Boris has a new slogan, “Move on”, which he deployed repeatedly today in his appearance before the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Remembering short slogans is fairly well the extent of his political skills, and he contrived to look pleased with hmself for remembering this one. The public, he solemnly informed those watching, now wanted the narrative to “Move on” from the Dominic Cummings debacle.
The problem with this slogan is it does not have a good history. The aged among us will remember that after the disaster of the Iraq war, it was constantly repeated by Tony Blair. OK, millions of people were dead. But it was time to “move on” from that. Only he could not. The dead of Iraq have haunted him ever since, they enabled Brown to depose him and Blair has the look of a man who believes the dead will be waiting to speak against him in the next life. No matter how much the Guardian still tries constantly to rehabilitate him, he will always have to be protected from the British public, a stinking rich, morally bankrupt pariah.
One of the first articles published in this blog spoke of Blair and his “Move on” mantra. On 21 April 2005 I published from the Blackburn parliamentary election:
Two months ago I arrived here alone, standing forlornly with my rucksack on Blackburn railway station, in the midnight snow. I wanted to make a stand on principle against illegal war, and against Jack Straw’s decision that we should use intelligence obtained under torture. I wanted to get some national publicity for these issues during the campaign, to counter Tony Blair’s mantra: “Let’s move on” from the war.
(Am I the only one to find this mantra insulting? I think I’ll rob a bank to get some campaign funds. When the police come to take me away, I’ll say, “Hey, let’s move on. OK, so I robbed a bank. Whatever the rights and wrongs, that phase is over. What is important is that we all come together now and get behind the really great things I’m going to do with the money.”)
When a politician is desperate enough to use the “move on” slogan, you know they have done something very wrong indeed and are in big trouble.
“And now we must move on from Watergate to the business of the people”
said President Richard Nixon on August 25 1973.
Like Johnson, Nixon made the claim it was “the people” who want to move on. This is the standard mantra for politicians who have done something very illegal: the public do not care, are not interested in justice being visited on politicians. It is always the public who are urging the guilty politicians to “move on” and ignore the trivial detail of their own guilt.
“No decision I have ever made in politics has been as divisive as the decision to go to war to in Iraq. It remains deeply divisive today. I know a large part of the public want to move on.”
“Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this,” he said. “That is all I can do. Now is the time — in fact, it is past time — to move on. . . . And so tonight I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse, and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century.”
Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky affair, August 17th 1998.
We now know it would have been a good deal better if America had not “moved on” but had taken a much deeper interest in Clinton’s appalling history of predatory sexual behaviour.
I presume you see the pattern here. If a politician tells you to “move on” from a subject, it is a gigantic red flag that you should do precisely the opposite. I tried to discover some examples of politicians telling us to “move on” from an issue, where hindsight does not show the politician to have been a massive crook. No examples were readily apparent.
Ladies and gentlemen, I add to this list of shame:
“It is now time to move on… the country wants to move on.”
Boris Johnson 27 May 2020 on the Cummings Scandal.
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Reading John Pilger’s Twitter, I saw these:
@johnpilger
18 May
Julia Gillard’s elevation to the Wellcome Trust follows her cultivation as a ‘feminist’. As Australian PM she attacked misogyny while cutting benefits to single parents, mostly women, pursued the racist ‘intervention’ of the Indigenous poor and opened Manus Island detention camp.
@johnpilger
17 May
Julia Gillard is the new chair of the Wellcome Trust. As PM, she oversaw the first deaths of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and ordered the illegal arrest of Julian #Assange for exposing US cables and conspired to cancel his passport, also illegal. Mentor: Hillary Clinton.
He’s as brilliant as ever.
I see Manningham Buller (ex MI5) is the Wellcome Trust chair. YCNMIU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellcome_Trust
Interesting info about Manningham Buller.
At least she didn’t join the board of Boris Johnson’s stepmother’s family firm Marks and Spencer, as her predecessor at MI5 Stella Rimington did. I bet M&S are having a good Covid war.
The Wellcome Trust sold most of Wellcome plc to none other than Glaxo, a while back.
The Wellcome Library on Euston Road in London is better stocked than most public libraries – an excellent library, in fact, which has some items that aren’t in the British Library or any of London’s university libraries.
I strongly suspect that Wellcome-linked interests have had something to do with the spread of phrases such as “wellness”, “well woman clinic, “well man clinic”, etc. Insurance interests have for sure. Insurance, hedging – it’s all about what Marx called M-M’, and here we have it wielding its influence through propaganda, but only about 1 in 1000 people on the left are even open to becoming relatively more sussed about this kind of thing…
It’s a interesting event in the business-political world when a huge “charity” such as the Wellcome Trust sells a big chunk of its assets to an openly profit-making company (here, Glaxo) – because what does it do with the money? Legally it has to spend it only on “charitable” activities, even if it has just sold off most of the instruments it previously used for conducting such activities.
The same happened when the “charity” Edexcel that ran an exam board flogged it off to Pearson, the world’s largest “education” company.
Funny how “charities” can build up businesses that are so “profitable”, huh?
The Wellcome Trust is basically a large fund of money ( generated from the sale of Wellcome PLC etc ) that is used to generate revenue income to support basic scientific research in the UK.
So for example the Sanger centre is largely funded by the Wellcome Trust – https://www.sanger.ac.uk/
So you can view the Wellcome trust as having two key parts decisions on:
– asset/fund management – to generate the revenue – here you need ‘money’ people.
– where to invest in scientific research – here you need scientists.
For the second part, they try very hard to be in addition, rather than a replacement, for government funding – hence funding big blue sky projects like the Sanger ( a key player in sequencing the human genome ), and other research that is more speculative. I guess part of avoiding overlaps with government requires some knowledge of government initiatives.
The Wellcome trust plays a huge part in the strength of UK life sciences research.
