This page organises various blogs, articles, and papers into some categories. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter', Why half of India's urban women stay at home. OnPPE, Mr Cummings said he was told in meetings that vital masks and gloves were being sent by sea because it is what we always do. Dominic Cummings. In May he handed it another despite no longer working in Downing Street. Only thing that the Right is happy about. (NB. I will finish Part Two shortly but in the meantime here are a few comments regarding responses to my interview. If his judgement about people were not so bad and he hired a deadly serious chief of staffand did what they told him instead of being the nations uber-pundit, then he could beat Miliband easily as Miliband seems to have an even worse operation than No10 and is failing to take advantage of the extremely favourable landscape. Little is known about his firm, which as a small company has only ever been required to publish limited accounts. Forty-four years later in 1914, the confusion over guarantees to Belgium, often expressed in almost identical language to 1870, resurfaced. This is ironic as I did have proper jobs between Oxford and getting into the anti-euro campaign at the end of 1998. Wrong. 1. Dominic Cummings: The seven most explosive claims - BBC News northwood dominic cummings - everythingwellnessdpc.com Mr Cummings painted a vivid picture of the chaotic atmosphere in Downing Street on one "crazy" day in March 2020 when the government was considering a national lockdown - at the same time as officials considered a bombing campaign in Iraq. Mr Cummings added: My resignation was definitely connected to the fact that the Prime Ministers girlfriend was trying to change a whole bunch of different appointments in Number 10 and appoint her friends to particular jobs. He recruited Faculty to work on the Vote Leave campaign in 2016. A. list of conservative mps by age 2020 Why? Read about our approach to external linking. Anyway, I can see why some people think just saying Macmillan doesnt mean hes terrible and I agree, but read the 2004 speech too when read in the context of how he mismanages No10, what I mean will be clearer. Dominic Cummings: Key points from his evidence to select - Sky News Major bust in the Mass. to NH drug pipeline: 45 arrests, 30 kilograms northwood dominic cummings. But even if people vote out, who thinks Cameron could negotiate the details, and who doubts that powerful forces that want us to remain may try to force a second vote? Setting out reasons the energy and transport crises were unlikely to abate, he predicted the next stage would be panic, he returns from holiday with usual spin about PM taking charge, holding Cobra meetings etc, lots of gimmicks to grab media attention, and a panic splurge of cash at deserving and undeserving cases alike. The silliest error is to think MG knew about or approved my interview. If the EU remains in control of immigration, renegotiation would be seen as a failure and would make peoplemorelikely to vote out, as renegotiation would raise expectations then increase anger. DONT LET CORBYN-STURGEON CHEAT A SECOND REFERENDUM WITH MILLIONS OF FOREIGNVOTES, On the referendum #33: High performance government, cognitive technologies, Michael Nielsen, Bret Victor, & SeeingRooms. Cummings also claimed that as the second wave of Covid cases broke over the UK last autumn, Johnson asked him to get into campaign mode and come up with a dead cat to change the public narrative, saying he was fucking sick of Covid. He may well have been an early advocate for lockdown; a better judge of the data than Boris Johnson, or quicker to grasp the flaws in a pandemic plan originally designed for handling flu not a coronavirus. Unless those with power and money get behind my essay, of course! Does anybody think our current system is thinking wisely about possible equivalents to the rise of Germany post-1870, such as autonomous robotics, synthetic biology, the rise of China, or the collision of Islam with modernity? In particular, she was trying to overturn the outcome of an official process about hiring a particular job in a way which was not only completely unethical but which was also clearly illegal.. Promising a load more cuts for schools wont go down too well Lynton says. (It is telling how little discussed this book is in Westminster.) Our economy stuttered, the empire shrank. This is supported by all serious market research. p.18) in which people think that swing voters occupyan average point equidistant between a Right pole and a Left pole. Timeline: How the Dominic Cummings controversy unfolded He said he would make a statement in the Commons on Thursday when he would "have more to say". I worked in Russia 1994-7 on various projects. He suggested she had distracted Boris Johnson from taking key . I have never been a member of a political party. The polls have not moved in favour of the Tories. Dominic