Sunday, 27 June 2021

In defence of Hancock: details, details ...

There's no handier scapegoat than a figure of fun - though clearly Johnson has no moral standing whatever in such matters.  But let it be said in Hancock's defence: he was fully engaged with his responsibilities at a level of considerable detail.

I am reliably told that when specific ministerial decisions were required, region by region, he would always call for the full stats down to the level of individual second-tier local authorities - the smallest level of granularity dealt with by Whitehall - and consider them in detail (where most politicians would pretend to cast a quick eye, and go with whatever the functionaries were proposing).

I realise some of you may respond - so HE'S the bastard responsible!  And he had to go.  But he has my respect on these grounds.  The Napoleons and Wellingtons of this world did not achieve what they did by idly accepting the plans of others and taking the detail on trust.  We have too many lazy f*****s "at the Top" in public life who want to be everything but are content to do nothing.  "King of the World", my arse.

ND

30 comments:

DJK said...

Yes, I think he was hard done by. He deserves credit for the fact that the health service never did buckle under, even with 1200 people/day dying of coronavirus. With hindsight, mistakes were made --- as everybody was acting in a blind fog --- but is there seriously anyone who could have done better?

James Higham said...

In all fairness, we need to temper our comments over at our place - shall drop this link in the appropriate paragraph.

jim said...

Tough luck to be found out or dropped in it. I thought he was doing a fairish job. At least Hancock has some blood in him. But when the tabloids bray.....

Stand in the corner for a bit and then back on the job....

tolkein said...

If your staff know that you're going to go through the proposals in detail, they'll take more care.
Who knows, you might have something of value to add.
But he had to go.

lilith said...

Oh yes, we must all offer up detail to Mr Hancock. He'd like to see us genotyped at birth. It is high time he provided some details instead of demanding ours.

dustybloke said...

The Civil Service are mostly Lefties, so this was Christmas come early.

As Douglas Murray has pointed out, society is committed to exacting ultimate vengeance where possible. So the poor sod had no chance in the Court of Public Opinion

E-K said...

Inclined to agree but he focused too much on the wrong granular details.

I told you that even the best vaccine roll out in the world would not be good enough for him.

That's because he sees himself as part of a haughty elite and lockdown was the perfect cover for his undistanced dalliance.

- Hancock

- Scottish Health Minister

- Cummings

- Ferguson

and...

Boris and the whole G7 leadership, none of whom really believe in the sadistic rules they enforce on the rest of us and were stupid enough to be filmed glad-handing while waiters had to stand to attention in the background wearing muzzles (they represent us, the plebs, you realise.)

What an image Boris has projected - an elite class and the rest of us.

So I've ditched my muzzle despite the occasional dirty look. It is truly liberating.

The Tories are once more steeped in sleaze at this most critical of times and the recent by-election was not an aberration, nor was it about house building nor HS2. It was Boris bottling of Freedom Day on the guidance of Hancock et al wot done it and Hancock had put himself above the rules already.

The Tory elite are now out of control.

I have written to my own MP thus "You're a good MP but I'm sorry, can't vote for you again. Your leader is chaotic and an inveterate liar whom I cannot trust."








E-K said...

DJK

The NHS DID buckle.

I've lost four friends now, during this crisis. None to CV-19 - all due to lack of attention from their GPs.

I've been waiting 14 weeks to see a doctor over my ACL injury.

Med students are having placements and electives cancelled because CV-19 restrictions will not allow so they are doing online courses instead. What impact this will have on future competencies one can only guess.

E-K said...

Many deaths were not recorded as NHS deaths when they should have been - repatriation of infecteds back to care homes, for one.

"Save the NHS. Die at home."

Sobers said...

"Save the NHS. Die at home."

Which they have been, deaths at home have been running significantly above long term averages ever since covid hit.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/england-wales-office-for-national-statistics-marie-curie-university-of-southampton-b923059.html

Now a lot of those will be people who would have died anyway, probably in hospital, but chose not to seek medical attention, stayed at home and died there with their families around them. But a significant amount will be people who could have been saved had they sought medical attention, or been able to access a GP. But of course their deaths don't matter, because they can't be used as cover for the authorities turning the UK into a virtual prison camp.

E-K said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
E-K said...

And now we have a clear motive for the mission creep - from flatten the sombrero, save the NHS, to circuit breaker to, to celebrate Christmas at Easter and now to full-on Zero Covid and the vaccine rubbished for no logical reason.

Hancock was high on ego. The ultimate aphrodisiac, power-in-a-crisis that he wanted to perpetuate by examining every granular detail to keep it for himself.

Inviting someone he had the hots for to work in his crisis team in order to impress and to woo her, to keep her close, closer than his wife and children "Look at my grand offices, look how far I have come."

The empty corridors, the empty chambers, the unmasked G7 power-kick jaunts ... away from The Wife and the kids... no wonder he worked so hard.

The ultimate romantic backdrop for an illicit affair - a man of little humour, looks or charisma, only able to rely on gravity in a grave situation for sexual appeal... so best keep the situation grave then !

Damn right he was looking at every granular detail in order to keep the crisis going and his doxy keen. And I bet he wooed her with woe, how much he regretted keeping his boot on the throats of the masses, "But such is the burden of power, my love."

What the man has done is downright wicked.

The very weakest and worst of motives to deprive loved ones of contact in their darkest hours. To ruin lives and businesses, to criminalise human behaviour and to change the country irreparably and to (as I fervently believe he has) KILL people.