Essentially the original owners of Wellcome PLC left its wealth to the nation to further scientific excellence.
Having said all that – I have no idea why you’d have Gillard or Buller on the board – unless the investment management side at the high end benefits from the insider knowledge people like this can bring, or perhaps it’s just a ‘governance’ thing – when you have a scientific committee doling out huge wads of money to scientists, perhaps you need some outsiders to make sure it’s done on merit.
Dunno.
well said scientists, why would one want to have politicians and spooks mixing up the science, are they part of big pharma trying to wedge into the welcome trust? the mind boggles
You are very well informed N_.
Propaganda in the style of Edward Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
N_
I’ve been in side the Euston Road Wellcome.
The curator showed me a manuscript in Sanskrit on palm leaves stabbed through with thread one third and two thirds across the width of the leaves.
He told me if I had a way of conserving those there was a job waiting for me. But the leaves were all broken where the threads were and if you shuffled them , not reading sanskrit, somebody might complain , who did.
It is a repository of ancient knowledge, sitting in a world of mind boggling ignorance, Mercedes, and hedge fund casinos.
Wellcome Trust was putting its own employees under surveillance in the late 1990s, so it is clear it has been a spooky organisation for decades.
They also fronted a ‘Seeding Drug Discovery’ initiative, which those exposed to its internal shenanigans termed the ‘Seeding the GSK Drug Discovery Pipeline’ initiative.
WT has an enormous cash pile/asset value, which makes it a very important global player in biomedical research.
That does not make it an honest one, nor does it make it likely that it will be above politics of the more divisive kind.
Another big platform given to the great advocate for needless suffering and death, this time to demand that other people’s young children be returned to school.on Monday.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1262506909606739968
Message to parents: if you don’t want to return your children to school, you don’t have to.
The following information is for England and Wales; the legal position is similar in Scotland, although I do not have chapter and verse to hand.
See section 8 of the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006.
Just send a letter (by “signed for” post so that the swine doesn’t deny receiving it) to whoever is listed as the school’s “proprietor” on the big fancy board outside of it (usually the headmaster) saying as follows:
“I hereby notify you under section 8(1)(d) of the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006 that my child [NAME] has ceased to attend school and that he is receiving and will continue to receive education otherwise than at school in fulfilment of my responsibility as parent under section 7 of the Education Act 1996. Please now ensure that [his/her] name is deleted from your admission register in accordance with the statutory deletion requirement that comes into force once you have received this notification, and confirm to me accordingly by return post.”
@Dom – when I read your post I thought “Is Blair in an ‘education’ racket with Sunny Varkey?”…and it turns out he is.
If the child is in a hard to get into school can the child get readmitted automatically or is the parent committed to home education or at the mercy of the local LEA on which school they will admit the child to?
Yes. Totally agree. There ought to be a set of Regulations somewhere that allow the parents to keep the child at home on a temporary basis for the reason that the child’s Well-Being overridinh the obligation to attend school that remains valid even outside of the current Coronavirus situation, so as to avoid taking the child off of his current school.
off course every child should, by right, have a seat reserved in school, just in case mummy and daddy had enough of teaching/ want to go back to work.
That must be part of the new normal???? getting much hotter out there and it shows
It seems to me now that Johnson is a dead PM walking. His days appear numbered and I think it can only be a matter of time and when.
‘If’ at some point there is a public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic then, unless it is the most blatant whitewash ever, it is very difficult to see how Johnson would survive it because his handling of the crisis has been so utterly appalling, and arguably criminally negligent.
The FT is now reporting that the UK not only has the highest mortality rate in Europe &c, but now also has the highest death rate (deaths per capita) in the world.
FT – free to read: https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0
We have already heard from Mr Galloway that Murdoch is seeking the removal of Johnson and his replacement with Gove, and Johnson has never had the full support of the Establishment. The BBC’s (voice of the Establishment) relentless pursuit of Cummings, and by association of Johnson also, demonstrates they want him gone asap – I would suggest before the end of the year so that the Brexit transition period can be extended and Brexit eventually overturned.
I watched Maitlis’ intro to Newsnight on Tuesday – https://twitter.com/jonlis1/status/1265402689330057216 . Of course it was utterly biassed, using the BBC’s ‘authoritative voice’ to present opinion as fact, but, at the time, I thought little of it as that is now becoming the norm at the BBC – Maitlis and her editor clearly thought so.
The FT is also reporting, surprise surprise, that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is set to “produce 1bn doses of a vaccine booster as it steps up its preparations for an eventual immunisation for coronavirus. The London-listed pharmaceutical company, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, said its adjuvant could make “a significant contribution against Covid-19”.”
FT (paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/30c6c6a7-dca7-40f4-9fc0-5b8835f1aab3
Funny that while the MSM for the sixth day running is still engaged in a round the clock take-down of Cummings that, to my knowledge, not one of them has mentioned the GSK connection, and funny that neither Cummings or Johnson can recall the details of a phone call they had while Cummings was still in Durham – nothing to see here, move along.
Very fishy indeed.
However, I still can’t see the media assault on Cummings as anything more than an Establishment attempt to remove him and his boss.
As anti-Tories we may enjoy the spectacle, but the alleged ‘crime’ does not merit six (including today) days round the clock coverage and if the media think Cummings’ journey undermined public commitment to the lockdown, then what do they think their relentless coverage of it does – rank hypocrisy.
Negligent mishandling of the epidemic, Establishment hostility, round the clock BBC/MSM assault …
What could possibly go wrong?
I’ve just had another Guardian account completely deleted (mine usually last for about 1 week!) for posting the following:
“”US death toll from coronavirus reaches 100,000” as the Guardian headlines from every possible angle.
However, I’ve yet to see the headline “US coronavirus death rate still half that of UK” (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries).
I wonder why?”
Of course, the reason why (and the reason that my latest account was deleted) is that these figures go against the puerile liberal “Trump, him bad man” narrative.
