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Notes -
These are all my observations as a britbong.
When the UK voted to leave the EU, this caused a political stalemate in the UK's lower chamber that lasted 2 years. Theresa May, who became PM after Cameron resigned, did not have the numbers required to pass her deal and invoke Article 50, which was to agree to a settlement with the EU and terminate all other aspects of EU membership. This was unpopular with those parties to the left of the Tories, who wanted to remain part of the EU and those on the right of her own party, who wanted to leave the EU without any concessions offered. She quit in the spring of 2019, after a third failed attempt to push her deal through the House of Commons.
Boris wins the resulting leadership election. His plan, partially concocted by Dom Cummings was to force a GE and campaign on the basis that, if given a majority, he would end the deadlock and leave the EU under a repackaged version of May's deal. In December, he won an 380 seat majority, and passed A50 just before the new year.
In 2020, the coof hits. The original plan of the UK government, which is to encourage individual measures such as handwashing and voluntary distancing, is thrown out for the lockdownist policy that originated in China and was copied by countless other nations. Cummings is of the impression that, if we had done this earlier, we could have reduced the number of deaths. I disagree highly, the UK does not have the culture, geography, nor the dystopian panopticon required for the results seen in east asian countries and its primary hobbies consist of Greggs and Alcoholism, but that is another topic for another time. I also do not think it is the reason he was eventually knifed.
Dom Cummings is exiled from the government as he and Boris' wife Carrie took huge dislikings to each other, resulting in interfactional squabbles until Carrie's faction won. He is now on the outside looking in.
During the winter of 2020 while the country is in Lockdown and the common citizen is denied freedom of association, Boris and his colleagues host several parties at Number 10. This is leaked to the press a year later around the time a fourth lockdown is being proposed. After several months of political obstructionism, Boris is eventually fined, issues a weak apology and moves on.
In the Spring/Summer of this year, a story emerges about a sex pest in the Tory party having molested several people at an event. It is revealed that Boris ran interference and prevented action from being taken against this person. Tory MPs, sick and tired of having to defend the actions of the PM and his inner circle, propose a VoNC, which he passes with the worst numbers for a PM to date. His cabinent shortly resigns in quick succession, and he gives up the ghost and resigns.
After his own leadership election, Liz Truss wins. Liz Truss is, as was discussed on the subreddit, extremely stupid. She appoints longtime ally/adultery partner Kwasi Karteng as Chancellor (chief money guy), who unveils a budget with tax cuts and spending rises funded by borrowing. This is the event that caused the pound to crap itself and nearly killed off the pension industry. Truss eventually U-Turns and replaces Karteng with Jeremy Hunt, who immediately undoes the budget and replaces it with one reminiscient of the pro-Austerity Cameron government. Her position still awful, she elected to resign today.
Boris is being suggested primarily as a replacement for Truss by the membership, who are rural pensioners with opinions far to the right of even the populist public.
To expand on and agree on why this is, it's the most accurate reflection of how things look to us Greggs-devouring, Alcoholic commoners.
I will never be as floored as I was when CNN ran this post-leadership article singing Liz Truss' praises, and painting her as the New Thatcher she so badly wanted to role-play. The perception overseas of what happened is... alarmingly off.
[And I am especially amused to note that the current CNN article, with the same exact URL is now 'updated' to be about the resignation. I'm curious as to whether someone in the news room pointed out how well that particular milk/lettuce had aged.]
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Huh. For some reason I thought Cummings was the architect of the original approach, and that the draconian lockdowns marked the beginning of the end for Cummings. But maybe that was based on my impression of his comments to media when he broke lockdown to be near relatives when his wife got sick.
Oh, that piece he did 'apologising' was so bad. He clearly had nothing but contempt for the whole idea, and his 'excuse' that he had to travel halfway across the country with his family, while his wife was sick with Covid, was that they needed the grandparents to look after the kids while she was sick.
What, you can't manage to look after your kids yourself, Dominic? Or hire nannies/au pairs/agency staff to do so?
This at a time when ordinary people can't leave their houses, can't visit their sick grannies, are told that if they do anything at all they will be responsible for spreading a deadly plague - and then this guy breaks rules with gay abandon because hey, rules are for the little people.
Correct, rules are for little people. The modern rejection of this idea has lead to the "little people" suffering the most...
In a sense, sure. The benefit of rules is most easily and obviously observable with "little people", people with less margin to burn. "Big" people can flaunt rules longer and harder without suffering obvious consequences.
Only, can you actually get "little people" to follow rules that "big people" won't abide by? I think the evidence pretty clearly shows that you cannot. "Rules are for the little people", in the colloquial sense, results in everyone worse off.
Humans are a monkey see, monkey do animal. Big people, especially those in positions where they are likely to be seen frequently by little people, need to have a sense of noblesse oblige and make sure they follow the rules so that the little people can imitate them. Indeed I think this loss of noblesse oblige in the west is directly hurting the little people right now.
It's basically a form of charity from the people at the top towards those at the bottom if you ask me (instead of giving them money the people at the top are are giving them direction). Big people should be strongly encouraged to follow the rules just like how little people are, but not for the same reasons, and when they don't follow the rules the charge against them should not be "you broke the rules" but rather "you set a bad example for everyone else" and if anything the punishment for this should be more severe than the punishment for "merely" breaking the rules.
What isn't good is pretending big people and little people are the same, which is what the West is doing at the moment in its mass collective delusion.
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Ironically your continued presence, and it's deleterious effect on the Sub would seem to support this claim.
@ZorbaTHut, @TracingWoodgrains, Et Al. Perhaps you'd like to offer a rebuttal?
Inasmuch as I have a rebuttal, it's that I would strongly prefer not being pinged into old feuds you choose to dredge up out of context, particularly given that you've also indicated my continued presence here is undesirable. Leave me out of your fights, please.
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I wrote a whole thing about debate forums which value free expression and what I think would be deleterious to them, but I hit some link just above my keyboard and lost it all. So I will just say that I don't care if you are right, you should delete this post.
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The media has an awful habit of memory-holing or reversing positions taken by various figures in March 2020. It's even harder to decipher the exact manuevering that took place because the published minutes don't match public statements. According to Sunak, SAGE minutes are manipulated to suppress disagreement, which is plausible because, taken literally, nobody supported lockdowns until after they were in place.
Cummings wanted to replicate China's lockdowns, it seems. This is likely more from a sheer contrarian streak than any rational reason, as the pre-2020 consensus was lockdowns being somewhere between bad and unthinkable - so unthinkable nobody even considered to call them bad because nobody was ever suggesting them. Perhaps also a bit of mysticism about East Asian healthcare.
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The trip to Barnard Castle made Dominic Cummings a national laughing stock, but that was survivable as long as he retained the support of Johnson. It was falling out with Carrie that did for Cummings in the end.
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