Boris Johnson has apologised for attending a “bring your own booze” gathering in the garden of No. 10 during the U.K.’s first lockdown in May 2020. Speaking in the Commons just before Prime Minister’s Questions amidst calls for him to resign, the PM acknowledged public “rage” over the incident but said he believed it was a work event, with the Downing Street garden being an extension of the office. Here is the Prime Minister’s apology in full, courtesy of the Telegraph.
Mr Speaker, I want to apologise.
I know that millions of people across this country have made extraordinary sacrifices over the last 18 months.
I know the anguish that they have been through, unable to mourn their relatives, unable to live their lives as they want or to do the things they love.
And I know the rage they feel with me or with the Government I lead when they think that in Downing Street itself, the rules are not being properly followed by the people who make the rules.
And though I cannot anticipate the conclusions of the current inquiry, I have learned enough to know that there were things we simply did not get right.
And I must take responsibility.
Number 10 is a big department with the garden as an extension of the office, which has been in constant use because of the role of fresh air in stopping the virus.
And when I went into that garden, just after six on May 20th, 2020, to thank groups and staff before going back into my office 25 minutes later, to continue working, I believed implicitly that this was a work event.
But Mr Speaker, with hindsight, I should have sent everyone back inside.
I should have found some other way to thank them.
And I should have recognised that even if it could be said technically to fall within the guidance, there would be millions and millions of people who simply would not see it that way.
People who suffered terribly, people who are forbidden from meeting loved ones at all, inside or outside, and to them and to this House I offer my heartfelt apologies.
And all I ask is that Sue Gray be allowed to complete her inquiry into that day and several others so that the full facts can be established.
It may be that it could technically count as a work event – although the barrister Adam King doesn’t think so – and there was also a (convenient) exemption for Crown buildings that may apply. So it may well be that the gathering didn’t technically break the rules and Sue Gray will exonerate him on this.
However, it’s not just about the letter of the law. How it looks matters – even if technically within the rules, everyone knows a party when they see one. And they also know that they weren’t allowed to go to one or hold one at the time.
While seemingly a minor misdemeanour in the grand scheme of things, along with the other lockdown gatherings in Downing Street it is undoubtedly damaging to the Prime Minister. People are angry because they observed the rules themselves, sometimes at great personal cost.
It’s worth noting that Boris may be more likely to survive this because he got the big Omicron call right and resisted (or was compelled by sceptical Cabinet colleagues to resist) the calls to impose additional Covid restrictions last month.
One potential plus is that, assuming it doesn’t finish him off, it means Boris will be even less able to impose similar restrictions again. A successor may not have such difficulty, however – and some of his possible successors (e.g. Michael Gove) would have fewer qualms about doing so.
Stop Press: Scottish Conservative Leader Douglas Ross has called for Boris to resign, saying his position “is no longer tenable”. Ross is the most senior member of the PM’s own party publicly to call for him to go, though an unnamed senior MP told Sky News‘s Sam Coates earlier in the day that Boris’s apology would be “too little, too late” and MP Sir Roger Gale has called Boris “politically a dead man walking”. Will Wragg, the Vice-Chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers has also called on him to “do the right thing” and quit. Boris is certainly in the most trouble he’s yet faced.
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What sources were there in addition to ICL. We’re there a lot of others.
has anyone studied their history, methodology and financing.
The Bill Gates Foundation heavily funded Ferguson. No coincidence there. It seems to be a no go area where any authorities are concerned as to how, why, who these pseudo-scientists are funded. Probably because there is so much money swimming around for those willing to do and say what they are told. Ferguson has been doing it for years, certainly at least 30.
Why do they keep mentioning “pandemics”?
The word “failure” implies that the perpetrators were intending to improve public health, and believed in what they were doing. I’ve seen very little evidence of that. The most charitable explanation is of very early panic once they were told the virus came from a lab, followed by doubling down to cover up the leak and the needless panic. Then there are other explanations that have even less to do with “public health”.
Democide. No other explanation is remotely plausible.
Incidentally, since they mention the foot and mouth outbreak, it’s instructive to remember that, like COVID, that epidemic started from lab leak from a government animal research laboratory in Pirbright.
Tot it up, and there seem to be more disease outbreaks from the units set up to study them safely than there are from nature.
Global List of Lab leaks.
I think they’ve missed a quite recent one from some sort of lab in China I believe.
Whitty testified to the Inquiry that overestimates of numbers are “useful for planning purposes.” It sounds so sensible to budget for all contingencies, doesn’t it, until you look at the real damage it does.