My next most recent account was deleted last week for offering an answer to the Guardian’s repeated rhetorical question “What is this Obamagate thingy that Trump keeps spouting on about?”.
Looking forward to Twitter and Facebook being imminently re-defined as publishers rather than platforms.
Never criticise the Guardian or attack the writer of the article. It will be moderated away.
—
[ Mod: On the Guardian site, maybe, Mightydrunken – but not here.
We encourage people to insert the word “dump” into any Guardian URL, thus: http://www.dumptheguardian.com/
The reasons are given in the link. Regards. ]
That death rate is inexcusable. A damning indictment not just of Cummings and Johnson but of the entire ruling ideology in this country.
Calm down ! The COVID-19 ‘death rates’ are mixed with other illnessess……
They can be separated, though. Choose from the following according to preference:
Deaths with positive test result*: 37,460
Death certificate mentions Covid-19**: 45,231
Deaths over and above the usual number at this time of year**: 59,287
* figure to 26 May. Source: DHSC.
** figures to 15 May (24 May in Scotland). Source: ONS, NRS, NISRA.
Graph: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/15682/production/_112528678_three_ways_27may-nc.png
Story: Coronavirus UK map: How many confirmed cases are there in your area? (BBC News)
The first two figures are almost meaningless, vulnerable as they are to “policy-based evidence”. Only the third figure is at all reliable.
“The FT is now reporting that the UK not only has the highest mortality rate in Europe &c, but now also has the highest death rate (deaths per capita) in the world.”
…interestingly using as numerator not the number of reported deaths “with” this coronavirus (for which Britain is behind Belgium and Spain) – I don’t think there is a reported number for deaths “from” it – but the number of “excess deaths” since 20 March, meaning the excess over the “normal” number. They describe that figure as an indication of the number of people that the virus has “directly or indirectly killed”.
So that would include people suffering from other illnesses who were not Covid-19 positive and who died because they were not treated at hospital for the simple reason that the relevant hospital ward had been shut down. Or in what would usually be the parlance (now forgotten about in all the clapping): they died because of cuts in the NHS
This isn’t just a few hundred people either. The Times reports
“There have been almost as many unexplained deaths at home as there have been as a result of Covid-19, according to analysis of official figures.”
Whoopsadaisy!
Meanwhile Mary Wakefield wrote of her and her husband Dominic Cummings “emerging” from quarantine into “London lockdown”. Since the phrase “emerge into” means “come out into without going somewhere else first”, a remarkable amount of contortion is needed to argue that it is compatible with the idea that they spent most of their quarantine in Durham. One would have to imagine that they travelled in a car that was quarantined rather in the manner of Lenin’s sealed train until it crossed the boundary of Greater London on the return journey.
Her words: “from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown”.
A…lmost
C…omical
U…ncertainty of
L…ondon
L…ockdown
Was she trying to tell us something?
Imagine all of those thousand of human bodies lined up, or the number of graves dug if they were buried.
The FT is well off. The highest deaths rates/million population are currently:
San Marino 1,238
Belgium 810
Andorra 660
Spain 580
UK 552
Italy 547
France 438
Sweden 423
St. Marten 350
Netherlands 345
Ireland 331
USA (or, if you’re a liberal, Trump) 309
FT data is rarely way off. Think I’ll go with their findings.
It helps if you read what’s written before posting. Those figures are deaths “from COVID-19” and are significantly affected by the testing regime in the countries concerned. The FT specifically ruled out this metric and is talking about “excess deaths”, i.e. the additional number of deaths from all causes over what would be expected for this time of year, so yes, your apples are significantly different from the FT’s oranges.
How is the “expected for the time of year” number arrived at? Is it averaged over say five years?
I think that’s it, yes.
So – you are saying that Governments’ death rate as actually produced and published are not congruent with the published figures?
So – why would governments want to inflate their official figurers?
Signed: Non-statistician.
This isn’t the death *rate*. This is the total number of COVID deaths per million of population.
The death rate is something different, where they average over the last two weeks and get `x deaths per day per million of population’.
OK, to be super accurate, these are the averaged death rates, as of yesterday, for the total coronavirus pandemic period. Death rates for shorter time periods will vary up/down from this average according to the point taken.
As far as “unexpected deaths” figures are concerned, they are largely bullshit for two reasons:
1. Until broken down, death certificate by death certificate, case by case, to determine whether, for example, suicide X was in any way related to austerity (in a previous age) or coronavirus lock-down today, they are just “data”. Good luck finding anyone to do that with tens of thousands of cases – far easier to find someone prepared to follow empiricist methodology and just ascribe the lot to cause A or B.
2. Periods of war, mass immigration, health issues related to work (mining, asbestos use), health issues related to leisure (smoking) leave significant peak-and-trough effects decades later, making ‘trends’ difficult or impossible to scientifically separate from ‘noise’, as is also the case in meteorology.
I’ve been working out per capita figures from the worldometer site. The UK passed Italy (from this data set) a week ago, but still lags behind Spain. Apples and oranges of course.
Here’s a thought, leaving aside outliers like South Korea and a handful of others, has the UK Government response been outrageously poor in comparative terms? Most Western governments faced the same issues (resultant from lack of preparation). What if differentials in comparative death rates across countries are impacted to a greater extent by general health of the population going into the pandemic. Type II diabetes rates in the UK for example are terrible.
That’s a very good point, Just like the United States we have a large proportion of the population that is overweight with a sedentary lifestyle. In Japan and South Korea being grossly overweight is regarded as socially shameful. No surprise that these counties have emerged in far better shape then the lard arse western countries.
Masks appear to work.
Shh! The gov’t missed the boat on mask wearing, now they don’t want anyone to mention it.
Compulsory in over 50 countries including France Spain Germany Italy Venezuela Luxembourg Poland Czech Rep Slovakia Turkey UAE Israel Cuba and many others.
