UPDATED Dominic Cummings specifically stated now in the press briefing that he had been eager to “get back to work to get vaccine deals through, move regulations aside” and that is why he drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.
Now it may be entirely a coincidence that the place to which he chose to drive for his eyesight test happened to be the site of the major factory of GlaxoSmithKline. It may be an entire coincidence that two days later, on the very day Cummings actually started work back in Downing Street he has stated was “to get vaccine deals through”, GlaxoSmithKline announced an agreement to develop the vaccine.
It is however plainly not crazy to ask the question. This astonishing Twitter pile-on against Clive Lewis for retweeting my piece says something very worrying, when you consider that the large majority of those piling in are supposedly part of the “opposition” and include many journalists. A society where it is viewed as a sign of madness to look into the prospect of corruption involving a company as massively, provenly corrupt as GlaxoSmithKline and a figure as shady as Cummings, is a very unhealthy society indeed.
One red flag to me is the number of trolls claiming GlaxoSmithKline only has a small and remote office in Barnard Castle. This is not the entire site, and in a further £96 million investment two new blocks are in construction or recently finished:
So to return to my original posting:
In 2012 GlaxoSmithKline were fined $3 billion for fraud, overcharging and making false claims about medicines in the USA. In 2016, GlaxoSmithKline were fined £37.6 million in the UK for bribing companies not to produce generic copies of their out of patent drugs, thus overcharging the NHS.
Despite the fines, these frauds were still massively profitable for GlaxoSmithKline. A perfunctory search on the company brings up similar frauds and fines it perpetrated in South Africa and India. All this within the last decade. I cannot find any information that anyone was jailed, or even sacked, for these criminal activities. It is absolutely astonishing that such an habitually criminal enterprise carries on serenely in the UK. And what is particularly interesting today is that it carries on its crooked activity from its massive manufacturing and research base in Barnard Castle, County Durham.
On 12 April Dominic Cummings was seen in Castle Barnard during lockdown. Two days later, GlaxoSmithKline of Barnard Castle signed an agreement to develop and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine with Sanofi of France.
Of course, that could be coincidence. As a child I lived in nearby Peterlee and I know families may go to Barnard Castle just for relaxation. Even when that is illegal. But GlaxoSmithKline Barnard Castle has been working 24/7 during the coronavirus crisis including the weekends. It was working.
The government’s extraordinary refusal to confirm or deny Cummings visit to Barnard Castle appears to make little sense if he just went there for a walk.
But surely if he was discussing Covid-19 vaccine business on behalf of the government, that would answer all the critics of his trip, would it not? They would want to trumpet it from the hills? I mean to believe otherwise, you would have to propound a crazed conspiracy theory. You would have to believe that criminal activity may be occurring again involving GlaxoSmithKline of the kind which might lead to fines of 37.6 million pounds for overcharging the NHS, or of three billion dollars for fraudulent medical claims in the USA. Nobody sane believes that kind of thing, do they?
UPDATED: I should never be surprised by the puerile nature of debate on the internet, but I frequently am. There appears to be organised pushback stating that this article is only speculation. Of course it is. It states a number of facts not generally known, and wonders if there is a connection. It does not claim to have proof Cummings visited GSK, let alone of what he did when there. But both GSK and Cummings are known bad actors.
The even sillier argument is that Barnard Castle is the research and manufacturing centre and not the corporate HQ and therefore no deal could have been done there. Because when a company is involved in a massive criminal conspiracy, as GSK undeniably was in the multi-billion fraud in the USA or its price-fixing to the NHS, such criminal actions obviously can only be arranged in the main London company boardroom during normal working hours with lots of people around and the maximum chance of inconvenient people finding out what is happening? That is a stupid argument.
Equally, those who claim I have uncovered a criminal conspiracy are wrong. I have not. All I have done is put together some circumstances around Cummings denied trip to Barnard Castle, that could potentially provide a more reasonable explanation for why he would take the risk of going there, and why the government would stake all politically on denying it, than a day trip for a walk for his wife’s birthday. I have not proven anything.
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Thank you for your clear comments about this topic.
I thought the most entertaining story of the morning was Cummings reediting hs old blogposts to prove he’d predicted the threat of the coronavirus in 2019.
“Jens Wiechers
Cummings said he warned about i.a. corona virus in 2019.
Thing is, he didn’t. References to SARS and corona virus were added to his blog post on pandemic risks sometime between April and May of this year. (The sitemap says it was edited on 2020-04-14)”
Cummings is losing touch with reality. Why does he need to pretend that he predicted the coronavirus a year in advance. Completely out of this world.
Laguerre – It will give the MSM rabble something more to chew on and of course while the spotlight is on Mr. Cummings, the short-cummings of the government, NHS management and Public Health England can all safely be ignored. The feeding frenzy has become frantic like bunches of hyenas and piranhas on heat.
I take it anything Cummings does is fine by you – you must be a real hero-worshipper.
You must be quite hard of thinking as well as reading as I made no comment as to what I think about what Mr. Cummings has or has not done. The fact you refer to him as “Cummings” indicates to me you probably dislike him immensely as to use your own kind of thinking I suspect you are a die-hard EU Remainer and want him punished for cementing in place Brexit. Hard cheese, Brexit is on-track and good riddance to the EU. I have no heroes or heroines.
der Spiegel has an article as to the resignation of Douglas Ross, whilst here it is not a main issue, yet.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/grossbritannien-staatssekretaer-tritt-wegen-chefberater-dominic-cummings-zurueck-a-6f051c3e-7c86-4df7-8875-0a325fe1f4d6
Der Spiegel is an overrated publication. I remember it calling me up, and wondering why I thought General Al Haig was ‘Deep throat’ or why Angela Merkel was aka ANITA, a communist spy..After considerable discussion of my sources, it just hung up, and that was the end of it. Think it works for German intelligence in important matters.
