love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

Kids, the important thing here is that the status quo doesn't die. Everything else is collateral

Hey do you remember during the election campaign when that guy had the temerity to confront Boris Johnson about the state of the NHS and our most prominent political journalist was all "ah what do you expect he's a Labour supporter" handwavey? And when that guy shouted at Matt Hancock outside a hospital and they amplified confected a story about a physical assault?

Is it possible that a) maybe those guys had a point and b) that our most prominent political journalists might have been unable to see the real story that was staring them in the face?

I wish to like and retweet this

perhaps I could print it on a t-shirt and wear it forcibly attach it to someone more persuasively attractive to wear around town. forcible attachment not social distancing-compliant though

There was also that other guy who presented evidence of the government’s designs against the nhs and was negged by the same lickspittle journalists

He at least was an elected representative, negging and smearing members of the public for pointing out glaring flaws in our creaking public infrastructure is a different thing entirely.

Still, it's not as if thousands of lives are at stake or anything.

got my COVID-19 operational planning updates from both farrow & ball and screwfix so I'm feeling a lot calmer now

windrush report out today. it's a good month to bury bad news.

in my local Co-op all the milk, bread and potatoes were wiped out though I managed to get onions, cheap bottle of malbec and long life cream. I heard a macabre convo going on behind me in the queue. Bloke with local council shirt on was loudly boasting how he now has Key Worker status and added : they've moved me from cutting hedges now, they need me to dig some graves.

Priti Patel "I'm a bit sorry.."

I was out earlier, the local corner shop was rammed and there was a 'only 2 customers at a time' notice on the Pharmacy. The local Costcutters that no-one ever goes to remains a goldmine, several of those enormous bags of rice in.

And just home from picking up the weekly vegetable bag from Community Farmers, on the way surveyed the absence of stuff in the four local Sainsburys - the shelves is the big ones were at least 50% empty, the smaller were doing better, and the other corner store I dropped by on the way back was pretty much full. I'm not sure whether this state of affairs will continue - the big ones are possibly only getting raided because it's where people go to buy the big shop.

For my sins I am watching the zero-audience QT because I finished the dishes but I note that whenever a Tory says the Opposition makes ‘a very powerful point’ that is our signal to (a) know that the square root of fuck all will come of it and (b) DRINK.

News night pulling no punches on Bojo’s floppy routine

NEW: the Thursday 19 March update of our coronavirus mortality trajectories tracker

• Italy now has more Covid-19 deaths than China’s total
• UK remains on a steeper mortality curve than Italy, while Britain remains far from lockdown

Live version here: https://t.co/VcSZISFxzF pic.twitter.com/QvByzSj6QX

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 19, 2020

I don't believe China's figures but yes.

I don't believe the UK figures either - the number of cases is surely way more than is reported.

Anecdotally, it seems likely that there is at least a 24-48 hour lag in a lot of the confirmed cases being reported. The lack of testing also contributes to low official numbers overall. Whether that’s also true of the death statistics, idk.

Whitehall sources say most shops could close and transport could be restricted to key workers in London by the weekend under plans being considered in Government

— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) March 18, 2020

The strategy of leaking stuff like this to the press as a trial balloon remains completely abhorrent.

yeah it really is awful. that combined with the drip drip of support measures, rather than a macron “no business big or small will be allowed to go under” to allow them to continue to pay staff regardless, as well as immediate payment measures for the gig economy and people who have already been laid off, produces horribly fluid uncertainty.

All it does is create panic and confusion.

One of the many things that makes Johnson an almost uniquely poorly suited PM to this current moment is that he can't resist using colourful language that sticks in people's minds and is going to still be there in three weeks' time. How is 'send the virus packing' going to look when the death toll spikes, or if this isn't under control by the middle of the summer?

The alternative is that this isn't a strategy at all and they just haven't got their shit even remotely together and are neither competent nor experienced enough to do so.

I don't know what message '70+ people to be cocooned', 'pubs to be shut', 'London to be locked down' etc, etc and then not following through with any of it, sends other than 'we've looked at the risks and decided that it's not as serious as it would need to be to take those measures so go about your business'.

Seems to me that the constant drip drip and then walking back is pushing people out panic buying, leaving London to go to their families before it’s locked down and into pubs before they close.

That’s what happened in Italy, right - it leaked that a lockdown of the north was coming and a bunch of infected people decided to get out? Leaking this stuff deliberately is just guaranteeing that happens here.

pretty much all my work colleagues have now left london and when they ask where I am they look a little bit uncomfortable with my reply

no longer feeling so smug about moving to zone 1

Every time I read about the number of young people still going to pubs I think 'this is proof the Tories are going to continue winning elections forever'.

yeah it really is awful. that combined with the drip drip of support measures, rather than a macron “no business big or small will be allowed to go under” to allow them to continue to pay staff regardless, as well as immediate payment measures for the gig economy and people who have already been laid off, produces horribly fluid uncertainty.

― Fizzles, Friday, March 20, 2020 9:23 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fizzles otm. I don't get why the UK gov hasn't come out guns blazing. Macron, and over here the Dutch, have done that. No business will go under, they've basically written a blank cheque for business (not a dumb cheque like US that says "here's $1000 now fuck off and g/l with yr medical bills") to be able to let people keep their job and income. My business will see three people sent away on leave for half of their hours, but 90% of those hours will be covered by the government. Employer gets reimbursed, can pay the normal salary to the people sitting at home weathering this storm: profit.

