No, it could just be that she played the part with real commitment (an early episode of Miami Vice springs to mind)

Hancock has resigned.

My god what else did the paper have on him!?!?

Which 7?

Has he left to spend more time with someone else's family?

I read it on one of the news sites but it was a 'live news' feed and it has gone off the bottom now.
Three of them were Gavin Williamson, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove, they have been ruled by the High Court as breaking the law during the pandemic response.

Speculation: A lot of people owe him for the over priced contracts he put their way. He may think resigning makes any scrutiny go away so he can sit back and let payback roll in.

Sunday times

Matt Hancock faces an investigation after using a personal email account instead of an official address during the pandemic in a breach of government guidelines

Probably the straw that was going to break his back.

Confirmed - Sajid Javid is the new Health Secretary

According to an unconfirmed report ;)

I think that those were all judicial review cases. The executive being held to account by the courts in this way is really just part of the usual process of government, even if this particular government regards it as unacceptable judicial meddling. I’m not sure if a minister has ever had to resign because of losing a judicial review.

For Boris to back Hancock, announcing that he “considered the matter closed” a day before the pressure caused Hancock to jump shows Boris to be weak, of poor judgement & out-of-touch.

Jonathan Pie skewers Matt Hancock:

"**** you, you nasty, snivelling, useless, lying little ****. Your mistakes have cost lives and now your marriage, and your apologies are meaningless."

https://youtu.be/NsyQ2Q3QMAw

Things are slowly starting to suggest that…

Apparently Matt Hancock has left his wife and three children now.

All I can see is Alan Partridge in the Travel Tavern.

It's obvious. Covid was a dead cat to distract from Hancock's affair.

How long was Johnson sitting on the knowledge?

If he didn't know at the time - that raises questions why the PM was unaware of compromising film footage of a Cabinet minister. If he did know - that raises questions over his judgement.

Matt Hancock and Gina Coladangelo are probably holed up in a Travel Lodge right now. Within a fortnight, they will discover they are now utterly bored with each other, now that the thrill of a secret affair is no longer there, with grapplings across the photocopier, steamy glances over the boardroom table and canoodling at the office door; and everybody knows about it, so is no longer thrilling. She will return to Oliver and he will seeing the kids at weekends with Martha making it as difficult as possible. What a swine, leaving that gorgeous dachsy.

I guess the question is whether the current crop are less law-breaky or whether there simply is no desire to prosecute. I fear it's the latter. :(

His what?

The department of health is to look into how footage from Matt Hancock's office was leaked, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has said.

Asked about the leak on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, Mr Lewis said: "The Department of Health will be investigating quite rightly to understand how this was able to happened."
"We have got to to concerned about the fact that someone was able to secure a recording from inside a government building," he added.
Replying to a question about the possibility of a general review into security cameras across government buildings, Mr Lewis said he was "sure that is something the team will be looking at".
"I take the view that everything you are saying or putting in writing will be reported somewhere."

Speaking on the same programme, Jeremy Hunt - Mr Hancock's predecessor as health secretary and now chairman of the Health and Social Care Select Committee - said there "absolutely" needed to be a review of security across Whitehall.
"It is completely unacceptable from a security point of view that minsters are big filmed from inside their own offices without their knowledge."
Asked if the leak was a breach of the Official Secrets Act and whether the police should be involved, Mr Hunt said "possibly" but added that whistleblowers should be protected.

Speaking to Sky News, former Labour cabinet minister Alan Johnson said: "I could never understand why there was a camera in the secretary of state's office.
"There was never a camera in my office when I was health secretary or in any of the other five cabinet positions."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57628523

While everyone is looking at the distraction of Hancock caught snogging, this also happened on Friday

Gove found guilty of awarding contracts to his mates.
Yesterday’s Court hearing https://goodlawproject.org/update/ye...court-hearing/

They are probably mortified that someone somewhere has a video of that time Miss Moneypenny took dictation and it ended in a frantic lovemaking session over the desk, or she disappeared under the desk...

Brandon Lewis put out by the Tories to spin the yarn on Marr and Sky says that In resigning, Matt Hancock has “put his family first”

He literally left his wife and children to shack up with his aide!

Nope, not a criminal prosecution, so “guilty” was not a possible result.

