Dominic Cummings

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 67

Monday 25th May 2020

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

It’s all still kicking off on top aide and resident genius to the PM (read: the de facto leader of our country) Dominic Cummings, now under siege from the groundlings on ( I mean off) the streets, the Opposition, his fellow MPs and even the Church. He sneaked 260 miles into County Durham during the lockdown he helped create, and now JK Rowling’s entered the fray, armed with quite some humour. If ever there was a delicious scandal to pass the time between Eastenders and Hollyoaks re-runs, this is it. Even the Daily Mail screamed outrage, with every broadsheet exposing the PM as dependent. And following his decision to back Cummings against the uproar of the nation, through the reworking of what a lockdown should engender, someone released an official Tweet from the Home Office.

s

After it was hastily removed, she offered a year’s salary to the sleuth:

s

One can imagine the scene in the government offices right now, the Prime Minister’s door slamming, the roaring, the staff running round the corridors -or at least their living rooms, where they’ve been WFH, zooming back and forth between walls in a show of urgency. The wrenched phones, the papers fluttering in the air as a bespectacled secretary scrambles to pick them off the floor. The whodunnit perpetrator, possibly holed up in a photocopying room, making surreptitious folders, or downloading data while a wingman fakes a seizure.

The mood of the nation is just as brazen as Cummings has been, both in his crime and his response to getting caught.

Well, what an epic spectacle, with #BooforBoris or #Booris (and er, #CumGate) trending for the day, planned for an 8pm Tuesday. We should order popcorn. The Twitterstorm is also full of supportive tweets for the government, that runs into the new Dominic Cummings show, and subsequent investigations as to how many copy-pasted messages have aligned, by accounts inactive for years, sometimes decades, before recent revival.

s2

The copy-paste of Tory MPs to their constituents also appeared sourced from some handed-down directive:

s

In other words support bots still at large, run by the Conservatives, and another of Cummings’ tricks from up his algorithmic sleeves. This new arsenal is hot on his act with Cambridge Analytica that swerved the tide for Brexit (by targetting over a billion ads at swing voters). This a sign of the times, the future of democracy under attack by partisanship, AI, populism and media wars.

Coronavirus - Mon May 25, 2020

His public announcement, to a gathering of the press in his lush £1.6 million Islington garden, showed he was unrepentant, claiming his circumstances exceptional, and that the law apparently allows for. JK, who appears to be tweeting hourly through lockdown (new book too she just announced, free online, that’s setting every HP fan near to self immolation with expectation), had something to say on that:

s

The fact there is obviously two systems at play, one set of laws and restrictions for the spivs, and the other for an elite to openly dismiss. People (including fellow politicians) who’ve been unable to say goodbye to dying relatives due to obeying the lockdown are furious, with some MPs already tendering resignations in protest.

Cummings also admitted to having driven to Castle Barnard where he was spotted, a 60 mile excursion, but only to ‘check his eyesight’ with wife and child in tow, a practice Michael Gove now echoes that he himself has done in the past, possibly near baby-killing ceremonies in Masonic Temples. The castle happens to be large HQ for big pharma company Glaxo-SmithKline, that also announced a deal to supply vaccines and meds to France on the same day. His wife can drive -a 2012 Spectator article dug out about her roadtrips in the US -so why did she not take the wheel so concerned were they about his eyesight? Ever more holes are appearing not just in the story but his Party support, now bitterly divided.

Another Tory twit following suit didn’t help things. The party seems doomed:

Well, all in all quite a schadenfreuden showdown. But in other more sobering news, Trump was spotted playing golf as America’s death toll breached 100,000 on the Memorial Day weekend. It’s crazy to say, I know… leader of the free world, president of these great United States… but it’s… almost as if he doesn’t actually care.

Biden, who was out for the first time in 2 months, released an advert:

I mean look at him, just LOOK AT HIM.

s

ss

sss

PHHHWWWWOOOAAARRRRRR!

Pretty sure the Maganiacs had a frenzied wank over that in the stalls. Beetroot red, face pressed into the corner, imagining their G.O.D happy-slapping behind.

