respect which I pay to figures like Whitty. I give them my attention. I consider what they say and the output from the entities they operate within. Sometimes even this is more than they deserve, and it often gives birth to reasons to criticise or ridicule them, but its still a form of begrudging respect on my part.

Anyway sorry for the general pandemic talk that this angle has turned into on this Cummings thread. I'd rather be speaking more directly about Cummings, but we've ended up at the inevitable point where anger and ridicule about his behaviour has not gone away, but finding new aspects to the story with which to keep channeling this anger is becoming more tricky. The Van-Tam and Harries comments would barely have raised an eyebrow if there was other stuff still rumbling at high volume. I hope there is more to give the story direct front-page legs for some time to come but as I have no insider political info its impossible for me to predict. I will predict that this shit will haunt this regime for ever more, whatever happens next. As if they hadnt already managed more than enough pandemic failures to taint them for all eternity.
 
sim667 said:
Software, API’s etc
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What is the name of the software? How does it function as a weapon? Who on earth has ever heard of software having to be registered with GCHQ before it can be deployed?

Come on now, you have to see that the story is a load of baloney, right?
 
elbows said:
It bothers me that others dont get more credit, just because I am especially persistent and gobby. People are going to get quite a rest from my pandemic thoughts in June (at least relative to normal, since even in June I wont be gone completely, especially if any shit hits the fan in new ways), and plenty of other people will keep everyone informed. Plus I have certain narrow fixations, often stemming from the fact I'm prepared to spend time reading really dull establishment documents, where the same themes pop up again and again. But this reminds me, there is one sort of respect which I pay to figures like Whitty. I give them my attention. I consider what they say and the output from the entities they operate within. Sometimes even this is more than they deserve, and it often gives birth to reasons to criticise or ridicule them, but its still a form of begrudging respect on my part.

Anyway sorry for the general pandemic talk that this angle has turned into on this Cummings thread. I'd rather be speaking more directly about Cummings, but we've ended up at the inevitable point where anger and ridicule about his behaviour has not gone away, but finding new aspects to the story with which to keep channeling this anger is becoming more tricky. The Van-Tam and Harries comments would barely have raised an eyebrow if there was other stuff still rumbling at high volume. I hope there is more to give the story direct front-page legs for some time to come but as I have no insider political info its impossible for me to predict. I will predict that this shit will haunt this regime for ever more, whatever happens next. As if they hadnt already managed more than enough pandemic failures to taint them for all eternity.
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I thought you was having some time off? Give that keyboard a rest fella.
 
Supine said:
I think you're out of order for turning on the UK scientists tbh (just imho).

They have two really important jobs at the moment 1. Their day jobs - the science and 2. The politics - standing next to Boris or whoever.

It's an amazingly difficult job I'd imagine. From what I can see the science is standing up well but the politicians are starting to fuck up by moving away from that and unlocking earlier than recommended.

That's on Boris not the scientists.
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What do you think Vallance and Whitty do in "their day jobs"? It isn't science, or at least not the sort of politically neutral science you seem to think exists, they are helping the government form and disseminate policy - in what possible way is that not political. And if they are willing to be silent when policy opposes "the science" fuck them.

The idea that the Chief Scientist and Chief Medical Officer aren't political is as ludicrous as claiming that the Governor of the Bank of England is apolitical.
 
elbows said:
I wasnt swayed by such appeals to believe in the wisdom of the authorities back when we were first sleepwalking into a disaster with this pandemic, so I'm hardly about to do so now am I? It was quite possibly you that caused me to rant about deference being dead, and that was months ago. Dont confuse me with someone who turned on UK scientists recently. My stance was always more complicated than that, but it certainly did not involve trusting everything to their hands from the very start.

