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

"(For Labour) It means recruiting an army of over 50,000 so-called ‘contract tracers’."

we'd have recruited more contract tracers, even though I sound quite dismissive of their effectiveness here. I know what he's trying to say but yet another gr8 example of crystal clear message discipline from those masters of spin the Labour melts. he's fucking shit.

It’s bad but i can imagine someone being reassured by how pedestrian it is. if they can remember having read it of course.

mdc otm that there’s at least one simple editing fail that renders it incoherent in places

" I don't want to see people die purely because while they're in hospital being treated for it they're still taking up beds"

aye that is a fair point.

"at time of huge anxiety."

he really going for that Red Wall here!

some of the VE day bbc footage was pretty shocking but I didn't see anything like that in my local tory zone.

― calzino, Wednesday, 27 May 2020 21:14 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol, all my downstairs neighbours with gardens had parties in them, there's some grass at the back of the flats with a lane where i take my dog to have a wee before bed and there were dealers loitering. i have never seen that happen pre-lockdown!

All I saw was some pretty lightweight window dressing, no actual multiple gen gatherings in the street like in some of that bbc footage from deep tory heartlands. but this is yorkshire where anyone who has ever attended a Rugby League game or has tribal tatts, even if they vote tories, live in a 350 grand house with stables connecting to the 30 acre garden and have deep savings and four cars - they are still working class to the core!

All of these articles are clearly written or at least edited by the same person and they need to fire whoever that person is because they're all bland to the point of incomprehensibility.

The conga line and VE Day in and of themselves are not going to cause a spike in cases, but the confusion caused by government announcements since then might.

re newspaper editing styles, I have only, since this cumming thing got big, realised how demented daily mail articles are stylistically a result of having to scroll down endlessly through the main article to find the comments.

All of these articles are clearly written or at least edited by the same person and they need to fire whoever that person is because they're all bland to the point of incomprehensibility.

keir starmer iirc

That 412 needs a bit of unpacking - is that hospital deaths alone? There did appear to be a precipitous drop in the daily death rate over the past couple of days so I guess this is the data catching up?

i used to quite enjoy reading those old paid for advertorials in the papers. very odd style. “come to/invest in x place - everyone is happy and it’s very stable” usually wrt falling apart failed states. obv also objectively hilarious the government are reserving paid for positive news space in the *Mail*.

having to pay the Mail to run your propaganda is an interesting position for a Conservative government to be in. https://t.co/rMLFDkOEKW

— jamie k (@jkbloodtreasure) May 27, 2020

i find myself oddly relaxed about the Starmer approach to Cummings, even if the rest is ridiculously melty. The Tories and press will get him fired or not, and i do wonder if there’s something to be said for having a Cummings weak spot to attack whenever you want.

otoh like Tom D sort of said upthread, get your fun and victories where you can. It’ll make everyone feel better and larger victories are made up of smaller victories. no need to overthink it.

There is a sense that people are waiting for Starmer to unload at PMQs, where he has the reputation for making a bigger fool of BJ.

Pmqs though is two weeks away due to recess - and by that time there will almost certainly be something else.

Hrsy

No, it’s next week on 3 June.

Yeah I guess what I said was true...last week. Lockdown is fucking up any sense of time. Still, point stands that they’ll have tried to shift to something else, and KS seems keen to go along with that.

that UK gov paid for advertorial content elsewhere too:

They're also paying The Guardian, albeit a little more opaquely under the name 'All in, all together'.

(Michael Gove said of this: "With this campaign we are both saving lives by providing essential information to the public, and supporting cherished local institutions.") pic.twitter.com/2gXb2bYg9Q

— dan barker (@danbarker) May 27, 2020

If Cummings thinks he’s getting all the numbers and emails in my phone he can get fucked. Screw your app to hell and back.

— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) May 27, 2020

looks like AntiCum could be the new AntiVax

The excellent Huw Lemmey on the function of hecklers:

https://huw.substack.com/p/what-have-you-got-to-say-to-that

So bleak:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/28/coronavirus-infection-rate-too-high-second-wave

"So where does this leave us over the next few months? With Re so close to 1.0 there are basically two options. First, we could try to accelerate the decline in the number of infected people – bringing Re down further – so that efficient test, trace and isolate measures combined with the quarantine of new arrivals might give us a chance of suppressing the virus to the point of virtual elimination, as has been done in South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and perhaps China.

It became clear from the prime minister’s announcement on 10 May on easing the lockdown that the government has chosen instead to open up the economy when there are still large numbers of infected people who do not know they carry the virus – guaranteeing ongoing infections and the inability to suppress the virus. As a consequence, the Covid-19 death rate will stabilise but may not drop much lower, and the threat to older people and those in care homes will remain serious."

Huw Lemmey piece is great, watching The Hecklers now

"all in" is a gambling term, right? are they using it with a difft meaning i'm unaware of? do they mean "all inside"?

