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

any song can be good, apart from if it is appropriated by bovine middle england in a pervasive militarism sort of context!

I'm not sure I entirely follow Tracer's post - asking for unemployed people to be given jobs is surely asking them to risk their lives if we're stuck with insufficient PPE, ventilators, etc.?

he's saying that the focus of the opposition should be on reconstruction after the necessary safety precautions are no longer necessary

and a reconstruction that isn't an unseemly scramble back to the pre-rona shithole

Daniel, that depends with the jobs - Fruit picking is on the other end of the scale from meat packing, I understand.

We are now in that phase where the main task of the Government's morning messaging on a national crisis is to kick back against the Government's evening messaging from the previous day. https://t.co/1G7KDmj8VH

— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) May 7, 2020

street party going on in our very middle class road, they've blocked it off with cars and there are kids playing football, social distancing be damned.

and the red white and blue death held sway over all

in the passage the usual suspects are out in front of their shared houses (two households of eurostudents who dont social distance from one another and last night were playing the guitar v badly before and after the clapping)

Bad (public) guitar playing a far worse crime than refusal to social distance.

well yes

Celebrating VE Day by ensuring that anyone who still remembers the war will die a painful and suffocating death.

I've seen ripped young middle class lads from the posh side of town doing what looked like a mini kickboxing tournaments in the park and a guy was coaching group of children at the tennis club in the last few days. No bbq's or fools with tribal tattoos - no five oh it seems!

I should have added ..white ripped young middle class lads!

Celebrating VE Day by ensuring that anyone who still remembers the war will die a painful and suffocating death.

I imagine he'll fuck it up, but getting to put the boot into Boris on the front cover of the Telegraph on the 75th anniversary of VE day is something all the same.

street parties today in front of middle class houses, beer circles on the kerb among polish dudes - literally no difference from a similar bank holiday weekend from any other year. masks only once you start approaching big shops.

The May Day Spike should ensure that Blighty puts clear air between us and the silver medal pretenders in the Coronalympics 2020. Hooray!

"scones were served at 1940's themed tea parties"

I'm pouring one out for the Red Army tonight, fuck Britain

otm comrade

Lol

Italy's death toll from the coronavirus passes 30,000, the highest in the EU https://t.co/kSuKiy61BA

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) May 8, 2020

it's almost as if

ok i'll stop

It’s good to know that the disdain for gaudy celebrations in the height of this pandemic is

*checks notes*

antisemitic?

Boom! D’Ancona out of nowhere to claim the 2020 VE Day Pretending Not To Understand Things You Do Understand Hack Challenge! This lesser known journeyman has been seen as a dull plodder but he’s feigning moronic ignorance with the very worst in the business today, sensational! pic.twitter.com/V073DeeYVB

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) May 8, 2020

scared because in a just, post-rona world what role is there for a D'Ancona?

Good thing we left the eu or we’d have got a real showing up there

"scones were served at 1940's themed tea parties"

I'm pouring one out for the Red Army tonight, fuck Britain

That Matthew D'Ancona tweet reminded me of this, which I'm sure wasn't the intention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_DPrSEOEo

Is the disdain for gaudy VE Day celebrations more antisemitic than... Winston Churchill?

Yep Tooze and Egerton have been a good antidote to the widespread manure getting sprayed everywhere today

Tooze is the grandson of soviet spy Arthur Wynn after all!

street party going on in our very middle class road, they've blocked it off with cars and there are kids playing football, social distancing be damned.

real england update: someone on the street whatsapp group was 'shocked and horrified at the disregard for social distancing, it's like living on a sink estate', and an ambulance couldn't get through. someone said this was ridiculous, 'the local mp and the police said it was ok to block the road and the ambulance driver said it was ok', someone else said 'the hysteria for every living person to stay at home is ridiculous'.

you'd think Starmer with his oh so w/c factory boss dad who was obv a bit of a labour party history geek might have an inkling that it traditionally wasn't a party that protected the interests of minority groups like wealthy landlords. That was the job of the other party.

Looking after the interests of all those millions of exploited worker ants might not win you plaudits from the UK media but that is supposed to be your job, cunt!

absolutely pathetic policy, protecting landlords from sustaining even the briefest hits to the income, at a time when almost every other industry is in freefall, at the expense of the rentier class, who are expect to pick up the debt or bankrupt themselves https://t.co/nAKQJEG1Ww pic.twitter.com/gaPz51rh9H

— tristandross (@tristandross) May 9, 2020

radical landlord policies are needed during a crisis like this, not as radical as I'd like but protecting their wealth like nothing is happening here and putting the financial burden of c-19 on renters is a right wing tory policy.

*some* people get stopped and arrested by covid-ridden cops for sitting alone in parks or on train platforms

while *others* are celebrated as a heartening puff piece by the state broadcaster (yes) while helping to guarantee a second peak of infection

this country is wildddddd pic.twitter.com/CjVmDcGM2Q

— michael (@Sisyphusa) May 9, 2020

god damn it that pic makes me want to commit a mass shooting

what

the

fuck

exterminate all the brutes

meanwhile

All travellers coming to Britain will be quarantined for a fortnight in an effort to avoid a second peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Boris Johnson will announce tomorrow.

The prime minister will say in an address to the nation that passengers arriving at airports and ports, including Britons returning from abroad, will have to self-isolate for 14 days.
Under the measures, which are likely to come into force in early June, travellers will have to provide the address at which they will self-isolate on arrival.

The authorities will conduct spot checks and those found to be breaking the rules face fines of up to £1,000 or even being deported. However, the aviation and holiday industry has warned that the move could be catastrophic for business. It is likely to end any lingering hopes that Britons could take their summer holidays abroad this year.

yes timing-wise this seems like a weird flex

maybe a bit of misdirection while he lets flash mobs of union jack draped cunts run amok round carphone warehouse

give an address and be ready for a "spot check", ie "oh please don't go out"

Amazed UK hadn't already done this, and even so it's weak piss. In Sydney where I am, travellers are taken to hotels in the city centre and unable to leave for 14 days

yeah but they did that before the rona

TBH I'm amazed there's anyone other than repatriated Brits entering the country at all right now. Then again I saw two planes going over within about ten minutes of one another yesterday and that felt like the most in weeks.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/lockdown-boris-johnson?CMP

Meanwhile I concur with the Tory MP who thinks we're completely fucked. Although maybe not for the reason he does.

of course Katy Balls gets a Graun column, why wouldn't you?

Travel quarantine is two months too late, the community spread was well out of hand by then. They going to do anything about care homes or...?

TBH I do think it's useful to have a columnist who Tory MPs will talk to in a less guarded way. The Graun is absolutely awash with political hacks whose contacts books are 10-15 years out of date.

Re starting to quarantine being announced as part of the “exit roadmap” or whatever, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of ppl were assuming we were already doing this so it could be quite a bombshell - & the govt’s line appears to be “nothing we did could possibly have made any difference”. Really feels like if they only received any kind of pushback at all, ever...