This is one of the things that really p*sses me off. So many soundbites and news headlines about whether it was a "party" or not. That's irrelevant, and I wish there were some journalists who would just cut to chase on this. At the time tier 3 restrictions were in place, social gatherings of people indoors (outside of support bubbles) were not permitted. You couldn't even meet more than 6 people outdoors FFS. So stop agonising over what word to call it - was it a social gathering of people beyond support bubbles? (Hint: yes).Sciolus wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 11:36 amDoes he not realise that a "gathering" is exactly what the regulations made illegal?El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:38 amYesterday, in response to Labour's urgent question, Paul Scully kept calling it a "gathering", not a party.
He was challenged about this today on LBC, and apparently it wasn't a party because a party must have balloons and there were no balloons:
Look, ‘party’ suggests, and you see some of the graphics that go around with some of the coverage here, with balloons and poppers and these kind of things. It suggests that there’s big invitations going out and lots of people coming in from elsewhere and those kind of things, so I think it’s right to be proportionate until we know the detail.
Are they really going to try and argue it was just "people at work" who happened to stay beyond midnight, drinking alcohol, giving secret Santa presents, eating nibbles and playing games? This shouldn't be hard to figure out, but journalists and commentators should focus on the very simple fundamentals - were the tier 3 restrictions broken or not?
And as for the police "not investigating potential covid breaches retrospectively". WTAF? Assuming they don't have a time machine to allow them to investigate future covid breaches, are they really saying they don't investigate covid breaches at all? People have already been investigated and prosecuted for private parties etc. So this is presumably just a word-salad smokescreen to try and put people off the scent. But it should be journalists who ask the very simple and direct questions on this stuff. It's not hard.
And lastly, the "we don't have any evidence" to investigate. Aside from CCTV cameras, I presume that people coming in and out of No 10 are recorded or logged in one form or another. It really can't be hard to figure out who was in the building at the time. Are the police saying they don't *want* to investigate and they don't *want* to collect evidence?