Letters: Shame on the mob hurling abuse at Dominic Cummings for trying to keep a little boy safe
SIR – How heartless this country has become when Dominic Cummings’s only “crime” was having to make a speedy decision under frightening circumstances. Shame on the hysterical media and the appalling mob hurling abuse at a parent desperate to keep safe a little boy.
Diane Choyce
London W2
SIR – After listening to Dominic Cummings explaining why he acted as he did, I think he behaved in a very reasonable way in the circumstances.
Some of the media have been out to get him and thought this time they had succeeded. He should carry on; he’s doing a great job.
Anne Robson
Midhurst, West Sussex
SIR – If Dominic Cummings was a man of principle he’d admit his mistake and resign, and not place Boris Johnson in an impossible position.
There are far more important issues to resolve than wasting time on Mr Cummings.
Helen Penney
Longborough, Gloucestershire
SIR – Boris Johnson’s decision to back Dominic Cummings will come back to haunt him, and may cost him the next election. He has certainly lost my vote.
How can the electorate henceforward trust a PM who indulges in such cronyism, while it is asked to continue to obey the lockdown rules strictly?
Kim Potter
Lambourn, Berkshire
SIR – Refusal to remove an unpopular favourite has been the downfall of a number of rulers in history. And this one isn’t even pretty.
Jean White
Wythall, Worcestershire
SIR – Do disgruntled Tory MPs really believe that Dominic Cummings is the target, when it’s so obviously the Prime Minister?
H David Hicks
Hythe, Kent
SIR – The sanctimonious humbug towards Dominic Cummings has zero to do with health concerns, zero to do with his position in government and everything to do with revenge.
The Guardian and Mirror have long stoked hatred towards the mastermind of the successful Leave campaign and the supposedly “impossible” Tory clean sweep in Labour’s northern heartlands at the Christmas general election. They will never be happy until Cummings is burned as a witch.
The Covid-19 horror encapsulates Britain’s love affair for mawkish sentimentalism and hypocrisy. Mr Cummings’s real crime is proving he’s human after all.
Mark Boyle
Johnstone, Renfrewshire
SIR – The pack of journalists crowding round Dominic Cummings on Sunday did not appear to be following social distancing.
Is it one rule for members of the public and one rule for those journalists?
Jan Thompson
Winterborne St Martin, Dorset
SIR – The BBC, introducing Dominic Cummings’s statement yesterday, reported that the Durham police were investigating whether he had “breached the guidelines”. The press questions harped on the same point.
Perhaps they and others hounding Mr Cummings would actually care to read the law on restrictions on movement (as referred to by the Rev His Honour Peter Morrell, Letters, May 25) and understand that Mr Cummings had “reasonable excuse” for the journeys he made.
It is worth noting that part of that reasonable excuse involves the despicable pressure on him and his family in their own home from harassment outside.
Michael Staples
Seaford, East Sussex
SIR – Section 6 of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 prevents people from leaving home without a reasonable excuse.
It does not define what constitutes a reasonable excuse; it merely lists some reasons that would not be unreasonable.
Leaving your home to care for your family is clearly reasonable.
Patrick Nicholls
Hemyock, Devon
SIR – Sir Keir Starmer has said that he would have sacked Dominic Cummings if he was prime minister. Why, then, did Sir Keir give Stephen Kinnock a shadow minister’s job shortly after he had been rebuked by South Wales Police for breaching lockdown rules?
Brian Armstrong
North Shields
SIR – In our health and economic crisis, political point-scoring and the blame game are now beginning to undermine the effort to rid ourselves of this dreadful disease.
John Knowles
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
Distancing from China
SIR – Charles Moore is right: the United Kingdom needs to review its relationship with China.
It has an unhealthy dependence on Chinese products. Reshoring manufacturing would benefit the economy, shorten the supply chain and cut carbon emissions.
It’s clear the Covid-19 pandemic will change businesses and is already resulting in redundancies. However, we should take heart from the early Thatcher years, when unemployment rose rapidly as inefficient businesses closed.
