26 May 2020 - Advisor to PM Dominic Cummings accused of breaching lockdown
Who is Dominic Cummings and why is everyone talking about him?
(BBC, 26/05/2020)
You may have heard lots of people talking about the prime minister's chief adviser Dominic Cummings recently.
He's been accused of breaking the coronavirus lockdown rules after driving from his London property to County Durham where his parents live back in March.
Lots of people are upset because they think Mr Cummings' actions were wrong.
Dominic Cummings Offers a Sorry-Not-Sorry for U.K. Lockdown Breach
Stephen Castle and Mark Landler (The New York Times, 25/05/2020)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson took a breathtaking gamble with his own popularity on Monday, allowing his closest aide to go public with a detailed, yet stubbornly unapologetic, explanation for making a 260-mile journey that broke lockdown rules and ignited a political firestorm in Britain.
In an extraordinary hourlong session with reporters, the aide, Dominic Cummings, admitted to traveling from London to his parents’ home in Durham in late March, shortly before falling ill with the coronavirus, and making a second outing in the region while there, confirming reports that have consumed the British news media for three days.
The Cummings debacle has exposed Boris Johnson's weakness and dependency
Polly Toynbee (The Guardian, 26/05/2020)
Out of the dark side emerged the power behind the throne. Can the supreme disrupter do humility? Can he grovel an apology in front of those he most despises?
No regrets, not sorry, but he tried a kind of plea for pity. The Cummings family plainly had a bad time, but his words may fall on stony hearts among other families who had also the virus, but obeyed the stay-at-home order without travelling 260 miles. The vast majority didn’t seek out loopholes, but kept the “stay at home” rule in word and spirit. Did the Cummings have no friend in London? Who would take a 30-mile drive to a beauty spot, risking wife and child, as an eye test?
'He must have had a f**king good reason for going to Durham' say people from Durham
(The Daily Mash, 26/05/2020)
DURHAM locals have confirmed that you would not decide to pay a visit to the ‘Coventry of the North’ unless you absolutely had to.
After the city came under scrutiny because of Dominic Cummings’ visits during lockdown, people who live there are perplexed as to why he would have chosen such a shithole as an escape from London.