Meanwhile the crowds continued to pack it in Stateside, with some of the usual scenes of protest, such as two stalwart Karens wearing facemasks but with a big hole in the visors cut out (gimp-like) so they could fully partake in Germfest ’20.

s

Another meme doing the rounds has been the nurse protesting against lockdown alongside the rest of the circus, until it was noticed she had on a fake badge (handwritten fer Chrissakes) and a dodgy costume.

Plus the Republicans’ chairwoman for Arizona urging protesters to fake it:

“Planning protest to #Reopen America? EVERYONE wear scrubs and masks -the media doesn’t care if you are really in healthcare or not -it’s the “message” that matters!”

s

Meanwhile China has quietly taken away Hong Kong’s rights not to stay bidden to the thumb of the Party.  While everyone’s too busy with the pandemic, and many Hong Kongers too fearful of infection to gather, as they so valiantly do normally, the regime’s slipped in a fast one. All after months of fighting off the extradition laws, which would have made everyone submissable to Chinese legislation- and treatment -as any Mainlander. It fully undermines the special status of the One Country Two Systems policy, and a democracy enshrined for 50 years after Handover.

s

Well now all that protesting appears for nothing. China’s quietly taken the initiative, with the appointed HK leader, Carrie Lam telling the world they ‘have no place’ to protest and denying the law will curtail citizen rights. Hmmmmm. I do kinda feel for her sometimes, dubbed ‘Beijing’s Puppet’ and jeered wherever she goes, despite her redemption in a winning handling of the C-19 crisis. But she is evidently lying imo.

This comes hot after China decided to give every adult Hong Konger a no-strings $1200 for being “overwhelmed by a heavy atmosphere” back in February, alongside a wave of freebies in the new budget. It appeared to be part fiscal handout for a struggling economy, part bribe to not keep protesting by the millions, for months on end. The new laws will ban treason, secession, sedition and subversion -everything the Hong Kongers have been doing for years, starting an entire generation culturally used to mass protest and rebellion.

ss

The border is slowly being erased, and for Hong Kongers that’s an erosion of their freedom-wheeling protectorate under Chinese law. It says a lot about our times, and our governments who will make use of the pandemic to sneak in their wishlist. From Victor Oban’s dissolution of democracy in Hungary to the US vowing only to ease sanctions against Venezuela (the socialist regime sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves) in so pressing times as long as they replace their anti-American leader.

When denied, Trump swiftly followed up with a failed US invasion earlier this month, that’s been barely reported. A coup so botched and abandoned by its backers, the plan was even reported in the press BEFOREHAND. When the handful of mercenaries arrived they were only lightly armed and seasick already, bless. Though dutifully wearing face masks:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-luke-denman-airan-berry-arrest-coup-plot-confession-a9503336.html.

s

If Big Bird and his auntie tried to stage la revolución it would look a bit like this butter-fingered rout (Selmaaa!!! Where’d ya put the ammo? Whaddya mean you left it in the cookie jar??? SEEEELMMMMAA!!!!).

The two surviving American mercenaries (8 were killed), hired by a security firm in Florida are now prisoners, paraded in front of the media and forced to confess. The regime is absolutely loving it. Yet the lack of furor? Sheer embarrassment on Trump’s behalf, and a media complicit with a script that the heroic West never fails at anything (nor so laughably), and doesn’t do cackling, villainous things, even to other cackling villains.

It’s not so much being caught red-handed in the brazen attempt at an illegal coup -one of 76 the US has so far funded abroad -but the circus of absurdity they called a military operation. That by far, would be the more damaging to the demagoguery, that American heroes are not how Hollywood portrays.

s

s

I ended the day watching Disney’s nature films. Childish commentary (and completely devoid of science, positively avoiding it) but with jawdropping photography. An unlimited budget surely helps. Insanely cute too, from baby pandas tumbling down a slope to leopard cubs chewing on mom’s ear, to shivering little monkeys.

We need this in our lives right now, a nice reminder that there is a world beyond our people, our politics, that’s still turning.

s

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 65

Saturday 23rd May 2020

We’d planned to go cycling this morning, all the way into Central London to see the ghost town, but it was blustery all day and whistling through the windows. A maintains it’s hard to ride when the wind’s against you, making it difficult to enjoy things, notably any scenery you pant your way past like Mutterly.

