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

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.

People have still been required to go to work throughout and the fact that there have been fewer Tubes running has meant they've been busier than they otherwise would be.

Meanwhile "civic duty" is currently trending, in exactly the way that you might expect if you were anyone other than Matt Hancock. Cummings has effectively made it impossible for the government to communicate public health information or guidance in a pandemic.

BREAKING: A Durham Police investigation has concluded that Dominic Cummings DID breach lockdown rules when he drove to Barnard Castle, the Telegraph has learned

— Martin Evans (@evansma) May 28, 2020

charge him, go on

o rly

Breaking: Durham Police said it was a "minor" breach and therefore they will take no further action.

— Martin Evans (@evansma) May 28, 2020

60 quid coming straight out of the public purse

lmao

should have waited until saturday tho imo

Kudos to the picture editor, that is the perfect image pic.twitter.com/gpVsGfztL5

— Greg Jenner: 'DEAD FAMOUS OUT NOW!' (@greg_jenner) May 28, 2020

cummings has powerful gollum energy

Probably what kept him alive when he was stricken with the rona.

That video of Hancock laughing is going to haunt him.

and me

Some information on the free online retraining stuff the government is partnering on:

https://www.techworld.com/careers/case-for-universal-action-on-digital-re-skilling-now-3789193/

It doesn't seem to have made much of a splash with Cummings dominating the agenda.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI24QqLWkAIu8_3.jpg:large

idk, hundreds or thousands of courses for free isn't a bad thing but seems like a drop in the ocean of what's required.

yeah i just like remembering 150 years ago when we could all laugh at skills wallets and go to the pub

any courses on how to make your own poteen/moonshine still and the old culinary art of squirrel roasting, got to prepare for the future.

With the appropriate caveats, there's some interesting stuff here:

https://uklearns.pearson.com/courses.html?#stq=&stp=1

boxedjoy's point about service workers not being able to have their phone on them is a good one and I'll add that staff in schools are almost universally prohibited from having phones on them for safeguarding reasons. Probably many other workplaces practices that are preventative of this being used in many ways that the government has ignorantly overlooked in their quest to solve this with technical! gimmicks! solutions! apps! cheap! innovations!

i think there's a real problem with how the terminology 'contact tracing' already has all these contemporary resonances that seem to link it in the imagination to smartphones (contacts) and the kind of high militaristic high tech stuff you see in bond films ('tracing') immediately puts in my head sort of gulf-war star wars images. In fact contact tracing is a labour-intensive activity that needs to draw on fairly mundane knowledge (local communities, lifestyles, connections) and would be better overseen by community nurses than mobile phone company operators.

i'm suspect that the problems with the contact tracing scheme are more about inherent lack of understanding of issues affecting health (exacerbated by gov policy) than the fact that its being rushed out to cover cummings. it would have been a shitshow anyway.