The government response in the UK is what needs looking at and it has been in the outside world . Didn’t protect care homes, too slow into lockdown despite all the warnings, way off the pace on testing and PPE, etc. Even they themselves aren’t trying to wriggle off the hook by pointing to diabetes.
It’s not possible to work out deaths per capita when no-one knows the true extent of the UK’s population. The official line is 67m, but 13 years ago, in a study carried out by supermarkets, the population was between 77-80 million. Look up ‘City Eye: facts on a plate’. If the supermarkets were right in 2007, then we could have the lowest deaths per capita.
I can’t see how the census could be so wrong, without many people knowing so. Estimating the population from consumption of food will have massive uncertainty based on food wastage. Those 20 million or more people have to live somewhere, would use the mobile phones, energy, roads, schools, and other amenities.
How could this not be noticed? The Census could be out by by say 10%, at most. Any more and it would be plainly obvious by many other routes.
Utilities such as electric and water companies have done such studies and reached similar conclusions, the figure of 67m is way too low. There are near 40m driving licenses on the system, no one, including the office of national statistics has any idea how many national insurance numbers are in circulation.
I can see how it is possible. I Know you hate my anecdotes but in 2006 I worked as an HGV driver for sports direct taking stock to stores out of the Shirebrook distribution centre. I got to know quite a few of the pickers (Polish). They had come to earn and save money, they lived extraordinarily frugally. To the extent of sharing accommodation and transport between two shifts. A lot of the uncounted immigration is sure to have a similar profile, just because you or I live in a 4 bed detached with a converted loft and a study with central heating and a Netflix subscription doesn’t mean everyone else in the country does. There is plenty of space if you are from a different culture with different expectations of how you will be living in the UK.
I really get narked when people comment that ‘Murdoch is seeking to replace a UK PM’ without paraphrasing that with ‘and as he pays no taxes in the UK, is not a UK citizen and has been a global genocidalist for over 40 years, that is something he has absolutely no right to even contemplate’.
When will people start portraying Murdoch as he truly is? A gneocidal psychopath who thinks whole nations have to do his bidding or else.
@Rhys Jaggar
Thanks for that.
I presumed, and I think safely, that your point is taken as a given here, and that most, if not all here, like myself, would to a large degree share your view.
I can assure you that I didn’t mean to portray him as an avuncular soul of sweet reason.
I think it will be deeply offensive to the vast majority of people that he still has such influence on British public life.
It’s not just politicians, in literature and films, it’s always the guilty party who wants to “move on” , “put the infidelity / financial mismanagement / gambling or alcohol problems / breach of trust etc. behind them” and “look to the future”. What were BJ or his advisors thinking of?
One hopes the dramatic tension increases!
If Keir Starmer were to ask “After visiting Glaxo Town, what money did Dominic Cummings need moved?” and “After visiting Glaxo Town, what regulations did he need moved out of the way?”, it would.
Starmer said a little while ago that if he was PM he would have sacked Cummings.
Johnson protected Cummings today by restricting any question about him or Durham. Even La Kuenssberg curled her lip when her question on the subject was rejected by the Gauleiter. The two medics (Vallance and Whitty) there were like dummies. They both said they didn’t want to get involved in politics!
It’s all very good to move on. But to where?
Isn’t the UK leaving the EU, and isn’t Boris doing it?
Just dreaming!
He is right the public do want to move on – but the obstacle to that is DC still being in post or showing any sort of contrition.
A bit like Blair’s refusal to accept the Iraq war was a mistake ( morally or even just practically ) stopped people moving on as far as he is concerned.
Mark Sedwill is still in post for crimes infinitely worse. But no-one seems uptight about that.
Ditto the repulsive Olly Robbins never got his marching orders for shamelessly seeking to nullify the greatest democratic mandate the UK has ever given.
People on here need to get their moral compasses in order: Cummings should not go until both Sedwill and Robbins have got their extremely brutal just desserts….
Rhys,
You seem not to understand either the contemporary – nor – the historical role of the City of London.
Do you?
Then articulate and explain.
Over to you.
Rhys Jaggar
That binary joke was not a mandate.
Computers maybe can use binary lingo but we only got one binary choice, not the millions of other binary choices they get.
Some people voted 0 to get more money for the NHS. Some people voted 1 to stick a spanner in the militarization of Europe.
That’s roughly 30 characters per line on
my mobile screen. We only got offered a choice of 2!
So let’s have referendum here. 0 = Should DC be sacked ? or 1 = should we move on ?
Say 67 million possible votes . Why have we spent a week expending millions of verbal or written alphabetical characters, if we only needed 2 characters per person , 0 or 1 ?
If the Tories had not got a way of rigging the election, we would not now be discussing a pack of lies from no 10. We would be moving on from a negotiated agreement with the EU over a covid 19 extended 2 years, and thinking how we could rebuild our economy around green energy, which the Toffs put in the bin in 2010, before attacking the richest oil country in Africa.
Why are we not hanging David Cameron and Nigel Lawson ? As a warning to this little pimp, Cummings not to piss around ?
The world has not moved on since 2003 , nor will it move on from British murder of Gaddafi for a very long time. British pimp murder of Gaddafi by Abdulhakim Belhaj.
Every time the criminals ask us to move on, it reminds us of all the other things we still haven’t forgotten. Tories just love rubbing our noses in our inability to punish them.
So could you kindly refrain from adding your wind-ups to the Tory ones?
A day will come when the Tories will pay for their crimes and for rigging elections.
Like May who interpreted Leave as racism.
Like Clegg who interpreted votes for Liberal as votes for unelectable Tories.
Like Johnson who instructed Peter Lilley to count anybody who hadn’t voted for 2 previous elections, in Labour constituencies, as Tory.
You are counting all the votes for Brexit as agreeing with your particular set of opinions.