Don’t’see any purpose in translating the article from German.
Why do you think Gen. Haig is “deep throat” and Angela Merkel is a “communist spy”?
Maybe the journalist from the Spiegel had the impression you are something of a fantasist?
You aren’t the guy who once called me a fucking cunt, are you?
Now I am a fantasist, a scholar with a Ph.D. from an ivy league University, three books published by a reputable English legal firm, over thirty articles in peer-viewed journals, hundred of articles on the internet, etc.
Why did I waste all that time and effort?
The policy in England to return the early years school children together with the first year secondary pupils is an interesting government strategy.
Now I am no.educationalist or epidemiologist but why send the youngest schoolchildren back to the Petri dish of a school.
Could it be that sending the children back to school is an attempt to spread herd immunity. Children are particularly immune to Covid19, yes they may carry the virus, may have absolutely have no symptoms, or just maybe just a slight sniffle, so what better way to get the R numbers down down than by allowing children to be extensively exposed to the virus.
And younger children tend to have younger parents, who whilst not as immune to effects as their kids are, are nevertheless at much less risk than the older teachers and most certainly the grandparents to whom they could spread the virus.
If correct in this assessment, then once again we are coming back to the concept of sacrificing the older populace, taking it on the chin, losing people before their time. It’s exactly how high Tories think.
Thankfully, the Scottish Government appears to be taking a much more cautious approach. However, if the Tory high command in Westminster says back to school in Scotland, then back to school will be because all they need to do is turn off the financial tap. And turn off the financial tap they would as a Tory treasury minister opined when he suggested that teachers wages be docked to get them back to school.
But hey, I’m not really sure if we are too bothered about this. We did vote for it after all. Or did.we?
Meanwhile I had a surfeit of drink last night into the wee small hours. To check if I am now sober and fit to drive I’m going now to take my wife and four year old grandson out for a sixty mile run. It’s what any reasonable grandparent would do.
Bernhardt at MoA calls out Cummings’ novel eye test procedure as “an obvious lie”.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/05/britain-johnsons-pandemic-management-is-trashing-his-authority.html#more
Of course eye tests should only be conducted by a qualified Optician.
Father Jack’s Eye Test | Father Ted – YouTube
Cummings should not drive if he is uncertain of his eyesight. One can have an urgent ocular problem, but this also argues against driving.
In my town, a person I know was riding a bicycle on a wide highway berm and there he was killed by a “legally blind” driver.
Willie
If the Tories turn off the financial tap, the EU will turn it on again. Independence . U.D.I. End of story.
Willie
That is my reading too – they want more disease in the society, its all about herd immunity – but they wont admit that,
This is an insane policy since the virus/spread will drag on for months and eventually years and the population can not go on with their lives, rest assured the economy will be hit hard.
Now compare this insane policy with the nations that had lockdown or taken other measures, they can open up soon and the society/economy can begin to flourish again with little or no rise in deaths.
Any parents of school pupils who are reading this should know that school is not compulsory, and that according to the law they can deregister them from school and educate them at home with immediate effect, without asking anybody’s “permission”.
For a poor family with both parents required to work, this is the equivalent of “let them eat cake”
is it a boris “johnson” quote?
Not sure but I thought the government said that people who have partners who don’t live with them or own 2 property s choice one to isolate during the lockdown ? If so why didn’t his wife who was so concerned about her child stay at Durham with her child during the lockdown and let her husband go to work and stay in London ? I’m sure I would have
Doesn’t sound impossible. Does make sense. May be what happened.
I watched the press conference and I have read the transcript of Cummings’ statement and answers to questions. I can’t find anywhere where he said “get back to work to get vaccine deals through, move regulations aside”.
Maybe I missed it somehow. Can anyone tell me exactly at which point he said it?
The transcript in the Torygraph and probably elsewhere too is likely to be copypasta from a handout which had “Check delivery” written on it. I’ll be watching the video again this afternoon so will hopefully be able to answer your question. My recollection is he put his hand over his mouth during the Barnard Castle section; I’ll check that too. He was damned good but not perfect. Rarely does anybody give a presser on their own like that, in any context. A fool like Donald Trump wouldn’t be able to cope.
Some hacks are saying they didn’t realise he could appear so meek. That says far more about them than about him. They were too lazy ever to look up one of his talks on the internet, and they assumed that when he was delivering a statement and answering questions he would act with the same snappiness as when he is being harassed in the street outside where he lives. They are so stupid. They associate confidence with extraversion. Sometimes you have to wonder where people have been all their lives.
I’ve got no problem with him getting police protection against the filth of the press. Anybody who genuinely opposes hypocrisy and “one law for them, another for us” should hope that the cops enforce social distancing among the hacks and photogs too. Calling somebody a corona hypocrite when you’re in a baying pack totally disrespecting social distancing is itself hypocritical. That shouldn’t need pointing out, were it not for the fact that in Britain there is a great deal of respect for the media, for politicians, and for the social elite, behind the superficial veneer of joky cynicism (e.g. “brown envelopes”, etc.)
Last point: Dominic Cummings is not a member of the elite. His dad worked as an oil rig project manager FFS. To be in the British elite you have to be born in it, even if you did attend a (local in his case) 600-year old school that belongs to the HMC and later get mentored by Norman Stone. (Stone wasn’t a member of the elite either – his dad was a junior commissioned officer in the RAF).
Many thanks N_. I’ll look forward to you being able to answer the question later. Presumably Mr Murray would know, since he quoted “get back to work to get vaccine deals through, move regulations aside”, but he’s probably too busy to read all the posts on here and answer them.
