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8 hours ago, Bill said:

As to Aggy (above) the real question here is what Cummings thought. If he thought his actions were reasonable and therefore could be justified then why the need for the various attempts to cover it up. Sure, if nothing was said then he could count himself lucky that he had got away with it.

But with this it is a case of both mens rea as well as actus reus.

That he knew before he set out that what he was doing was 'wrong' was the reason for the cover up, which was in full swing by mid April when his wife wrote up the lies for the Spectator.

An example being that over the weekend (ish) a Tory MP had a party at his house for his wife with guests. The police attended, two guests left... and that was that. No major complaint and no more said ie no lying via a cover up.

If he was not knowingly guilty there would have been no need for a cover up..... it is as simple as that.

My guess Bill is that the mens rea would relate only to the intention to leave the house. Ie; did he intend to leave the house, or did he (for instance) slip and accidentally fall out or sleep walk out... The reasonable excuse bit is a fact and ties in with the actus reus - he either left the house with a reasonable excuse or not. 

The point you make though is, for me, the bigger issue than whether a court would convict. Even if he didn’t commit a crime - did he genuinely believe he was following the spirit of the laws and guidance he and the government have come up with in the last few months, or did he go off on a jolly thinking he was above it all? That would be deplorable in anyone, but particularly so in an unelected someone who has so much apparent influence over our current government. And, as you say, the “silence” in the articles could be fairly suggestive....

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I know the track and trace system only got officially rolled out today, not sure if it’s been going on behind the scenes for longer (I know tests have been sent out), so presume the answer to my question below is that we don’t know yet... 

But, do we know how long this system takes? Does the test arrive the next day after you’ve rang 119 or whatever? Or is it going to take a week for the test to arrive and another week for the results to come back? Because if the latter, it’s virtually pointless.

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50 minutes ago, T said:

Congratulations to the UK on finally starting a track and trace scheme. 3 months after other countries. 3 months of delay before starting to be able to actively being able to manage coming out of lockdown with all the health and economic consequences. If anyone thinks the UK government is competent then you are deluding yourself because in comparison to some other countries the UK management of the situation is absolutely shockingly appalling. 

Matt Hancock, a woman sacked by Talk Talk and Serco are in charge of it. How well do you think it will work? 

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The benchmark is 24 hours result if requested to test and 48 hours if just curious. It is going to take U.K. even longer than 3 months before it hits that benchmark. 
 

Sounds like there were other family issues behind DC leaving London per Penny Mordaunt. 

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8 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

There will be tracers in place as there always has been (or at least since 1854) the nurse that asks you where you put it and if there is anyone they should call is a contact tracer.   

The question is have we now both enlarged the service and reduced infections enough that we can follow every lead.   Doesn't matter so much during lockdown (though I have wondered why we didn't keep it going right up until lockdown but as we progressively open it it will become increasingly important 

Yes of course, hence I said they haven’t got “all” the tracers in place. In fact the local staff that report to the DPH have always been there but have virtually been ignored, until a week ago, in fact the 22 May, when Tom Riorden sent out his letter to the pilot areas, Norfolk being one.

Edited by Van wink

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I saws the announcement yesterday about the Track and Trace Civic Duty but I must've been blinded by Matt Hancock's brilliance as I missed the bit where you have to drive for 260 miles, get an eye test and drive another 260 miles.

 

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I despair for the UK. There is a better way. 

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7 hours ago, Bill said:

you never have struck me as one of the brightest stars in the galaxy LDC, but this time you appear to have turned into a black hole of idiocy

it is black and white (no pun)

either Cummings is guilty of breaching the rules, or he is not

for my part his numerous attempts at a cover up point to the mens rea - the guilty mind

(I shall desist from making any joke that your absurd waffle points to diarrhoea)

if he thought his actions were not wrong there would be no need of any cover up, or lies...................quite simple

much like yourself, some might suggest 🤪

Yeah, like I said, for some people everything has to be black or white.  As for being simple, I must be for keeping coming back to your thread and hoping to see some reasonable comments from you. 

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20 hours ago, BigFish said:

Absolutely superb line by line analysis of the statement Cummings read out. Definitly worth a listen.

Dominic Cummings's statement: a guided tour

I am sure David Allen Green is right that Cummings’ statement was drafted by a lawyer. What I wondered was whether Cummings practised before the press conference with a mock session, in which he answered the questions he expected to be asked, and if so whether there was a lawyer there to advise on those replies and even suggest changes.

