Boris' Christmas Party car crash

there's just not enough pop corn

Sounds like the pre-Christmas afternoons I've had at work where someone cracks open a gift from a client and we finish the day working with a glass on the corner of the desk.  Not sure I'd call that a party.

I think the point is that this relates to a year ago when they were banned.

Not a bad thing all in all, makes it harder for the govt to bring in draconian rules this time around given how little those in power have taken heed of them. 

apparently they were having get togethers in the Spring too

the thing is, lockdown only happened to mollify puritanical aunts out in the community so

I don't care about the parties, I care about the rules being made

Sounds like the pre-Christmas afternoons I've had at work where someone cracks open a gift from a client and we finish the day working with a glass on the corner of the desk.  Not sure I'd call that a party.

 

You are an absolute snivelling little worm mate.  Did you know that?

Did No. 10 have a party? Yes

Did it break prevailing covid rules? Yes

Is anyone surprised! No

Will anyone give a toss? No

Will it have any bearing on the govt’s ratings? No

I love that they asked the spokesperson if they were invited to the parties or not. Proper trolling.
 

Heh, yeah that was great. “I don’t have anything on that”

Yes Threep and it's served me very well thus far.  

Let's face it the staff were already in No. 10 running the country so it's not like they'd been invited in specially for a party.  That would be a rather different scenario.

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Laura Hughes

 

@Laura_K_Hughes

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Replying to

@Laura_K_Hughes

“They were the only things that kept us going, bearing in mind we were the only people in Whitehall in the office working throughout”, the insider says. “We weren’t seeing anyone else outside of work and were our own bubble.”

Er diddums? The rest of the country didn't see anyone either, because of the laws you made 

Most of the No10 operation had already had Covid by then, I suppose.

Not that that is a brilliant excuse.

An awful lot of people changed their plans at the last minute when Boris u-turned and an awful lot more people went through losing family members and not being able to attend funerals, be with them in hospital/care homes etc.

They will rightly think this was colossally irresponsible. 

In fact “colossally irresponsible” is pretty much a fair summary of Boris Johnson’s entire career and personal life to date.

Obviously BoJo knew hew would be able to get away with this but I don't understand why they thought they might be able to keep it quiet given the whole of the civil service is #FBPE , that  every last one of them votes labour and can't stand the Tories, and that there is never in the history of leaky thigns, been anything more leaky than this current current crop of civil servants.

 

If I’d been the PMS in that exchange, after about the fourth question I’d just have started repeating “The covid rules were followed at all times” with a blank thousand yard stare.

ChuffyChufnell02 Dec 21 09:40

Did No. 10 have a party? Yes

Did it break prevailing covid rules? Yes

Is anyone surprised! No

Will anyone give a toss? No

Will it have any bearing on the govt’s ratings? No

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is that a direct quote from Louis the 16th? 

seems people are getting fed up of fat cat ministers living the high life while making everyone else's life miserable 

It would clearly be a sh*t show if they'd sent an e-mail out to the No. 10 staff saying come on in for Christmas drinks on Tuesday evening and bring the mistletoe.  That's rather different to people who were already legitimately at work cracking open a few drinks at the end of the day and it sounds like that is basically what happened.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few NHS saints who'd had a couple of in the break room at the end of a long shift as well.

Sails, if that is what happened why dont they just say so? If the party consisted of people who usually share an office cracking open a beer and putting a record on fine.   If that was the case they would have said surely?

Sounds like the pre-Christmas afternoons I've had at work where someone cracks open a gift from a client and we finish the day working with a glass on the corner of the desk.  Not sure I'd call that a party.

It doesn't sound like that at all.  And if it was that, why didn't PMS just say so? 

Because if they say it was that everyone will say it was a party and that as they'd finished work they had no legitimate reason to still be at work and so on and so forth and, therefore, clearly a breach of the rules.

We did secret Santa last year albeit remotely with stuff delivered to your selected person.  Guess if we'd have been able to justify being in the office we'd have done it there instead.

hate to break it to you Mr Idealist, but no, governments in democratic systems are not really accountable for things that happened last year

sorry to disabuse u of ur optimism

No everything that anyone does that in reality isn't going to lead to super spreader event if find by me.

I have far more of an issue with my parents and their friends who are all vulnerable and spent their whole time sneaking round to lunch parties because everyone else is being "careful" in the sense that they've only been to lunch parties with six different groups of people this week who are also "careful".  I snort with laughter when I listen to my mum telling people she and my dad are clearly being careful and wearing masks in Waitrose.

I actually can't remember the rules last December but I do remember chinning a few in the office.