Cummings (@DominicCumins) / Twitter Markets and science show that some fields of human endeavour work much better than political decision-making. Last May, Baker wrote in the Critic: He [Cummings] said we should vote for the original withdrawal agreement without reading it, on the basis Michael Gove articulated: we could change it later. Also, remember that many of the companies who keep the CBI afloat have vital legal interests in Brussels (e.g. Dominic Cummings provided the Government with its biggest scandal of the first lockdown, when it emerged he had travelled to Barnard Castle in County Durham at the height of restrictions last April. The fact that Cameron wont threaten to leave confirms that he is not serious. northwood dominic cummings - fieldscore.org The work with NHSX, the digital innovation arm of the health service, is understood to have involved extensive data modelling. It said it had never received or benefited from any favouritism by Cummings or any other political figure. Lgislation et Traits. She said: On becoming a special adviser, Mr Cummings started a new job and gave up any commercial roles; the necessary steps have rightly been taken to wind down his previous company. At a meeting on 27 March, Mr Cummings said he was told by officials that theDepartment of Health and Social Carehad been turning down ventilators because the price had been marked up it completely beggars belief that sort of thing was happening. He may by his own account have struggled to get the prime minister to listen to him, but Dominic Cummings has half the country hanging on his every word in the run-up to Wednesdays select committee hearing. dominic-cummings-isaac-levido-lockdown-popular-public Warner is the brother of Marc Warner, the co-founder and chief executive of Faculty. Lets leave aside the word ideological which often just means different ideas to mine. (This is particularly odd since Osborne brought in Crosby to provide a focus for Cameron that Cameron cannot provide for himself and Cameron agreed to this, yet he continues with his uber-pundit role anyway.) So we wriggled thro[ugh] with best option we cd & intended to get the [trolley emoji a reference to Boris Johnson] to ditch bits we didnt like after whacking Corbyn. This content requires a MileSplit Pro plan. A private company owned and controlled by Dominic Cummings paid more than a quarter of a million pounds to the artificial intelligence firm that worked on the Vote Leave campaign. Because his policy lurches in response to pressure, it never solves his problems. When Business for Sterling polled CBI members in 1999, we discovered that the CBI leadership had been lying about the views of their own members. Like many aspects of contemporary Whitehall, if one put it in a satire, nobody would believe it. Recently I ran focus groups in marginal seats with people who voted for Cameron in 2010 but think theyre unlikely to again in 2015. An op-ed I wrote for the Times on this subject (26/6/14) is added at the bottom of this post.]. But one can hope, 4. How quickly Boris Johnsons triumph has given way to doubt and instability | Martin Kettle, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Dominic Cummings inquisitors must not allow themselves to be hijacked, either for the settling of old scores or in the creation of a personal myth., he stage is set, the props laid out, the audience whipped into a frenzy of anticipation. Theres no doubt at all that many senior people performed far, far disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect. Much of the commentariat, in my opinion, is also wrong on this issue. Detailed and vitriolic: Dominic Cummings' five most explosive claims After one dinner, he wrote to his wife about how little our leaders understood of European politics: [Palmerston] and, to an only slightly lesser degree, Lord Russell too were in a state of complete ignorance The British ministers know less about Prussia than about Japan and Mongolia. Soon after this party, the fateful telegram arrived Periculum in mora. I make judgements about people and ideasindividually for me parties are just a vehicle of convenience, not something that define my choices, likes, and ideas. Many Tory MPs and 'free market' pundits / think tankers are living in a fantasy world in which they want hostility to big business to end . Dominic Cummings Resigns: What It Means For Boris Johnson | Time BA and landing slots). Post author: Post published: June 8, 2022; Post category: best psychiatry programs sdn; Post comments: . The issue of Camerons qualities is probably the thing we most disagreed about over the years. 