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

Esther McVey. Case closed.

John McDonnell outweighs all that lot

Grew up in East Anglia though. God, a Scouser in East Anglia, talk about a big fish in a small pond.

This is good

BREAKING: HUGE RISE IN TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP

🔺91,000 in the last year
🔺170,000 female members in the last year
🔺Almost 200,000 in two years
🔺Third consecutive year of rising membership
🔺Highest female membership since 1995

There’s power in a union. Join yours today.

— Trades Union Congress (@The_TUC) May 27, 2020

my Scouse friend Dave is from a public school background. But his family fell into abject poverty when his dad got sent down for fiddling the books at his accountancy firm to cover up loads of money his business partner had stolen off him. It's basically a plot from Brookside!

Cilla has done terrible things

this video about how cilla black used to eat oranges covered in oxo does not end where you expect it to pic.twitter.com/9Ksx6WBQy0

— hoops (@itsmatthooper) May 8, 2020

This has been a thing for the best part of a decade - poorer councils have disproportionately borne the cost of austerity compared with richer authorities which tend to be in Tory areas.

Funnily enough it was Liverpool back then as well.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/most-deprived-english-councils-suffer-biggest-cuts-in-spending-power-10045665.html

yes, council funding formulae are boring but v important. the first round of crisis funding factored in deprivation & the second round didn't, I'm guessing due to pressure from Tory councils

liverpudlians love it when you remind them that they had a significant Tory vote until the 60s

The Court of Session has found in favour of ex-Scottish Labour leader @kezdugdale in the defamation appeal brought by Wings Over Scotland editor Stuart Campbell. The appeal has been refused, ending a long, expensive legal drama that goes back to March 2017.

— Michael Gray (@GrayInGlasgow) May 27, 2020

rip big man, you were my favourite amiga power writer before you went crackers

xxp yeah the Scousers had been a Tory and Liberal Party stronghold for most of the 20th century!

https://vole.wtf/this-mp-does-not-exist/

The Court of Session has found in favour of ex-Scottish Labour leader @kezdugdale in the defamation appeal brought by Wings Over Scotland editor Stuart Campbell. The appeal has been refused, ending a long, expensive legal drama that goes back to March 2017.

— Michael Gray (@GrayInGlasgow) May 27, 2020

some *normal news here, complete arsehole bankrupts himself with costly legal fees hopefully

* non Bo-Dom non Rona news

what a way for gyac to find out that calz has her killfiled

eh?

gyac posted the same exact same twitter link a few posts up

oops sorry, just didn't notice!

well it is an echo chamber after all!

no one posted this yet, I see, some non-domcum news for once

The Court of Session has found in favour of ex-Scottish Labour leader @kezdugdale in the defamation appeal brought by Wings Over Scotland editor Stuart Campbell. The appeal has been refused, ending a long, expensive legal drama that goes back to March 2017.

— Michael Gray (@GrayInGlasgow) May 27, 2020

I've killiefied 90% of this thread so every day I tell myself I'm easily in the top three best poster of regular contributors here

just admit you refer to this thread as 'the calzone' or resign

that will be Tell Kier Starmer to fuck off thread I'm going to start!

I'm fuming. I wrote to my MP, Sir Christopher Chope, about Cummings, and in his reply he not only defended the man but also managed to find a way to blame migrants.
Don't vote Tory, folks, especially if you vote in Christchurch. pic.twitter.com/mcpXq8rCiW

— Benjamin Chadwick (@bchadwickfrance) May 26, 2020

Don't vote Tory, folks, especially if you vote in Christchurch.

Good luck with that one.

Noted epidemiologist Sir Christopher Chope telling everyone how it works on viral transmission there

He's the upskirt guy?

Who ya gonna call? FILIBUSTERS!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Chope#Blocking_and_filibustering_of_bills

Repulsive man.

I ain't afraid of "no" votes

vg

calzino hasn't even killfiled me, he's a softie really :D

I wouldn't even killify a Danish fly

I hate Scousers as well tbh even though my best pal is one, but he's a Berlin Scouser and also hates Scousers!

Liverpool way cooler than Berlin ftr.

I've not been to Berlin but that seems unlikely

lol we're all gonna die

A retired doctor who set up the UK’s first Covid-19 contact-tracing scheme has warned the Government faces major challenges after they struggled to persuade health and care workers to self-isolate.

Dr Bing Jones told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme that only a third of people involved in their testing scheme agreed to self isolate.

He said: “The other two-thirds were mostly co-operative but we didn’t complete the follow-up. One of the reasons was that three-quarters of these people who we were unable to follow, so that is around 30 people, were employed in the health service or care homes or home care.

“They generally said ‘we’d like to help but I discussed it with my manager and my manager says no’.”

He added that “this is a major challenge for the government”.

Greg Fell, a director of Public Health in Sheffield, added: “I hope the app will do what it was built to do but certainly I’m not building my hopes and aspirations about the app being there to save us. I’m building my hopes and aspirations about having skilled humans.”

xp reminds me of a thought I had the other day, is Johnson the only British PM to be unable to enter a part of the country he governs* for fear of being lynched? I doubt Thatcher was too popular in Liverpool either but she could probably have at least visited without being strung up.

* as so often different circumstances probably apply in Northern Ireland

I've not been to Berlin but that seems unlikely

Having been to both, unlikely doesn't really cover it.

(xp) Pretty sure Churchill avoided South Wales like the rona.

Dundonians otm.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/nostalgia/1315993/this-city-will-kill-me-churchill-the-maggot-saga-and-how-the-cigar-puffing-statesman-came-to-despise-dundee/

I like Liverpool well enough but, no.

The contract tracing thing seems dead in the water.

oh no

‘A good strong daddy’ pic.twitter.com/b7i5UIFFtG

— Harriet Williamson (@harriepw) May 27, 2020

I've been to both, so nyah.

Viewpoint somewhat coloured by the fact that Berlin is the number one destination for obnoxious rich kids throughout the continent, mind.

xposts

The contract tracing thing seems dead in the water.

yeah, can't say i'm surprised that we appear to be on the verge of fucking up the one thing that might help us get some control over the spread of the disease but this doesn't look good

so not "world-beating" then, there's a surprise it's not like boris to talk in excitable terms about something he has no chance of delivering

Has anyone implemented contact tracing effectively without making it a social necessity?

see that south korea are thinking about introducing some tightening measures again - and that’s with quite a sophisticated track and trace program in place

xps so what you're saying Tom D is that Johnson is well and truly Churchillian

I heard on a report earlier the S Korea outbreak was traced to a nightclub but it also coincides with them re-opening schools as well

Kerala's contact tracing seems to be manual and therefore doesn't rely on anyone having an app or owt