This pandemic is a none too subtle guide as to some of the reasons why centralised authority, the sorts of roles and formats of decision making that are favoured in this country are shit. Top down bollocks. Laughable appeals to maintain faith in such things carry no credibility with me. Nor should they seem credible to anybody else from round these parts. Because this forum demonstrated quite well what is possible if a far broader approach is taken, one that values far wider and less formal forms of input. Even if absolutely all of my own posts during this pandemic never happened, other people on this very forum figured out the timing of our first epidemic wave with a far better degree of accuracy than SAGE managed. The publicly accessible sources of data gave a better picture of where we were relative to Italy than SAGE and their data sources managed. And so we were treated to the spectacle of people on this forum making accurate statements about how many days and weeks we were behind Italy, well before before Vallance and others came out with totally wrong estimates of their own. Estimates it took weeks to correct. We didnt have to wait for this to become distant history before being able to judge some of this stuff.
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I'd be a bit cautious about the idea that people on here predicted things more accurately than the SAGE members - I'm sure you can go back through various threads and find early predictions that were right on the nose but you will also find loads of others that were way out. There will be a spread of opinion, and you can always cherry pick the 'correct' ones with hindsight. There will have been a spread of opinion on the SAGE committees too.
 
teuchter said:
I'd be a bit cautious about the idea that people on here predicted things more accurately than the SAGE members - I'm sure you can go back through various threads and find early predictions that were right on the nose but you will also find loads of others that were way out. There will be a spread of opinion, and you can always cherry pick the 'correct' ones with hindsight. There will have been a spread of opinion on the SAGE committees too.
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Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
 
elbows said:
Also, there is plenty of blame to go around, I'm not trying to stick it all one a few peoples shoulders. Vallance gave me plenty of reasons to complain from the start, I've not criticised Whitty very much till now but his comments the other day were not what I wanted or expected from him.

The SAGE minutes are not full minutes in that it is not really possible to identify the opinions of individuals from them. So they are limited in some ways that make it harder for me to unpick things. All the same, some things are apparent. Some limitations and failures of orthodox thoughts across a number of disciplies are occasionally on display. But what is most obvious from reading between the lines of the various documents once into the very difficult period in early March, is the extent to which they were completely hamstrung by failures of data collection, testing, etc. Within the confines of the system they were operating in, I doubt whether individuals at the top of their game could have necessarily done much better. I expect that any future inquiry will easily find that Public Health England was not fit for the purposes it was needed for in this pandemic. Its painful reading some of the earlier minutes, when SAGE realised that the new world after the u-turn needed all sorts of testing on a big scale and quickly, and how they thought they were actually going to get some of that from PHE. As time goes on, despite the highly sanitised nature of the minutes, it is possible to see the penny drop and the frustration set in. I expect there is plenty more frustration within SAGE these days too, as similar phenomenon will no doubt be happening again with regards things like the contact tracing system, and the ongoing reality of the testing.

So yeah, there are very definite limits to how much blame I am directing at any one person. There were all sorts of systemic issues and power, resources and responsibility was not genuinely spread around at all the different levels of society and government over many years leading up to this pandemic, and that isnt the fault of a Vallance or a Whitty. Still they are to extent products of the systems and priorities of this country over many decades, and I cannot say where the best place for them would have been if we'd had a sane, well spread system in the foundations of this countries government and public health institutions. I'd likely have valued their opinion, but as with all opinions including my own, I'd value it more when tested by various means including criticism without fear or favour.
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The secrecy from the start about SAGE, not even telling us who was there let alone who said what, has stood out in stark contrast to the openness of many other European countries. This is not a war. There is no enemy from whom to withhold secrets. There is no excuse for not making the whole of the discussion about what to do and how to do it public from the start. That's been massively damaging to government credibility, and given the centralised nature of the UK's response, no doubt has caused delays and confusion on the ground. How many lives it's cost – the only metric that really matters – it's hard to say, but it won't be zero.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
The secrecy from the start about SAGE, not even telling us who was there let alone who said what, has stood out in stark contrast to the openness of many other European countries. This is not a war. There is no enemy from whom to withhold secrets. There is no excuse for not making the whole of the discussion about what to do and how to do it public from the start. That's been massively damaging to government credibility, and given the centralised nature of the UK's response, no doubt has caused delays and confusion on the ground. How many lives it's cost – the only metric that really matters – it's hard to say, but it won't be zero.
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Yeh you'd have a great point if this was an aberration or if you went on to say there is too much secrecy in British government despite many years of FOI. There's no mention of the many pandemic plans available online and how they compare to the shitty c19 response in practice. And the centralised response is clearly fragmenting as devolved administrations start diverging. I expect discussions of mass deaths were at least in part responsible for some of the secrecy, but to my mind the greater damage isn't caused by the secrecy but by what we know of the attempt to politicise the advice by placing at least one non-scientist on the panel.
 
