Barney's fifteen minutes of fame
May. 26th, 2020 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustPartridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English includes in the explanation of 'having a barney' a related expression:
which seems too good to be true, but appears to be genuine.
It has been interesting to see County Durham featuring in the news, with little maps of England showing London and Durham and a line between them marked 264 miles (I think) and gradually identifying 'a market town 30 miles from Durham' ("23!" saysdurham_rambler) as Barnard Castle (which the BBC is pronouncing 'BarNARD Cadtle', presumably not having heard the story of Matty Groves and Lord Barnard's wife).
As so often, being that much closer to a news story makes it more puzzling, not less. So I don't have any answers on this subject, just more questions. The big one, I think, is why we are discussing whether the Cummings family's trip to Durham is compatible with the rules of lockdown when actually, since one of the family was already displaying symptoms, they should not simply have been in lockdown but in self-osilation? The nearest the press seem to have come to asking this was Laura Kuenssberg on last night's ten o'clock news, suggesting that perhaps Dominic Cummings should have gone straight into self-isolation at home, instead of driving 250 miles first. As if the offense, if any, was not in breaking isolation, but simply delaying it; (as if you're not infectious until you have started to isolate).
But he had no choice, you see, because his wife was ill, and he might havehad to look after his son himself fallen ill himself, and then who would have taken care of the child? The family had no friends in London, it seems, and no support from social services or professional network (and yes, I can believe that this might be the case). So he threw everyone into the car, and drove straight to Durham. durham_rambler, who is familiar with the limitations of the male bladder, is impressed that they got all the way without stopping, especially with a four-year old on board; I am just relieved that they got here - and back again - without an accident, although Dominic Cummings was incubating what Mary Wakefield describes as quite an acute case of the disease. Fortunately, she seems to have found the drive therapeutic, so that when he took to his bed, she was able to look after the family. Despite the severity of his illness, by the end of their second week in Durham, he felt well enough to drive home - but just to be certain, he first took a short test drive. As someone who grew up locally, he might have found some quiet back roads for this experiment, but chose instead to visit Barnard Castle on Easter Sunday: it's not as if he had any reason to hide himself, is it? Oh, wait ...
Am I accusing Dominic Cummings of lying? Not quite. I bear in mind that he is the great communicator, the architect of the Brexit campaign, and that you don't need to lie to people in order to mislead them, sometimes half-truths, misrepresentations and selective omissions will do the job just as well. The Guardian's account of the Rose Garden press conference includes this 'explanation':
You or I might have concluded that if we couldn't publish a truthful account without giving away information we preferred to keep secret, well, there was no need to publish anything at all. But (as someone on my reading list quotes Ian Dury,in a locked post) "There ain't half been some clever bastards".
Which brings me to the other big question, do I think Dominic Cummings ought to resign? When I started writing this, I thought I didn't have an opinion on that one: or rather, that my opinion was and is that the post of Special Advisor is an anomaly and an abomination, that it is not in the public interest and should be abolished. Don't just sack Dominic Cummings, sack the lot of them. But the more I consider Cummings' performance, the more I think that he ought to be sacked, not for any of the many ways in which I regard his influence as harmful, but because he is letting his ego get in the way of his job. When the backroom boy becomes the front page story, when the Prome Minister has to squander his own political capital to defend his advisor, something has gone badly wrong. And the thing that has gone wrong is the public presentation of the situation, which is supposed to be Dominic's area of expertise. If I may offer a word of advice, Mr Cummings, this is how a master of communications handles this sort of situation.
That's not quite all. At some point in all this, Durham Constabulary spoke to Mr Cummings senior: he contacted them, apparently, and they gave advice about security. THey don't seem to have said anything about lockdown regulations and travel and suchlike, and they have quite rightly treated the whole thing as confidential - but ih, I would love to know what was (or wasn't) said!
cf. '"come! come! that's Barney Castle!" ... an expression often uttered when a person is heard making a bad excuse in a still worse cause', recorded in the 'Denham Tracts,' 1846-59
which seems too good to be true, but appears to be genuine.
It has been interesting to see County Durham featuring in the news, with little maps of England showing London and Durham and a line between them marked 264 miles (I think) and gradually identifying 'a market town 30 miles from Durham' ("23!" says
durham_rambler) as Barnard Castle (which the BBC is pronouncing 'BarNARD Cadtle', presumably not having heard the story of Matty Groves and Lord Barnard's wife).As so often, being that much closer to a news story makes it more puzzling, not less. So I don't have any answers on this subject, just more questions. The big one, I think, is why we are discussing whether the Cummings family's trip to Durham is compatible with the rules of lockdown when actually, since one of the family was already displaying symptoms, they should not simply have been in lockdown but in self-osilation? The nearest the press seem to have come to asking this was Laura Kuenssberg on last night's ten o'clock news, suggesting that perhaps Dominic Cummings should have gone straight into self-isolation at home, instead of driving 250 miles first. As if the offense, if any, was not in breaking isolation, but simply delaying it; (as if you're not infectious until you have started to isolate).
But he had no choice, you see, because his wife was ill, and he might have
durham_rambler, who is familiar with the limitations of the male bladder, is impressed that they got all the way without stopping, especially with a four-year old on board; I am just relieved that they got here - and back again - without an accident, although Dominic Cummings was incubating what Mary Wakefield describes as quite an acute case of the disease. Fortunately, she seems to have found the drive therapeutic, so that when he took to his bed, she was able to look after the family. Despite the severity of his illness, by the end of their second week in Durham, he felt well enough to drive home - but just to be certain, he first took a short test drive. As someone who grew up locally, he might have found some quiet back roads for this experiment, but chose instead to visit Barnard Castle on Easter Sunday: it's not as if he had any reason to hide himself, is it? Oh, wait ...Am I accusing Dominic Cummings of lying? Not quite. I bear in mind that he is the great communicator, the architect of the Brexit campaign, and that you don't need to lie to people in order to mislead them, sometimes half-truths, misrepresentations and selective omissions will do the job just as well. The Guardian's account of the Rose Garden press conference includes this 'explanation':
He said the trip to Durham was not mentioned in articles for the Spectator written by him and his wife about their lockdown experience because he was worried about his security.
You or I might have concluded that if we couldn't publish a truthful account without giving away information we preferred to keep secret, well, there was no need to publish anything at all. But (as someone on my reading list quotes Ian Dury,in a locked post) "There ain't half been some clever bastards".
Which brings me to the other big question, do I think Dominic Cummings ought to resign? When I started writing this, I thought I didn't have an opinion on that one: or rather, that my opinion was and is that the post of Special Advisor is an anomaly and an abomination, that it is not in the public interest and should be abolished. Don't just sack Dominic Cummings, sack the lot of them. But the more I consider Cummings' performance, the more I think that he ought to be sacked, not for any of the many ways in which I regard his influence as harmful, but because he is letting his ego get in the way of his job. When the backroom boy becomes the front page story, when the Prome Minister has to squander his own political capital to defend his advisor, something has gone badly wrong. And the thing that has gone wrong is the public presentation of the situation, which is supposed to be Dominic's area of expertise. If I may offer a word of advice, Mr Cummings, this is how a master of communications handles this sort of situation.
That's not quite all. At some point in all this, Durham Constabulary spoke to Mr Cummings senior: he contacted them, apparently, and they gave advice about security. THey don't seem to have said anything about lockdown regulations and travel and suchlike, and they have quite rightly treated the whole thing as confidential - but ih, I would love to know what was (or wasn't) said!
