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

It is ridiculous that people ask the current UK PM questions, in good faith, expecting reasonable answers, truth, logic or anything related.

You would not do this with Donald Trump. And most of the UK journos would chortlingly agree that you wouldn't.

So don't do it with the UK PM.

Don't bother unmuting.

Literally give me 1/10 of what Bobby P is paid for this shite and I’ll do a (metaphorical) reign of terror that makes Jeremy Paxman look like Holly Willoughby.

― scampo italiano (gyac), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 15:44 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Setting up a crowdfund for this

Good things are possible

Lord Alan Sugar has said his central London property investments are "suffering" due to office workers staying home https://t.co/y2pyy3qxhu

— Evening Standard (@standardnews) September 9, 2020

Labour to the core

100% this is what this whole thing is about, the government don't especially care if Pret goes under or if a few Spanish baristas have to find new jobs, but if they do then rents will have to go down and the collapse of the Central London property market is going to hit a lot of anonymous Tory donors where it hurts.

I am going to get a several copies of the Standard everyday if commercial rents are fucked it's going to be so good.

Operation Moonshot then.

the SAGE guy on PM thought the best case scenario at the moment was slowing the rate of growth of the R rate, we are so getting locked down before winter

“The prime minister has tasked the secretary of state for health and social care with delivering a Mass Population Testing Programme, currently called Operation Moonshot, before the end of the year.

“This is described by the prime minister as our only hope for avoiding a second national lockdown before a vaccine, something the country cannot afford. He would also like this to support the opening up of the economy and allow the population to return to something closer to normality.”

The leaks confirm private sector organisations are to be encouraged to carry out testing to help their own trade and protect their workforce.

“Businesses could support our testing strategy by providing ‘testing at the door’ to enable large scale ‘high-risk’ events to take place, such as football matches, theatre productions, concerts or conferences,” the strategy says. “The costs of travel or leisure activities could include the costs of accessing tests beforehand.”

Absolute bullshit.

Jess Phillips MP (Labour) tweeted :
Might get a t-shirt to where to work that says "Grow a Spine" on the back "There's no point being a captain on a burning wreckage" There is nothing more disappointing in Westminster than the weasley complete lack of courage.

0 0
Jess Phillips MPDeleted about 16 hours ago after 2 minutes, tweeted using Twitter Web App

if Jess didn't delete all her best tweets she could have bin a contender.

operation moonbeam

she can't help but to burn so brightly after being the beneficiary of a Russell Group Uni and a grammar school education. I can't help - as a thick bastard - being so jel of her oh so honeyed classicism. actually tbf most of my first draughts are that bad as well!

I came here to post about the obviously knocked up in 10mins PowerPoint presentation that's doing the rounds but I got distracted by this:

This is a fabulous photograph of a reflective PM, with a lot on his mind. I can’t help noticing that he’s pulled off some timber. I hope his team continue to find him the time to continue training. https://t.co/i1Ma25O6ZR

— Tom Watson (@tom_watson) September 10, 2020

Very relieved to figure out that it means "has lost weight"

wtf.

when body fascism is just fascism

hey who hasn't pulled off a bit of timber during lockdown?

Moonshot thing is hilarious. For one they can't deliver because they are incompetent. It also assumes people are going to go to theatres, concerts and matches in enough numbers in the first place. There is no 'trick' that will substitute for a vaccine. People may have to face a version of this until all trials fail but until then I reckon there'll be enough people that will sit this one out than take a huge gamble on a government scheme.

the moonshot doesn't exist! it's like basing your plan on Jesus coming round and curing everybody

in other news i'm kinda bored of life being fucked now

does "moonshot" have other some vernacular meaning i haven't encountered: "hugely ambitious project that certainly succeed"

bcz to me its plain normal meaning is "our one shot is at best a wild gamble"

Spaffing at the moon. And other unused Coil album titles.

They can't deliver it because the technology to deliver it doesn't exist. It's narrative over policy, to make it look like they're doing something.

Also how do you enforce it? Say there's a guy who's got tickets for, say, City v Liverpool, it's a gigantic game, they've paid maybe £70+ for the ticket, they feel fine. They do a test, it comes back positive, can you really say that everyone is going to stay at home in that scenario? Or do you do it in a controlled environment outside the ground? If so, who administers that, how do you cope physically with the queues that will build up or, y'know, tens of thousands of people in a bottleneck outside the stadium.