I can’t find the exact quote but this is similar. It appears in the Q&A session after his statement.
https://youtu.be/-mSyZGy8LX8?t=4013
The whole video is on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mSyZGy8LX8
here is the comment about warnings of coronavirus which is now interesting given that people are saying it was added to his web site in April.
https://youtu.be/-mSyZGy8LX8?t=5281
I have sympathy for Dominic Cummings and his wife, their decisions in relation to looking after their child and thinking through the possibilities of what would happen if neither of them were able to care for him. I’d have done the same thing in those circumstances. People are pointing out that other parents in similar circumstances had to abide by the rules for lockdown and in doing so risked the possibility of having no one to care for their child. I don’t think the lockdown rules were meant to require anyone to do that.
@MrSoft – @ET has found it. Watch from 1h06m40s to 1h07m10 at that Youtube link to get the context:
“If I hadn’t worked here [10 Downing Street], for example, then you could very easily say that OK I could just have stayed in an isolated cottage for weeks afterwards, but I was involved in lots of things involving crucial questions of vaccines, trying to get scientists involved in the effort, trying to get money moved, trying to get regulations moved out of the way, and I thought, I thought that if I could return to work that I should seek to return to work.”
He doesn’t say “get vaccine deals through”, but he does say “get regulations moved out of the way” and that he was involved in “crucial questions of vaccines”, and most beautifully he talks about “trying to get money moved”. What money? Moved from where to where? This is all in the explanation of why it was so important for him to get back to London.
To list the points again:
* “crucial questions of vaccines”
* “trying to get scientists involved in the effort”
* “trying to get money moved”
* “trying to get regulations moved out of the way”.
I didn’t catch the hand-over-mouth movement, which is kinda interesting because given that I know I saw it the first time and didn’t see it the second time it probably happened only once, so it would be nice to know what he was saying at the time.
When Gary Gibbon of Channel Four News presses him on the timing of conversations he had with the prime minister about his movements, he frames his hands into a kind of Merkel diamond. He’s trying to calm himself.
There’s far more…for example there are a handful of “to be honests”, but I’ll leave further analysis to somebody who’s more obsessed than I am 🙂
I’d like to know if they went North because Mary Wakefield, Dom’s spouse has suspected covid-19, why didn’t they isolate at her parent’s castle?
Chillingham Castle
Father Sir Edward Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield
surely, the story is, she was the one that was ill, not, at that stage, Dom.
Almost certainly edited out of both the original recording and the transcript. This happens all the time. Maybe we should view this positively. I have been hoping the Westminster Government would change tack over Covid-19 vaccines. The Oxford vaccine has been admitted to have failed to protect primates from the infection, so the chances of this vaccine protecting humans is remote. The Oxford Vaccine Group is now collectively bleating about the virus disappearing too fast and are looking for healthy volunteers to be infected with potentially dangerous Covid-19 virus in order to see if the vaccine works in humans. Appalling.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8351369/Oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-50-chance-success-professor-leading-project-warns.html
Extract:-
“Oxford University vaccine trial has only a 50% chance of success because virus is vanishing in UK – academics call for human volunteers to be infected
• Government struck a deal for 100 million doses of the jab ‘as early as possible’
• Ministers hoped a third of them would be ready to roll out for use in September
• But Prof Adrian Hill said the rapidly disappearing virus is creating problems
• If volunteers don’t catch it, scientists can’t prove the vaccine makes a difference
• Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19”
A vaccine that does not protect against the targetted disease is not a vaccine. Time to pull the plug on this expensive failure before any more harm is done. I am worried health workers might be forced to receive it.
DC mentioned about vaccines and regulations while answering a journalist after his statement.
‘But I was involved in lots of things, involving..crucial questions of vaccines, trying to get scientists involved in the effort, trying to get money moved, trying to get regulations moved out of the way.’
Scroll down to video of interview, and it’s about 1:06:40 mins in to 1:07:05:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/26/dominic-cummings-press-conference-statement/
Oh look, my post has been deleted! What a surprise! Here it is again…
The whole point of Mr Murray’s blogpost is the assertion that Cummings was in Barnard Castle to do a DEAL with GlaxoSmithKline. Mr Murray claimed above not once, but twice, that Cummings said “to get vaccine deals through”. The quotation marks are crucial. It is perfectly plain that Cummings did NOT say that and did NOT mention deals. Either Mr Murray is mistaken or he deliberately altered the quote to support his theory, presumably in the (usually correct) assumption that his acolytes will accept it without demur.
—
[ Mod: It’s not clear why you’re suggesting that your comment was deleted. That’s not true. Maybe you’re having trouble finding your way around the thread structure. Or maybe you’re just reposting as a novel way to evade the criticisms attached to the earlier version of the comment? ]
“….the assertion that Cummings was in Barnard Castle to do a DEAL with GlaxoSmithKline.”
.
Craig asserted nothing of the sort, Mr Soft. Naughty, naughty, porkie pies.
I heard him say it too and it caught my attention at the time. He definitely mentioned vaccines. I think he was in the midst of answering a question and was recounting what he and Boris talked about while he was away when he was making the point that telling Boris where he was when he was supposed to be self-isolating was unimportant because they had more important things to discuss.
Well done Craig, I’ll see what I can do.
Thank you for the alternative and refreshing journalism.
Surely there to be some accountability and honesty?
It seems to me that this has all been thought out and planned for quite some time, now that all the threads of corruption and connectivity are coming together…. Hijack the annual flu season, and let loose a novel strain of virus from a laboratory, and create a ‘pandemic’ so as to usher forth a new sociopolitical economic order out of the chaos and fear… May well just be a conspiracy theory, but it does feel that there’s an element of truth in it all, what with the documented agendas from years ago, with the vision laid down from artificial intelligence corporations…
I also read elsewhere that Dominic’s sister, Alice Cummings was made a director at the company IDOX on 14th April… They being the company who are bringing forth the technology for the Tracer App..
Can anybody confirm if that’s true, as it’s another thread in this game if it is.
—
[ Mod: It’s a false rumour, but people keep posting it here despite it being debunked earlier in this thread. ]
—
I’m just putting this out there for further clarification as there is so much in the way of speculative writing flying around these days.
It’s not true about his sister.
Changing the “sociopolitical economic order” – that is true. “Social distancing” is unlikely to end in the foreseeable future…and we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Did you see the prime minister at a daily Number 10 briefing advertise “Pick for Britain” which turns out to be run by a socially well-connected nob who specialises in “making high-profile families feel at ease” (in other words, posh childcare and personal assistancing)? That’s how “serious” they are about maintaining the food supply for the “plebs” later this year.
Thanks for clarifying about his sister
Is there actually any proof that Cummings and his wife had covid-19? Were they tested? Were the tests positive? Otherwise, we only have Cummings’ word for it, and how much faith do we put in that?
DC has never been tested and his son was tested at a hospital in Durham area and found to be negative.
Scroll down to interview and it’s about 35 mins in to 35:05 and 39:10 to 39:20:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/26/dominic-cummings-press-conference-statement/
Later on, in answering journalists’ questions, I remember DC saying that neither he nor his wife have been tested – but haven’t time to find it now.
He specifically states that neither he nor his wife were tested because they couldn’t get one done. His child was when they had to bring him to hospital.
If I were Dominic Cummings I’d be raising hell at work as to why I couldn’t get tested. Like him or not, agree with him being in his role or not, for someone with such importance in the running of governent not to be able to get tested is beyond bizarre. If I were him I’d be looking for an antibody test now.
ET
Of course he and his wife could have got tested if they stayed put in London. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
Sorry but Cummings story is just a pack of lies with the only question being what parts, if any, are actually true.
Cubby, it is not all lies.
He mentions he ran out of ten Downing Street, after communication from Mary Wakefield, that she was too ill to look after their four year old child.
This was captured on video and shown at the time, with journos guessing what was up?
Michael Norton
Dear Chap, You seem to have missed the part in my post where I said ” the only question being what parts, if any, are true.”
He did indeed run out of Downing st – how does that make the rest of what you said indisputably and factually true? Oh that’s right Cummings said that is what happened – just like he said he was testing his eyesight by driving to Barnard Castle.?????
The smirking reasoning he gave for the trip to Barnard Castle heightens the likelihood he was engaged in corrupt dealings. I read it as virtual admission of guilt. As for the berserk reaction of liberal journos and their acolytes to any suggestion of corruption, they must either be some of the most credulous individuals on the planet or some of the most disingenuous and dishonest. Considering their ardency on behalf of openly bought and paid for figures like Blair, Sir Keir, and Joe Biden, I lean heavily toward the latter explanation.
You may be interested in this – headline of article in Mail yesterday:
‘Dominic Cummings ‘dressed like a GP’ and his ‘weak vocal tone while sitting forward in chair hinted at humility’ but his ‘discomfort increased at mention of Barnard Castle’, says body language expert JUDI JAMES’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8355367/Dominic-Cummings-dressed-like-GP.html?login#reader-comments
Yes me too
The Ipsos Mori poll that gave Nicola Sturgeon a +74% net approval rating & Boris Johnson a -25% net approval rating was conducted BEFORE the Cummings storm. Nae wonder Ruth the mooth launched Operation Erse back in the day.
I thought that England now had many Street Surveillance Camera’s; maybe one of those would show up a vehicle; his own that he drove from London, or one belonging to his parents who, I gather live nearby, approaching the GSK Sites in Barnard Castle on one of those days?????????
There should also be ample cctv at GSK’s facillity, entrance gate, side gates and private access entrances. But unless somebosy is looking for it, we will not see it.
Some are beginning to suggest, like our own Nigel Farrage, that the reason Dom is getting bashed for his Northern outing is because he single handed plotted Brexit, Johnson was a late band waggon jumper.
The Bishops are tearing in to Dom, they hate Brexit, the BBC are tearing in to Dom they hate Brexit that idiot Sir Ed.Davy, wannabe leader of the shambolic Liberals is tearing in to Dom.
So the Remainacs last gasp is to delay Brexit because of covid-19 and the Lock-Down, much easier to do with Johnson and Cummings thrown under London Buses.
Yeah, it’s the meme of the day, as put out by Downing St, that it’s only so-called “remainiacs” who are unfairly and idiotically slurring Cummings. Good to see you repeating the government propaganda, MN. Nothing of course to do with the evident fact that Cummings behaved appallingly, and completely wrecked government policy on lock-down.
More diversions from the subject, time to have him investigated, fined for breaching his own quarantine.
I do not want an unelected employee to resign, he ought to be sacked.
What about those lefty Remainaics at the Mail and The Sun who have been crucifying Cummings?
Dan, the Daily Mail is Remain and has been since Geordie Greig took over, the Sun is a Turdock paper and Johnson is not a Newscorp puppet.
Newscorp “sponsor” Gove and Hunt for now there was a puff piece for Gove in the times a couple of weeks ago.
If you take a deep breath and start from the position that all of the media including the mainstream new media and social media are compromised (ie they promote an agenda and it is usually aligned with the status quo and some limb of the state or business). After all that’s why we come to read Craig’s blog, he isn’t perfect and I don’t think much of this article but I do respect him for his integrity.
