Boris Johnson called Treasury ‘the pro-death squad’, Covid inquiry told

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨shish_mish@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨unitedkingdom@feddit.uk⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/06/boris-johnson-called-treasury-pro-death-squad-during-pandemic-inquiry-told

ncumbent PM made joke about Rishi Sunak’s department because of its focus on lifting restrictions, according to diary entries

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Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If I accidentally killed someone and was remorseful about it, I could still be convicted of manslaughter. If I kill thousands and “joke” about it in a callous manner I can expect to get… what? A slap on the wrist?

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- HumanPenguin@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  If I accidentally killed someone and was remorseful about it, I could still be convicted of manslaughter.
  
  Only in fairly limited circumstances. Where your own choices lead to an accident you should have known was likely to lead to an accident.
  
  Being a dumb idiot with the brains of a rhubarb plant. Would be a valid defence. Even if folks were dumb enough to vote that plant for PM.
  
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  - Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    No rhubarb was harmed in the making of this post.
    
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0x815@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Boris Johnson asked if £37bn NHS Test and Trace was ‘achieving anything’

The former prime minister made the comment in handwritten notes on a report from the Cabinet Office’s Covid taskforce on 28 October 2020, which were today shown to the Covid inquiry.

Witness Edward Udny-Lister also claimed Johnson did make the infamous comment that he’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than enforce another lockdown. Dominic Cummings first alleged the then-PM had said this in 2021, but Johnson denied it.

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Treczoks@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The real UK pro-death sqad is the DWP.

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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

Boris Johnson referred to Rishi Sunak’s Treasury as “the pro-death squad” as he sought to gain support for a gradual end to Covid restrictions, the official inquiry into the pandemic has been told.

Johnson and others inside No 10 used language that “pejoratively termed as pro-death” the Treasury, then led by Sunak, because of its focus on lifting Covid measures, according to diary entries by Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser at the time.

Glassborow, who spent more than a decade as a civil servant in the Treasury and returned there after leaving No 10, also professed no knowledge of Johnson’s reported view that Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people”, another detail from Vallance’s diary that was revealed last week.

Subsequent evidence on Monday heard that advisers inside No 10 were increasingly worried during early 2020 that ministers were too slow to consider a lockdown, and then became alarmed that autumn that a second wave was not being treated seriously.

Ben Warner, a data scientist brought into No 10 by Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s then-chief adviser, told the inquiry he was worried about “a lack of scientific capability within the different teams and groups that I was working with”.

In evidence about decision-making at the start of the pandemic, the inquiry was shown pages from a report on Exercise Nimbus, a February 2020 theoretical planning operation about Covid, which was told that leaving the virus unchecked was “effectively rendering it a ‘survival of the fittest’ situation”.

The original article contains 630 words, the summary contains 251 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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