Also as normal no one in the government is thinking about the train beforehand.

Even with a high threshold of success, 10m tests a day would mean a hundred thousand or so false positives a day as well.

pretty sure you're right, mark.

i.e. the "shoot the moon" strategy in hearts where you try to lose every trick

If so, who administers that, how do you cope physically with the queues that will build up or, y'know, tens of thousands of people in a bottleneck outside the stadium

look when somebody invents the test that doesn't exist yet they can just invent a pill that makes the rona disappear instantly at the same time

Well, the original moonshot was putting people on the moon - it cost 2% of US GDP - the comparable amount in the UK would be £4 billion (er, based on 2019 GDP, not 2020!)

Government haven't even built a proper test and trace system have they? This moonshot scheme sounds like a cover for that failure

what we need is the Russians to start working on a moonshot so we have the incentive to spite them

or fake it in a disused warehouse, loads of them available

https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50074/1001463752/original/krtek-traveled-space-in-2011-thanks-to-an-american-astronaut-photo-u2?w=375&q=60&fm=pjpg&dpr=2

thread of people who aren't the Prime Minister

https://img.discogs.com/WcyNZs2k6VEyqZ_bsDEHH1wBWQM=/fit-in/600x589/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-797300-1387703058-8183.jpeg.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOgZDiLW4AAC8sD.jpg

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uz2VwR0ZQEX-LcobfpxJOvXB7GE=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x800/filters:focal(807x387:1113x693)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59605469/melies.0.jpg

this moonshot is basically a tube rocket in your drunk uncle's back garden and it fell apart before the end of Today

a model rocket made of crudely painted cardboard boxes, if you will

Yesterday, over 2,500 spectators at Doncaster watched horse racing for the first time in Britain since the outbreak of the pandemic as a government-endorsed pilot event.

However, during the day the council told race organisers not to allow fans in for the remainder of the St Leger over fears of a spike in the number of virus infections.

Arena Racing Company, which runs Doncaster Racecourse, confirmed the remainder of the four-day meeting will be held without spectators.

that went well

nobody wants to see Donny become a quarantined wasteland of shambling half corpses aimlessly coughing and spluttering around the oh never mind

I mean

And I would drive 400miles
And I would drive 400 more
Just to be the gal who drove 800 miles to drop dead at your door pic.twitter.com/cRdfkNdZ0s

— Your Mum says Black Lives Matter (@judeinlondon2) September 10, 2020

👏 MUST 👏 PAY 👏 RENT 👏

this is because they want to make sure they're locked into rental contracts first, right? that's what matters isn't it

— 12 oxen (@HINIONGE) September 10, 2020

"a quarantined wasteland of shambling half corpses aimlessly coughing and spluttering around"

there is no "new normal" on the great spice routes of The North!

xp

"The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent." Karl Marx

— Irishmonk (@castlvillageman) September 9, 2020

So much awful stuff. The illiterate deleted Phillips tweet. But the Tom Watson picture tweet - really? When you thought he couldn't go any lower.

well he's more limber
now he's shed some timber

I can't wait till he live blogs on the pulping of the ill-fated diet book he brought out just as the Rona was coming to Town and panic buying and comfort eating were all the rage.

there's a great take on the Jaccob Rees Mogg lounging in parliament shot in this week's 2000AD in the steampunk mini series about mystic worlds and Parisian detectives

I was really proud to act as Strategic Comms Consultant for this report. It's a really thorough piece of work, based on 11 focus groups and two polls carried out between December 19-July 20. Read Rob's thread for the key points. I'm also going to share some thoughts of my own... https://t.co/TPzH8W4rdu

— Ellie Mae O'Hagan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@MissEllieMae) September 10, 2020

O'Hagan goes into some of the findings about approval and defensiveness towards billionaires

To be fair to the cunts the universities thing is not just about rent, if students can't make it to their £9k a year universities it's one of those totemic things that show that the government just can't run a properly functioning society right now (which is true, it transparently can't).

Some of these students will have had the double whammy of disrupted university education AND messed-up A-level grades and while they've created a whole generation of people who won't vote Tory for at least another 25 years, their middle-aged parents might do and are likely to be thinking twice about it now.

That's a very good Ellie-Mae thread by the way.

rank the o'hagans

Sean at the bottom on the basis of his LRB articles alone.