14709 Northwood Dr, Chesterfield; Manuel Mitchel J and Lindsey M to Dodson Robert Leonard and Carol A, $250,000. The commentariat then conclude the public dont like this, its too nasty party etc. ), 6. I worked in No10 24 July 2019 to November 2020 as assistant to the Prime Minister (NB. Earlier, he said sorry for ministers, officials and advisers "like me" for falling "disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect". The biggest change in the EU debate since the the euro battle is that people now spontaneously connect the issue of immigration and the EU. DOMINIC CUMMINGS: In no order of priority there is an obvious problem with democratic legitimacy (which the pro-EU people accept) if you have democratic accountability working at a national . The Dominic Cummings scandal, or the Dominic Cummings affair, was a series of events involving the British political strategist Dominic Cummings during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.The events include at least one journey that Cummings, then-chief adviser of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and his family made from London to County Durham after the start of a national lockdown in . BBC people in particular: I said inSeptember 2013I was leaving and I left voluntarily in January 2014, do not put me in your lists of people who were fired as you are prone to.). Part of the reason No10 does not work is that senior people issue airy instructions (usually in response to a column rather than as part of a serious plan) but, not understanding management, they do not know how to follow through and ensure things are done. If a Cabinet Minister replies saying I do not approve, this EU rule is stupid and will cost a fortune then someone from the Cabinet Office calls their Private Office and says, Did your Minister get pissed last night, he appears to have withheld approval on this EU regulation. If the Private Office replies saying No, the minister actually thinks this is barmyand he is withholding consent, then Llewellyn calls them to say ahem, old boy, the PM would prefer it if you lie doggo on this one. Last week, Mark Francois, the current chair of the ERG, told the Guardian they had signed the deal knowing it was a risk as the protocol in their view was flawed but there was a greater prize at stake the UKs exit from the EU. But I think v low % the will do this, will need new PM.. North Carolina high school boys basketball: NCHSAA rankings, state CONCORD, NH - For now, the deadly drug pipeline between Manchester and Lawrence, Mass., has been cut off.. April saw the culmination of a year-long drug investigation by multiple agencies, bringing in a huge haul for law enforcement officials - 45 people arrested in two sweeps netting 30 kilograms (more than 60 pounds) of fentanyl, plus two guns and $500,000 in cash. Regarding this he said: The PM stopped speaking to me about this matter in 2020 as I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended. Dominic Cummings: PM's top adviser leaves No 10 to 'clear the air' If he concluded that was impossible, then he had the option of resigning and going public with his concerns much earlier. boutiqueCPA - cpastore.ca 2022-23 high school individual state champions list, as of Feb. 28: Add For Cameron, hes dealing with an incredibly complex environment (true), in which some things are bound to go wrong (true), as well as could be expected (wrong!). My new company, North Wood, was hired by Business for Britain to do some market research on what swing voters think about arguments over the EU. Mr Cummings also compared the Governments response to the pandemic to a meme. About. Mr Cummings said he came to believe that his former boss was not fit for office. Thatcher too failed here and when she woke up she was chopped. He dismissed the emerging coronavirus as "the new swine flu" and "just a scare story" - and pledged to be injected "live on TV with the virus so everyone realises it's nothing to be frightened of'", He was a "thousand times too obsessed with the media" and appeared to be persuaded by the Daily Telegraph's view of events on any given day, Displayed "criminal, disgraceful behaviour" as he held back coronavirus tests and meddled in efforts to build a mass testing system in order to meet a "stupid" pledge of 100,000 tests per day in April 2020, Lied during meetings held in the Downing Street cabinet room, including about testing people before they were discharged from hospital into care homes during the first wave, Used the UK's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical adviser Chris Whitty as a "shield" for government failings at Downing Street news conferences, Mr Cummings and the UK's then most senior civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill recommended to the prime minister that Mr Hancock be sacked in April 2020, The prime minister did not sack Mr Hancock because some felt he would be a convenient fall guy during any future public inquiry. and the noisy headlines he keeps generating about a supposed secret herd immunity strategy or the woeful failure to shut Britains borders are all ways of ramping up the drama. Adam Cummings (Alvirne) 152 - Christian Morency (Manchester West) . We have tried within the severe constraints of Camerons nature, the