Which is a bit dumb.
I wouldn’t assume Dominic Cummings is completely in it with Glaxo. He may even be at loggerheads with them. Perhaps he prefers Astra Zeneca. After all, he did go to Oxford.
The reason I say this is the attitude taken by Durham police. It was probably a police statement that caused the delay of the rose garden presser. Even today the cops still seem to be negative about him.
Given the Cummings family’s gangland connections (see the Klute nightclub in Durham), they’ve got to have chums high up in the local police, that’s for sure. The cop that Dominic’s father Robert Cummings called, and with whom he had a conversation about “security”, was probably a cop he knew. Just a guess.
On the other hand, a massive great force like Glaxo Smith Kline (or is it Glaxo Wellcome Smith Kline Beecham? – the sheer amount that that company has gobbled up suggests strong resistance to indigestion) will also have police officers on their payroll. They will probably consider that they own both the local plod and the local council. So if the local police are causing problems for Cummings they may be doing Glaxo’s bidding.
What a tangled web.
PS A “Barney Castle” allegedly means “a pathetic excuse” in County Durham slang. I hope that’s true!
N_
All I institutions spend the majority of their time and energy protecting themselves. So Cummings says to t’wife. Get her kit on lass, we’re going back home .
Fixing Matt Hancock and Risni Dishni are doing my fixing ed in. Nowt to do here. Fixing Bojo just killing time at Chequers shagging.
Next day he decides to have a look at the factory in Barnard, just to see how kind of run down it looks from the outside and what’s the size of the new extension.
I don’t think GlaxoSmithKline does deals with low life advisors to No 10. They have a reputation to keep.
If he did go near the factory he’d probably get a lamppost telling him his car registration had been recorded for purposes of security and monitoring.
Coming from the North East, near Geordielan…Dom is probably more likely to say: haway pet, we’re gan yam.
Stay Elite, Back Boris, Bugger Britain
Howzat?
Craig, first thanks for your insightful blog which has taught me so much, especially as I go back through the archives and receive new understandings of issues always fudged by the MSM.
Have been accepted by the court to view your hearing. Have asked Vivienne W. to put links to your blog on her site, Climate Revolution.
Also sent a small donation and bought your books, as suggested!
Will be thinking of you and watching on the 10th and wishing you safe passage through what must be a very frightening charade.
AFAIK there’s still no evidence Cummings visited GSK. Turns out it was his wife’s birthday, so he took his family for a day out…
Will you take back your article, or have you moved on?!
Is there new evidence to rule out a possible GSK visit?
A good journalist, and in fact any decent person, doesn’t hint at things like that without evidence.
Without evidence, it is not journalistic reporting but conspiracy spreading.
Perhaps you need to look at the title of this blog post again. “he took his family for a day out” but “why Barnard Castle?”. There are other beauty spots in County Durham, some considerably closer to DC’s Durham home.
Jan – if he really didn’t have a serious business meeting, then that makes it much, much worse. Craig Murray was giving him a brilliant excuse for an apparent breech of lock-down rules, but he didn’t take it.
For your information, the *only* acceptable activity, under lockdown, for celebrating your wife’s birthday is something invented by the Finnish, known as `pantsdrunk’. You’ll find the emojs cooked up by the Finnish government on this link.
https://www.google.se/search?q=kalsongfylla+emoji&sxsrf=ALeKk02SSZKF3LFZrG-t16KIHHCgxvw5yg:1590403960438&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=1mNp4nU2yLADBM%253A%252CIHeRMfmKJyBu7M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQTMEY0APtXPG7KtW8hyvykndW5oA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2hfG47M7pAhVNUZoKHek7BUkQ9QEwA3oECAoQCg#imgrc=1mNp4nU2yLADBM:
They’re trying to persuade the Finnish people that there are good ways to enjoy oneself during lock-down without going out. The problem is that you need to be clean shaven, have well groomed hair and clean underwear to engage in this activity (which probably excludes Dominic Cummings).
Please note that my comment wasn’t about Cummings breaking the rules, or lying about what he did. That is another matter.
My comment was about making stupid unfounded allegations that massively devalue the good work Craig Murray is doing.
Is Eugenics Man firing Emily Maitlis from Newsnight now, not satisfied with getting rid of
* Tony Hall as BBC Chairman,
* Mark Carney as Governor of the Bank of England, and
* Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Apparently Maitlis said something he didn’t like.
Is this a government or a nightclub?
What about Mark Sedwill as Head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary? Or Cummings could broaden his sights to south of the river and take out Alex Younger as head of MI6, and Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury while he’s about it. Replace Welby with a Catholic or something, just to shock people into realising things can be different from what they always assumed without realising.
Can I have a few vice-chancellors from Russell Group universities too, please, including one from either Oxford or Cambridge. (Having both would be even better.)
I applied for and have received permission to attend the virtual Hearing on 10 June, Craig. I hope lots of others have too.
‘What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.’
Milton Mayer.
‘They Thought They Were Free
The Germans 1933-1945’
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
We are getting close.
Thank you for that.
I think that Dominic Cummings keeps the likes of Boris Johnson, Rabb C.Nebitt, Michael Gove and Prit Priti Patel, in the loop.
He would have told them in ten Downing Street was was happening, before he ran down the road, at all times, unless delirious,
Dom would have been in regular contact with Number Ten.
Almost certainly, their little away day to Barnard Castle would have been in lock-step with Number Ten.
I wish Craig had included another notorious example of a political charlatan and head of state employing the “move on” dodge:
Obama repeatedly defended his administration’s refusal to examine and investigate the multifarious high crimes and misdemeanors of the “Dubya” Bush regime because of his “belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.
As I observed at the time, this airy bit of would-be high-mindedness was obviously a euphemistic twist on American Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball pitcher Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige’s famous admonition, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
Since Obama’s effective amnesty whitewashed the US/UK “Coalition of the Willing”‘s illegal and illicit war of aggression and subsequent occupation of Iraq, and the crimes against humanity committed during this mega-atrocity, I think Obama deserves dishonorable mention here.
