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

also some of it could be nervous pollsters not wanting to undermine the govt during a national emergency.

heard two or three paranoid-sounding conversations and saw a "Police State Virus!" graffito during my alloted Exercise and Shopping Sponsored by Wetherspoons hour

if i was a copper's nark i should prbobaly be outraged by these little pockets of people hanging out but i'm just tired and confused by having to shop for food in these conditions

I think you have the wrong friends.

Casual acquaintances, more like, but yeah not every friend I have is a good socialist.

Yep, the switch from ‘the government is right not to overreact, follow the experts’ to ‘the public should be ashamed for not taking this as seriously as the government is’ was whiplash-inducing.

My FB neighbourhood group is overrun by "people are in the park, WHY???" type stai informer behaviour and one dude actually replied "well it's metropolitan elites, they always think they know better, just look at brexit". The contortions people twist themselves into.

fwiw "the people are to blame, only in this country!" is a popular take in Portugal as well, despite being hailed as one of the countries that responded best to the crisis

People have had it drummed into them for forty years that anything that goes wrong in a person's life is down to individual fuck-ups rather than government policy. Takes a while to get out of that.

at least for Portman Park fans there is a virtual grand national today, what fun!

And the worse it gets the more extreme the contortions will be, god forbid anyone should ever admit they were wrong about anything.

xpost

I've got some almost out of date cream in my fridge that will last longer than the Trump + Boris ratings bounce

I wouldn't necessarily count on it disipating all that soon. Starmer's disappearing act can now enter its final phase and Biden and the last complete sentence he uttered were in different decades.

The various oppositions have given almost no indication what it they would do.

I wonder if this is true, a lot of the country seems positively desperate to put its trust in the government and its institutions right now, even as the evidence mounts that the government is entirely unworthy of that trust.

Well this is only in the case of some people obviously, the majority of the population aren't becoming flat earthers (many experts are saying this is around 18 months away)

:(

Five London bus workers who tested positive for Covid-19 have now died, the Unite union said.

Jesus.

And a five year old kid too apparently.

Watford general hospital has closed its A&E to new patients and visitors “until further notice”, West Hertfordshire hospitals NHS trust announced. People have been instructed to go to their “next nearest hospital with an emergency department” or to seek advice via 111 in a non-urgent situation.

Ratings bounce for world leaders during the lockdown is surely some special kind of Stockholm syndrome, ironic that Sweden is the one place where they've not gone hard with it (unless that's changed)

I'd be surprised if there's been a bounce for Sanchez in Spain. Probably another GE there within the next two years.

Despite what Michael Gove is saying, London has basically fucked social isolation off over the last couple of days, right

Nah, no way. It’s really quiet out there. Never seen Peckham so quiet. Queues were all 2m distant, and while the park had people in it they were all in 2-person or family groups and distant from each other. I was quite impressed.

TfL cams show the roads are pretty dead too.

i got the feeling there were more people out here today when i went to the shops. i think the imperative will trickle away from people's heads the longer they try to self-isolate

OTOH

Despite clear advice, over 3000 people spent today in Brockwell Park, many of them sunbathing or in large groups. This is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the actions of a minority now means that, following police advice, Brockwell Park will be closed tomorrow. #StayHome

— Lambeth Council (@lambeth_council) April 4, 2020

ffs!

Brockwell Park in Lambeth 30 minutes ago; importance of "one form of exercise", "minimising time spent outside" and "2 metres apart" not getting across to many. My second outing in two weeks, but next time think cycling along normally busy roads a better idea pic.twitter.com/tHNg6qTlKB

— Alex Swanson (@alswanson) April 4, 2020

Update: Governor Larry Hogan has confirmed that Bobby Kennedy's granddaughter Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean drowned following a boating accident on the South River earlier this week.

Endless tragedies for this family for 75+ years. https://t.co/71lWMacwwJ

— Pixie D (@AdrienneC123) April 3, 2020

Oops, wrong tweet above

Where do people with children go now?