I imagine the place as dystopian, akin to the opening to 28 Days Later, where a fallen double-decker blocks Westminster Bridge. Apparently the scene was made on low budget by shooting at the height of a Sunday summer morning (dawn at 4am) and begging any drivers to wait a few minutes. I kinda just want to say I saw it, I was there, for history. A pretty ghoulish intent, but for a committed urbanist just too compelling.

s

I expect the streets will be populated somewhat, with quite a few cars too compared to the start of lockdown, now that the sun’s out and the rules have been eased. A big furore’s kicking up about Dominic Cummings, chief Tory aide and mastermind of the Leave Campaign who was caught driving 260 miles to Durham after getting C-19 symptoms (apparently to have his kids looked after by his elderly parents). There’s also a lot trending on social media as to why media outlets initially refused to cover the story in a hope it would all blow over, notably ITV news. And how the govt is now desperate to reinterpret the wording of what staying lockdowned entails.

Downing St issued a statement saying it was going to ignore the story because papers such as The Guardian and The Mirror published reports that he’d been seen twice on other outings from Durham, and that they were false allegations. It’s since been forced to face up after Tory backbenchers have come forward to ask for Cummings’ resignation, seeing the party reputation and resources damaged otherwise. The PM maintains he’s backing Cumming’s position to stay in place as an advisor. Ah such farce.

s

The day has been surprisingly health-moan free- no headaches, though a big achey arm by nightfall, perhaps from playfighting in bed as one is wont to do when bored. Other domestic newsflashes include thinking about cutting and dyeing the hair again (growing out), feeling old (seeing bad photos of me), feeding on a giant watermelon for days (paired with feta, as is traditional for Greek country cooking), and bickering about whose turn it is to do the cleaning this weekend (we’d been getting the order wrong and expecting each other to do it).

Apparently the trick is to not add the mint, onions, rocket, walnuts or olive oil as many recipes ask, but just the purist melon and cheese, nothing else, the Greek farmers way of taking a block of cheese while working  the fields, and for once ignoring the herbs around. That way the flavours combine into something new, rather than layer themselves distinctly. Also the seeds can be cooked after – they’re literally amazing with salt and pepper.

s

 

I am also getting exhausted from the racism online. One of my favourite websites now overrun with it, as it has been for some years. Skyscraperpage is racist, oozes it -and that’s just a random architecture and urbanity site, who you’d think was populated by progressive IMBY’s. I’m increasingly resorting to watching Youtube vids on a range of algorithmic topics that are my own personal echo chamber, perhaps to cheer myself up that the world does support my way of thinking everywhere I look. But knowing inside that it’s just a damn foil I’m surrounding myself with every click.

It kept me up last night. The end to a good day scuppered by seeing the insults online, and the avid acceptance and support of them as an institutional reminder. I am yearning for history to fast forward, and just deal with the results rather than this limbo. My intended holiday to NYC, planned over a lifetime, will always be marred as to what to expect, sure -but it’s getting increasingly shadowy. I get that Americans are not all neo-Nazis and there are hundreds of millions of normal people, but the White supremacism -underhand, subconscious or overt -appears saturating in every public arena online, that currently rules its politics and laws. The country is battling for its soul, and the democratic rights of ignorance that now supersede facts.

s

I cannot bring myself to watch the lurid videos of the racism, from neighbours shouting insults for hours, to demonstrators attacking, to the public diatribes. It’s hard to watch hate without feeling it yourself.

J has been getting down recently, the lockdown is getting him lonely -and we’re not helping by being holed up in our rooms for most of the day. I gave him a hug or three, but that’s not exactly a miracle cure. I try to have lunch with him on the sofa, and fixed the TV that’s been on the blink (goddamn Sony Bravia, planned obsolescence kicking in after 7 years), recalibrating every setting for half an hour, but all to little effect. He’s headed off to his partner’s place for a day or two to cheer himself up.

I got to remember things can be a lot worse, like skyline-burning worse, just like how we imagined it at the start. As America’s death toll climbs past the 100,000 mark the Great Orange Wotsit (thank you to my sister for the moniker -an item just as tainted and puffed up with hot air) going golfing on the occasion, a sign as to how mundane the disaster’s become. In better news New York state is significantly lowering in deaths, but the other states are starting to climb, notably North Carolina and California. A part of me wants to say fuck it, bring it on, goading on the end of the world order, another part knows it’s playing into the same role.

s

 

Yesterday

Tomorrow