Uk seems to have a special blend of half-assed financial measures and vague mixed signals about what measures are to be taken health-wise.

It means those economies are going to rebound much more quickly later on. When you consider lost corporation tax, spiralling unemployment benefits and the wider hit to the economy, keeping businesses going must be basically free for the government.

Every time I read about the number of young people still going to pubs I think 'this is proof the Tories are going to continue winning elections forever'.

― Matt DC, Friday, 20 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Reading this hilarious argument of someone on left twitter last night convincing himself that Johnson's assurances were good enough so he could go for a drink. Thankfully this was shouted down quickly but the guy really wanted a drink.

Exactly If you're a bartender, or supplier of meat to restaurants or pubs, you obv have zero business. You need the gov to compensate your income to see this out. Plus side is you won't have to pay for unemployment afterwards, and things can go "back to normal" a bit more easily when this is done. I fucking hate saying it but our rightwing government got this right. It's put three of my colleagues hearts and minds really at ease, taking away the fear of no income etc. xp

UK governments in unable to see beyond the end of their noses shocker.

Austerity is going to look like the Scando welfare state when these cunts decide to start clawing the money back

Really wanting a drink is a powerful imperative tbf

My 24-yr-old has been paying National Insurance for two years. After losing job due to corona, inquired about Jobseekers’ Allowance. But can’t claim because needs to have been paying NI longer.
What happens to kids without homes & supportive parents?

— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) March 19, 2020

why it's almost like this thin veneer of a welfare state that us lefties have been bleating about for the last decade isn't actually a made up phenomena (like that photo of the kid on the floor of a hospital corridor).

At a guess, i'd imagine the government thinks the French plans might be sustainable for a few months but the policy of letting this play out, rather than trying to control it, means that anything they put in place needs to be viable for nine months to a year, idk.

Nice self-own from supportive mum of the year AP

My heart goes out to the Pearson family at this difficult time. In my prayers.

NV - some talk of loans from what I've seen. But that's poll tax riots territory. Same for rents. Under a lockdown a person can't be thrown out due to non-payment.

Our numbers of cases/deaths are almost matching Italy's 12 days ago -- literally only a few digits in it. It's also remarkably complacent. From both Tories and most of the opposition.

Still somehow hopeful that the sheer blinding necessity of just unequivocally guaranteeing incomes will make it happen very soon but can't help but see their fear of this as the reason for the lack of decisively shutting everything non-essential down.

bread's all been panic-bought, circuses closed down by the so-called politically correct brigade

Aviemore Coylumbridge Hotel sent this letter to staff today. Not just fired but chucked out of their accommodation with no notice and no redundancy pay! @BritanniaLtd Britannia Hotels should be ashamed of themselves. Certainly no "room at the inn" here, disgusting. pic.twitter.com/p6ZB2IYfoK

— John G. Burns (@ScaryHighlander) March 19, 2020

LAURA K: Prime Minister, in the wake of a million deaths, food riots, and cars burning in the streets, could you still say that people were right to vote Conservative?

BORIS JOHNSON (Surrounded by riot police): Yes I would, Laura! Attempts to salute and falls over Cripes!

ASSORTED PRESS PACK: Thank God for the Prime Minister keeping us all jolly in such dark times!

PESTON: Viewers trying to obtain paracetamol scrapings from the ruins of Truro may ask could the Prime Minister have done anything more? But in my opinion, we have the right man for the job.

i'm looking forward to next year when bog roll hoarders get their heads forcibly shaved in public

Yeah this crisis is really bringing out the capital punishment enthusiast in me

SOME CUNT ON TWITTER: Jeremy Corbyn though 😂😂😂😂😂😂 can’t believe you’re STILL trying to score political points off this “crisis” 😂😂😂😂😂 you lost get over it 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Capital punishment for the punishing Capital xp

The status quo is over, you can't claw the money back, people paying tax in 2080 will still be paying for the response to this crisis, and that's fine. It requires a fundamental change in our attitude to government debt and the money supply more generally. What happens to the economy from now on is 100% dependent on what the government does. Obviously this doesn't necessarily mean the return of the social democratic consensus - what's coming might be considerably worse than the status quo.

Make sure you let Johnson, Cummings et al clear on that dude.

Are they particularly interested in or driven by austerity? Serious question. Obviously they're no fans of the welfare state itself but Cummings doesn't appear to be cut from the same ideological cloth as Osbourne.

But yes I think in general that they and the party behind them lack the capability to think long-term about what this crisis means for the relationship between government, business and individuals. Subsequent governments might not.

He seems like a classic Internet libertarian to me. Probably not interested in the kind of bovine punish-the-poor shit of your IDS types but I feel like the opportunity to reframe the social contract will be irresistible to Cummings, and why would Johnson, a vain moron fixated on personal legacy, not want to buy into that?

You're probably right, the question is whether internet libertarianism is really compatible with the gigantic amounts of government intervention that will be required to prevent Boris's legacy being 'PM of a pile of smouldering rubble'. Unlike in 2008-2010 there probably won't be a change of government between the intervention and the clear-up, so they can't blame the deficit on previous incumbents.

For the avoidance of doubt I don't think even the best case scenario is leading us anywhere good, but wherever it is it won't be a return to the status quo.