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

one thing boris was probably correct about at PMQs today was that proximity apps are a dead end, especially in the densely populated cities and human based contact tracing is the correct way forward. Not that the UK govt have managed to implement a functional version of that. But Starmer is so weak and lacking in conviction on anything and treads so carefully, he will never be able to put any pressure on the govt on how much they are fucking this up. He's fucking useless. He's so easy to dismiss, because he is gutless and his barrister routine will come across as parody opposition through repetition. Fucking useless on every level is that cunt.

Jenrick won't have to go, even though they seem to have got him bang to rights here, but nothing matters.

I was actually hoping to enjoy at least seeing Kier making the tories sweat a bit seeing as he is an establishment LOTO, even though I've got more respect for shit on the pavement than him. But no, even that doesn't make any difference when someone's first instinct is invariably be just slightly less tory than the Johnson govt.

This is the face of the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson being held to account for his disastrous record over COVID19. Not a pretty picture. #PMQs #BorisJohnson pic.twitter.com/5pIeKe1ogK

— Gerry Hassan (@GerryHassan) June 24, 2020

He looks fucked. There's the usual outrage that anyone has had the temerity to ask him a question but there's real bewilderment in there as well. Interested in who he's turning to look at there.

back in happier times...

Currently trying to figure out which circle of hell this picture of Boris Johnson and Richard Desmond originated from. pic.twitter.com/ZoxxXjCNMo

— Steven Sheil (@SSheil) June 25, 2020

Absolutely the plan now is to just brazen everything out and hope for the best.

If this was, say, the Blair era then Jenrick would have been made to resign by now after weeks of hostile front pages but I doubt most of the country even knows what the story is about.

How is it possible that the staring unnoticed child in the tunnel is not the creepiest thing about that photo?

Cursed image alert.

✈️

Irish Gov to exclude Britain from its plan to have ‘air-bridges’ to other EU countries.

Cabinet memo says this is because Britain’s attempt to tackle #Covid_19 has been “significantly poorer” than Ireland’s. https://t.co/tzgAnDLPnX

— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) June 25, 2020

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/D3AC/production/_113088145_mediaitem113088143.jpg

RoI otm, the rona won't have had this much of a fun day out since the Cheltenham festival

xp I've got to be honest, I love to see it.

On the one hand yes, on the other hand not looking good for us getting to see family. 😔

oh come on ireland, show some guts

How about a...tunnel bridge.

back in happier times...

🐦[Currently trying to figure out which circle of hell this picture of Boris Johnson and Richard Desmond originated from. pic.twitter.com/ZoxxXjCNMo🕸
— Steven Sheil (@SSheil) June 25, 2020🕸]🐦

hah hah! Maxine Peake is basically calling the Labour leader a melt it seems

xxp yeah I'm not unconflicted, but I've been feeling like I've been going nuts hearing about the air bridges from the UK (7-day average deaths: 133) to Italy, France and Spain (36, 22 and 3)

It's not like Boris to fail to acknowledge a child.

One of the best things about that Bournemouth picture is all the nice people on Twitter with variations on "but where do they all pee?"

FWIW it's the video footage of everyone piling off the train that's really scary.

Yeah, have sort of accepted that outside gatherings are less of a risk and it's the cramped inside spaces that we need to be most careful about. Which makes the pubs reopening all the more terrifying.

RLB taking a lot of shite for calling Peake a 'diamond'

(also Jordan Peterson is trending after Cambridge university is actually standing with one of its lecturers for tweeting "Abolish whiteness")

Richard Desmond’s “we don’t want to give Marxists loads of doe (sic) for nothing” was a reference to potential tax to Tower Hamlets Council, the borough with London’s highest child poverty rate (43%). pic.twitter.com/tNzGX7G1mc

— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) June 24, 2020

sleaze like this is just standard practise. I miss those days when at least you could have the satisfaction of seeing the odd politician getting pumped when they are caught out.

we don’t want to give Marxists loads of doe

cos the price is two deer

I always remember Desmond as the arsehole an Express hack wrote an acrostic fuck you message to when he first purchased it.

he was the publisher of 'asian babes' amirite? not sleazy at all that guy

the Priyamvada Gopal quote is a complete wilful misrepresentation of what she meant, some arseholes have been trying to get her sacked.

