cummings and goings and game theory .......

I always thought that, as with Rome, all roads lead to London.

But I guess like so many of Mr Cummings' radical departures we might say, all roads lead to Barnard Castle?

Apparently Mr Cummings enjoys 'game theory'.

According to Wikipedia:

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction among rational decision-makers.^[1] It has applications in all fields of social science, as well as in logic, systems science and computer science. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in which each participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by those of the other participants. Today, game theory applies to a wide range of behavioral relations, and is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals, and computers.

I guess if you undertake a hermeneutic on this quotation the first word that catches your eye is 'rational' in relation to decision makers.

I am fortunate that neither me or my partner have contacted the Virus, but one member of our family has, a health professional, she was isolated in an upstairs Tyneside Flat, with her husband and three young children for 14 days.

Now she is back at work and her husband also has returned to work as a teacher with responsibility for children of key workers.

When my wife Janet, who had MS and then developed Breast Cancer, on one occasion rang me at work in distress I took a taxi from central Birmingham back home, in other words I panicked.

So I have sympathy with anyone who hears a cry of distress from a partner and responds urgently.

Where the question of 'rationality' comes in is in what follows.

In my case it was a decision to leave my job in order to become a carer and that took some time to organise.

To abruptly, the next day, drive 246 miles without informing your employer seems to me to be both discourteous but also 'irrational' if not a straight forward case of Gross Misconduct.

A further example of a hermeneutic study might focus the words 'zero sum game' surely a decision to leave home, when the advice you have possibly written or advised on includes the stark, unarguable statement: 'Stay Home' must, when it becomes public, lead to anything but a zero sum game.

Indeed as has happened, many people feel let down, many people assume that the advice is now discredited and even more feel that it no longer  needs to be followed.

As the clergyman from Poole asked Mat Hancock at the recent briefing will all those people who have been fined for travelling have their penalties refunded?

So have Mr Cumming's and his families gains and losses, which include having his eyesight tested by driving 60 miles, having his childcare responsibilities taken up by his extended family and having his excuses approved and supported by Michael Gove been matched, exactly matched, precisely matched by the gains and losses experienced by the population at large.

I think hardly is the most generous and least offensive answer to my own question.

It is interesting to me that when I had issues first with a detached retina and then with a cataract the advice I was given was, 'DO NOT DRIVE'.

I was certainly discouraged from putting my wife and a four year old grandchild in the car and driving sixty miles to test how my sight was doing.

Apparently, and as I don't read the magazine in question, once edited by Boris Johnson, I can only quote what I have read in my newspaper Mr Cummings' wife wrote an article about their life in lockdown with the virus. Apparently the dates here raise further questions about the explanation given by Mr Cummings for his behaviour and there is also evidence to suggest that there was some form of redaction.

Mr Cummings in the Rose Garden of No 10, reminded me of the Principal of my theological college who on one occasion when I had breached the rules commented, as I was from Manchester he chose a Manchester landmark to illustrate his point, 'Smith if you fell off the top of Lewises into pile of manure, you'd still come up smelling of roses.

Apparently game theory is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals and computers. 

Or as Mr Cummings explained 'reasonable people might have questioned what I was doing but in fact what he did was reasonable and legal'

It is pretty clear to me that there is literally nothing logical about driving 246 miles when unwell especially with close family members living close by to your principal home.

Equally my four dogs occasionally appear to behave in a logical manner, but only when food is involved, at which point their logic entirely Pavlovian.

And following in the tradition of Hal, the computer in Space Odyssey, my computer frequently behaves in a manner that can be scarcely called 'logical' just as, another serial rule breaker, Jeremy Clarkson has observed if a car required you to press the off button to start it surely you would think it illogical. 

Maybe for Mr Cummings its not game theory that explains his behaviour but the fact that ultimately its all a game or as Tommy Edwards sang:

Many a tear has to fall but it's all in the game
All in the wonderful game that we know as love
You have words with him and your future's looking dim
But these things your hearts can rise above

Once in a while he won't call but it's all in the game