Thread by @uk_domain_names

BJ: "On that matter [Cummings] it's been going on, in the media, for several days now."

Opening sentence brings in the media.

He's already been warned the first 20 minutes would be about Cummings, and yet he has immediately refused to answer questions about him!

BJ: "Quite frankly, I'm not sure that an enquiry right now is a good use of time. We're working flat out on the coronavirus."

And yet the gigantic distraction of Brexit's ok?!

BJ: "What we need to do is move on to how we're going to sort out the coronavirus. We have a plan. It's working."

Full on campaign bluster mode.

BJ: "A lot of what was written and said over Saturday and Sunday with respect to my advisor was false."

Then goes on to accuse others of making "party political points".

This is dire dire dire dire dire.

The word "shame" isn't in Boris Johnson's dictionary.

BJ: "It suits separatists - those with an agenda to break up the UK - to play up differences."

Full-on attack mode.

Running down the clock, very blatantly.

BJ: "Yes, OK, I saw the evidence [about Cummings]"

Then wiffles and waffles when he's asked to make it public. It's like a kid saying "of course I did the homework" when they didn't.

He is in hyper-weasel mode. This is worse, much worse, than the other night.

BJ: "I really think what [people want] is to focus on what they need, rather than a political ding-dong about what one adviser may or may not have done."

BJ: "I don't actually read the scientific papers, but what I do get is the digest from SAGE. They give me the cream of their advice."

This is absurd because the hand-picked Chair keeps shutting down enquiries.

BJ (on track-and-trace warnings): "We will be asking people to stay at home. If they don't follow that advice, we will be considering what sanctions may be necessary."

So it's not a law, it's fluff.

Why would ANYONE install the app the way Boris Johnson's describing things?!

BJ: "Unfortunately we didn't the capacity. We didn't have the enzymes. We didn't have the test kits. Nor did we have the experience to mount the sort of operation that was [rolled out] in other countries."

BJ just claimed that he got no advice that suggested there was a risk of spreading the virus from hospitals into care homes.

He's now lying about the release regime (which changed mid-April).

Listening to Jeremy Hunt, I find myself wistful for what might have been had the Tory leadership challenge gone very differently.

He's ineffectual, but he doesn't seem out and out murderous like BJ.

BJ: "We were seeing outbreak after outbreak, because staff were moving from one care home to another."

I wonder if he realises how much ammunition he's giving an inquiry?

BJ's now blaming problems in unnamed labs ("I'm not going to name them") for delays in testing.

BJ keeps answering questions as if he's not the one in charge.

Obvious jokes about Cummings aside, it's a serious point. He *is* in charge.

Yet everything he says sounds like he has little control over the situation.

BJ: "We are relying on peoples' public-spiritedness, on their willingness to beat the disease."

(Asked why there's no compulsion for people to provide a list of contacts for track-and trace.)

Doesn't work on scale of entire population, especially after you anger most of them!

BJ better not play poker! He has a tell the size of the Grand Canyon: "that's a very good question". Means there's a deflection coming rather than an answer.

BJ: "Schools will be safe provided EVERYBODY remembers the guidelines."

Wow! He's just blame-shifted onto everyone in the UK.

BJ didn't even know that a "no recourse to public funds" condition can be attached to leave to remain.

Seems completely floored by the concept, which has been talked about for ever and ever.

BJ's now got a bad cough.

He looks really quite ill.

It's possible it's completely real.

BJ: "I'm pleased, er, I think your question, Caroline, is, er."

Somebody needs to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL - he's got stuck!

BJ's accidentally admitting that he's taken no advice of any kind about the disproportionate impact of lockdown easing measures on women because of childcare requirements.

BJ is lying by claiming that the UK's furlough scheme is the most generous in the world.

Plenty of other countries offered help across the board, not patchwork style with exceptions and gaps all over the place.

BJ: "I didn't say there'd been enough (female voices in the decision making process. I just said there'd been a lot."

So he feels there are "a lot", but also not enough? That sounds highly sexist.

BJ keeps glancing off camera in a very, very strange way. I wonder if there's someone making throat-chopping motions at him just out of camera range whenever he strays onto "dangerous" ground.

BJ: "We will deliver 40 new hospitals" [kicks into stump speech, with suddenly renewed vigour]

BJ: "Don't forget that self-employed people already have access to bounce-back loans."

Not true of many of them.

BJ (asked why quarantine at ports wasn't introduced in March): "The scientific advice was that it would have made vanishingly little difference to the arrival of the epidemic."

In other words, they'd messed things up so badly we were doomed either way.

BJ (asked about what impediment stands in the way of an "air bridge" scheme): "We'll have to have evidence that other countries are in at least a good a position as we are."

But we have one of the WORST infection rates in the world right now?!

BJ: "I was looking back at my notes for early March. We were terrified that we'd run out of ventilators, that the NHS would collapse."

Interesting, because that was around the time he was shaking hands with everyone and saying there was no real danger.

I'm still listening, but there's been zero info in the last 5-10 minutes.

Chair did an appalling job. Tried his utmost to undermine the tricker questions.

The automated "This meeting has ended" announcement had more informational value than anything Boris Johnson said in winding up.

Pathetic. Just pathetic. That's 3 outings in 4 days in which Boris Johnson has underperformed an amoeba.