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

That was what it was like the whole time he was leader.

i guess i saw bits of it, news dodger that i am. he seems more vulnerable now somehow as a backbencher just trying to go about his day to day

I'm so glad he didn't have an unlock door fail moment. helping the Tories defeat him isn't enough for these vindictive bastards, they always need more.

So the covid testing kits are poisonous or something?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/16/uk-government-orders-halt-randox-covid-19-tests-over-safety-issues

fucking lunatic reporter there at cromryn's door

ironing my hair to get the Starmer quiff then turning the steam up and ironing my face to imitate his complexion

— Rosewood Shoehorn (@apiarism) July 16, 2020

"Randox was awarded a £133m contract in March to produce the testing kits for England, Wales and Northern Ireland without any other firms being given the opportunity to bid for the work."

i wonder who they know.

If you believe in shady Russian interference in Brexit then why would they be interfering on behalf of the party with a second referendum in their manifesto?

Easy for the right to play this as Corbyn choosing politics over patriotism (in an 'allegiance to The West' sense). Doesn't really make a blind bit of difference to anything.

it doesn't need to make any sense for it to be effective unfortunately. As if the Tories aren't the party of Russian oligarchs as well, they probably have been amongst the top donors in the last decade and most of these lads are subordinate to Putin still.

Feel sorry enough for Jez having to haul his bike through the front door every day and presumably out to the back garden. That is not figuring out how to live lad.

Why this journalists are harassing us and not asking the government about the suppressed #RussiaReport? pic.twitter.com/ImlaKseIqK

— Laura Alvarez (@LauraAlvarezJC) July 16, 2020

@pestononsunday had to go outside to take picture of El Gato as he's not too impressed with your guest pic.twitter.com/OOa6vWzeWU

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 22, 2016

no, the back gardens are small in those. this is his neighbour's
https://assets.themodernhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/4_Berriman-Rd_HIGH-RES-5-1600x1068.jpg

always funny when you see JC's unkempt garden (left) next to the pristine fussiness of his neighbour's (middle)
https://assets.themodernhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/1_Berriman-Rd_HIGH-RES-44-1600x1068.jpg

that's an extension though. Very nice room.

The government’s chief scientific adviser has said the UK does not yet have the capacity to carry out 350,000 coronavirus tests a day over winter.

Tennessee, which is a COVID basket case right now, is already doing this many tests a day.

Wait sorry I got those numbers wrong :/

NEVER TRUST ANYTHING I SAY, I’VE TOLD YOU FOOLS THIS BEFORE

This afternoon I spoke to Keir and asked to step back from the front bench duties as Minister for Air Quality and the Natural Environment but remain a Labour and Co-operative MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven.

See my statement below. 👇 pic.twitter.com/g1I8T7QLVg

— Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP🌹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 (@lloyd_rm) July 16, 2020

R-M stepping down due to attacks and harassment.

That's really awful, I don't even want to know the nature of some of those messages but you can well imagine.

Feel sad for the ace with the mace and I bet he'll be replaced by someone with more melt adjacency

Looking forward to reading the broadsheet thinkpieces decrying his cancellation

I do like LRM but also find him a bit embarrassing, he reminds me of a friend who has a similar way of talking / presenting himself, so might be a "me" problem.

He would on his last chance with Starmzy. I think he already was on a written warning for publicly politicising politics as opposed to the forensic strategy.

All those people who went on for weeks about Angela Eagle’s office getting a brick have been extremely silent over LRM and Dawn Butler.

Melts are such champion self-victimisers as well. I've forgotten the one who reported someone to the police for posting she should go jump in the water. What? Are you threatening to drown me?

He has been targeted over the last two weeks by Collier, Philipps, et al.

Who are now campaigning for him to have the whip removed.

Fuck this party.

depressing that he would get heat for these stances p much in any country/big tent "left" party.

Wait is there a backstory here? Assumed it was a coordinated far right thing.

2009 Facebook post, made when he was 22, calling Zionism a ‘dangerous nationalist idea’, which he subsequently deleted and apologised for.

and the jk rowling thing

it's quite clear Starmer Labour is no big tent, which is not how the slippery melt campaigned for the leadership. Seriously I hope a spear of ice-piss from the sky goes straight through his skull.

McKinsey coming into 'restructure' the civil service.

Big news in same story too: McKinsey has been given a £800k contract for "Provision of Consultancy Services for Civil Service Modernisation and Reform".
The Cummings revolution has started.

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 16, 2020

But that's fuck all really, given the task, so I expect renewals when they only deliver 5 pages.

that little wanker that was aggressively doorstepping Corbz is a Dimbleby. Quelle fucken surprise

Hate to say it but £800K to McKinsey won't buy you a revolution- they can't do that off-the-peg. It'll buy you a literature review, some quali research, some organigrams and flowcharts & a little cover. https://t.co/gv7cHxVc7I

— Declan Gaffney (@djmgaffneyw4) July 16, 2020

This isn't really the gotcha that these guys think, Cummings is hardly going to throw public money at one gigantic reconstruction project in one go, it's testing the water.

As a project it does sound like a preliminary phase.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdFVKKnXsAILsDv?format=jpg&name=900x900

this is why Communists had brutal anti-rightist campaigns and liquidated class enemies or sent them to hard labour camps, because it is a self-perpetuating cancer that will end up killing us all!

Inherited his father's name and connections etc

wow this Dimbledore the younger provokes a new level of hatred in me, they were a horrible dynasty and just as they seemed to be fading away into infirmity this little creepy anobiinae crawls out of the very fine antique woodwork!

The other well-known junior Dimble, Henry, is part owner of Leon and is to be encouraged or at least not slicey boid for not going into news.

Also:

pic.twitter.com/i6zVUzWonQ

— Cold War Steve (@Coldwar_Steve) July 16, 2020

This 'commitment to free speech' includes government stipulations on what universities will not be allowed to teach https://t.co/3zw3vZvbcE

— Nick Srnicek (@n_srnck) July 16, 2020

what an incredibly warped version of free speech, if you stop teaching stuff we don't like and give platforms to hate-speech merchants then we won't bankrupt your university.

I'm suspicious about this...

Yesterday two Oxford University statisticians published an alarming article which said there was a serious flaw in the way Public Health England has been recording coronavirus deaths: they say that PHE has been recording the deaths of anyone who has previously tested positive for coronavirus as a coronavirus death.

Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan wrote:

By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.

If this is correct, it may mean that the number of coronavirus deaths in England has been significantly overestimated.

...partly because the duo writing 'no one is allowed to ever recover' in that way, plus tossing out 'run over by a bus' as if a common cause of death feels distinctly agenda'd.

Williamson said an institution’s free speech policies would be included in any decision. Student unions would be required to focus on “serving the needs of the wider student population rather than subsidising niche activism and campaigns,” he said.

This is bananas. Student Unions are independent of universities, as Williams presumably knows.

*Williamson

“We need a future [higher education] sector which delivers the skills the country needs: universities should ensure courses are consistently high quality and focus more heavily upon subjects which deliver strong graduate employment outcomes in areas of economic and societal importance, such as Stem, nursing and teaching,” Williamson said.

as well as closing courses with low graduate pay,

Uh huh.

tbh once the immediate rage dissipates there's some fun in seeing which Cabinet minister contradicts themselves the soonest on a daily basis