VNVObit wrote:The excuse actually calls into question his worth as an advisor.
Are you suggesting that, "We agreed that we should go for a short drive to see if I could drive safely," is an irresponsible, irrational or even imbecilic, statement? Shurely not.
Having now read
a transcript of his statement I see that a previous footnote of mine was founded on a misunderstanding. He said that the urination incident took place on the return journey from Barnard Castle and that he left the car on both occasions, the first time because he felt sick (which sounds to me a reason
not to leave the confinement of the vehicle, let alone return to work the next day) and the second because... his wife and son were playing in the woods? They needed help with the boy's zipper? He needed to protect them from a pack of wild squirrels? That bit seems unclear.
Also:
The Cumming Dom wrote:The regulations make clear, I believe the risks to the health of a small child were an exceptional situation … I thought that if I did not develop symptoms, then I might be able to return to work to help deal with the crisis … I was involved in decisions affecting millions of people, and I thought that I should try to help as much as I could do.
This work apparently included taking part in Sage meetings and helping to draw up those very regulations. It may seem odd, therefore, that he was not aware of the following as explained by the deputy chief medical officer for England:
The Beeb wrote:"… if the individuals do not have access to care support - formal care support - or to family, they will be able to work through their local authority hubs."
…
She used the examples of an elderly person with no supply of medication, or a child with both parents too unwell to provide medical care.
"Risk to life" would be a valid reason to break lockdown rules, Dr Harries said.
which suggests a more obvious and immediate emergency than vague suppositions of both parents becoming so severely unwell in a hypothetical future as to risk the life of their child when one of them is currently displaying mild symptoms with no cough or fever and the other is asymptomatic and thinking of returning to work. Mind you, the virus does appear to affect brain function in some people. Perhaps it blocked that part of his memory.
Foozwah wrote:Thing I wonder is, is it piss-weak because it's the best he and his could come up with, or is it piss-weak because he know that there'll be a couple of days of hullabaloo and then the media and everyone else will just lurch off to pontificate on the next disaster, and he'll just get away unpunished, in the grand Tory tradition...?
The Grauniad and Mirror have been working on this story for over six weeks. I doubt that they will let it slide in the near future.
Emoticon and contraction free since... quite a while ago.