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

Just a hideous empty shell of politician, weaker than kaliber.

My theory is that Blue Labour and those melts saying "continuity Corbyn won't work" + saying "lessons need to be learned" that have been critical of Sir Melty Hairstyle are all laughing their heads off and know their boy will deliver he isn't interested in any reforms and the project going forwards will be more about challenging the tory party to be more like they were in the Cameron era.

all this "nothing will be the same post-Rona" stuff is a bit fanciful imo. It will be more of the same - but worse!

just short of a million people hitting the UC in a calendar month. If the large parts of UK electorate weren't such self-hating masochists this would be the end of the Tory party for decades. I hope they are cooling the sanctions down for "better standard" applicants who turn up two minutes late or eschew work in the sex industry.

Fucking hell I've gotta face that asap

don't let the bastards grind you down.

It makes me laugh how arrogant and rude I used to be in job centres when I'd sometimes sign on during quiet periods when I'd get temp laid off, but knew there would a load of work coming in next month. "You insult me with this egg packing shit, i'm a fucking qualified apprentice trained spark ffs!" Now I'd be like "let's start with the egg packing jobs first pls!"

Fleet Street is now comfortable that they can hand over to a status quo opposition if necessary. https://t.co/CfOnFeLEph

— Tom Munday (@tommundaycs) April 2, 2020

another take on Fleet Street suddenly being beastly to the tories, some kind of *disaster* coalition national govt with Sir weak-as-piss Meltalot imminent?

I'm not especially keen on Trump but I don't think its controversial to say he would do a better job than Starmer

The alternative is that they consider Labour electorally irrelevant and therefore can attack the Tories' handling of this disaster with impunity.

i like how the consideration that there's a real scandal here which has led to unnecessary deaths doesn't even come into it

The alternative is that they consider Labour electorally irrelevant and therefore can attack the Tories' handling of this disaster with impunity.

True, there's also limited mileage in attacking Labour because no one knows who they are. They killed off the one guy people recognized.

"I'm not especially keen on Trump but I don't think its controversial to say he would do a better job than Starmer"

if you put that to Starmer himself he might at a very glacial rate of getting ever so slightly upset not have an impressed comportment about him, he might even be in a state of disagreement with you, but lets not politicise this matter as our differences are only very slender, but i'll warn you in advance I'm not feeling a strong sense of concord here...oh do i pull the pin out of this hand grenade ..yessir!

what time are they hammering the nails in Labour's coffin?

oh of course it's Saturday, never mind

i like how the consideration that there's a real scandal here which has led to unnecessary deaths doesn't even come into it

Nah it does, it's their readers that are dying. You can't deny gravity forever.

The Rona doesn't respect class lines, how unBritish!

i wonder if the ehrc report is going to come out now corbyn's gone

I think it likely will, the EHRC doesn't really give a shit about internal political dynamics. The amount of publicity it gets will be different though.

The pressure needs to be kept on Starmer to get rid of the hard left, so yes no reason why it wouldn't xp

The Times has been doing what it can to ensure as much blame as possible falls on Johnson personally, since he can be removed and replaced, and I notice today’s editorial explicitly tries to shut down the “We were just following the science” excuse. pic.twitter.com/cenAm44xMb

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) April 2, 2020

talk here that the money behind boris wants him to be the fall guy rather than the party

Not sure I fully buy that. If Johnson could be easily replaced I’m not sure he’d be the leader in the first place. This is still fairly mild criticism.

The size of his majority meant that five years of fawning coverage was never likely. The press needs to be able to turn the screws to exert pressure.

I disagree. All those papers will have a wealth of material on him that can be turned on him the same way as they have with any politician. If they decide the indiscretions they’ve looked the other way on or dismissed are a big deal now, they will be. And it’s the first time since he got in that they’ve had a few successors more amenable to them. Sunak was chosen for the Treasury cos he’ll do what he’s told, and that is doubtless more appealing to capital and its spokespeople than Bojo.

With politics and the media the way it is I don't think any Labour MP would be as ~effective~ an opposition leader as Piers Morgan.

The Sun urging people to clap for the NHS a few years on from bitterly attacking striking staff for daring to oppose Jeremy Hunt (I mean I'm sure you don't have to go that far back for such hypocrisy tho).

apparently Murdoch has his man Jeremy Cunt waiting in the wings, if this scandal does break Boris. I can't think of anyone better for a public health crisis, he's probably personally responsible for turning thousands of junior doctors into Labour voters!

Don't think Cunt would get it...if the NHS is broken by this you wouldn't turn to the guy who ran it for a few years.

Surely the reason for the media asking questions is in case we match Italy/Spain. Or its worse than either. Cathy Newman doing a very light version of this here.

This is really really sobering. Could different decisions - both scientific and political - have saved lives? https://t.co/qkscd2Fazx

— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) April 1, 2020

This is pure wishful thinking, Boris has just won the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher, he's going nowhere.