"all in" could be from poker - "i am gambling everything on this one hand" or in slightly more dated slang it means "i am knackered and at the end of my resources"

i mean either way, good choice

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/28/alarm-over-five-suicides-in-six-days-at-prisons-in-england-and-wales

having the loosest and most confused lockdown in Western Europe doesn't go as far as our prisons where there is a highly restrictive lockdown regime and five inmates have committed suicide in the last six days.

Still, point stands that they’ll have tried to shift to something else, and KS seems keen to go along with that.

xp to self!

the danger is nobody gives a shit about prisoners getting locked down during a pandemic (it's probably a pc gone mad non-issue to some) but we aren't meant to be killing them or putting them through such brutal isolation they will come out with PTSD

https://t.co/g0pZJHaGmr pic.twitter.com/eqAzH6U7D6

— isaac rose (@_isaacrose) May 28, 2020

jokerfiying on live tv

looks like AntiCum could be the new AntiVax

I was properly shocked that when a friend asked on Facebook "when the app comes out will you use it?" and no-one said they will (unless you need it to get into restaurants etc) - I mean the people who won't are going to be louder than the people who will, but still...

The whole 'do your civic duty' line from Johnson is just... the gall of it.

I was properly shocked that when a friend asked on Facebook "when the app comes out will you use it?" and no-one said they will (unless you need it to get into restaurants etc) - I mean the people who won't are going to be louder than the people who will, but still...

I would have no qualms about using it even if I were in a country with a right wing govt like Germany or France - but here? That NHS Angels app that is almost impossible to use but quite competent at spying on your data sets a precedent.

I'm not convinced by the app at all. There's the issue of data privacy and security. There's the issue of people who won't take it seriously - "me, self-isolate? Nah I don't feel ill, I'm off for a street conga" - or people who can't because the SSP offered to them means being off work is financially impossible. It runs on Bluetooth - if I'm working a 9-6 and it takes 30 mins journey each way, I won't have battery to have it run in the background on the bus home. And people who work in retail/service jobs are usually not allowed to have their phone on them anyway, and even if managers are sensible and allow it in their pockets, a lot of staff may not feel comfortable on their shop floor or whatever having it on them for all kinds of reasons anyway.

also - it's a stereotype based in some level of truth, the most at-risk people are the least tech-savvy. In my experience, so many older people react to being asked for an email address or advice to go online to find something with "oh, I can't be doing with all that, it's not for me" type self-exclusionary disinterest

The US and UK pushing against a global patent pool has a real "are we the baddies?" energy to it.

I feel like Britain would be better at prolonged lockdown of everyone than it will be at individual lockdowns. "My mates are in the boozer? fuck this I feel fine"

oh you know what brits are like, they'll be all: "OI MATES I READ IN THE NEWSIE-WEWSIES LOCKDOWNS A SHAM ALSO BLOOD SAUSAGE IS DELICIOUS"

and that's just the women

bagsy not in net

The Bluetooth thing again - even when the battery was very worn on my last phone I could run BT headphones for 10 hours and it wouldn't drop more than a few %. Maybe actively scanning for new devices takes significantly more? That's possible I suppose. Obviously stick it in airplane mode and switch off wifi. xps

I say a few %, I mean like 2. It uses very little power when synced at least.

have to say fair play to the FT for their covid coverage, been consistently the best/only one worth reading

From that heckling article upthread, the most depressing truth bomb I'll read today

you weren’t so much voting for two differing visions of how to shape a country, but for who was the best manager of a country whose shape was already fixed

The fact that people have continued to use the Tube throughout lockdown and the virus appears to have declined heavily in London is positive and suggests that even with relaxation measures it should decline further in other regions over the next fortnight.

The problems will occur I think when people start moving around the country again - the govt is desperate to allow people to take summer holidays, particularly in Britain and that level of movement just does not seem like a good idea right now. Once again the Cummings situation has been spectacularly unhelpful here. At least we'll be able to see what's happened in other countries - Spain in particular is opening up massively and if they get their second spike earlier then, in theory, the government should be able to react. Note the In Theory bit.

yeah a lot of this rests on the government learning from their mistakes and reacting appropriately, which is harder when you are constitutionally incapable of recognising mistakes

"The fact that people have continued to use the Tube throughout lockdown"

Is that right? Usage has been considerable but down? Hasn't the tube been dead at weekends?

QC Twitter up in arms, justifiably for once:

Attorney General has replied to my letter. I sought assurances she would uphold the rule of law, in the light of her tweeting in favour of accepting Cummings' account. She gives no assurance. Instead she gives a disingenuous account of her earlier tweet. pic.twitter.com/Hw1eVsBJ4Q

— Charlie Falconer (@LordCFalconer) May 27, 2020

Braverman's elevation to a role the last two incumbents were turfed out of for exercising a degree of constitutionally-required political objectivity is one of the most indefensible appointments in recent memory.

Yes, she's atrocious.