Oooh touchy. Calm down dear.



You gave me nickname based on how you saw my personality. I've simply returned the favour. Smackrat seems to fit.

Fruit picking? Good lord man I'm British, it's below me. Don't we have cheap Eastern Europeans for that sort of thing?



I suspect as they've determined it's 'may be a minor breach', it's not worthy of a fine. The vast majority of people across the country throughout lockdown haven't been fined or charged, just instructed to go home.

But I imagine you think it's all a conspiracy...

I guess you believe in Brexit so what do you think to 300,000 British passport holders coming in from Hong Kong.

Nah, I just gave you a nickname based on you being a d!ckhead.

In my bubble Cathy Newman’s infamy comes from saying she was thrown out of a mosque when she wasn’t thrown out of mosque.

I did read about the JP interview sometime after it, and looked it up on YouTube. The top hit was an interview by JP with a friendlier interviewer about the Newman interview. I watched a bit of it and what he said seemed reasonable enough, in isolation. I just find his tone rather querulous and didactic, and his delivery somewhat plodding. I imagine it to be a similar feeling to that on the other side of this cultural and political divide feel when being ‘lectured by finger-wagging liberals’.

In contrast, when somebody (possibly Sally Cinnamon) provided a link on here to talk given by Cummings, I watched and enjoyed all 40 or so minutes of it. I don’t know if I find his ideas more interesting because his manner is more engaging, or vice versa or both. Probably both, on balance. He doesn’t try to milk one idea or feel like he has to wait for you to catch up. More than anything, he makes some good points, imo. Pretty much everything (not much, I admit - life is short) I’ve heard from Peterson was a statement of the bleeding obvious dressed up in original thought clothing, or just earnestly spoken (imo).

Likewise



If someone like you thinks that, then I'm doing something right. I don't associate with lockdown-breaking smackrats and would hate to be considered a friend.

I didn't know about that. Seems like a genuine error though she was pretty quick to remark before ascertaining the facts.


True, JP can become a little tiresome in his delivery. I enjoy what he says far more than how he says it.

I didn't watch the link on Cummings. I'd be interested if you or Sally came across it again, simply to get a better idea of what he's about.

What about Dominic Cummings who’s circle I am pretty sure you would not reach, his trip to Barnard Castle was deemed to have been unlawful and if intercepted by the police would have been instructed to return home. If it was lawful based on the same criteria one would presume he would have been instructed to carry on.
I dread to think what action they would have taken if stopped and him coming up with the eye sight excuse. You may not associate with him but you are happy to accept his lockdown breaking therefore what is he.

Well for a start they're British National (Overseas) or BN(O) passport holders, which doesn't currently give them the right to live or work here, but gives them right to remain for 6 months.

The government are considering extending right to remain to 12 months and there is a train of though that modern immigration laws would permit right of abode though this appears to run contrary to the 1984 Sino-British joint declaration on the future of Hong Kong.

What do I think? I think if it's legal, fair enough and I can certainly empathise with the desire to escape the Chinese regime. It's unlikely 300,000 would seek abode in the UK as other nations would probably open their arms, but it's worth considering the impact a couple of hundred thousand would have in addition to normal net migration of about 230k a year.

It is Dominic Cummings speech at IPPR in 2014.

Obviously, it is against the rules to post links to video sharing sites - but this has been made available by the Institute of Public Policy Research themselves, so I think I’m sticking to the spirit of the rules by hinting at how you might find it. If this leads to lots of people posting links to copyrighted materials, then, because I suspect Admin value me less as a moderator than Johnson values Cummings as an advisor, I’ll be sacked from my unpaid role. So, everyone, please don’t.

I can’t easily give you a weblink anyway as I have the App on my iPad, and I can’t work out how.

The speech and Q&A is a bit longer than I remembered, but as I say I found it interesting.

Bit of a difference between someone who went into isolation with his family, didn't break any social distancing guidelines, and whose biggest sin was an ill-advised drive. And I've already said his Barnard Castle excuse is a stretch of the imagination. But Durham police happen to have reached the same conclusion as me: it was minor and frankly give over whining.

Counter that with someone who boasts repeatedly of breaking lockdown to go bone some desperate rancid skank - and if he's doing that and boasting about it that it's fair to assume he blatantly doesn't give a sh.t about you, me, his neighbours, his family or anyone else, and has been breaking the lockdown throughout.

Fact is, the biggest threat with this virus is not going for a drive with your family, the biggest threat is promoting the spread of the virus via personal contact.

It's one thing thinking with your dick (although tiny it's probably his most intelligent organ), but bragging about it takes a particularly despicable type of person.