Also there's 6 million more people in the UK than Italy.

The other unexploded bomb here is, after fawning praise for the big promises made by Sunak a couple of weeks ago, there is still no website available or any other means for businesses or self-employed individuals to actually apply for the furlough support that's been promised. If the government bungles this, or if the site doesn't work or is beset by delays, then it's curtains for huge numbers of small businesses and probably a lot of larger ones as well. Then there will be an even larger spike in people being driven to a Universal Credit system that isn't fit for purpose.

There is probably a reasonable argument in favour of the idea that Labour should be seen to be engaging constructively (eg "how do we save lives and livelihoods?") rather than hammering the government for the sake of it while we are still in this phase of the crisis - a lot of the country is still at the fear stage rather than the anger stage - and once again look at how Cameron behaved during the peak of the financial crisis. The government isn't going to listen to what Labour say in any case but it prevents Labour being sucked into that stupid and self-defeating media-driven "waaah why are you politicising this?" cycle of defensiveness - the country in general might react badly to the sense that it's being exploited clumsily for political gain. There will be plenty of time to hammer the government later. The problem is that it doesn't create the pressure that might actually save lives.

The one area where Starmer might actually succeed - being able to pinpoint every single fuck-up and not let the government off the hook about it as the crisis itself recedes, is offset by the fact that he just lacks the personality and political capabilities to channel the inevitable public anger in an effective way. And it only works if he is inclined to really hold the government to account, which is a big if. If he isn't he shouldn't be in the position at all.

One line of attack is not necessarily what the government is doing now - although that is obviously going disastrously wrong - it's what they were doing in late January and February when they should have been preparing for this. The likelihood is that Cummings will be hung out to dry (and maybe Whitty or Vallance as well) and Johnson himself will survive.

I'm sure Johnson will try to come up with some way of pinning blame on Theresa May's government or, even Cameron, since he has very successfully managed to persuade the British public that that Conservative Party is not his Conservative Party.

Oh fuck, just looked up from my laptop to see Jess Phillips doing some sort of advert for ITV.

I'm sure Johnson will try to come up with some way of pinning blame on Theresa May's government or, even Cameron, since he has very successfully managed to persuade the British public that that Conservative Party is not his Conservative Party.

He won't even have to mention names or eras, he'll just say "previous governments" or even "the last Labour government" and while people who can count will mutter about that being ten years ago, enough people will go "ooh yes, we voted for A Change in December" or "bloody Corbyn!", apparently

sigh.

Johnson got enough people to vote again for what they voted for in the 2016 referendum.

If there are more than 20K in deaths and if a fifth or more of small businesses collapse I don't see how that is going to stick.

Oh fuck, just looked up from my laptop to see Jess Phillips doing some sort of advert for ITV.

was it pizza hut

lol was just thinking better make sure her pizza is bland + lukewarm but on time in the itv green room or heads will roll!

funny hearing Laura K talk about "media sources usually friendly to the Government" like she means somebody else

apologies because this is potentially triggering but jesus fucking christ

Also today, three services (in Somerset, Derbyshire and East Sussex) where GPs have contacted the teams to say that they have deemed the people we support should ALL be DNR. No consultation with families, no best interests. Mostly working age adults. We will fight this.

— Andrew Cannon (@VoyageCEO) April 1, 2020

wow!

much less horrible, but another classic bit of Blitz Spirit Britain

#Coronavirus: Woman fined £660 for refusing to tell police at Newcastle railway station why she was out https://t.co/be4TCCMDOj

— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 1, 2020

Reminds of some distant memory of a 90s doc about fare dodgers on trains. Some posh guy gets caught bang to rights with no ticket and just keeps repeating his name is Authur and address is Camelot until the police intervene.

earlier tweet from the same guy nv posted, absolutely horrifying

Learned today of DNR applied by a hospital for one of the people we support; man in his 50s, no underlying health condition and great quality of life. Family not consulted. Can only conclude ReSPECT form put in place because he has a learning disability. https://t.co/5UnGLKvsun

— Andrew Cannon (@VoyageCEO) April 1, 2020

it ought to be criminal irrespective of the age or underlying health if it's done without informed consent tbh, but it looks a lot like a few doctors are getting pretty turned on at the prospect of playing eugenics Shipman

good thing no-one in government shares their views eh

They are probably under extreme pressure to free ventilators up, which doesn't excuse anything but does signal where the blame and responsibility really lie.

Oh wait is this care homes rather than hospitals? Regardless, fucking hell...

I personally believe a lot of them are closet eugenicists, it goes with the territory and the arrogance in my experience. Of course not all docs j Mengele...

of course the blame ultimately rests with the government and senior NHS managers, but i don't think anybody in that profession should be making the decision that healthy adults with learning disabilities are somehow less worthy of resuscitation

Some of the ones I've dealt with can barely disguise their contempt for dealing with autistic nonverbal patients.