When an argument is taken too far

Until today I had been quite concerned about the allegations that there were Chrsitmas Parties in Number ten and other government buildings last christmas.

It is essential that the same rules and laws apply, and are seen to apply, to everyone - we cannot have one rule for the people who work at the heart of government and a different rule for the rest of us.

I thought - and still do think -  it was essential that the country's senior civil servant has been asked to check what was going on in Number Ten on the dates mentioned by the BBC.  There cannot be one rule for the people who work in government and another for everyone else.

There needs to be transparency about what actually did happen, 

However, the BBC did not allege that the PM attended the party which they say took place on 18th Decembet - indeed they reported that he wasn't there. Facebook posts and a report in the local Bolton newspaper posted on that day suggests that in fact the PM was 200 miles away visiting the Openreach training centre in Bolton.

Some pictures have come out today showing the PM taking part in a virtual quiz over Zoom - if that's the best evidence Keir Starmer and the Mirror have of him taking part in any breach of COVID-19 regulations they have lost the plot and taken the issue way beyond the evidence. They will have nobody but themselves to blame if people stop taking their allegations seriously.


regarded

Comments

Jim said…
However you look at it trust in the current government has hit "net zero". Many people see Boris attempt at a Dead Cat by declaring an Omicron emergency as an absolute joke. The sad fact is many people won't have Basseterre simply because the current government are telling them to do so.

Fwiw I think its a shame the current pm should go down over "partygate" really would have rather seen his end for one or more of the many serious policy errors of the current government. Though I guess its often the case that the small things are the downfall, like the authorities having to get Al Capone on tax evasion.
7:46 am
Chris Whiteside said…
It is so often the case that not being upfront about what has gone wrong does more damage than the original mistake, and frankly that appears to be exactly what happened with whatever took place in Downing Street last December.

We do not yet know how serious a threat Omicron poses because it has not been confirmed what proportion of people in this country who get the Omicron variant will need hospital treatment or how many will, sadly die.

We do know that it is spreading at a frightening rate, so much so that if the proportion of those who get it who become seriously ill could be substantially lower than with the Delta variant and it would still put more people in hospital because a smaller proportion of a much larger number can be greater than the larger proportion of a much smaller number.

The fact remains that it is not just politicians who are telling people to take the jabs and the anti-COVID drugs, it is doctors, scientists and the clinical leaders of the NHS.
10:17 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
At the time I made the original post the issue was being investigated by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case.

Concerns were then raised about what had been billed at the time as a Christmas party held by Simon Case's own staff last year. This raised legitimate concerns about whether he was the right person to conduct the investigation. It is clearly important that whoever does so should be seen to be independent and impartial and should not be open to charges of having acted in the same way or turned a blind eye to the same conduct he or she was investigating.

It was subsequently announced yesterday (17th December 2021) that Simon Case has stepped down from conducting the inquiry into Christmas Parties in government offices last year. This was the right decision.

A government statement said that the investigation will be taken over by veteran civil servant Sue Gray, second permanent secretary at the Communities and levelling up department.

“She will ascertain the facts and present her findings to the prime minister,” the statement added.
5:01 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

Image
I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more