Obama is a split personality and I don’t mean bipolar. I mean that he is capable being a cool black lawyer and of signing for Islamic State to train in Jordan, get 4 x 4s in Turkey, military cadets in Mosul and rape Yazidi women. At the same time.
Compared to which Dominic Cummings doing deals with big pharma, and murdering 20,000 elderly people in care homes as a Eugenics trial, is pretty insignificant. One presumes this is only a start for the Tory regime to show us how it intends to carry on. Prepare for Falklands, NHS charges, pension thefts, mortgage interest hikes and , so cool, injecting us all with Ebola.
Cummings must go now.
Obama summed up “we droned done folks”
So the Isle of Wight trial of the “contact tracing app” was a complete failure then?
How much public money went on that? And who to?
Can any journalist remember what I’m talking about, or have drugs screwed with their memory too much? The pilot scheme started three weeks ago.
Because today government clowns are saying they will be running a contact tracing system that’s very different…
“Tracers will text, email or call people who test positive with coronavirus and ask who they have had contact with.”
Imagine you’re in intensive care and your smartphone rings.
“Keep that ventilator away from me, will you? I’m trying to think who came within 2 metres of me this week.”
Gotta wonder if cut-and-paste “journalists” ever think about what they’re “writing”.
That kind of system is obviously different from a terminal program you’re supposed to install on your smartphone if you admit to having one, that enables a log to be kept of all other mobile phone users who have come near you recently (as if that info isn’t collected anyway), which is what they were supposed to be trialling on the Isle of Wight.
However, surely it’s exactly the SAME as the contact tracing they’ve been doing for months. Or isn’t it? If someone falls ill with respiratory problems, tests positive for Covid-19, and then tells nursy that he played a game of secret rugby yesterday in which there were an awful lot of scrums, isn’t an effort made to trace the said sports enthusiasts in order to “save lives” and all that kind of stuff?
What a joke! “I went to Asda’s yesterday and I jumped ahead in the one-way system so as to avoid walking down the booze aisle, and I think I came within 1.37 metres of a guy when I walked past the baked beans. No, wait a minute, it was Tesco’s. I think he had a beard.”
“Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was confident that the ‘vast majority of people” would participate in the voluntary system.”
What does that mean? Say a person falls ill, calls 999, and he’s lucky enough that the ambulance and hospital don’t turn him away. He tests positive for Covid-19.
NURSE: “Tell us who you’ve been in contact with”
PATIENT: “Shan’t!”
What would happen if revealing who he’d been in contact with WASN’T “voluntary”? Would they take him to court, kill him, or what?
“In this war on the virus, ultimately we are all on the same side and we’ve all got a part that we can play,” he said.”
Oh, right.
The main thing seems to be the hiring of “contact tracers” by local councils. The number has risen from 13000 to 25000, so we know we’re talking about the public sector. Who are these people? Basically call centre workers? Or guys from private security companies, or what?
It used to be said that if you were too thick to become a cop you became a screw, and if you were too thick to be a screw you joined the army. What is it now – too thick to join the army so you’re a contact tracer?
“So the Isle of Wight trial of the “contact tracing app” was a complete failure then?”
Why am I not surprised? Now they can pay the developers, ditch the app and the developers don’t have to spend hours of valuable time making the damn thing work, which, as any programmer knows, is where the bulk of the hours are. Ker-ching!
If one was cynical, one might even suggest that this is what was supposed to happen.
Faculty, which had a pre-existing contract to build an artificial intelligence lab for the NHS, took on a leading role in the data response to the pandemic. It is run by Marc Warner, whose brother, Ben, was reportedly recruited to Downing Street by Cummings after running the Conservative party’s private election model.
Ben Warner, who used to be a principal at his brother’s AI company, is said to have worked closely with Cummings on the modelling programme used in the Vote Leave campaign to leave the European Union. Faculty’s lawyers said its NHS contract was the result of a tender process that was not influenced by Cummings. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/uk-government-using-confidential-patient-data-in-coronavirus-response
Dominic Cummings’s wife gave her account to the Spectator when they both had Corvid no mention of their Durham dash.http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3I5vcg0U09gJ:https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/getting-coronavirus-does-not-bring-clarity&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0
Angela+Wooridge
As somebody has already said, we’re talking about people who rigged the election , who are world wide known liars. So it makes no difference if she gave her account to the Spectator or a Mashed Potato.
They’re lying.
“when they both had Corvid”
Is that what you get if you live in Islington and JC is your MP?
Ste
As in willy willy harry ste
Harry dick john harry 3
3 neds etc ?
There are things called old people. They live on borrowed time into old age thanks to socialist installed medical care.
Those old people remember times before socialism and this government wants to shift them out the way so that everybody can live together in peace on Love Island.
If I had known that the government in power when I reached old age wanted to exterminate me in a care home, I might have been a little bit more active in fighting for socialism. Too late now. Bye. Xxx
socialism is another mans nude colony you can never win by group think it certainly is no cure for tyranny on a real democracy where we can vote for laws not herder middlemen can power be distributed equally.
Craig and family are having a barbeque party. Hope they have a good time. Lots of kind comments below his tweet with good wishes with which I would chime if I was on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1266028246195372036
Regardless of ones view on Boris he is PM with a large majority and over 4 years to go to the next election. He has firm control of all the levers of power. In addition, he has an unelected rottweiler in Cummings to do the dirty work.
Why would anyone regard that as being vulnerable?
In many ways this whole exercise is a case of ‘if you act to kill the king, you have to succeed’. Does anyone think that Cummings is just going to say ‘OK its over, lets get back to where we were?’ Not a chance. He comes across as a tough, unforgiving bastard and he and his family have been put through the mill. There are scores to settle.
Given that part of the plot must have been to upset his plans to drag Whitehall kicking and screaming from what he probably regards as its 19th century mode into the 21st century, I would suggest that some are going to find that journey a wee bit more uncomfortable than it might otherwise have been.
Add into those plans the impact of the current and ongoing, for the foreseeable future, dramatic loss of tax revenue and soaring Government spending and we have an interesting 12 months ahead.
Another attempt from a Johnson troll to get us to move on. How many elections have we had in the last five years since 2015? Not exactly one every five years.
The fact is that Johnson has wounded himself grievously by his support of Cummings. Who knows what the consequences are going to be? Short-term survival perhaps. Long-term he’s shredded his trust. I’d be surprised if he’s still in power in 2024.
Most likely he will, Tory is still leading the polls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Macron rule after next election? Probably not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanuel_Macron_presidency
Mr. Gove is waiting in the right hand fish wing
Mr.Gove adopted father was an owner of a fishing fleet.
Mr. Right wing Gove will sieze the crown and take us over the cliff edge.
Michael norton
Maybe the novichok drama was a test for Boris’ reliability under pressure. He did succeed in facing it out and persuading the EU to expel Russian diplomats under the 3 musketeers all for one rules.
So I suppose the name for that must be plonkocracy, or promotion of the biggest ass hole..
Laguerre – if I were a betting man, I’d be prepared to bet you one pint on that. I don’t believe that Johnson will be out by 2024.
There were reasons why Johnson won a large majority and (a) I simply don’t see where the external opposition to Johnson is coming from (Labour under Kier Starmer? Give me a break!) and (b) I don’t see the Tories trying to oust him and replace him by – Theresa May? Jeremy Hunt? Who exactly? They see the last election result – and they don’t want to be out of a job, no matter how much they may loathe and detest Johnson’s policies and his underhand dealings. The words `honourable’ and `Tory’ haven’t exactly been synonymous for a very long time now. So they won’t kick him out because he lacks moral integrity – such an idea would never enter a Tory head.
So my prognosis: the Tories will ultimately stick by Johnson and there won’t be serious opposition from Labour and Johnson will keep going, winning at least one more election.
The people using this issue as a reason to demand Cummings resignation are the same people who never liked Cummings anyway; those who approved of Cummings before haven’t changed their minds on this issue (the excursion to Barnard Castle for his wife’s birthday).
Of course – Craig Murray’s investigative journalism could change that – exposing the corrupt dealings with pharmaceutical companies. That could turn people against Cummings (and by extension Johnson). But that hasn’t been established yet. It requires much more evidence than we have seen so far and therefore more digging. This is a longer game and won’t happen overnight.
Yes, believers in the invincibility of the Tories, such as you, are very common, much as in other domains there are thousands of commenter believers in the evil but also the invincibility of the USA, in spite of the fact that they lose war after war.
I have no idea what is going to happen, but Johnson has done much this last week to destroy the credibility of the Tories in the minds of people, including the Red Wall Tories, such has been the confusion and incompetence manifested. Lame Duck if he survives, I would say. Another round in January with No-Deal Brexit, and he may not.
The plan all along was No Deal Brexit
as in Full Brexit
The same as it was always Herd Immunity.
You just have to flower things up a bit for dim people.
Laguerre – well, I would very much like to be proved wrong on this one – so let’s hope you are right. I’m not optimistic, though.
Ah ha Mr Murray. Just like the slogan ……” Get on with the say job”
Gotcha!
Not behind a paywall:-
“GSK to produce 1bn doses of coronavirus vaccine booster in 2021
World’s largest vaccine maker in talks with governments over manufacturing expansion”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/28/gsk-coronavirus-vaccine-booster-2021-glaxosmithkline
Barack Obama stated his intention to “look forward and not backward” with respect to the war crimes of Bush and Cheney, and the massive banking fraud that brought down the financial system. These weren’t even his fault! But he chose to share in the guilt of those responsible as an accessory after the fact. Figure that one out.
Clayton Bradt
Double your money, double your fun..
You don’t get to share in the profits of crime unless you are prepared to share some of the blame.
That message is written all over his face, a message of ancestral regret that you too can share in the spoils of corruption even if you are African.
Contrast that with the radiance in the faces of African Muslim men and women. Somalis and Sudanese who understand perfectly the role of the west in creating terrorist groups to destabilise and clear countries ready for mineral and oil exploitation.
Clayton Bradt
“Those responsible” had paid for him to become president.
He wouldn’t be in the position he’s in now if he hadn’t followed orders.
Mere semantic cud-chewing over the use of the phrase ‘move on’. But taking each case individually there’s no common thread.
Nixon was disreputable but probably had some virtues, he was compared to what sorts came later, his own man, but taken down by the deep-state or some faction or tribe. Clinton when his purpose had been served and utility declining was set up and taken down, deserving it more than even Nixon. In increasing severity there was then Blair who could have gone on for ever, the forever loyal media, the forever blind steerable, manipulable mass of voters never clamoured for his departure, but his always present increasing messianic insanity meant he had to go, he began having delusions that He was his own man enough to worry not the public but his puppetmasters. The (Gordon) Brown interval was necessary, before the new anointee Cameron could be moved into place, after the financial heist of the century so far had been seen through with Brown both carrying the can and in his own mind saving the planet too, then moving on to even greater things.
There should be no prohibition on or necessarily sinister intent in merely saying so, though sometimes a universal principle, an evil has occurred of such magnitude, of such horror, that moving on is impossible and saying to do so is at the least a bit suspicious as well as patronising. We can of course move on and in the process of doing so, move on from heeding or trusting ever again those exhorting us to move on.
On a personal level too, the inexplicable death, perhaps murder of a brother, the abduction the disappearance from life amounting to death of a beloved octogenarian parent, these are all things from which moving on is I’m told necessary, desirous for some, knowing there is no possibility ever of redress or ever of justice or even investigation, every arm of the state just shrugs and says move on or we’ll make life such greater hell for you that you might find your death our relief from your refusal to lie down and submit to our terrible and untramelled power.
I’m quite getting the hang of typing with one hand tied behind by back, the only error I can spot is untramelled should be untrammelled.
Jennifer Allan
May 28, 2020 at 22:38
“GSK to produce 1bn doses of coronavirus vaccine booster in 2021
World’s largest vaccine maker in talks with governments over manufacturing expansion”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/28/gsk-coronavirus-vaccine-booster-2021-glaxosmithkline
Jennifer,
I have not read your link to the guardian yet but I will later.
The point I want to make is that no company or university in the world to date has a vaccine for Sars-Cov-2
which means they cannot promise a booster vaccine. The vaccine has to be produced first.
We are all being conned.
This puzzled me too on first reading Doug, but on closer inspection GSK is producing, not a Covid-19 vaccine, but a vaccine adjuvant. (An adjuvant is the media in which the vaccine is delivered; it is designed to ‘boost’ vaccine efficacy). Calling this a ‘booster’ seems very strange, since most persons associate this term with booster vaccines, usually administered a few years after a first vaccine administration. Those of us who are not at all happy about some vaccine adjuvant ingredients, would like to know what exactly GSK is intending to manufacture. Do they mean Squalene – an oily substance derived from shark’s liver? Squalene was the new ingredient in GSK Pandemrix, the H1N2 flu vaccine which was hurriedly rolled out during 2009/10 in response to a flu pandemic which never materialised. It caused Narcolopsy in a significant number of children.
Recently Squalene has been brought back in the UK, as an ingredient in the new annual ‘super duper’ flu jab for the over 65s. Yes-that means me. I have asked for the ‘bog standard’ flu jab instead, a nice single dose mercury free version, but was refused. That means no flu jab for me until this discriminatory rule changes. We are told Squalene is a natural vaccine ingredient, similar to the squalene found in our own bodies, but that’s the problem. Apparently the vaccine immune response boosted by the squalene can in some cases cause an auto immune attack on our our own body’s squalene. We are told Squalene has been extensibly tested and found to be perfectly safe. I am sick of being told what to do by so called ‘experts’ often financed by corporate interests. So far in the UK we have retained our Neuremberg rights to refuse vaccines, and any other medical drug or procedure. But this Covid-19 crisis is looking like a great excuse to force these things on us in the name of ‘saving the NHS’.
Incidently, the GSK adjuvant is destined for the French Sanofi Covid-19 vaccine. It is looking like Craig was on to something over Dominic Cummings’ ‘eye testing’ trip to Barnard Castle after all.
GSK do not need Dominic Cummings’ permission to sell an adjuvant to the French. They are far more powerful than him.
Dominic Cummings is merely an adjutant to UK political money streams, which GSK want to access too.
Far more important to review the links between GSK and the Murdoch family, the history linking unnecessary vaccines to media scaremongering.
I think the point is the secrecy and obfuscation around Dominic Cummings’ drive to Barnard Castle. The other UK Covid-19 vaccine, being developed by Imperial College London, already involves GSK in any future production, but they seem to be taking a more cautious approach than the Oxford Vaccine Group, already geared up to produce millions of vaccine doses, with orders from all over the world. If Dom called in to GSK on Government business, or even to say hello or look around the plant, then why bother with all the secrecy? Most reasonable thinking persons would understand the reasons for this, particularly since the Sanofi Covid-19 vaccine is a UK-France collaboration. However, the Oxford Vaccine Group might not be too pleased about it.
we’ve rewritten the rules in hindsight to accommodate whatever dommy feels like doing. we will do so again if need be. your job is simple: obey the rules, shut up and move on.
The appointment of Richard Sambrook as the arbiter of political bias at the BBC, is not unexpected, as with the police, they investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing. He is the Lord Protector of BBC bias as his credentials include affirming the contents of Bair’s dodgy dossier, and presiding over the Savile affair with alacrity so absolving senior BBC staff of any misconduct. He was also in charge at the time of Jill Dando’s tragic killing. Perhaps Emily Maitlis should hire some special protection. Here’s what he believes is a definition of trust, https://orca.cf.ac.uk/33772/1/Delivering_Trust_Impartiality_and_Objectivity_in_a_Digital_Age.pdf
He left the BBC in 2010 and is now at Cardiff University as Professor of Journalism.
He has had his fingers in many pies including time with this American PR outfit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelman_(firm)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sambrook
I’m not going to be told by Boris Johnson to do anything. There is no end to the criminality of the Tories to move on to. We have fallen or been pushed into the slurry of a capitalist pig farm. We move left or right , backward or forward, the same eye- watering ammonia of fraud, murder and crime.
The only recourse to safety we used to enjoy was an election but the new system if votecrigging by algorithm has blocked our only exit plan.
As I have said repeatedly here, staring Tory fascism in the nostril of a Tory godzilla, the only issue that matters now is to retrieve democracy from Tory control. Hitler is happening again. But this time the virus has been morphed by zionism into an even worse form.
The Conservatives have certainly done no more than New Labour did: demonising them by believing that Labour is better is the height of cognitive dissonance.
We have two brands of the same nonsense, namely being imperialistic yapdogs for the Yanks.
Nothing Conservative about that. It is just FCO mandarins imposing dogma through threats of US sanctions.
They thought that by issuing deliberately vague advice (“Stay Alert”; socially distance at work “if possible”) they could pin any 2nd wave of infection on an irresponsible public. But Cummings has screwed his own attempted scam. If Britain’s world-leading death rate holds even tame media will point the finger at the twin grifters, Cummings and Bozo.
The story may have moved on by the weekend but if Britain’s death rate continues to lead the world it will keep returning to the grifters.