Whatever the individual agendas at the moment the media are all fairly well aligned against Cummings, but he is so contrarian that it is not really possible to say they all want rid of him for any particular view he holds. More likely each institution has their own axe and are sticking the boot in while they can, could be Brexit, could be the initial resistance to lockdown, could be swinging the axe,
Not actually true. Greig is just not as strident as Dacre, but the editorials are all unambiguously pro-Brexit, as is the spin on the news reporting. And the readers BTL are just as rabid on Brexit as Greig’s predecessor.
Not sure what point you’re making about The Sun. It – and its proprietor – are pro-Brexit. To suggest otherwise simply isn’t true.
Within the nest few months both the U.K. government and the Elite of the European Union, either have to agree on a way forward to the sunny uplands of togetherness or we irrevocably split the crazy sceen.
This, in Michael Gove Speak, is the Last Chance Saloon.
If both Johnson and Cummings and others are thrown under the bus, we get a new prime minister, Boris has been failing and flailing for months, I think he is still ill, he certainly is not firing on all cylinders, we could, possibly get a refocusing, which would likely mean a postponement of full brexit.
This is the dearest wishes of many remainers, with grudges and benefits to themselves.
To imagine that some would stop at nothing to stop full brexit is stupid.
Michael Norton
Both Scotland and N.Ireland voted to remain in the EU. In a normal democracy or a normal modern democratic union those votes would be respected but of course the UK is neither of the above.
It is an English dictatorship. Therefore Scotland owes no respect to the Brexiteers in London.
The my point is that the Sun’s position on Brexit is secondary to their designs to get rid of Bozzer and Cummings.
We disagree on the Mail’s Brexit stance but remain or soft-independence, neither really makes it a good example of a Brexit paper ripping into DC or BoJo
I have carefully watched the video of Cummings’ statement and answers to questions several times, as well as watching the original broadcast. I have read all the comments on here relating to it. It is perfectly clear that Cummings DID NOT say “get back to work to get vaccine deals through, move regulations aside” as Mr Murray has claimed. Most importantly Cummings said nothing whatsoever about “deals”.
I can only conclude that Mr Murray is very badly mistaken or he fabricated the quote. It’s likely that my post to be removed. I will take a screen shot and I will re-post it time and time again if necessary.
I saw three replies to your earlier request, each providing links.
MrSoft, are you actually interested in the meaning of what Cummings said, or are you just nitpicking over incorrect use of quotation marks?
Here’s the direct link to the relevant quote at 1:06:40 in his explanation: https://youtu.be/-mSyZGy8LX8?t=3995
I was trying to balance lots of competing things. I mean, if I hadn’t worked here, for example then I could very easily say I could just have stayed in an isolated cottage for weeks afterwards. But I was involved in lots of things involving, you know, crucial questions of vaccines, trying to get scientists involved in the effort, trying to get money moved, trying to get regulations moved out of the way, and I thought that if I could return to work then I should seek to return to work.
Is it really worth kicking up such a fuss about accurate transcription if the semantics remain the same? Does that actually count as being “very badly mistaken” in your view?
With such a gift for syntactical nitpicking, you should apply to join Dominic’s next intake of weirdos and misfits ….
You’re unlikely to win any awards for incisive political analysis, MrSoft. We’ve built up a pretty clear picture of the sort of person that you are. And I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the ideal job for you is chartered accountancy.
The whole point of Mr Murray’s blogpost is the assertion that Cummings was in Barnard Castle to do a DEAL with GlaxoSmithKline. Mr Murray claimed above not once, but twice, that Cummings said “to get vaccine deals through”. The quotation marks are crucial. It is perfectly plain that Cummings did NOT say that and did NOT mention deals. Either Mr Murray is mistaken or he deliberately altered the quote to support his theory, presumably in the (usually correct) assumption that his acolytes will accept it without demur.
Er… he states specifically that he is *not* asserting that.
If he’s not asserting that Cummings was doing a deal with GSK then the whole blogpost is just meaningless drivel, so you must be right!
Cummings own quote says that he was involved in all of these things Before he returned to work. Was he doing these things remotely from his parents estate or did he have a break from these things while there?
It was in the Q n A’s after the statement I believe someone in a post above mentioned.
Evening Standard comment on yesterday’s rose garden press conference: “The clock is ticking on Britain’s anti-elite elite“. Unfortunately the piece isn’t as interesting as it sounds. It’s not arguing that the elite is about to show its boot to some house guests whom it invited in and who have now got too big for themselves. (With an Old Etonian in No. 10 and and Old Wykehamist in No. 11 that would at least be a thesis.) It’s not really arguing anything. Its author says the days of the “Vote Leave” “veterans” are numbered. Seriously what has VL got to to do with either CV19 or GSK? There is only one ruling elite in Britain. It hasn’t just been relieved or even temporarily pushed out of the way.
Do you remember during the Olympics during 2016, babies were being born with microcephaly?
They said it was as a result of the Zika virus, it wasn’t. It was as a result of pregnant women being given a compulsory Tdap vaccination made by GlaxoSmithKline at the early stages of their pregnancy. At least 4,00 babies were born with the condition.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35368401
At the same time and in the same place this was happening:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/dont-want-guinea-pigs-one-african-community-fighting-genetically/
Unfortunately, whatever the arguments about lockdown coronavirus has been the biggest opportunity for pharma-government racketeering the world has ever seen – I would imagine the racket that that Cummings was most concerned about during those days was the Porton/Oxford/Astra Zeneca deal.
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/05/further-anomalies-of-the-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine.html
If he went to Barnard Castle was he taking wife and child as camouflage?
