Coronavirus General Discussion

Absolutely. The BBC should apologise publicly but I doubt they will. Wouldn't be surprised if we get a statement from Cummings to the effect of "I'm sorry if you feel I broke the law"

DC has broken the lockdown rules according to the police force were these incidents happened....he must resign or be fired...no other logical conclusion,surely

He broke the law. But it's a 'minor breach' so no fine has been issued. I look forward to seeing lots of people arguing "I was only a few miles over the speeding limit, it was just a minor breach!'. Or 'Yes I'm drink driving but am only a few units over so it's just a minor breach!"

Still waiting for a response about the fact that Emily Maitlis said she'd be back tomorrow? And then “wanted a day off”?

And @jeanhunt, now that the Durham Police have confirmed a breach may have taken place, could you point me towards anything that Emily Maitis said that was a lie? And, as above, she is quoted as saying she'll be back tomorrow and then suddenly request a day off? And you sincerely believe that? And I would like to preempt the points of “no fine” and “minor breach” by asking where there was ever a discussion of different levels of breaking lockdown? You either did or you didn’t. And it's looking increasingly like Cummings did. In my opinion there is simply to defense, no matter how much effort the government go to cover it up.

That's part of the picture, but not all of it. Yes, absolutely the government should have taken a very different strategy in February and early March, and would have saved thousands of lives if they'd acted more promptly - but the fallout from austerity cuts has also most definitely had a large impact. It's the reason, for example, that covid-19 patients who were still contagious were discharged from hospitals into care homes, with catastrophic consequences: thanks to ward closures resulting from austerity cuts over the last decade, there wasn't anywhere else for them to go.

Happy to help. I didn’t say she lied, I said she editorialised. She basically said Cummings had committed an offence before any police investigation returned any such suggestion. It’s a clear breach of BBC guidelines. But anyone who works there in a reporting capacity should know that, it’s pretty simple: if what you’re saying sounds like an opinion, not a proven fact, you need to caveat it. From what I could read between the lines of the BBC statement following it, if she’d said something like “tonight we’ll be asking questions about...” before the rest of it, she’d have been fine! 

Re Emily Maitlis saying she herself specifically requested last night off. She may be lying but if she’s doing it on her own Twitter account, that’s her business. I might request a day off too if I was teed off at being reprimanded by my employer. Or maybe she was unwell. Or had caring responsibilities that arose unexpectedly. Who knows. I just don’t see a grand conspiracy.

Police statement appears to say only the Barnard Castle trip ‘might have been a breach’. And even if it was, they seem to say they probably wouldn’t have done anything about it then and certainly don’t intend to now because there was no risk caused to others, due to social distancing being observed (as far as they know). Short of the result being ‘he did nothing whatsoever wrong and wasn’t perceived to have done anything wrong’, this is about as good an outcome the government could have hoped for.

Worth noting that the "might" in the statement is a technical necessity given that the Police are not final arbiters:

I see your point for sure. But now the police investigation has returned a result (and many thanks to the poster above me for quoting the Secret Barrister tweet regarding “might”), should the BBC not retract that statement? I understand *at the time* some viewed it as an opinion. Many viewed it as fact, which is what it turned out to be. And why does the BBC not afford the same practice to Laura Kuenssburg who appeared to be personally defending Cummings when replying to other reporters when this story first broke? And numerous other occasions which seemed to demonstrate a clear political bias. Or when Andrew Neil gives his own view in his monologues? Or even when Maitlis herself sat in front of a screen showing Jeremy Corbyn photoshopped in front of the Kremlin wearing a Russian-style hat? I'm pontificating, of course, I don't expect you to have the answers, but it's something to think about.

If you can entertain the idea that Maitlis lied on her twitter about taking a night off, surely you have the entertain the question why? 

Fair point - but since they said they’re not taking it any further, isn’t the point moot? ie we’ll never know if the CPS would charge and if a good lawyer might successfully argue no breach. It’s essentially a kind of legal Schrodinger’s Cat? Which I’m not sure gets any of us anywhere?

Reasonable doubt all round, surely?

I’m not sure Johnson much minds the visuals. I think he sees more benefit in keeping Cummings on, and hoping that any changes they make in coming months/years that benefit their target communities (ie northern ones particularly hard hit by past austerity) will offset what he sees as a storm in a teacup. Though it will be interesting to see if the govt can pull that off and raise the billions they’ll need to repay coronavirus spending...!

Particularly immoral and gutless considering the public cannot protest without risking their lives at the moment.

I'd say I hope people remember this next time they cast their votes, but clearly they won't.