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

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

Williamsons eh? Who needs 'em?

Political editor of the Standard being so angry at PHE not the government he voted for

PHE say there is no WHO time limit to when covid should be counted as a factor.

But Scotland count things differently.

What infuriates me is that we, the public, were not given this information by PHE to make up our own minds with the facts.

— Joe Murphy (@JoeMurphyLondon) July 17, 2020

because he wants to "make his own mind up" with the facts

BJ: "an ambition to return to total normality from November, "possibly in time for Christmas".

Because the virus will just go away, you'll see, it'll just go away

They know they're fucked if people can't do Christmas properly. People will sacrifice a foreign holiday but I'm not sure they will be forgiven if the public can't spend Christmas with their families or go out properly in the run up.

Question is whether it's possible to beat the virus down to a low enough level by then and no one knows that.

and what the consequences of a "normal" christmas will be in terms of carnage in January.

your search "gavin williamson sitting in a wheelbarrow holding an owl while a forest is being chopped down behind him" found 1 result:

https://www.expressandstar.com/resizer/eKdEVxIyUVk02-ZXFcPiesZ61gg=/1000x0/filters:quality(100)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-expressandstar-mna.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ATNCPSBOVVFPXA4ECK5TQJ3DOE.jpg

feels like November is the most optimistic possible date SAGE would be pushed to and they're trying to make it the base case

Man I just realised the Christmas ads this year are going to set a new standard for mawkishness.

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

Absolute bollocks, surely? Considering that the death figures (all causes) in England and Wales throughout April and May was *way* above the figure you'd get from adding the historical seasonal average to the official Covid-19 death toll. So the impact of the virus (direct or indirect) was being underestimated.

People keep trying to pick holes in these figures like it's all being inflated for some shady purpose. In the UK there was a massive spike in death certifications for the six weeks up to Easter, like you just wouldn't see outside of... I dunno, 1950s smog? Wartime? And then it rapidly came down because we all stayed at home. "Ah, but it was never that bad" is not an angle I have much time for.

My dentist still hasn't opened for appointments. I had a filling cancelled in April. I call once a week. They say 'try in a few weeks.' Their explanation is that they still haven't received guidance from the government.

People must have been imagining all those funerals I guess.

We also don't know about how those deaths are recorded if the person dies of a lung condition, or a stroke, or something else that potentially has its roots in a covid case from months before.

Looking at the 'significant normality' plan, the big one appears to be the proposal to have sporting crowds back from October. Thousands of people piling onto the train to the ground is hugely dangerous if the level of infection isn't lower in all parts of the country. Otherwise you're looking at a super-spreading event every time Leicester or Blackburn play either away or at home.

Oh good.

BREAKING: PM lifts lockdown further in England...

🚌 Anybody can use public transport from today

👔 From 1st August instead of govt telling people to work from home, it'll be up to employers to decide how best staff can work safely

🎳Bowling, skating rinks, casinos to reopen

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) July 17, 2020

not returning to normal until i see pictures of the queen necking a pint in a crowded pub

to my surprise my stepdad has decided not to go back to the pubs so far, the casino though - or the funhouse as he would have it - he'll be back there in a shot.

My dentist still hasn't opened for appointments. I had a filling cancelled in April. I call once a week. They say 'try in a few weeks.' Their explanation is that they still haven't received guidance from the government.

Jesus, don't remind me, I had toothache earlier in the week and was dreading having to go to the dentist - but the pain's disappeared now.

employers are not going to react how the government wants, I don't think. You don't volunteer to have your staff get sick in order to help save Pret ffs

People keep trying to pick holes in these figures like it's all being inflated for some shady purpose.

Press encouraging it all the way and I've already had relatives falling for it.

Hancock literally announcing an urgent enquiry because of a report from Oxford that hasn't yet been peer-reviewed and seems full of dogwhistle political bias.

I thought the ONS higher than usual recorded death figures for the Rona spike suggested our official figures are too low if anything? I mean fuck this bullshit anyway, it reeks!

employers are not going to react how the government wants, I don't think. You don't volunteer to have your staff get sick in order to help save Pret ffs

I've had lot of first hand discussions about this stuff and overwhelmingly they're saying they're not going to make anyone go in if they're not comfortable, certainly not before 2021. That might be different in boiler room call centre environments but in general WFH seems to be working fine regardless of how challenged the businesses themselves are. It's certainly less disruptive than having a virus raging round the office.

To give an anecdote from the other side, an acquaintance who works in hedge fund management (obv would never call someone who does so a friend) has had his boss freak out about people not wanting to go back in the office for months already - they never actually shut down and always had a few ppl in, including ppl who had the virus.

nb this is the same boss who made a Brexit Day cake w/ a giant UK flag surrounded by tiny little flags of the countries that all the employees come from and thought that was a nice gesture

The biggest problem for call centres - that i guess would also extend to some finance stuff - is that, aiui, you can't have people working from home handling customer payment information. Again, with India - where BPOs are a major part of the economy, the approach has been that you can't legally have more than one employee in every three in the office.

Actually, on that subject, i've heard anecdotally that there are a few US businesses looking to move call centres back onshore as there's less chance of government-mandated closures but idk how common that is or whether it also applies to the UK.

pic.twitter.com/ddL19HWkfh

— Simon Hedges (@Orwell_Fan) July 17, 2020

Watching the making of the Olympic 2012 opening ceremony and I have weeped 6 times already. I love my country very much.

— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) July 17, 2020