Coalition, Whitehall dynamics to take power out of Whitehall on the basis that nothing is worse than the dysfunctional central bureaucracy controlling things (a feeling strengthened exponentially by experience). It was like that, but with everybody. B) My objection is not to pragmatism. Ive said hundreds of times off and on the record MG would be a bad leader, he knows it, and so do his best friends. John Hoskyns book Just In Time is a brilliant explanation of why she failed, analysing the interconnected issues of MPs qualities and Whitehalls dynamics. Seldon. I think we could do much much betterifwe will face our problems honestly, Coming soon, Part II what does work, whyWhitehall doesnt work, and how we could do things better. The post-2008 euro crisis has changed this long-term factor and provides an opportunity to argue closer integration with the euro basket cases will cost you a fortune. (PDF) The AJR has been extraordinarily busy over Refugees Rabbi Less than one percent of my time was spent dealing with journalists. Carrie Symonds. A company run by long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings has been working behind the scenes with the exams agency Ofqual on its disastrous strategy . The prime ministers chief adviser is declining to explain the reason for the payments to Faculty, which were made in instalments over two years. Sources of confidential information close to power have traditionally been repaid with the lightest of scrutiny. While thestatus quoin a referendum usually has a structural advantage, in an EU referendum this advantage could be lost as the out campaign could say this is your chance to change immigration policy. The former Downing Street chief then added: Now time for IM2 #Frosty, a reference to the internal markets bill, which works to prevent internal trade barriers coming into force between parts of the UK. Immigration is now such a powerful dynamic in public opinion that a) no existing political force can stop people being so worried about it and, contra many hacks I speak to, it wouldnt matter if the Tories and Mail shut up about it peoples actual experience and conversation with friends, family, and colleagues is the most important thing driving opinion, not the media; b) it is therefore not necessary for the main campaign to focus on it in a referendum (others will anyway) and focusing on it would alienate other crucial parts of the electorate. Of course. The Guardian has identified at least 13 central government contracts awarded to the firm since early 2018, collectively worth about 3m in revenue. In practice, if you do not do this you may as well be on the beach because government departments are so dysfunctional that even the great officials who could manage things properly are seldom allowed to by the system. Without exception, this meant trouble never progress. (Many of the social science academics who write letters attacking Gove often Marxist economists still in the pre-1989 jungle, literary theorists, and others from the lowest ranks of academia are appalled at the idea of techniques from the hard sciences invading their domains and exposing their frauds. At the PolEx party (18/6), Cameron said that I am a career psychopath. He has largely been out of the public eye since leaving Downing Street but here is what he has been up to. One of the things that is most striking is how much of a Cabinet Ministers box is filled with EU papers. The combination of immigration, benefits, and human rights dominates all discussion of politics and Europe. The records show Whitehall in chaos over what to do about our guarantees of Belgian neutralityand itwatched in bewilderment as Bismarck changed the course of world history with the unification of Germany. ], Ps. The policy that they raise and discuss most is the Australian points system for immigration and many realise that membership of the EU makes this impossible. This list was amended on 29 May 2020 to give Scott Manns constituency as North Cornwall, instead of Bodmin. I read Ancient & Modern History at Oxford University (graduated 1994). Dominic Cummings drove 260 miles (418km) from London to Durham, and took a 60-mile round trip from Durham to a nearby town on his wife's birthday - a trip he says he made to test whether his . company on its communications strategy and its senior recruitment, Do you have information about this story? Swing voters, however, are more anti-immigration and anti-free market than the centre of gravity in Westminster. Not me bring them on! This page is for an essay I wroteover a few years, Some thoughts on education and political priorities, that (in draft form) was published by the Guardian on 11 October 2013. They may well want to explore last weeks contested allegations that Johnson skipped Cobra meetings during the earliest stages of the outbreak in order to finish a book on Shakespeare that he hoped would fund his divorce a rumour reporters have tried and