It wouldn't surprise me if Tories broke their own rules though.

The greater hypocrisy was agreeing that it was right to cancel Christmas only to then still have a couple of relatives to stay because they'd be lonely otherwise.  I know a few people who did that and ended up with 'rona as it turned out great-aunt Mary hadn't been careful and isn't lonely as she's often sneaking round to see her mates to keep up the bridge groups.

No everything that anyone does that in reality isn't going to lead to super spreader event if find by me.

 

This isn't the point you utter, utter cretin.  We're not discussing what the rules should be.  What we're actually discussing is incredibly simple: if you are literally making rules for other people that criminalise innocuous and harmless fun, it makes you a massive fvcking khunt if you yourself don't follow those rules.

Threep see above but I'm not being tribal here.  Can't get excited about a bunch of knackered civil servants doing something that's probably in a bit of a grey area in the midst of what was undoubtedly a nightmare period to work through.  I suspect it happened in many government departments.  Yes it's optically unwise but what fvck.

FAO The Sailo Save our Brave Boris Committee and his feathered side bitch 

From Kunesberg; 

a source who had attended the alleged gatherings on 18 December in No 10 told us there'd been "several dozen" people in attendance, with food, drink and even party games on offer, with the event, however it was described, going on past midnight.

does not seem to be people grafting and having a can at their desk 

Sails it’s morally repugnant that the rest of us had our Xmas completely cancelled - we had to self isolate along with the other 42 kids in nobs pre school. My parents were both alone. Xmas was completely cancelled. It was fvcking miserable.

 

and it didn’t need to be. And the jokers putting us through this making up the madness, were getting pissed at parties, giving phoney contracts to mates, shagging in the office etc.

Not for us roger. Nob hadn’t left the house for days or had any social interaction.

The older kids couldn’t come over

I love my husband and all our kids and we weren’t together and we were all really upset about it. 
 

 

Maybe that's where my parents went wrong.  When I was a kid I'd go days at a time without social interaction unless you count talking to the dog and the cat.

SummerSails02 Dec 21 11:50

Maybe that's where my parents went wrong.  When I was a kid I'd go days at a time without social interaction unless you count talking to the dog and the cat.

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I can get the rage on this.

Full facts, I am a capitalist which means I would generally be a bit of a soft tory or a blairite (old style, not populist type) simply for the tax breaks and personal freedom. Really hate well meaning tools so could never fit in with proper lefties. 

That said, corruption and hypocrasy are bad for business - smacking peoples liberty is only acceptable in an emergency where we are all in it together. you cant ban shit for the plebs and throw a party, its just not on. 

Nathaniel Tapley 22h

I'm struggling with this, chums. We were meant to see my sister-in-law last Christmas. We couldn't because of the restrictions. I never saw her again because she contracted COVID and died in January. Nothing to add, except that I'm struggling with this.

 

 

But I like the fact the Tories hate foreigners and poor people like me so it's fine, I'm just not that bothered

LIterally everyone i know said last Xmas was the best one ever, no parents or in laws causing stress. lovely family time

 

- we fkng well didn't. Kids absolutely gutted by the Bozo lurch to cancel Christmas and thus not to be with their elderly grandma and grandpa, and me too. Had to overnight assemble a Christmas in the wrong house, presents in the wrong place etc. People going through infinitely worse, no one died, we move on. But best ever? You must be joking. 

I'm a cynic so not at all surprised by Bozo antics, but that doesn't mean they don't stick in the craw. 

I had to leave presents on my parents doorstep and pick up our ones while everyone waved at each other through the window.

Bojo and chums were doing the conga with chums in no. 10

I think anyone who blithely asserts it was the "best ever" is as bad as fooking boris.

That said, I also think anyone who abandons their family because the government sez has only themselves to blame.

I didn't then and I wouldn't this year and if someone had done it to me I'd have written them out of the will.

Boris Johnson’s two most shameful lies just blew up in the most spectacular way

Video has emerged of the prime minister’s former spokesperson laughing and joking with government officials about that Christmas party Johnson still swears never happened. Meanwhile, a letter about dogs in Afghanistan has also proven something so contemptible it’s almost surreal

Boom. Boom. Two horrific blows, one after the other. Both on their own would be enough to knock out a man with even a nanogram of shame left in his body, though we shall doubtless see that Boris Johnson will carry on regardless.

Even for a liar of Boris Johnson’s prodigious industry, though certainly not talent, Tuesday was shaping up to be an extremely difficult day. Two epic lies had to be styled out.