As a result, a new wave of entrepreneurs was unleashed as the number of new businesses registered for VAT rose from 158,000 in 1980 to 255,000 in 1989; the surplus of new businesses over those deregistering rose from 16,000 to 66,000. In addition, over roughly the same period the self-employed increased by 64 per cent from two million to 3.3 million.
With suitable fiscal incentives, coupled with our imminent exit from the EU into the wide open waters of international trade, we could turn this crisis into a real opportunity for the British economy.
Sir Gerald Howarth
Chelsworth, Suffolk
New face of security
SIR – I heard a BBC interview with John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow, on changes to improve passenger safety.
Apparently, to reduce our need to touch anything, we should expect an increase in facial-recognition technology. He also said that passengers will be wearing face masks.
Charles Bentley
Bristol
Reopening churches
SIR – As a church warden of a village church, I heartily agree with Michael Dugdale (Letters, May 25). Our small congregation could easily socially distance during services.
I feel Church leaders have badly let down their congregations and clergy in not promoting the positive aspects of worship in church buildings, in numbers allowing social distancing. Parishioners ask me weekly when we will be allowed to return.
I fear that many churches with small congregations may not be financially able to reopen after the lockdown ends.
Sue Dykes
Marple, Cheshire
SIR – A village church in Kent has stayed open throughout this epidemic. I have visited it six times and only once met another visitor.
Richard Beaugie
Ashford, Kent
Play up, play up
SIR – Michael Vaughan (“Five ways cricket must change after the worst of the crisis is over,”) says that too much cricket is played.
In 1959 Essex played 93 days of cricket in four months (May-August) – 28 county championship matches, two university and one tourist. That’s an average of 23 days’ cricket a month.
Nowadays the number of days of cricket is actually the same (93), spread over six months (April-September): an average of 15 days a month.
Since Michael Vaughan’s proposals would mean far less cricket for members to watch, what reduction in membership fees does he suggest?
John Lester
Romford, Essex
Patients left with terrible toothache
SIR – Where is the NHS duty of care to its dental patients? They are being left in agony, or worse resorting to do-it-yourself dentistry. Ireland has opened up its dental surgeries, as has Germany.
Lockdown since March has been miserable, but lockdown with excruciating toothache is a totally depressing existence.
Frances Jones
Liphook, Hampshire
SIR – Some dental practices have PPE and safe protocols and are ready to open, but this is now being prevented because NHS England and the Office of the Chief Dental Officer have advised that all routine dentistry should cease. Urgent treatment is only to be provided in dental care “hubs”. Unfortunately these work by impenetrable triage and really only offer tooth extraction.
Those with severe toothache or lost fillings and crowns are being left untreated or encouraged to medicate with analgesics.
We badly need our dentists to return to work.
Dr Diana Samways
Haslemere, Surrey
SIR – Toothache is said to be the next worst pain to heart attack, but people don’t die of it. It seems to have been calculated that the fatality risk to dental staff treating multiple potential Covid-19 carriers, despite all due precautions, outweighs the fatality risk to toothache sufferers.
David Berry
General Dental Practitioner
London SW20
Schoolchildren in bubbles face an alien regime
SIR – At the end of last week we received guidance from our local village primary school as to the measures being put in place for children to return to school on June 1.
The school is only able to accommodate the return of Year 6. The reason is abundantly clear when you read all the measures. The letter we received was five pages long.
The children will be split into bubbles of 12 pupils and not allowed to mix with other pupils. They will have separate toilets, classrooms and outside space (in a marquee).
There will be no tables. No toys or resources. Reading books and other items will be quarantined for a week once used by one pupil.
This is not life at school as our children know it. In the week before schools closed, none of these measures were in place. There was extra hand washing but not much else. Understandably the world has changed since then, but to this degree?
It is hard to understand where all these rules have come from. Is it the Government or the unions, or a mixture of both?
I was expecting smaller class sizes, perhaps shorter days or weeks. But this? It is prison camp, not school.
Laura Rogers
Kemsing, Kent
SIR – Has there been a case of Covid transmission between the child of a key worker sent to school and one of their teachers?
Nichola MacDuff
Wolverhampton
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