I meant to say:
“If he went to Barnard Castle on business was he taking wife and child as camouflage?“
Sir Patrick Vallance is Chair of SAGE and worked for 12 years for GSK. He’s also Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group to the Grenfell Inquiry which a few months ago quietly decided not to look at the role of flame retardants or contents in the fire, even though these were the two major contributors to deaths. Do a little digging and you’ll find that big healthcare companies including GSK and big flame retardant producers use the same massive PR company, Burson Marsteller. There is a lot of to and froing between Burson and Imperial College. Imperial’s fire science unit is funded by the flame retardant industry and has played a major role in blocking changes to furniture fire safety legislation which would reduce flame retardant profits. I’m sure, though, that there cannot possibly be similar shenanigans going on behind Imperial’s virus numbers modelling.
What this “health crisis” is really revealing, first of all, is a serious mental health crisis throughout society at large as well as a real failure of education, if the purpose of education is to help people (young or not) think for themselves to become productive and creative members of society who are able to see when they are being lied to and wronged and take actions to oppose it. We’ve seen none of this so far, but people obediently wearing masks and patiently queuing in front of “essential” shops … as if indeed it was the new normal to be accepted.
People did not use their critical mind. They were mainly terrified to the point of losing any common sense and showed themselves really ready to believe anything from their media and government, even their police, to the point of applauding them as heroes (well it was supposedly for the nurses and the doctors, … but I’m afraid that these will be in the end, along with the whole NHS system, as usual, the ones who will really suffer).
A school, like any social place where people gather and interact, has always been “a Petri dish”, and that’s always been a good thing, as our immune system depends mainly on the exchange of viruses and such to thrive and maintain its health by building the antibodies our body needs to function healthily.
Moreover, it is only exceptionally in history that schools were closed, when a really bad virus threatened the children, which is definitely not the case here and it was known before the lock-down measures. Usually in case of a serious epidemics, it is the people who are ill who are quarantined; not the whole healthy population: this was a sad premiere in the world medical history ! And this should not be seen as any “(new) normal”. At all.
Every epidemiologist, virologist or scientist who is not on Big Pharma or Gates Foundation payroll will tell you so, as he will tell you that the peak of the infection of this supposedly deadly virus happened before the lock-down was put in place. Which is revealing as well of, in the very least, the pusillanimity of the authorities at the helm. Not to speak about corruption. Yet.
But I’m afraid you know that – like the UK government not only knows that very well but even declared it: Chris Whitty and others declared several times – the virus was not really dangerous. So I’m afraid that the matter we’re dealing with here is not at all a health crisis [as Andrew Mather of Peerless Reads astutely showed, the “crisis” mainly touches the world’s main centers of power: the US, UK, Europe … Strangely enough when you look elsewhere, the number of victims of the “pandemic” goes dramatically down.]. And it has rather to do with a crisis of an economic system which is eaten out by the corruption within the Western (or capitalist) system of production.
What happened for instance to the “products” of Boeing (the repetition of serious safety issues due to cost reduction measures in the conception of their planes, to the point it ended up in deadly crashes and those planes being grounded everywhere in the world!!) is easy to link with the new passion (to the point it has become an obsession) of now supposedly “philanthropist” Bill Gates, who however candidly admitted in an interview that the vaccine business promises a 20 to 1 return on investment -in the video Gates smiles at that point. There goes your philanthropist.
And this high profitability (on a par with the huge profitability of the arms business btw) may very well be more than enough to explain how the vaccines companies (many of them already condemned in many parts of the world for fraudulent products or practices ) are so eager to produce a vaccine (btw which is unnecessary, whithout even taking into account the near impossibility of the feasibility as such a vaccine, as the virus has now nearly totally disappeared from the real world – a real world which does not seem to concern the media or the politicians) “at warp speed”, that is without even testing it (a process which usually takes years) before using it on humans! …
And that’s also the reason why those pharmaceutical companies which produce vaccines are so eager as well to benefit from a total immunity from sanctions or legal actions in case any « accident » should happen to a patient using their vaccine, as is the case already in the US !!
And people should be worried because “the school is a Petri dish” ?!! While people would gladly inject such a vaccine to their kids as soon as next September??!! [In the US the town of Chicago has proudly declared they are ready for the (mandatory) vaccination of the entire population… when « the vaccine » is ready!] There is definitely something really wrong and dangerous in such an approach and in what happens to society since this whole affair of the lock-down began.
And the fact that the politicians need now big corporate money more than constituents to go on with their political careers or the fact that the media are no longer profitable without the support of their government and big corporate may bring a sufficient explanation to their lack of a spine or a critical approach during this whole “pandemic” affair.
But we may need to consider as well the fact that the military intelligence is now at every level of the “crisis”, which should “normally” not be that reassuring to a population concerned with their rights and liberties. I wonder why the general public should remain so sheepish, as if they were paralyzed by fear.
It has been revealed in government publications that the military intelligence has been used in order to “enhance compliance from the public” with the use of behavioral psychology, that is using subconscious messages to induce public compliance. Isn’t it worth considering as well?
The 77th brigade, is now even chasing opposition to the official narrative on the social media, while the new (and as unnecessary as “the vaccine” and for the same reason that the said virus is no more already) “contact tracing” systems which are put in place are (so tells the government) “perfectly safe as far as privacy is concerned” as the information is first to be treated by a “hub” … managed by the military intelligence before it gets to NHSx… So that your private health data go to the intelligence who surely will put them into the bins of history for your privacy’s sake as we know the « new normal » will undoubtedly force them to do from now on ! O Brave New World that has such people in’t ! This is the recipe for a police state.
Unavoidably, the medical martial law which has been/is being put in place since the beginning of the lock-down deserves to be revealed for what it is to the British public (and it must be true of course for the other states as well throughout the US, Europe …): a coup d’état in slow motion and a crime against humanity, no less.
