The Sin Bin • Re: More Tory Lies
Mild Rover wrote:
One curiosity is that I think that Dominic Cummings does understand those who have been left behind. What is less clear is whether he understands them like somebody understands a hammer, as tool that can help him get poop done (like a British Steve Bannon or Vladislav Surkov), or whether he might have some empathy. His quote about the Tory politicians not caring about ordinary people and the NHS offers hope (and about David Davis being thick as mince
)but why he thinks Johnson and Gove are any different or even better, remains a complete mystery to me.Have you watched the youtube vid of Cummings speech to the IPPR in 2014, called 'the Hollow Men'. It's over an hour long but only about 40 mins is his speech, the rest is questions and answers. He comes across better than I expected from what I'd heard about him. He's definitely not a ranting ideologue, although there is something dangerous about a man who is completely convinced in his own genius.
He's definitely not a loyalist Tory, he's not even a Conservative member. He was scathing about the lack of ability of the Conservative Ministers under Cameron and as well as giving a list of things 'the left' doesn't understand, he gave a similar one of things 'the right' doesn't understand, starting with bloated salaries at the top of the private sector and the way the rich get round paying taxes. Most of his ideas around changing the skills base for those in government - more towards understanding statistics, data, how to do models effectively, and taking a scientific approach to policy problems, rather than the approach of rewarding PPE or arts grads who are good at networking, blagging it and 'playing the system', seemed sensible to me. This was before the Brexit referendum so he didn't talk about the EU much, he wasn't going on about deregulation or culture wars, his main goal seemed to be that the UK should become the 'nursery of science' for the world.
Statistics: Posted by sally cinnamon — Mon Dec 23, 2019 4:32 pm