Partygate

Surely it should be Garden Gate as some of them were in the garden and most of them don’t sound very party like

 

I by no means want to underestimate the seriousness of any parties in or outside No 10 but given the present situation in Europe I should imagine Vladimir Putin is quaking in his boots at the thought the UK standing up to him over any potential invasion of Ukraine.
By all means let's have an inquiry but the way the media, in particular the BBC is covering Birthdaygate and other parties when we could soon be at war Europe is quite ridiculous. Putin will be having a good laugh at our media's priorities.

 

I'm not too fused about what had been going on, I'm more cheesed off with the fact that if we as the general public did it we would have faced the law.

The piss up before Prince Philip's funeral was a couple of weeks people were told they couldn't see their own mothers on mothers day. (I personally ignored that and saw my mum as I knew the rules were bollocks, but if caught I would have been fined).

If I had to bury a family member and could only do so in a small group then I would be extremely pissed off.

Also, it's the blatant denial. If he had come clean and apologised from the start we wouldn't be seeing the shitshow we see today. It's clear he knew this was happening, you'd have to be a fool to think otherwise. It becomes ridiculous when you have the decorator in a the cabinet office when there is no good reason for her to be there.

 

And if your local police force follow the Mets example you could now get a fine as you have just admitted breaching the rules

 

They could do, or that breaking of the rules as per C Dick said earlier will probably not meet the threshold for action.

 

When they issue Fixed penalty fines do they make public details of those paid or not?

or is it classed as private and confidential?

 

No it's not. The rules were there to strictly prevent none work events taking place. I didn't make the rules up but if you are going to enforce the rules then, meeting in more than groups of six, going into someone else's house or holding a social event at work are all now under the same banner because even though it made little difference for the crossing the line from work to social as they were the same people, they put that line in to place.

They all make no sense because if you work with a group of people there is no extra danger having a beer with those people after you have worked with them, nor is there more danger of seeing one group of 7 people, that meeting two/three/four groups of 6 people in the same day, infact there is probably far less, but they were the rules set out. I didn't make the rules but that was the nonsense of them, so if you are putting your name to them then you need to observe them.

Seeing your mum or having a beer with work colleagues is fine to me, but if you put those rules into force to say you can't do that then you have to live with them. There are some Tories having a pop at Starmer for doing the same thing.

In theory my kids are in school all day with children they would usually have at a birthday party, so what difference would having a bouncy castle and sandwiches be to say having a piss up, DJ and breaking a swing?

 

The birthday cake in the office is the weakest and least worrying accusation of the all. The far bigger one which they deny but others confirm is the after hours gathering in the official residence which people seem to have overlooked.

The only question I would have about the cake scenario is why is an interior decorator wondering round the No10 offices in the cabinet room, which isn't a party issue but more of a security one.


One thing is for sure and a point I made from the start, Boris knew this was going on and instead of coming clean, apologising and putting it to bed, he has made it much much worse by moving his position on it and letting it snowball to this position.

We wait to see what the report holds.

 

The parties etc are only breaches of the covid regulations and while annoying they are not the reason Boris is in trouble, The accusation is that he either lied or misled parliament about them which is a breach of the ministerial code and a sacking or resigning event if proved true

 

It will end up being a discussion about the exact wording of what he said and what he was replying to. Did he organsie any parties , no. Did he attend any parties. Now that then becomes a question of defining a party. So when he said no was he misleading the House if his definition of a party does not agree with the opposition. Looking at most of the parties I would be gutted if I got an invite to a party and turned up and that was it, especially the birthday cake one.

 

“What I can tell the right hon and learned gentleman is that all guidance was followed completely in No 10.”

Does him living in No11 mean that if it is found there were gatherings in his residence held by him and his wife, that technically he hasn't lied because he said No10 and he lives in No11?

Not long now till the whole thing is out in the open and one way or another it is all put to bed.

 

The point about the birthday cake gathering is not about whether or not it meets some arbitrary definition of a 'party'. It's the juxtaposition with what was going on everywhere else in the country. People were trying to work from their kitchen tables with screaming toddlers round their ankles because nurseries were closed. Those office workers who had to attend in person were wearing masks, sanitising everything to within an inch of its life and keeping as much social distancing as their work tasks would allow. Choir practice, band rehearsals and gigs were all not happening because of the widely known scientific advice that singing was an activity that was particularly likely to transmit Covid. Funerals were being held with masks, restricted numbers and no singing allowed.

Yet here we have the PM's partner organising a gang of people in a room, mingling and singing Happy Birthday as though everything was tickety boo. It reeks of entitled public school types who believe that the rules they impose on the plebs don't apply to them.

So, no, it's not as serious as the invited basement rave-up with a DJ and suitcase full of booze. But it's yet one more indication of a government and a PM presiding over a 'one rule for you lot and another for us' culture, at the same time as they were chucking billions of pounds at their friends' start-up companies and ignoring existing public health experts.
It's the arrogant entitlement, hypocrisy and lies that stick in people's craw. Which is why two thirds of the electorate think that Johnson should resign.

 

If they claim that he lied to Parliament and he said No10 and the incident happened in No11 then technically he didn't lie. That is what I meant by it will end up picking through the exact details as it looks like it has been blown up about 'parties' when none of them sound very party like

 

Exactly we still got cards and stuff for peoples birthdays during lockdowns if we were in work when it was their boirthday