And of course, this needs to be vigorously resisted by a population which would pretend to the continuation of their basic human rights and freedoms when every authority you hear is announcing you a “new normal” which is the exact contrary, brought about and supported by an ideology which is the exact contrary to humanism : direct profit and the enslavement of the entire population by a wealthy elite of profiteers (literally the world population !! in Bill Gates own crazy declaration of intention of vaccinating the 7 billion humans on planet earth ! Why should we ever question his -and Big Pharma’s- philanthropy?) in the name of Corporate Profit. Certainly not in the name of Humanism. We could even give it a fitting name : Nazism 2.0. That’s the way capitalism went wrong in the 1930s. That’s the way it went wrong in the US at the end of WW2, with the creation of the big intelligence agencies, the military-industrial complex and the National Security State, … and the McCarthyism that instantly ensued. It seems the times have come again for capitalism to go badly awry, and now the savior which supposed to “save us” from the indescribable horror of a death from a virus (or from the imaginary fears put in our heads by totally hysterical media in the first place, as said virus’ level of threat is proven now “in the ballpark of seasonal flu” and is now virtually extinct) is “technology”… and those « happy few » totalitarians who exclusively profit from this new barbaric age where science is second to profit and power. And definitely not “for your own good”, as should definitely be clear by now to all of us, … in a normally functioning world.
UK Column News (mentioning Craig Murray’s article), May 25, 2020 : OASIS, Operational Applications of Special Intelligence Systems : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbemJNd4gFA
Andrew Mather, Peerless Reads : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imrLwM97i0k
About the nefarious elitist ideology behind the corona crisis :
James Corbett, Meet Bill Gates (part 4 and final part of the series) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvhPnUgyz8
All the nurses coming out of hospitals in tears, crisis actors paid by Bill Gates. The dead doctors, fake news (or summink). Anyone who suggests otherwise, obvious military intelligence……
Exactly! It’s getting ridiculous.
Hello Dan, that’s right it’s getting ridiculous… Here is one great guy who agrees with you 100% I just discovered on 21st Century Wire:
Why You Should Believe Everything Media Tells You About Coronavirus:
https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/05/26/why-you-must-believe-everything-the-media-tells-you-about-covid/
Oh while I’m at it, Dan, you might like this “ludicrous fake news” as well: Leading UK Epidemiologist: ‘Pubs, Nightclubs, Restaurants Could Reopen Without Serious Risk’ : https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/05/27/leading-uk-epidemiologist-pubs-nightclubs-restaurants-could-reopen-without-serious-risk/
Those fake news conspirators are the real scourge of mankind! See, we definitely agree on that!
Boris Johnson reaches into pocket.
Pulls out a pair of glasses for effect – not once but twice – at least.
Back up from the truthful PM that Covid can and does affect your eyesight.
Cummings – I was testing my eyesight by experimenting with driving to Barnard Castle.
The fact: Cummings did not and does not have Covid.
another fact: his son does not and hasn’t had Covid.
Fact: His partner says she has had Covid ( unproven )
Fact: Cummings had legged it to Durham because he feared that his family may have become endangered by Covid even though he didn’t know whether he had it and certainly knew ( at the time ) that his child didn’t have it and his partner didn’t have it.
So: what was he running away from?
More to the point – why leg it to Durham when with all the contacts he has he could have called on the
people that he knew in London.
He is the PM’s bezzie mate afterall.
PM’s have a lot of influence.
Perhaps he thought that using his contacts was unfair?
Which to my mind is utter crap.
The irony of this story ( and it is a story) is that non of the three have Covid and they don’t have it now.
Do you make reference to the claims of “chemical attacks” made by the White Helmets in Syria, which were really fake as proven later by the experts (who then became whistle-blowers) of the OPCW, who revealed their direction had lied to the public and changed what their reports on the ground in Syria said (their reports said they were no chemical attacks) so that it fit with narrative of the Western interests fueling the proxy war in Syria? Of course this major scandal of the OPCW “corrected” reports were not even mentioned in the mainstream media -why should we keep wondering about our mainstream media not reporting truth, may I ask you?- who maintain the US/NATO (fake) narrative about chemical attacks.
But this has nothing to do with the covid-19 crisis. Except maybe for the cherry-picking by the same mainstream media of images of nurses in tears and overwhelmed hospitals, while they did not show the nurses who had nothing to do but stage a “covid war dance” in empty wards, or hospitals where no special surge of patients were noticed or where they even had to put health personnel on furlough.
The MSM do not mention either all the “non-covid” patients who could not be attended to while every attention in the health service was focused exclusively on “the pandemic”. So that people in treatment with serious conditions such as cancer had their treatment delayed, or people confronted with serious health problems did no longer dare to go to their hospital for fear of being “infected”. Many seem to have died simply out of fear of going to the hospital, due to the terrifying media coverage!
The very figures about the number of death given by the government themselves show that there is a large part of the excess mortality figure which they themselves do not attribute to covid19. That important part of excess mortality would then reveal the number of people who were the victims of the lock-down! And that number may even be more important from what can be seen on the graph if you take into account that the Italian Health Institute lowered their first terribly high figures of deaths considered “from covid” in Italy to “only” 12% of their first number.
Moreover we can now notice as well that a huge part of the death figure of “the crisis” concerns old people in nursing homes. It is a real crime that such vulnerable people were not even taken into consideration and protected as they should, as they were, with the immune-depressed, the most at-risk group in the population! And this while the government knew it very well before deciding for the lock-down, from the experience of covid in Asia! Instead they preferred to put the healthy population in lock-down and totally ignored the nursing homes! This is a real crime from people who are supposed to be so concerned about the whole population’s safety, and who based their decision of shutting down the whole country on the basis that it was “to protect the vulnerable and the elderly”! And the people in charge of this terrible mess will, hopefully, have to answer for this some time. At least it would be desirable in a functioning society that lessons should be learned, specially when the people in charge already warn us “other waves of infection” could threaten us in the future.
