Dominic Who?

Well, it seems to have been some time since I last bothered to write anything so I thought maybe I should sit down and write something. I can't give any assurances that it will be in the slightest bit interesting but at least it allows me to let off a bit of steam. 

In some ways, by writing this crap down and then posting it on here, it's like taking the thoughts that are annoying me and causing me to reach for the emergency blood pressure tablets and putting it all in a little box and tying a ribbon around it, not necessarily yellow, but that'll do I guess.

So, have I missed anything interesting? I notice that as I am writing this the daily coronavirus update is on tv in the background and for the second day running a politician is batting off questions about a single individual that broke some rules, or not depending upon your point of view, and finding how useful it is to have the Q&A section of the press conferences via video conference as that means the journalist gets one opportunity to ask a question before being switched off and for the past two days most of the questions have been wasted as they are one after the other all on the same subject just slightly nuanced on each ask. 

It is an amusing game of cat and mouse for those of us who watch far too much of this crap but for anybody that is watching for news on the governments approach to the pandemic it will seem pointless and uninformative.

Depending upon who is running the update/press conference, the journalists normally get to ask one question, or even a few related questions and then they get a follow up, although some cabinet members didn't get that memo. or indeed for the Home Secretary it was simply that she believes it is beneath her to have to answer questions from anybody about anything and regards such questioning as impertinent and tiresome!

But with the current 'issue' the journos are being shut down really quickly and their mics cut off before they get a chance to try again. I bet they can't wait to get back to face to face interviewing where they can ask the same question over and over and over again until even I start jabbing myself in the eye wanting one or the other to just stop. 

The game is simple enough I guess. They all want to be the first to get, or trick, a cabinet minister to go off track and give a non-approved message, or in the parlance, go off-message or off-piste or even off-line. 

Once upon a time such things would and did happen and such things caused resignations and even whole governments to slowly topple over. Nowadays every senior member of a party is sent for media training, the majority of which is spent helping the student find a way of not answering the question asked but instead answering a question they were not asked. 

The best of them, and there are only a few, manage to answer the question they wanted to be asked in such a way that people think they answered the question actually asked. Most people not being the journalists who conversely know the answer they want to hear and keep hectoring until they get that answer, which is almost never, or one of them or the viewers lose the will to live!

This whole 'issue' is about a man who is not particularly well liked, although he might be disliked simply because he is a bit maverick who just happens to get things done, which is in itself hugely annoying to a lot of the people in the political bubble. 

To be clear, even though I have no idea what he is like as a human being, he comes across as a not particularly pleasant person but maybe that's just because he is 'driven' in his determination to get things done which blinds him to the people that get hurt as he bulldozers his way through to getting something done. Or maybe it is just because the only way I get to know anything about him is via the news outlets and they don't like him because he despises them!

And the issue is relatively trivial to most peoples thinking but the triviality of the issue is coloured by his political affiliation, his dislike of the EU, his association with the PM and the fact he's a little bit 'old boys club'. If you draw up a Venn diagram with those things you'll find rather a lot of people are not in his camp so he's on a fools errand trying to defend what he did.

That said, I listened to his personal news conference to explain his actions and I found myself sympathising with him and thinking it was time for the whole thing to just be put in one of those little boxes with a bow around it, probably blue, and then shelved.

But when the news organisations get a sniff of blood they are like sharks on a feeding frenzy and will keep on banging against the shark proof cage until either the cage collapses and they get their quarry or feedback on public opinion shows the public are just bored of the whole thing and want to know about some other unfortunate in the public eye that got caught having a fag behind the bikeshed!

In the meantime the PM finds he has put himself in a perilous position. He has backed his man and continues to back him. He is like an equally hungry and thirsty man equidistant between food and drink and ends up collapsing, probably from dehydration as that would kick in first although that raises the question about whether the equally hungry and thirsty man would become more thirsty over and above being hungry as time goes by and so sensibly walks towards the water! 

But the PM is now in an impossible position, of his own making. He cannot sack him and he cannot keep him without causing damage to his own standing, to the governments message and to the governments standing with the country. 

For a start, there is understandable feeling that this 'even up' government is not so 'even up' after all and will always look after the rich elite first and then everybody else, which should not really come as a surprise but heh, the voting public are not known for their collective intelligence, more like a massive shoal of goldfish in a massive glass bowl continually seeing everything afresh every couple of minutes, except with a strange sense of deja vu which they ignore until they've forgotten again.

Just to add to the PMs quandary, the opposition parties are trying to push him to sack his advisor which is a sure way to ensure he does not sack him, which is perversely what they probably want because whilst he does nothing he is wounded whereas if he acts it will be like ripping a plaster off, a short sharp pain that goes away quite quickly. All part of the game. 

But the opposition parties know that he cannot sack him and is unlikely to sack him, his only hope is for the advisor to resign but this is no ordinary man, he has a plan and a date with destiny and this is not it. 

So the PM stands there, knowing that from an 'optics' perspective he probably should sack him but he knows that he cannot as that will be seen as a victory to his many opponents. And he knows the advisor will not put his party or even the PM himself before his mission.

So I suspect the PM will keep him on, keep batting away the questions, keep switching off the microphones, keep pressing the answers to the questions that nobody asked and hope that he gets to the point where no one can remember what the fuss was all about in the first place. 

Of course that will depend upon two things, the journalists finally giving up and there not being any more revelations. We'll see. I'd say how exciting, but it really isn't, in fact it's a huge distraction from what really matters, dealing with this crisis!

In the meantime I will continue doing what I have been doing since my last post on here, tending the garden and trying not to fall out of any more trees, I really am getting too old for falling out of trees but I seem to do it at least once annually! I guess one way or another, one year, I will do it for the last time!

I might come back and edit this at some point, probably not, but maybe.

By way of an addendum...

I think I was somewhat unaware of a few things about this little disagreement. I was not aware that the wife of the individual who broke the rules was able to drive. I guess I had assumed, which is a little naughty, that she was unable to drive for one reason or another. Plus I'd forgotten that the rules stated that if you have the virus then you had to self isolate and go nowhere.

I also did not realise that at no point was it confirmed through a test that any of the family actually had coronavirus, they just assumed that one of them did and then that one after the other became ill although the child did have a test but that was negative. Which is odd, but also rather convenient as by not having a confirmed diagnosis there was a loophole through which to wiggle whereby the family did not have to obey the rule about self-isolation although they failed to obey the stay at home rule!

Then there is also this day trip out to test eyesight. That all seems a little odd considering the other points. It also strikes me, in retrospect that the story provided sounds a little more like a story built around something that happened by way of an explanation dreamt up during a brainstorming session after the fact rather than a retelling of what happened and why.

So, I've shifted my fence sitting position somewhat.

The PM on the other hand is doubling down like any good gambler, good as far as the betting company or bookie is concerned at least. He is sticking with his man regardless of public opinion which he believes is a) just whipped up by the press and b) will all die down very soon. I have my doubts given what I said previously, the sharks are still circling, in fact, they're plotting!

In the meantime, I suspect that if there is a second spike of cases there will be wide scale open revolt citing the behaviour of the PMs man and the support of the PM. Quite how the police are supposed to enforce this I have no idea and I suspect they will just give up!