I'm posting some of the greatest hits received overnight, then making an announcement at 9am before taking my two day weekly break from Twitter. What we now know is that much of this attack is from a site called 4chan (?) which is co-ordinating it. So targetted racist hate.

— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) June 25, 2020

he was the publisher of 'asian babes' amirite? not sleazy at all that guy

he had a whole porn empire - mags, phonelines, videos, the lot

Andrew's post is a pretty good advert for not taking Twitter talking points as the starting point for discussions on things like this, because you end up discussing the noise rather than the signal. Everything gets distorted when your starting point is some crank with an axe to grind.

I'm not sure which half of my post you mean!

the other day Gopal was talking about how within the caste system in India her family would considered the white people within this fucked up hierarchy. But nazi pricks love stripping all nuance away and misquoting her to make her sound anti-white, because we all know white people have had a tough time recently!

it's quite annoying to see a good person who doesn't seem to care much for grandstanding twitter wankery getting sucked into a culture war shitstorm.

i was stupid enough to read some of the Twitter replies and tbh i'm down for abolishing whiteness by any means necessary now

"RLB taking a lot of shite for calling Peake a 'diamond'"

What's the problem with this?

xp I spent half an hour reading the replies and reporting them, some were for long standing accounts with plenty of followers

cos the price is two deer

Post has been slept on.

no I flagged it

What's the problem with this?

Oh sorry - it was the sentiment rather than the term chosen! The people giving her shite should not be.

did read as 'talking a lot of shite' at first!

The interview contains a line in which Maxine Peake explicitly links the killing of George Floyd with the Israeli secret service. Given the recent history of the Labour Party I might think twice before offering a glowing endorsement of her given how that endorsement is likely to be spun, and it makes me wonder whether RLB read it in its entirety before sharing it.

I don't think vote-shaming has ever worked and is probably counterproductive but that's the lesser issue here. I'd be surprised if it wasn't deleted.

Not that the Twitter thread itself isn't mostly a load of people joining in a pile-on for the sake of it, but then they nearly always are.

I retweeted Maxine Peake’s article because of her significant achievements and because the thrust of her argument is to stay in the Labour Party. It wasn’t intended to be an endorsement of all aspects of the article. https://t.co/3k6P3hcCgJ

— Rebecca Long-Bailey (@RLong_Bailey) June 25, 2020

xp

Maxine Peake is wrong on that point imo, nobody owes shit to the Labour Party and it isn't a football club and if they want to take people for granted again because they think they've nowhere else to go they might be in for a bit of mauling at the next election!

we did anyone but the Tories in '97 and look where it has fucking got us!

The interview contains a line in which Maxine Peake explicitly links the killing of George Floyd with the Israeli secret service. Given the recent history of the Labour Party I might think twice before offering a glowing endorsement of her given how that endorsement is likely to be spun, and it makes me wonder whether RLB read it in its entirety before sharing it.

I don't think vote-shaming has ever worked and is probably counterproductive but that's the lesser issue here. I'd be surprised if it wasn't deleted.

Yes there's an Amnesty report that says as much but as far as I'm aware it doesn't say that's where kneeling on the neck comes from and making a point of making that link in a national newspaper is a bit dodgy.

Regardless of the truth of it, it isn't a great idea for a Shadow Cabinet member to be seen to be enthusiastically endorsing someone making that point, especially when you come from a wing of the party where the words of every antisemitic prick will be used against you, and it looks like RLB herself has realised that and clarified it.

Also it's not like the US police were previously short of ways to kill black people - I dunno, I get the same feeling I got a couple of weeks ago when a load of people on social media were suddenly very keen to make sure people knew all about the Arab slave trade, it's very much "why are you pointing this out now? What's going on in your head that's made you decide it's very important to mention it now?"

Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it pic.twitter.com/7wddf9tUYb

— Mohammad Alqadi (@ALQadiPAL) May 30, 2020

Pointing out that the US police gets training / tactics directly from two occupying armies (its own and Israel's) seems relevant tbh.

Tankie twitter 🤝 ilx poster gyac

it makes me laugh even after the left of Labour have been completely nullified loads of these worthless pricks still feel the need to jump on a quite innocuous related-to-a-celeb-interview tweet by a minor shadow minister, what a bunch of fucking vindictive arseholes.