In terms of our experiences with queuing etc, and sometimes almost expecting to be hit by a doodlebug it actually is the nearest to a wartime experience for most of us - but as you say it actually needs to be dealt with in the most modern and open way.

It has only struck me since VE day came around that it played into Johnson's ridiculous Churchillian fantasy and also with us being under attack from this "alien" virus from outside (continuation of the Brexit fantasy)

The fact that Cummings has had to hurriedly attempt to hide his eugenicist leanings by hacking his blog is hopefully a good sign ...

.. though it seems to be lost on the electorate - along with Johnson's 3rd Feb (presumably via Cummings) "take it on the chin / emerge sooner and beat everyone else economically" ... which might actually have worked if we'd locked-down earlier...
 
gentlegreen said:
In terms of our experiences with queuing etc, and sometimes almost expecting to be hit by a doodlebug it actually is the nearest to a wartime experience for most of us - but as you say it actually needs to be dealt with in the most modern and open way.

It has only struck me since VE day came around that it played into Johnson's ridiculous Churchillian fantasy and also with us being under attack from this "alien" virus from outside (continuation of the Brexit fantasy)

The fact that Cummings has had to hurriedly attempt to hide his eugenicist leanings by hacking his blog is hopefully a good sign ...

.. though it seems to be lost on the electorate - along with Johnson's 3rd Feb (presubably via Cummings) "take it on the chin / emerge sooner and beat everyone else economically" ... which might actually have worked if we'd locked-down earlier...
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If it was a wartime experience there'd have been banning of a range of songs being played on the radio as there was during eg the falklands and gulf wars
 
and posters going up with Careless Talk Costs Lives so we don't let the virus know how we plan to fight it

mind you those would be about as much use as the ones we have now
 
Bit of a derail but I'm fascinated by the whole Piers Morgan thing. I don't actually know what people had against him in retrospect. He got sacked from the Mirror for publishing what turned out to be fake pictures of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners but which he published for presumably genuine reasons, then sacked from CNN for spending half his primetime shows ranting against US gun legislation and the resultant mass killings, came back to the UK and has been laying into the Tories and brexiteers ever since.

Can anyone put their finger on why he is so despised? I know the phone hacking whiff will always hang over him but tbh I don't really give much of a fuck about that, even if it is true. What's the actual issue?
 
Petcha said:
Bit of a derail but I'm fascinated by the whole Piers Morgan thing. I don't actually know what people had against him in retrospect. He got sacked from the Mirror for publishing what turned out to be fake pictures of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners but which he published for presumably genuine reasons, then sacked from CNN for spending half his primetime shows ranting against US gun legislation and the resultant mass killings, came back to the UK and has been laying into the Tories and brexiteers ever since.

Can anyone put their finger on why he is so despised? I know the phone hacking whiff will always hang over him but tbh I don't really give much of a fuck about that, even if it is true. What's the actual issue?
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His opinions, his manner, his obnoxiousness and the things he says
 
Orang Utan said:
Find out for yourself. He’s got form saying controversial things to wind people up. There’s loads to choose from
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Yes, just as I thought. No evidence - just vague assertions.

He was Markle's friend I think? I agree he's a massive wind-up merchant, but then I guess I am too. But politics wise I don't see much to disagree with.
 
Petcha said:
Bit of a derail but I'm fascinated by the whole Piers Morgan thing. I don't actually know what people had against him in retrospect. He got sacked from the Mirror for publishing what turned out to be fake pictures of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners but which he published for presumably genuine reasons, then sacked from CNN for spending half his primetime shows ranting against US gun legislation and the resultant mass killings, came back to the UK and has been laying into the Tories and brexiteers ever since.

Can anyone put their finger on why he is so despised? I know the phone hacking whiff will always hang over him but tbh I don't really give much of a fuck about that, even if it is true. What's the actual issue?
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You don’t give much of a fuck about journalists hacking the phones of grieving families and dead children?
 
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