 

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From what I read some time ago DAG thought that the statement had been written by a lawyer basically in reverse, starting with the know breaches and then constructing a story to explain them. I wouldn’t want to be represented by the lawyer that came up with the “ I went for a drive to check my eyesight” story.

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1 minute ago, Van wink said:

From what I read some time ago DAG thought that the statement had been written by a lawyer basically in reverse, starting with the know breaches and then constructing a story to explain them. I wouldn’t want to be represented by the lawyer that came up with the “ I went for a drive to check my eyesight” story.

If I paid a lawyer for that I'd  want my money back.😁

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32 minutes ago, ricardo said:

If I paid a lawyer for that I'd  want my money back.😁

Or at least nulled

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1 hour ago, lake district canary said:

Yeah, like I said, for some people everything has to be black or white.  As for being simple, I must be for keeping coming back to your thread and hoping to see some reasonable comments from you. 

It is a black and white issue. Whereas thousands of people like you are desperately trying to turn it into a sludgy grey mess. 

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1 hour ago, Herman said:

Matt Hancock, a woman sacked by Talk Talk and Serco are in charge of it. How well do you think it will work? 

Don't forget that the woman sacked by Talk Talk is married to a Tory MP.

 

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2 minutes ago, Herman said:

It is a black and white issue. Whereas thousands of people like you are desperately trying to turn it into a sludgy grey mess. 

If you can't see that there is a possibility of mitigating circumstances, then that is your perogative, but take the "eyesight" thing which people have latched on to.  If you listen to what he actually said, he said was feeling a bit sick and and also had been having an issue with his eyesight. So - from what he said,  the drive wasn't to check if he could see, it was to see if he felt well enough and the eyesight thing might have not been an issue when it came to it. 

What of course happened was that the journalists pounced eagerly on the eyesight thing and ignored the wider point of him seeing if he felt well enough for a long journey.  This is all semantics of course, as people have made their minds up on a kangaroo court situation where everyone has decided the person is guilty of all charges.  And of course now everyone is deriding the eyesight thing, making jokes and making it a bigger issue than it probably was.  That is the danger with trial by media.

The whole thing is a farce. The more you analyse it, the more stupid it looks. What no-one is giving any credence to is his state of mind at the time - and that, in a court of law, would be critical to the case.  Fear, illness, uncertainty, pressure, all would be part of it. But no, apparently he is just a robot figure with no emotions, no scruples, no susceptibility to what the rest of us have felt during this time. 

Again I say, I'm not defending him at all, he should have stayed where he was like the rest of us, but the lack of compassion and lack of people TRYING to understand it is pretty ugly.

Cue more anger - how dare I question what so many people have fixed in their minds......yeah, well I'm sorry, but I like to try and see both sides of an argument.

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Don't forget that the woman sacked by Talk Talk is married to a Tory MP.

Please don't let them be using TalkTalk. Nigh on a 100K of accounts hacked during her reign. Perhaps they will also ask if you think the PM is doing a good job.

Once again this morning, Kay Burley elicits a pained giggle from Hancock when she accuses them of rushing test and trace forward without the app as a cover up of the Cummings crisis. We have all been there when a silly laugh signals your guilt.

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If you can't see that there is a possibility of mitigating circumstances

But the majority of people don't see any mitigation. Just because you do LDC doesn't make it a reason for Cummings not to be shown the door.

We have been bombarded by "the people decided" for the last 4 years. The people have decided now. Can we have a referendum? Surely keeping or sacking a liar who was willing to take a deadly virus from a hot spot to the countryside and then to a hospital (fact checked) is an important matter that people want their voice to be significant.

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1 hour ago, Van wink said:

I wouldn’t want to be represented by the lawyer that came up with the “ I went for a drive to check my eyesight” story.

What else did they have to work with to be fair....

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4 minutes ago, Aggy said:

What else did they have to work with to be fair....

Hands up, I shouldn't have done it and I resign 😀

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11 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

If you can't see that there is a possibility of mitigating circumstances, then that is your perogative, but take the "eyesight" thing which people have latched on to.  If you listen to what he actually said, he said was feeling a bit sick and and also had been having an issue with his eyesight. So - from what he said,  the drive wasn't to check if he could see, it was to see if he felt well enough and the eyesight thing might have not been an issue when it came to it. 