The first had become increasingly difficult. There had been a full week of lies about the Downing Street Christmas Party, which was, apparently, “in line” with Covid regulations — but as this couldn’t possibly be even theoretically true, the party at which more than 50 people attended has now been upgraded to “never happened at all”.

The second is a much younger, fresher lie. This one is Boris Johnson maintaining it was “complete nonsense” that he had intervened to have Pen Farthing’s dogs and cats evacuated from Afghanistan, when actual Afghan humans, some of whom had fought with the British army, were abandoned, and one of whom, having been left behind to be murdered by the Taliban, drowned in the Channel two weeks ago.

Staff at Pen Farthing’s charity for rescue dogs have claimed, on the television, that Johnson personally intervened. A whistleblower at the Foreign Office said the same, in evidence given to parliament.

And then, in the early evening: Kiss Kiss. Bang Bang. First, an actual signed letter, from Boris Johnson’s own parliamentary private secretary, Trudy Harrison, emerges courtesy of LBC Radio. In this letter, Harrison writes personally to Pen Farthing, to let him know that he and his staff and his animals have all been cleared for evacuation.

If it’s “complete nonsense” that Johnson was involved, there is absolutely no credible explanation as to why his own parliamentary private secretary would be. Any such explanation would itself be complete nonsense.

And then, twenty minutes later: Wallop. You might recall that around £3m of public money was spent on a White House-style press briefing room that was never, in the end, used for press briefings. But it turns out they did have some rehearsals.

And ITV have got hold of some of the footage, specifically from 22nd December 2020, four days after the Christmas party that apparently never was. And there is Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s spokesperson at the time, being asked by the prime minister’s special advisor Ed Oldfield, who is pretending to be a journalist, about “reports of a Christmas party on Friday”.

Stratton’s response is one for the ages. Remember, this concerns a party that 50 people attended, that the actual prime minister is currently trying to pretend didn’t even happen. First she laughs. “I went home,” she says. Then she laughs some more. Then she laughs again and adds, “This is recorded!” Some people off-camera mutter about cheese and wine and whether cheese and wine is allowed. Someone shouts, “No!” They all laugh some more. Stratton then says, “This fictional party was a business meeting.” Then she laughs some more and adds that “it definitely was not socially distanced.”

ITV have also spoken to someone who as at the party that the government continues to pretend didn’t happen, who told them the following: “We all know someone who died from Covid and after seeing this all in the papers I couldn’t not say anything. I’m so angry about it all, the way it is being denied.”

And the response from 10 Downing Street, to all this? “There was no Christmas party. Covid rules have been followed at all times.”

They can surely not be stupid enough to expect anyone to believe this. There is, of course, a phrase, about the tangled web that must be woven by those who get too deep into the world of lies. But it’s not sufficient.

This government regularly gets compared to outrageous, corrupt, extreme regimes from around the world and around history. Such comparisons are usually far-fetched. But one wonders if they are any more. I cannot readily think of many a historical comparison: of a government maintaining a lie, in the face of certain evidence, on a subject so emotive. Especially when there is scarcely anyone in the country who doesn’t know someone who has died a lonely death, unable to be comforted by friends and family, while all their government can do is lie and laugh about it.

And this leaves precious little time for the other outrage, the Harrison letter. This letter was read out to head civil servant Dr Philip Barton at the Foreign Office, the person nominally in charge, alongside Dominic Raab, of the Kabul evacuation, by the MP Chris Bryant. He nodded, stared at the floor several times over, and said, “I didn’t know about the letter.” It hardly bears repeating that this letter concerns the evacuation of dogs ahead of people who risked their lives for a country that wasn’t even their own. It’s so contemptible it’s almost surreal.

It is often said that governments have the stench of death about them when their time is up. This one has stunk the place out from day one. It’s an active health hazard now, quite literally. There is no precedent for how things are meant to carry on like this.

I’m pretty tuglite about this but if it means that any kind of lockdown this Christmas is becoming increasingly unlikely due to Bojo having lost all credibility then I’m glad this has all come out.

“Mingling”. I remember a lot of hooha about people not being allowed to mingle on their daily exercise during lockdown. Or “minglin’” as Priti Patel put it.

All seems so ridiculous now, that and the police posting drone footage online of people walking their dog.

one of my super tory mates (supported johnson over hunt in the leadership because of brexit, still defends the covid balls up) says johnson will lose the next election if he’s not replaced

completely anecdotal of course but he has been right more often than i’d like in the recent past

She did an interview on the Today programme at the time where she said “minglin’” about twenty times. In hindsight I think the interviewer may have been deliberately asking the questions in such a way to get her to keep saying it.