Now I wouldn't have the balls to put myself up for office but that doesn't mean that we should thank a man like Hancock for doing so either.

I shall refrain from saying what I think of mask wearing now. It is just too offensive.

That's how divided he has the nation.


lilith said...

Kev, you and I are looking through the same spectacles. I have met Matt Hancocks before. Shudder. They struggle with a "Git or God?" dichotomy. You have him pinned and mounted.

lilith said...

Either that or something went terribly wrong with his media training....

E-K said...

lilith - it is certainly plausible that he was motivated at least in part (at least) in showing off for his new girlfriend whilst intoxicated by love... it explains the peacocking he did at the dispatch box. He was thinking of her watching him do battle all the time.

In order to keep her to himself he needed to perpetuate lockdown. He needed to create as much drama as possible to glamorise and empower himself.

The Capt of the Costa Concordia slammed his ship onto the rocks whilst trying to impress a pretty young woman, after all.

lilith said...

It totally explains his media style of talking to camera as if he's about to shove it up our arse....

Jan said...

Maybe it's even worse than that Kev and lilith. He comes/came across to me as akin to Bliar and was/is probably in bed with the WEF and their "build back better" agenda.

Once he'd gained the top job he was probably planning his next app which had everyone forced to register along with a digital government controlled money system.

We can only thank the whistleblower who managed to stop him in his tracks. He thought he was invincible. Such was his hubris I'm sure I saw him smirk when he heard what Cummings had to say about him.

As one of my kids schoolteachers told his charges: "It's always the promising ones who let themselves down"

Anonymous said...

If what the Mail has reported is correct and there was a clearly visible CCTV camera in his office pointed at his office door, that's been there since before he moved in, then he deserves to go for the stupidity of not moving the 6 foot needed to be out of shot.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9728843/Matt-Hancocks-affair-footage-office-CCTV-reveals-GLEN-OWEN.html

Anonymous said...

Jan - It was reported back in Jan that Blair was having secret meeting to advise Hancock:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-advising-matt-hancock-coronavirus-vaccine-b1785125.html

So no doubt he saw himself as the true heir to Blair!

The journalist who bought us this story is Harry Cole,who happens to be the ex-boyfriend of Carrie Symonds. The Westminster bubble truly is an incestuous place!

lilith said...

Well done Harry Cole....he was a Guido protegee before Guido went all Tom Harwood (who'd like the unvaccinated excluded from society)

Hancock is BFF with Schwaab so no wonder he was dead pleased with himself...

dearieme said...

"With hindsight, mistakes were made --- as everybody was acting in a blind fog". That's far too generous. When I first heard about the Fluhan I was astonished at its dismissal as a Chinese sniffle that probably wouldn't even reach us. Not reach us, when our country was full of Chinese tourists? Sheer stupidity. A sniffle: on what evidence?

Anyway I read around on the web and started taking Zinc and Vitamin D supplements in mid-Feb 2020. What was HMG doing in mid-Feb?

Fog? Not really. "Using the Diamond Princess data, a team reports in Eurosurveillance1 that by 20 February, 18% of all infected people on the ship had no symptoms."
So asymptomatic infections were known about by 20/02/20 at the latest, and the vulnerability of the old and frail was pretty well established.

dearieme said...

What needs explanation was the wild swing from governmental insouciance to panicked, repeated lockdowns without - as far as is known - any attempt to put a cost on the lockdowns. I suspect that the explanation boils down to the Astrologer Royal at Imperial College.

Timbo614 said...

Interesting comments, despite the conspirators above I'll just say I agree with Nick.
He had to go yes, but mostly for being stupid enough to get caught!

E-K said...

The most recent abuse of data was Hancock's, which led Boris to using three week out-of-date figures to keep us in lockdown.

The guy has clearly been lovin' it.

Whatever the past mistakes there is no excuse for us to be social distancing and in masks now.

I cannot believe my fellow countryfolk walking around like automaton-zombies.

E-K said...

I never reckoned on many of our people actually liking this way of life.

lilith said...

I would happily contribute to the whistle blower's legal costs.

E-K said...

Conspirator or not what is beyond all doubt is that Hancock used this crisis to live out his fantasy.

dearieme said...

"what is beyond all doubt is that Hancock used this crisis to live out his fantasy." And in all the other countries that did likewise?

E-K said...

We have squandered a *world beating* vaccine roll out because of this man. We are not comparing ourselves to other countries.

He witheld data and got the Prime Minister to cancel Freedom Day.

And now we can see why it might have happened.

Some while ago he engineered things so that his pin-up girl could be beside him during lockdown. We cannot discount that he actually liked the restrictions he was imposing.

He broke all his own rules even while the Queen was sat alone in a mask at her husband's funeral.

His modus was to examine only the data that suited his agenda in 'granular detail' and ignore the rest - or even hide it from the PM.

What really alerted me to this man's weirdness was when he said jauntily "Who'd have thought a year ago that we'd all be used to masks."

Well obviously he didn't need to be.

Masks are oppressive -we used to think the burqa outrageous - and that's why nut jobs like Hancock want you to wear them.

E-K said...

The Boris Wall is crumbling.

I hope Peter Hitchens picks up on Hancock extending lockdown to continue his dalliance.

Football is a distraction.

Unfortunately Taking the Knee will be seen as a good omen.

We are truly fucked.