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

Seems short-sighted to have so many children unable to go to school and so many soft fruits that need to be picked and not have identified a perfect Uzbek-style solution to kill two birds with one stone.

*languidly indicating a chimney that could also do with sweeping*

PM says he's thought a lot about the NHS surcharge for non EEA staff to use the health service. Acknowledges he was just treated by someone who would have had to pay it! Who saved his life.

Johnson: "I do think that is the right way forward."

He said it makes money. #PMQs

— Kate Proctor (@Kate_M_Proctor) May 20, 2020

Charles should tread carefully here, his younger brother got into serious trouble with the feds for asking children to harvest his plums.

some other things which make money

*charging relatives of executed political prisoners for the cost of the bullet
*melted down gold teeth
*selling fighter jets to authoritarian regimes, oh hang on

Lol @ this interview:

Kerala's "rockstar" Health Minister @shailajateacher sharing the state's #COVID19 story live on BBC World News 🔥

(Part 1/3) pic.twitter.com/GM8VI8hlLO

— Siddharth🌹 (@DearthOfSid) May 18, 2020

This interviewer can't believe Kerala are not actually fucking this up like we are.

Hilariously, the call has gone out to Conservative MPs to dash back to the House of Commons from pandemic isolation in their homes to give the PM moral support in a Chamber that was quiet as a graveyard during Sir Keir’s last two attacks.

A little bit of Darwin Awards, as a treat.

Lol:

MPs have just voted by 350 to 258, govt majority 92, to discontinue remote participation in Commons on 2 June pic.twitter.com/m5U4UCdpbc

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) May 20, 2020

time to start a parliamentary dead pool lads

are MPs gonna be allowed to stay at home if they don't think it's safe?

I’m at Clapham Junction and I have never seen anything like it for quiet. Real Sunday 2am stuff.

Not a massive amount of mask wearing. Possibly linked to the “govt advice is to consider wearing a mask” announcements.

i've still not worn one - from everything i'd heard the govt lack of buying PPE tied with non medical stuff buying all the masks up meant there weren't enough for people who genuinely needed them so it was selfish as fuck for me to go buy one when i'm socially isolating at home, not getting close to anyone when i do go out and so dont need it.... but then today i see on my socials someone posting that not wearing a mask when you go out is "a sign of privilege". so yeah confused.

people will say anything to feel superior

that said if you're going to mix with people a mask isn't a bad idea idk, but if you're steering clear it's probably an indulgence. of course if we were all given proper medical-grade masks then it'd be much easier and almost second-nature to do it regardless

Medical-grade protects you, even a cloth face covering helps protect others is what I understand about it. And especially in confined spaces like buses

not wearing a mask when you go out is "a sign of privilege".

That's so much utterly backwards nonsense. I actually don't know where to get a mask. Are there shops stocking them? I suppose I could look on Amazon but that's because I have an internet connection and a credit card.

I don't like the language of 'provilege' especially but, and this also shouldn't need saying, having to go out is clearly not something everyone can reasonably avoid just because they don't have a mask.

Provilege? Don't know the meaning of the word.

Absolutely recommend a keffiyah / shemagh if you want to simultaneously have some level of protection without taking PPE away from healthcare providers and look like you're in the PLO.

or joining The Locust

obv

I did enjoy the terror1st chic effect when attempting to wear a scarf over my face one time but it kept falling down and defeating the whole purpose.

Hooligan chic I should say. People did actually seem to be giving me a wider berth.

Get some military surplus scrim scarf in olive paired with a black beret for the ira colour party look

An unmasked/ungloved person assuming privilege is a real thing though - particularly if they’re just breezing on through, pausing only to get annoyed at people who are dressed for protection, who are judged to be unclean or in the way. The privilege is assuming others will make way for you. Context was seeing obnoxious middle aged/class man going apeshit at a BAME youth for not backing himself up fast enough when MCW was trying to pass, and that being one of a few witnessed interactions of that type.

Denmark is giving out masks on public transport.

The United States is arresting/macing/tazing people who don’t look rich and don’t wear masks.

So there’s a couple of options the UK could take.

