Inside the mind of Dominic Cummings

[SydneyRover]

Collateral damage, you may be hearing this term quite a bit over this parliamentary period, my question to Cumings would be 'what do you really think of Johnson?'


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives

[BillyStubbsTears]

Excellent article, that.

Cummings is undoubtedly highly intelligent and right about the need for radical change in the civil service.

But he's a zealot, and zealots scare the hell out of me, especially zealots with power. He is utterly convinced that he's the brightest person in Govt and he has disdain for people around him. Many years ago, I used to work for someone like that. It's great when you're right, but you have to be right every single time, including having the ability to see how your decisions are going to turn out in complex situations in the future. In the case of my old boss, a set of decisions he made where he totally rode roughshod over rules he didn't think should apply led to a major disaster when events conspired that he hadn't foreseen. Turned out he wasn't omnipotent after all. The rules were there precisely to keep in check people like him.

In the case of Cummings, the potential damage he will (not "can","will") do when he turns out not to be all-seeing is terrifying. The writer of that piece gets it bang on with this

" Great leaders, revolutionaries, “men of action” and over-confident mavericks of all types always want to sweep the law aside, seeing only its negative character as a slow-moving body of outdated constraints on freedom of action – but that, of course, suggests why it is so precious. There’s a fine exchange in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons between Sir Thomas More, the lord chancellor who was to be executed for his opposition to Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and his earnest son-in-law, William Roper, in which Roper says he would cut down every law in England to get after the Devil, and More replies: “Oh? And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

"More’s point, of course, is that if, when we have the power, we impatiently strike down all the laws that stand in our way, we shall have no protections to turn to when power is in the hands of others. Cummings writes from the perspective of someone who’s in a hurry to get the thing done, never from the perspective of the judge who has been schooled to reflect on the potentially damaging consequences in the future of licensing this particular action in the present."

I hope there are very senior people in Govt with plans to keep Cummings under control.

[SydneyRover]

Yep we have already seen the attempt to brush parliament aside and now the johnson/cummings joint ticket is threatening no-deal again ................ if we don't get what we want we'll stab ourselves in the eyes.

[Dagenham Rover]

a set of decisions he made where he totally rode roughshod over rules he didn't think should apply

Hmnn we have some "managers" based in what is now a European country but non EU  They try to make much the same sort of decisions totally ignoring UK/EU law They usually get pulled straight away but occasionally they try to force people into accepting what they say  Suffice to say as my contract is subject to some rules with regard to disability's and is agreed between HR (which is in this country) and the Company Doctors they got pretty short shrift from me,  however I do know the person involved pushed his luck and got the in's and outs from HR   He got short changed again   I'm left alone he doesnt try to change anything