What of course happened was that the journalists pounced eagerly on the eyesight thing and ignored the wider point of him seeing if he felt well enough for a long journey.  This is all semantics of course, as people have made their minds up on a kangaroo court situation where everyone has decided the person is guilty of all charges.  And of course now everyone is deriding the eyesight thing, making jokes and making it a bigger issue than it probably was.  That is the danger with trial by media.

The whole thing is a farce. The more you analyse it, the more stupid it looks. What no-one is giving any credence to is his state of mind at the time - and that, in a court of law, would be critical to the case.  Fear, illness, uncertainty, pressure, all would be part of it. But no, apparently he is just a robot figure with no emotions, no scruples, no susceptibility to what the rest of us have felt during this time. 

Again I say, I'm not defending him at all, he should have stayed where he was like the rest of us, but the lack of compassion and lack of people TRYING to understand it is pretty ugly.

Cue more anger - how dare I question what so many people have fixed in their minds......yeah, well I'm sorry, but I like to try and see both sides of an argument.

No one can categorically prove the eyesightgate to a legal definitive. It's just nobody I have heard in my life, would take their wife ( on her birthday) and child on a 50 mile round trip if I was testing my eyesight. I would not go that far, and take a break at a beauty spot, if I was that keen on getting back to support the Country. He makes 'critical' decisions every day, but please don't say that he would be emotionally overwhelmed with making a decision about his family. It doesn't take a couple of hours round trip to decide if you can drive 4 hours. Which doctor gave him the go ahead? Was it a zoom type appt? Diagnosis? Conversation? Was it his own doctor? I guess, with his position, he might not have to wait a fortnight like the great unwashed.

Most people waited to hear what Cummings had to say before making their minds up, and most of us know when we are being taking the P out of, LDC. Like you said, the more you analyse it, the more stupid it looks.

He himself said he makes lots of mistakes a day. He's in the wrong job with so much at stake, would you not think?

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23 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

Again I say, I'm not defending him at all, he should have stayed where he was like the rest of us, but the lack of compassion and lack of people TRYING to understand it is pretty ugly.

I think he rather created that problem himself though. He came out and said he doesn’t care what it looks like to people, he spent weeks making no statement, he and his wife “forgot” to mention a 260 mile each way trip and a day trip to BC in newspaper articles. He had numerous opportunities to say what happened and didn’t. The only time he did was when it had already gone too far and the anger had reached boiling point.

As I said previously, he/the government have handled it like absolute amateurs. Had something like “the” press conference happened weeks ago, where he came out, held his hands up, explained what he thought were the extenuating circumstances and played the sympathy card then, of course there would still be some people who thought it was unacceptable, but a lot more people would have been more understanding.

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What else did they have to work with to be fair....

The truth.
I couldn't really give a siht about you plebs. I'm not here to justify myself to you arrogant nosey people who think that the law applies to people, chosen ones, like me. I tried to be humble by dressing like a lot of you council house types but I am hating every minute of it and couldn't wait to get to my parent's farm so I could dress in a suit for dinner.
Or
Honey, I slunked off with the kid.
  • Haha 2

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1 hour ago, PurpleCanary said:

I am sure David Allen Green is right that Cummings’ statement was drafted by a lawyer. What I wondered was whether Cummings practised before the press conference with a mock session, in which he answered the questions he expected to be asked, and if so whether there was a lawyer there to advise on those replies and even suggest changes.

 

Maybe it was drafted by a lawyer maybe it wasnt.   Maybe a lawyer reviewed it maybe they didn't. Maybe legal advice was taken, maybe it wasnt.

What point are you trying to make?  That taking  legal advice is proof of guilt?, that a person is not entitled to legal advice? 

I saw the DAG clip,  seemed pretty thin  to me (he left a space at the bottom, it was in the first person, he concentrates on the relevant areas) but mainly i watched it thinking - so what if it was?

Edited by Barbe bleu

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1 hour ago, A Load of Squit said:

Don't forget that the woman sacked by Talk Talk is married to a Tory MP.

 

There's a massive surprise. 😂

Who owns Serco and G4S and why do they constantly get massive government contracts? Have they got access to Dominic's secret file? 

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The Cummings issue is over, he is guilty and should have resigned, he hasn’t and that must colour people’s views of the government both now and in the future.

However the bigger issue in terms of coronavirus is that track and trace is successful, it’s the only method we have of controlling spread of the virus atm and people have to stick to the rules, because it’s the right thing to do for the health of all of us. To disregard the rules using Cummings as an excuse puts people in the same stable as him. 

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