In seriousness the UK attitude on masks (this thread, general public, the government) seems to be a global outlier.

next to no one is wearing masks here

we weren't hit like the uk mind

Right but it seems like no one is wearing them in the uk and most people wouldn’t know where to get one.

My wife ordered us tailor made masks which I'm sure are medically useless but look really cool and I'm sure would at least prevent me breathing on people if I'd set foot in a building that wasn't mine for the past month and a half.

i ordered some from etsy like a month ago and they have yet to arrive so i made a janky one out of a shirt.

“Medically useless” is the thing though. They’re not medically useless for the people you’re sharing a lift/bus/tube with.

There are so many de facto experiments being conducted right now on what works in practice and I’m sure we’ll find out if mask wearing/closing parks/2m *actually *worked to slow the spread in a few months. But in the meantime there’s very good lab based evidence that they help. A tiny bit of leadership here from the uk govt would have quickly had vendors selling masks on every corner like they have elsewhere.

I’ve been using clean scarves and tenugi cloths (and sacrificed the least interesting tenugi cloth to a friend with a sewing machine, who made it into a mask for me).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYfYLRFWoAQcKip?format=jpg&name=large

There will be thousands of vacancies opening up on farms across the country in the coming weeks and we have already seen a fantastic response from the public wanting to pick for Britain this summer.

I know of one leading politician who was picking for Britain even before the current crisis.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d63d3f2b39430935e344bd01b46b8a8206cb715f/0_109_793_476/master/793.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=4a3528301f7d494143dd9b9439784e67

This us a tough read. How two care homes have coped:

Spent the day in Oxfordshire talking to carers

They tell a tale of the mistakes of this crisis, how the differences between expensive care homes and more modest ones and good and bad companies help determine who lives and who dies for both residents and carers.

Thread.

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) May 20, 2020

Meanwhile BREXIT quietly proceeds

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/20/brexit-gove-confirms-plans-for-checks-on-goods-crossing-irish-sea

I think you mean is being cruelly betrayed!

No surrender, Boris.

my anecdotal observations from occasional shopping forays into hackney = some ppl are wearing them (maybe a third? a quarter?)

on the the whole older ppl (inc me) and more often black or poc ppl than white.

like tracer's mine is a janky self-made one which i have to tie behind my head -- more an awareness signal than a genuine medical device. i do have blue latex gloves tho, i scored a box v early on. streets are generally very empty so the issue of self-distancing doesn't seem to arise much here.

i've fixed my broken mask so i can brave the shops today secure in the knowledge that at least i'm not the one acting the cunt

somebody got knifed at 8pm last night in the park where i play ball with my kids. unless the knife was 2m long that's a naughty disrespect of the rules

anecdotal evidence but my daughter was telling me yesterday that a cohort of her friends seem to have totally given up on the idea of social distancing, notably since last week

https://i.postimg.cc/Y2z4Ht1W/Castle.jpg

^ for reference

Barely anyone is wearing masks here. I suspect it'll be even fewer when it gets too hot to wear scarves, etc.

I already had a decent pre-lockdown stockpile (well two 100 boxes) of xl latex gloves which I use for dangerous cooking activities like chilli/scotch bonnet chopping. I didn't think about getting more before the price gougers moved in.

I've been feeling that ppl are giving up, too. Surprisingly a steady stream of neighbourhood scolds lecturing people hasn't actually made people more likely to follow the guidelines, what a surprise eh.

xpost

Yesterday's twitter fad was a buncha media types trotting out tired "lol Stoke Newington hipsters" material. The fact that this happened at the same time as Hackney having the third highest mortality rate in the UK really struck home to me how BAME and working class communities get treated here - first you get gentrified the fuck out of and then you get erased by clowns performatively expressing their disapproval of other clowns.

tbf you get erased by clowns cosplaying WWII as well

I don’t think masks are ever going to catch on here unfortunately - in retrospect the waffling over their efficacy right at the start was unfortunate (as was the fact that the govt never advised wearing them obv). Now we have people thinking wearing a mask means going into a hospital and stealing one, or that making one is pointless (based on argument that are the equivalent of “there are no studies that prove covering my mouth when I cough stops me from getting coronavirus!”)