[satnav]

According to Tory MP Paul Bristow, Rwanda is a safe country because Arsenal have got Rwanda on the front of their shirts. I wonder if the government tried that defence in any of the legal challenges.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Can't wait for Wednesday...

[Andy McDandy]

Johnson's giving evidence. Well, sort of. Turns out he can't remember anything and as far as he was concerned everything was fine and dandy.

Guessing that will be his tactic - if only he'd known, but what can you say, just can't get the staff these days.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Grandstanding and obfuscation from the start.

Man's a cunt.

[Youngian]

Discussed the philosophical nature of WhatsApp and why’s it hyperbolic bantz. In answer to a question as to why his officials wrote that he and his government were all fucking useless.

[Abernathy]

I hear that the slippery cunt sneaked into the enquiry three hours early in order to avoid having to confront bereaved relatives. He'll be leaving via the back door for the same reasons.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I don't get all this 'we didn't know it was serious' bollocks. I was getting messages from Italian doctors in March 2020 that scared the bejasus out of me. And they weren't wrong.

[kreuzberger]

I was on a beach in Thailand in January and shitting bricks!!!

[Andy McDandy]

Throughout January and February 2020 I was doing training sessions on dementia to local groups. In every single one, people were asking about wearing masks, and should so many of us be in a small room. Late February, Widnes library (which I was manager of at the time) hosted a concert, and there were serious amounts of people asking if it was going ahead or not. End of February, I was told by friends who work for the NHS that a lockdown was coming and they were being told to prepare for one.

Nobody special, just average people. You don't need a weatherman etc.

[davidjay]

16 million people entered the UK between the start of 2020 and lockdown. Less than 300 were either tested or quarantined.

[Abernathy]

We have friends who live in Lipomo, in the north of Italy. In the early part of 2020, Tris was doing a fair bit of to and fro between Milan and Heathrow airports, as his Dad had just died and he had to get his house cleared and ready for sale. Covid in Italy was gathering in speed and force, and I remember him telling us of his astonishment that he was able to stroll off the plane at Heathrow and through immigration and customs without any checks, challenges or monitoring of any kind.

Thank the gods for the vaccine. Without it we really would be well and truly fucked .

[Malcolm Armsteen]

We got, literally, the last flight to the UK from San Francisco. When we arrived at Heathrow it was terrifying - no distancing, big crowds, no sanitising, no masks...

We went into voluntary lockdown as soon as we got back (acting on Italian advice) but it was some time before HMG made their minds up.

[Watchman]

They even knew in our local AgeUK shop, what was happening

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Should say that we were both recovering from our first dose of Covid - January 2020 - caught either from Chinese tourists at the place we volunteered or from family who had visited from Spain.

What was weird was that the official position was the we had no Covid in the UK but that there was a mysterious and very nasty type of flu starting to circulate. As we now know Covid had been present since the end of 2019 (sewage samples re-examined).

[Crabcakes]

Been at a work thing all day, so just catching up. Seems like Johnson has had a very bad day. Every lie about what happened and when has been immediately rebutted by an email, message or other document.

While I’m sure his missing WhatsApp’s would have been helpful, even on day 1 there seems to be more than enough here to destroy any excuse he comes up with. And to top it off, he’s so scared of having to deal with the consequences of his actions he turned up 3 hours early to dodge protesters and bereaved families.

He looks hounded and scared. Good.

[davidjay]

We had six weeks notice and 21 miles of water in our favour. One man's vanity, idleness and incompetence destroyed that advantage. He should be hounded until the day he dies.

[Andy McDandy]

Lie of the day IMO was that he wasn't on holiday during February 2020, nor was he working on his ghostwritten Shakespeare book. He claims he was in conversation with, oh, let's see, Trump and Xi. Like Trump's a reliable witness, and Xi even remembers him, let alone supplies an alibi.

[satnav]

I seem to remember that back in February 2020 there was some bad flooding in parts of Britain and Boris Johnson was nowhere to be seen. He was holed up at Chevening House.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... l-universe

John Crace on the same event witnessed by Quentin Letts.

Johnson looked amazed. He had no idea how so much had been leaked to friendly sources. It was completely baffling. Nothing to do with him. Maybe these political editors were telepathic. Nor did he have a clue why so many of his allies had been writing pieces trashing the inquiry in the past few days.

Johnson shrugged. He was devastated to have found that he had had the one phone on the entire planet from which it had been impossible to retrieve messages. And he had forgotten the password. 1234.

It was all the more frustrating because he had had so much fascinating tech training from Jennifer Arcuri. Most of it horizontal.

As ever, Johnson expected forgiveness to be extended without any real sense of contrition. What had been his biggest mistake? Easy. Not coordinating the messaging between England, Scotland and wherever. Wales and Northern Ireland were wherever apparently. Yup. Because that was the big question everyone wanted to ask.

Johnson had spent 10 days locked in with his legal team preparing his defence, yet time and again he was blindsided by the most obvious questions. Those legendary powers of concentration. Or maybe he assumed every lawyer was as rubbish as Suella Braverman.

Within minutes Johnson looked punch-drunk. Sweaty, pallid and shifty. Whatever else he has been doing in the last year, he hasn’t been getting in shape. Next he blamed the cabinet for the slowness to lock down. He would have done it much earlier. A lie. Keith pointed him to the evidence of previous witnesses who had said the cabinet was sidelined throughout

He is unfamiliar with a moral universe. All that ever mattered was his self-preservation. Hindsight was a foreign country. A place where he might be expected to be capable of self-reflection.

Biting stuff. Good piece by Dr Rachel Clarke too.

[Watchman]

All I have to say is; I hate the fucking cunt with all my being