An overestimate would be useful if it had an approximate probably attached to it e.g. the model said there is a 5% chance of 500,000 deaths without lockdown. That way governments could have contingency plans for a worst case scenario and look for indications e.g. rapidly increasing number of deaths that the worst case may be happening before putting the plans into action. The problem with the ICL models is either that they only gave one figure for expected deaths, or decisions were based on the worst case even if it was stated by the modelers that it had a very low probability of happening.
According to the report cited, the modellers had at least some caveats, which were ignored by governments in forming policy, and made into firm predictions for the benefit of the public.
That isn’t to say that Ferguson et al didn’t want it that way, as he’s never apologised for the foot and mouth disaster or anything else he got wrong… just collected the gongs.
The book can be downloaded free as a pdf from the linked website.
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/hpai-virus/#gsc.tab=0
And this is how food industries are being decimated – more nonsense “viruses.”
“Prior to the Covid outbreak, “most countries did have a plan to deal with pandemics”, Hanke told the Epoch Times, “but after the Imperial College of London’s ‘numbers’ were published, those plans were, in a panic, thrown out the window.”
I do not believe this. The bottom line is that national governments acted on instructions received from the Davos Deviants. The DD’s knew exactly what disasters the Lockdowns would create and the results we have seen fitted their sick, warped plans.
Governments did not ‘panic,’ they did as they were told. To suggest panic is to continue to support, even push the cock-up theory and we know that is BS.
Someone should tell Toby Young.
There is certainly a common factor with all these overestimates and ensuing disasters- one bloke called Ferguson. How on earth is he still being believed. He is a mathematician and nothing else. Well maybe an astrologist. Most lunatics who interfere with government and lives to this extent are usually ‘dealt with’ . He is more suited to the national lottery show like mystic Meg.
Actually he’s a physicist. His crap, totally wrong forecasts from the past are precisely the reason why he was listened to by those morons in government
How can it be that Ferguson has never been brought to book for his fantastical modelling that fanned the flames of Covid hysteria and informed governmental policy?
Perhaps he was telling people what they wanted to hear. Between Ferguson, SAGE and the government, the WHO and who knows who else, I could never quite work out whose hand was up whose backside – just that most or all of them were lying about almost everything.
I recall one of the modellers from (possibly) Warwick saying that they were specifically asked to model only worst case scenarios, not anything more realistic. Might have been the second lockdown.
I also recall Vallance airily telling the select committee that models are only “scenarios not predictions” so I don’t believe he was ever in a panic and he was in charge.
China’s lockdowns, which affected only 7% of the citizenry, were highly localized and very comprehensive.
To say Chinese lockdowns ‘worked,’ however, is misleading. Dynamic Covid Zero (the WHO Pandemic Manual repackaged) did work, and retained the support of 82% of Chinese.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/french-riots-an-ideal-excuse-for-another-lockdown/
We on here are not alone in suspecting the French riots will lead to martial law and lockdowns.
I loathe Ferguson but I have to say I’ve rarely eaten so well as when the mad git made his mad cow prediction. I was buying great cuts for next to nothing, it was like paradise! If only he had made a similar prediction on red wine and beer!
On a serious note, I genuinely think he should be prosecuted. He has a track record of turning up with insane predictions and he has never even been close to the Universe let alone the ball park.
His latest sojourn into his fantasies was funded by Bill Gates to the tune of £22 million. Is that not cause enough for Plod to stop dancing and get investigating what he was actually asked to deliver by Good Old Uncle Bill?
I firmly believe that any modelling should have to prove it can model a known similar event to within +/- 5%. The factors are all known, the outcome is known. If modelling is any use then it has to be able to predict, with reasonable accuracy, past events, current events and possible future events. It really should be the acid test before Government even begins to accept it.
In the case of Ferguson this should have been obvious. His track record is appalling. I remember all those pyres of sheep all around the country. All the cattle destroyed. All the Butchers Shops ruined. Ferguson got his money and walked free to wreak even more destruction.
I accept anyone can get things wrong but his modelling is known to not work and has been known not to work for 30 years. Why was he allowed anywhere near any form of power other than cleaning toilets? Who appointed him to destroy all those lives in all those cases of his predictions? Why is it not being asked “Who the hell appointed Ferguson?”.
The problem with that is that models are tuned (arbitrarily) to make them “predict” past events. That’s how the climate models work: always right about the past (including when the datasaet is modified), and always wrong about the future, because they were not modelling reality but adjusted to fit.
As John von Neumann said: “With four parameters I can fit an elephant. With five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
Climate and epidemiological models have dozens of parameters, each infinitely variable to taste.
No climate model can accurately predict the past climate, they have over a dozen different models which can “predict” periods of the climate within the parameters laid down. Which is like saying I can hit the bullseye on the dartboard every time if you give me 20 goes at it.