Alister Jack admits he deleted all of his WhatsApp, allegedly to free up storage on his mobile phone… He tells the UK Covid Inquiry: “I didn’t delete some of the messages, I deleted all of them.”

by CaptainCrash86

26 comments

  1. For the avoidance of doubt, this is just as bad as SNP politicians / civil servants doing the same, and should face the same consequences.

  2. For the avoidance of doubt. The excuse that his phone was too small is about as credible as Barnard Castle. Particularly with no policy in place as far as he is aware.

    But compared to not knowing how devolution works, misremembering legislation he claimed to have helped pass, dates, the furlough scheme, the restrictions in place the actions he claimed to have taken and his sneering contempt for democracy,. His phone bollocks was small fry.

    But at least that’s the end of the foaming at the mouth about the Scottish Government following policy and not lying about it One expects.

  3. Will. b. Write at least 3 articles on this subject over 3 days or just ignore it after Live feeds stops?

  4. “He (proudly) tells”

    They’re all scheming bastards

  5. Bastard. He had a duty to back everything up. Same as Sturgeon. 

    The Tories are as bad as the SNP on this.

  6. But that’s OK as he works for the England/UK government, right?

  7. As far as I understand it the messages across the board were routinely deleted because of data protection. So if you want to get angry at anyone surely it’s the civil servants / IT policy

  8. If they really wanted to, I’m 96.5% sure the police could retrieve them.

  9. Ah yes, those hundreds of bytes per message really put stress on a modern phone with hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

    Were they communicating by taking photos of each message?

  11. “to free up storage on his mobile phone” reminds me of the time that someone that I used to watch on utube years ago deleted msn messager to try and free up some hard disk space, ROTF

  12. They’ve all been told by legal people to get rid of any records that could come back and haunt them. It should be obvious that these conversations should be a matter for the public record.

    Your political persuasion doesn’t matter they’re all the same.

  13. I delete WhatsApps messages routinely. The disgraceful images and videos I receive quickly build up. I also don’t want that shit on my phone for longer than necessary. Once the chuckle has subsided those messages are gone.

    But I’m not a member of government. And I don’t conduct business via WhatsApp either.

  14. He deleted all his work WhatsApp and also some personal, family stuff.

    So, was he using a personal phone for government business, in breach of the rules, or a government phone for personal matters, in breach of the rules?

    Because he was clearly doing one or the other.

  15. Just had a look at how much space storage for whatsapp is taking up on my phone after around 5 years of not deleting anything, it is all of 100 megabytes.

  16. Then he should be held to account for it. They’ve no business deleting this stuff, they knew it would be needed later.

  17. These politicians have clearance. With clearance comes a commitment to transparency with the organisation you operate within. Especially when you have a relatively high level of clearance. Deleting not just some but all messages would generally be information that is required to be shared with said organisation, possibly needing approval before it can be done.

    So it would be reasonable to expect that Alister should have gone through the correct protocols in which everything checked out and the decision was approved. It would be just as reasonable to expect him to be held accountable if he had ignored strict communications protocol, especially in attempts to hide information.

    It’s no secret to all the politicians that delete information that they aren’t operating within protocol when they do so. So, it not crossing their minds is likely a massive lie. More on top is that deleting even thousands of messages would only free up enough space for a couple songs at best, poor excuse. Unless there was a significant amount of media being transferred, which I would think is even more privy to those that monitor security and sign off on communications decisions.

  18. So let’s see – the Scottish Govt deletes informal WhatsApp messages but sends backups to the Inquiry = wall to wall coverage, smears and innuendo

    Alistair Jack – who is our link to the UK Govt, who evidently politicised the pandemic in favour of the union – deletes all his WhatsApp messages without sending any backups to the Inquiry = little to no scrutiny, no accusations of cover up by the media

    If we’re going to throw the covid bereaved under the bus by making this inquiry about salacious gossip and potential cover ups, then at least treat all parties the same.

    Of course, we *could* be trying to learn lessons about the positives and negatives of how the pandemic was handled. We *could* analyse whether being in the union helped or hindered the pandemic response in any way (being able to close airports, for instance, would have been extremely helpful) but that would be way too dicey and would involve critical analysis, which is clearly a skill our media are lacking in.

  19. I’ve not heard of a phone running out of space since the dark days.

  21. There’s nothing alleged about it. I watched the inquiry. I’ve watched it for three weeks. He admitted under oath that he deleted all his WhatsApps because he had no space left on his phone. Lol.

  22. Because he couldn’t afford a new phone with more storage?

  23. They decided the punishment for deletion would be less than the punishment for the content of the messages.

    I

  25. I’ve had whatsapp for the better part of since the day it launched. I have had group chats from when I was a fanny sending 16,000 messages a day to pictures, videos, memes with several different groups, private convos, everything. I’ve been an extensive user.

    Not once, not fucking once have I deleted anything, and yet it’s all there.

  26. Because the gov’t couldn’t possibly have bought a few TBs of storage and backed up every MPs official phone messages, to free up all that space

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