Spence Eagle
UK’s Covid-19 excess death toll rises to more than 60,000
Compared to the five-year average, 60,822 more people have died in the UK since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/26/uks-covid-19-death-toll-rises-60000/
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[ Mod: Sorry, Jack – we’re not going to have that debate here, as it would eclipse the highly topical political issues. ]
I should stop being surprised at how well researched your facts are and perhaps start being more shocked at how ‘journalists’ don’t make even the pretence of fact checking and simply copy paste from HMG or off the wire!
UK and Sweden are basically tied for most deaths per capita. Brazil close behind
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1265185311715405826
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[ Mod: Unfortunately this is off-topic because it is only tangential to the question of the Dominic Cummings controversy. Claims or questions concerning Covid-19 diagnosis, epidemiology or public health policy should be posted either on a more relevant article thread or in the discussion forum. ]
Its not per capita its per million people. Every nation is judged based on how many deaths per 1 million people.
Thank you for this Craig if the visit is as Cummings says it I,s why the pile on to try to rubbish your article. Its as if they were trying to cover something up – maybe follow the money?
Keep up the good work and keep safe.
I just think Cummings should resign or Boris should sack him because he broke lockdown rules not once, not twice but too many times. And he had Covid at the time spreading it everywhere he went. Even my Tory MP Laurence Robertson thinks he should go.
Fascinating stuff.
Cummings is a leftie in Tory clothes or is it visa-versa?
Creepy chap all round.
I Kathy Gray refuse point blank to any Vaccine !!!
Wow quite a few trolls on here tonight Craig – think you have hit a nerve somewhere.
Cummings just ignored all the rules and he must have bought fuel for his 260 mile journey to Durham. If you have symptoms or have Covid you have to isolate. What is the final number of how many times he broke the rules ?https://medium.com/@jamesfclark/cummings-and-goings-a-full-timeline-e96f4dec256d
Mystery
The internet archive Wayback Machine, which tracks the changing versions of publicly available websites, shows that the blog was edited some time between 9 April and 3 May this year (after the pandemic started) to insert the reference to coronavirus and Chinese labs. This was first pointed out by a data scientist Jens Wiechers on social media, and can be seen here.
It is in the form of a new quote from an article already linked to in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It was not in the original blog.
And the sitemap of Mr Cumming’s blog corroborates this, showing that this post was indeed edited at 20:55:20 on the evening of 14 April this year, still available here. This happens to be the day Mr Cummings returned to work from his Durham trip.
I don’t regret what I did, says Cummings.
The families who stayed away in lockdown.
Dominic Cummings: What did he do during lockdown? Analysis: Johnson failed to close down Cummings story
It is a mystery why he felt the need to burnish his credentials as a coronavirus sage so much that he pointed to having explicitly warned about something that was only added to his blog after the event.
There is no other reference to coronavirus or Sars or Mers on his blog. There is a page on the mathematics of pandemic modelling and “herd immunity” in a long essay written on the education system in 2013, but no references to coronaviruses.
It is difficult to see why editing a year-old personal blog would have been on any list of priorities for any No 10 official on a day like that – in the middle of the period where hospital deaths had peaked the previous week, but care home deaths were still mounting.
But Mr Cummings clearly felt the need on Monday to point to examples of prescience on this specific issue.
The context of his quote on coronavirus was to help disprove the allegation, first made in the Sunday Times, that he had backed a so-called “herd immunity” strategy.
I’ve asked No 10 for a response on the change to his blog, the reference to Chinese biolabs, and whether he stands by the idea he explicitly wrote about the dangers of coronaviruses.
A source acknowledged that the blog was updated and pointed to the fact that the original blog from last year linked to the separate article [in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists] which did discuss coronaviruses.
Paul Edward Rigby
Around 23 March , without using the term herd immunity which is deeply insulting to Western individualism, we were all aware that there wasn’t that much cov19 around to be scared about.
A man travelling from the virus epicentre in London to a remote area in Northumbria is travelling back in time to a different time zone in the virus’s catchability. The news from London of panic stations and stay at home is received 260 miles north at the same time, but to the traveller he is now far enough away from danger to sllow him to break rules.
By contrast, in remote areas of the UK curtains twitch at the sight of unfamiliar faces coming to their area. Mr Gove is much too politically electrically charged to point out a simple fact of relative safety, because because because..
Even Mrs May and William Hague were permitted to wax on the Romantic healing benefits of nature, and most of us have taken off a few weeks to contemplate Death for the first time ever.
The problem here is not that Cummings sought refuge in Nature to reflect on his own mortality, but that politicians are not really supposed to be weak or mortal. They do spend their entire lives thinking about money, but they can’t admit to the human weakness of needing spiritual therapy.
What we desperately need is for our rulers to be morally indignant to corporate fraud and rounded in their education. Cummings is 100% neither of these. His idea of dealing with the EU is bluff and threats. He has made his own bed and he must lie on it. If he had previously revealed evidence of the spiritual in his writings he could just have said he wanted to go for a walk. But he hasn’t, so nobody believes him when he says he needed time for reflection. There is a lesson to be had in there.
Genuine? Who knows? Embarrassing, yes – if he had hitched a lift with Dominic. “We will never be dragged screaming from the comfy chairs in London….”, or similar, unless Der Leaderene agrees it with Dominic first.
Many is the true word spoken in jest.
Unfortunately.
Looks like unless you are not following the person on twitter you should just ignore comments.