In travelling to find the right kind of childcare
Boris Johnson says everything Dominic Cummings did was fine and according to the rules and what anyone would do. This is bewildering to most observers because of all the rules Cummings broke.
Facing intense pressure to explain why Cummings appeared to have flouted lockdown rules by driving more than 260 miles to his parents’ estate in Durham with his wife and young son after his wife became ill, the prime minister said Cummings had simply been trying to keep his family safe.
“I have had extensive face-to-face conversations with Dominic Cummings and I have concluded that in travelling to find the right kind of childcare, at the moment when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus – and when he had no alternative – I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent,” Johnson said. “And I do not mark him down for that.”
So then all families with children can drive hundreds of miles to move in with older relatives when one parents is infected? That’s just fine is it?
Calling some of the allegations against Cummings “palpably false” – but not saying which – Johnson continued: “I believe that in every respect he has acted responsibly, legally and with integrity, and with the overriding aim to stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives.”
That makes no sense.
The prime minister insisted that Cummings’s trip was in line with restrictions on movement in place at the time, and that people could use their own discretion in similar circumstances.
If they’re friends with Boris Johnson, that is.
“Looking at the very severe childcare difficulties that presented themselves to Dominic Cummings and his family, I think that what they did was totally understandable,” he said
But they’re the same childcare difficulties that present themselves to any family with children. There’s nothing unique about them. All parents of young children are terrified about what will happen if one or both of them get the virus. Is Boris Johnson so privilege-blinded that he doesn’t grasp that? Or just lying.
I doubt if Johnson ever took care of one of his 5/6/7 children in his life.
He has badly misread the public mood which is 90% furious about this.
Let me see if I have things straight. The guy’s wife came down with coronavirus, and so presumably the guy himself was all but certain to be infected with it as well, rendering them unable to care for their children. So he drove the kids to his parents as he had no other person to engage for their care. He, a coronavirus-exposed person, met his elderly parents, and engaged them to care for his coronavirus-exposed kids.
Forget about the laws involved for a second, how the fuck can someone be so careless about their own parents??
Holmes – as far as I can tell, he’s claiming that they went to stay in an otherwise empty house owned by his parents, and then someone dropped food off on the doorstep for them. So not childcare exactly, just a grocery delivery service like you couldn’t possibly get in London (oh hey, the wife’s sister lives nearby, but so what). Maybe neither of were ever too unwell to look after the child, so the parents didn’t have to risk their lives after all? But then there are also people who are saying that he, his wife and son were out and about in some woodland near his parent’s house. I can’t work out it if this was before, after, or during the time that they had symptoms or if this was a second 260 mile trip.
I do remember back in March / April when various officials were reported to be self-isolating due to showing symptoms, none of them seemed to be out of the public eye for the full 14 days that the rest of us were being told we had to isolate for, but I was too busy being simultaneously bored and worried to really think about it.
Anyway, I have to be honest, I can understand why they did it. I don’t understand how anyone can think that it’s not a sackable offense. If everyone with children and a slight cough had jumped in the car to drive to somewhere more convenient for being ill, the country would have been gridlocked. Not to mention how much worse the infection rate would have been.