— Nancy (@NangcyP) April 4, 2020

there are people about, but they are keeping their distance, mostly.

walking on one side of the pavement, 5 yards behind the people in front, people coming the other way, but the pavement was wide enough, everybody was happy. until the woman behind me decided to overtake...

and the woman in the supermarket carrying a ukulele and who was more focused on her phone than the other people

and the other woman stood by the door, opposite side to the queue, making it impossible to avoid to get out the shop

> to avoid to get out the shop

me fail english? that's unpossible

Camden sent out an email to everyone in the borough asking those with gardens to leave parks for people who don’t have gardens. In Notting Hill, the farmers market was very well-run although the coffee van was a casualty of the ‘no street food’ rule.

FYI south Camden/Islington Londoners looking for better coffee than Leon: the Greek deli by Chop House and the Eagle that’s taken over the old Gazzano’s space is doing proper barista coffee.

Brockwell Park looks like Finsbury Park did today - lots of people but the space is big enough for most to stay apart. Endless huffing joggers of course though, and the usual casualties coughing their guts out on the benches. Kind of stressful, next walk I take will be round some quieter streets. We might drive out to Hampstead Garden Suburb, it's deserted round there at the best of times.

Didn't see this but I heard it from my window. The Rye was less crowded than the pix of Brockwell Park upthread. This seems ridiculous to me.

A police van is going around peckham rye blaring “no sunbathing... exercise only” pic.twitter.com/cQw92CtNxv

— Griff Ferris (@g__ferris) April 4, 2020

lol just hop the fence at the sign for brockwell park gardens or go in through cressingham. I don't know why this is hard.

I was in Brockwell Park this late morning sitting on the grass for a while and thinking how relatively quiet it was at that point. Most people out were either jogging or walking dogs. I'm sure it was a lot busier by the afternoon though.

Rest assured I don't have a garden.

i was walking in brockwell park earlier and that pic is representative. people were out and sitting down but v far apart and i reckon no more than 70-100 in the entire large park.

i was hoping to run round there tomorrow morning first thing when it was quiet. :(

and btw to the tweet stet posted YES u prick cycle on the v quiet roads not in the park plz? cyclists really congested the park paths. (i say this as a committed cyclist)

The horror!

Brockwell park ( approx 125 acres) taken from my window today 16.04 hrs , people with no back garden need green spaces pic.twitter.com/3SJ1GcpsJS

— Robert Harrison (@ieattothebeat) April 4, 2020

tbr I accept I should have just kept walking and not sat down. If I were them I'd open it for a few hours in the morning at least.

I was already jealous of Facebook friends with gardens, thought about taking a book out today and finding a quiet spot but figured "fuck it, rozzers"

really. i don’t think it’s a problem with people sitting down. what is exercise for one person ie jogging maybe a breath of fresh air and a sit down for another. like your picture shows, people were generally quite dispersed. and where they weren’t it was people on the paths not those sitting in the park.

xpost.

I feel a cunt for FFS-ing that lambeth council tweet now i've seen the pics!

I'm very lucky in that I've spent the last 5 years needing to find out all the little shady short cuts, obscure ginnels etc that I can get to very quiet green open spaces without even needing to pass many people or getting seen by cops on the road. I remember going on a "greenbelt chain" walk when i lived in London and never feeling more homesick for genuine greenbelt!

Also this entire country is vitamin D deficient and taking the sun is one of the best ways of getting a bit more of it in you. Bonus: lifts depression, helps with cold and virus resistance. If sunbathing in public were explicitly banned, the BMA might have something to say about that.

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Spent all day trying to work out the one place absolutely nobody else would want to go to. Then, inspiration... pic.twitter.com/BFBH955Gun

— Dave Rowlinson (@Dave_Rowlinson) April 4, 2020

First good news for some time. Congratulations @keirstarmer who can bring back intelligence, principle, judgment - all essential for #Labour to be of service to the country. The Corbyn years brought terrible shame and monstrous defeat. The clearer the new start the better.

— David Miliband (@DMiliband) April 4, 2020

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck OFF

this is a terrible look, as if we hadn't seen enough of the melts's true evil already

Tony Fucking Robinson tho

If nothing else DMil has given the lie there to any claim he might wanna make about being concerned for the party

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Baldrick dismissing the Corbyn era as a "moral disgrace" is just so fucking pathetic and hateful. Let's do a Top Trumps of the moral disgraces of the "unelectable" Miliband Labour vs Corbyn Labour. The former was a fucking moral disgrace alright, even he Ed himself admitted later they went way too far to the right.

The rhetoric is insane

still, got the queen carking it to look forward to at least