Exactly.

What organisation filmed it? Was it legal? Why were they filming it? How did it get to News Corp*. What other Cabinet offices are being filmed? What organisations have access to the footage? What other footage is there and who is sitting on it? If a media organisation has such footage, how many foreign intelligence services have similar footage for the Foreign Office and MOD for example?





*Known, of course, to have links to the institutionally-corrupt wing of the Met.

Meanwhile on the issue of national security:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57624942

I don’t remember any then-current cabinet members being convicted and imprisoned under Thatcher or Major.

:confused:

Can you?

Obviously not whilst he was a Cabinet minister, but Johnathan Aitkin springs to mind.

He was jailed for offences committed whilst he was a Cabinet minister

As far as I can recall there weren't any. But I'm still confused as to the relevance of your comment?

Yes, but not while he was a current cabinet minister, and not until over two years after the fall of the Major government.

Ah I think I see; I wasn't saying they had been convicted whilst ministers, but I can see how my wording was a tad ambiguous.

We don’t yet have the data to say that we’re currently doing better.

More to the point: the press get 'tip-offs' everyday with sordid details of XY or Z doing this that or the other, or covert papparazzi shots and videos. Nine out of ten are likely rejected as intruding on people's privacy or being of dubious source (however, who recalls that story of Daniella Westbrook seen on a 252 bus in Holloway with a fluffy white dog, chatting to a friend? We all knew it was to mock her nose, or lack thereof). So Hancock's snog took place 6 May 2021, supposedly and probably leaked by an employee. Why did Murdoch's SUN sit on it all this time? It was probably released to feed the public's interest in all things prurient and salacious - especially when it is a family-values-loving Tory - but justified as a prudish, 'in the public interest' as he's telling us to keep a distance and, um, it could have been a bomb, or Russian or Chinese agents...

More likely to mock the bus driver for getting completely lost on his way from Romford to Hornchurch.

I disagree. What News Corp did with this film footage is not that interesting. How they got hold of it is. And I am not sure why you're (again) mentioning salacious details in a prudish manner. One could have said that the Profumo affair involved salacious details.

Are you really more concerned with what News Corp did compared to the fact that there was covert filming of a Cabinet minister's office (so some of the most sensitive government areas, and that this was filming by an as yet unknown organisation that leaked to a media group with known links to corrupt police officers?


What other Cabinet ministers' officers are bugged by this organisation? When did the PM know about this bugging? Who else has access to this footage? What other organisations are doing similar?

I wouldn't at all be surprised if Cummings was somehow involved. He's been attacking Hancock pretty heavily of late, and since him releasing damaging texts and messages has produced no result, he stepped it up a bit.

Then again, he evidently hates the civil service with a passion, so I it's hard to imagine him having an inside source who could leak such a tape to him.

Has it been suggested that this was a covert recording rather than from a routine security camera?

Whoops! Correction: 253. Long time since I was in London.

Journalism is a traditional cover for intelligence work. I expect News International ran it past the security services before running the story. Sounds like they are satisfied it was a member of staff wanting to catch the pair out. Seems they have taken a video via a smart phone, rather than from the original link, to obscure being traced back.

:lolsign:

:bunpan

:dl:

Hey if you can't trust one of our largest "news" media groups who can you trust - there is no way News Corp would do anything dodgy!

Oh, you sweet, innocent child.

;)

Extended family?

Glad to have caused you hilarity. So what is your theory as to why the SUN sat on the story for seven weeks? How come it hasn't published the contents of the TOP CLASSIFIED Royal Navy dossier found at a bus stop, seeing as it has no scruples? That should tell you it checked its sources.

Hancock is slimier than the slimiest slug. Not only did he fail to offer his resignation immediately, he failed to return to his wife and family on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness. Instead, Hancock has defiantly tried to brazen it out. Ew, he is even worse than I thought. Before, I thought he was trying his best and lying through his teeth to motivate the country, rather than admit he didn't achieve what he claimed what he said he would achieve, now I cannot see anything redeemable about this man.

Well, maybe because the BBC have the 'dossier' and not the Sun.

Not me, but the BBC are still describing this as being about a kiss

Please, please don't make my sides hurt so much!

:lolsign:

:bunpan

:dl: :dl: