Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption in the Telegraph has weighed in on Partygate to say it exposes both the moral deficiencies of Boris Johnson and that those writing the lockdown rules clearly didn’t believe their own hype.
Partygate is not about parties. It never has been. It is about personal integrity and standards in public life. The Prime Minister can put the parties, the booze, the vomiting and all the rest of it behind him. What he cannot put behind him is the sort of person that he is.
Three points stand out from this grubby saga.
First, the Prime Minister personally decided to criminalise almost all social contact, and then behaved as if this did not apply to him or those around him. It really does not matter whether he thought that his parties were allowed by the regulations. Their rationale was that unnecessary human contact was so dangerous that it must be forbidden by law. He cannot have believed a word of it himself. Otherwise, he would surely not have exposed himself or his staff to this supposedly mortal danger, whether it was technically permitted by the regulations or not. He made his own risk assessment, while denying the rest of us the right to make ours.
Secondly, the Prime Minister has persistently tried to hide behind his subordinates. No one told him, he has said, that this kind of behaviour was not on. It speaks volumes about his moral values that he needed to be told.
This sort of special pleading is a cowardly reversal of ordinary lines of responsibility. Junior staff took their lead from him. They assumed, as Sue Gray points out, that if he was there it must be OK. More senior staff had their doubts. But their only concern was that it would look bad if it got out (“a comms risk”). At the time they congratulated themselves that they had “got away with it.” Sue Gray goes out of her way to point out that their attitudes were not typical of the rest of Whitehall. We are entitled to ask what was different about Downing Street. The answer is that its occupants knew that the Prime Minister would share their instincts. Under a more exacting boss, they would have feared for their jobs.
The third point he makes is that Boris Johnson plainly misled Parliament in claiming not to have known about the parties, and that at a time of international crisis it is “more than ever important that we should be led by people of transparent stature and integrity, whom we can implicitly trust”.
Worth reading in full.
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What pebble/flint wall would not be improved with a couple of heat exchangers in front of it? Lovely!
Hilarious.
And there choc full of expensive copper matrix piping! Worth a small fortune at the scrapper, not that anyone would steal them!
Well, that’s recycling covered then.
It’ll be fun for new build cul-de-sacs residents when there are 8 or so houses all facing each other with their blowers going 24/7.
The owner of a semi-detached house in a road near me, in Kew, south-west London, has just installed a large one of these in the small front garden. Watch out for more of this!
On the other hand, the noise our woodburner makes is lovely. Our friends and neighbours often remark upon it when they visit.
It’s so cosy, with all the crackling and popping.
Oh, and it makes the house warm, unlike the boondoggles mentioned above.
And no horrible bills in the post, either!
And you’re using renewable energy, to use the modern slogan. More efficient than Drax power station, quite likely.
So, if they’re too noisy within 1 metre of a neighbour’s door or window they’re going to be fine nearer to your own? If most people wouldn’t do it to their neighbour they won’t do it to themselves,
For the eco-cult, no hardship is too much. These are the people who think taking five hours for a 2h journey is brilliant because their EV is saving the planet, one cobalt child-miner at a time.
wink
For many situations it is clearly the case that if you do away with oil/gas boilers, the eco alternatives do not work on the basis of each property having its own source of heat. There have been some pioneering work on district heating schemes with one going ahead at Swaffham Priors;
https://tp-heatnetworks.org/trailblazer-swaffham-prior-becomes-first-uk-village-to-retrofit-a-renewable-heating-network-into-an-existing-community/
And so yes you can have a replacement for oil[gas boilers but the answer for many is not a simple case of swapping a boiler for a heat pump. District heating schemes do work in various parts of the world but they are not a simple 5 minute fix. They are technically, financially and administratively complex. It will take longer than 2050 to bring in significant district heating schemes across the UK.
And while it may be viable for brand new developments, it might not be practical for most housing areas. There are loads of existing utility pipes and cables buried underground already. Installing a whole load more hot water ones would be fun.
As far as I can ascertain, the smallest heat pumps use 4 kw an hour, and their efficiency depends on longevity,(and outside temperature)don’t turn them on and off, leave them running, Reepham as an example!
The direction of travel for our prosperity, well being and life expectancy is all downhill. —–Welcome to the 21st century where capitalism and standard of living is to be REVERSED.———- All allegedly for the “children and grandchildren” and “saving the planet”. ———Do the children and grandchildren want to be the first generations to be less well of than their parents since the Industrial Revolution that brought us out of the abject misery of dying young after a life of back breaking Labour? Well they have no choice in the matter because that is what is happening. ——–With the seemingly plausible excuse of a climate crisis, which upon closer inspection is not supported by one iota of science.—–Roll up Roll up . get your heat Pumps while stocks last and make sure you stock up on extra pullovers and thicker curtains.