failed to stand up previously. During a seven-hour joint session of the Commons Heath, and Science and Technology committees, Mr Cummings made a number of allegations - here are the key points. And whoever wins, well have five more years of Hollow Men stumbling from cockup to cockup. Within a year, the CBI had fled from the euro battle. if she had been much more revolutionary then much more could have been done (though such a move would obviously be an all-or-nothing gamble for any prime minister who really tried it and one can see why she shied away). Of course.. Just 15 Things Boris Johnson's New Key Aide Dominic Cummings Has Said The same can be done again, Camerons hollow euroscepticism, The Times, 26 June 2014, [The printed version was very slightly edited.]. "He wasn't taking any advice, he was just making his own decisions, he was going to ignore the advice. 2021 Associated Newspapers Limited. Political strategist Dominic Cummings leads a popular but controversial campaign to convince British voters to leave the European Union from 2015 up until the present day. However, my role in DfE was not this. And I was trying to create a structure around him to try and stop what I thought would have been bad decisions, and push things through against his wishes. Meanwhile the Prime Ministers fiancee, Carrie Symonds, was focused on a story about their dog, Dilyn. Cameron hoped that the referendum promise would push the EU issue beyond the election and he would not have to infuriate people by revealing how little he wants to change. Interestingly, all the people I have seen who complain about us being ideological also opposed this move, as they like Whitehall controlling exams because they hope to capture control of Whitehall. I make my own judgements and have my own priorities. Dominic Cummings, 48, ran the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign in the EU referendum and was behind the group's "take back control" slogan; Prior to the referendum he worked for Iain Duncan Smith . The only other business relationship Cummings consultancy is known to have had is with Babylon Health, a healthcare startup backed by the health secretary, Matt Hancock. I think handled right, given overall situation (energy etc), we cd ditch signif bits causing trouble in NI without much fuss. You have Hancock pointing at the Permanent Secretary, you have the Permanent Secretary pointing at Hancock, and theyre both pointing at the Cabinet Office, and the Cabinet Office is pointing back at them. Cummings claims chime with comments made last year by Steve Baker, then chair of the European Research Group of backbench MPs, who indicated that the ERG had been persuaded to vote for the Brexit deal despite their reservations over checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea. I think Ive answered mostof the latters points here. Faculty said it had delivered work for hundreds of clients in more than a dozen countries, and that the majority of its work was in the private sector. I was Michael Goves main adviser September 2007 January 2014,with a break May 2010-December 2010. Mr Cummings said: "So, we have this sort of completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying, 'are we going to bomb Iraq? An interview with Dominic Cummings | The Economist Then cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill is alleged to have suggested to Mr Johnson: "Prime minister, you should go on TV tomorrow and explain the herd immunity plan and that it is like the old chicken pox parties. Remember that many of their members do NOT agree with the leadership. ), It is fashionable to say that we ignored evidence but it is false. Its completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as its crackers that Boris Johnson was in there.. BoJo's best bud, bus lie writer, government tinkerer, not Benedict Cumberbatch #voteleave #fakenews. One morning, he claimed, the "national security people came in" and said "[US President Donald] Trump wants us to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East tonight" and this "totally derailed" meetings about quarantine and the coronavirus. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. After botching the attempts to join, we gave France whatever it wanted as an entry fee then spent the next thirty years handing over more and more power because those in charge could not think of anything else to do. Really we've got days to act.". 182 Dominic Iaquinto (Danbury) 195 Brendan Gilchrist (Norwalk) . I refused to help him organise these payments. Well, if they mean dogged determination to switch course every time DC reads the papers, we agree, [Update. Boys Top 50 Returners in Every Field Event! My essay on an 'Odyssean' Education - Dominic Cummings's Blog Mr Cummings said it was "obvious" in retrospect that the UK should have locked down in the first week of March at the latest - and it was a "huge failure" on his part not to alert the prime minister.