Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

pls post it in the correct thread
Up-the-arse corner

PRINCIPLED
SMART AS HELL
LOOKS GOOD IN A SUIT

choose two

or in keir's case, fewer than that

Yes to this:

the virus is predominantly being spread by people adhering to the law, not breaking it. we don't need 'tougher restrictions' on people going for walks, we need better support for those least able to self-isolate.

— Sita Balani (@sitainshort) January 11, 2021

Though I think more places have been made covid secure, and also there is more testing but...

How secure are those workplaces and how reliable is lateral flow testing are some of the questions. Any talk of curfews etc. is designed to steer us away from asking about these.

And the opposition, by blindly following the government, are doing a ton of damage.

26m ago 13:48

Johnson under pressure to explain why he went for cycle ride seven miles from No 10

The Evening Standard has a good exclusive today. It reports that Boris Johnson went for a cycle ride around the Olympic Park on Sunday, seven miles from Downing Street.

This is awkward. As government officials were telling the Guardian only this morning (see 12.49pm), the advice is that when exercising you should you “should stay local in the village, town, or part of the city where you live”.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman did not have an answer as to why the PM thought that going seven miles away from home was consistent with the spirit of the rules - although he indicated that he would come back with a proper response later.

My Dad & his friends are all Nigerian GPs over 60 working in or around London. I spoke to him yesterday 3 of his friends are in hospital & a few friends have died. He’s had covid, he’s vaccinated but don’t underestimate the resilience required to work through this.

— Dr Annabel 🙅🏿‍♀️(she/her) (@SoSowemimo) January 11, 2021

Also hArD wOrKiNg fAmILiEs

Working hard at sitting on their arses pretending to do some work.

I think there's a pretty good argument that 7 miles on a bike is local xps

Working hard at sitting on their arses pretending to do some work.
― Eggbreak Hotel (Tom D.), Monday, January 11, 2021 2:41 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel seen

pretty difficult to do a decent length bike ride without going seven miles from your home tbh! but that story is in the context of matt hancock supporting derbyshire police who busted two women for going for a walk five miles from their houses xp

The way Labour under Starmer have followed the tories onto the public shaming/blaming bandwagon is criminal and I genuinely hope he dies a painful death for his part in this

A police car did a slooooooooow cruise by me and my neighbour today, while we were having a conversation at an acceptable distance. FRO!

lol yes your part of town is the only place I've seen police do that. lots of it this summer but nothing that involved them actually getting out of their cars lol

bless shami chakrabarti right now btw

But while Lady Chakrabarti is confident of winning Lib Dem support in the upper house, she has failed to win round the Labour leadership. Party sources said on Sunday that Labour would whip its peers to abstain.

quelle fucking surprise

During the first lockdown my friend D and I would walk by groups of police who were not social distancing with one another, just standing around on Lambs Conduit Street like NBD. We kept wondering whether we should photograph them and make the pix public because it infuriated us.

Shami Chakrabarti tells Labour sources briefing against her to "grow up" amid internal party divisions over the 'spycops' bill:

real adult talk from the Labour leadership

the party of legitimate concerns except for human rights

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/11/dutch-officials-seize-ham-sandwiches-from-british-drivers

pretty difficult to do a decent length bike ride without going seven miles from your home tbh! but that story is in the context of matt hancock supporting derbyshire police who busted two women for going for a walk five miles from their houses xp

I saw a group of youngish people (housemates presumably) walking four abreast, bad enough but this was across a fucking aisle in the supermarket

In case you’re wondering why they will get away with this

The PM has a young baby at home and a busier job than most, yet still manages to squeeze in a weekend cycle ride.

My other half is *never* going to let me hear the end of this. 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) January 11, 2021

Anyway the point about walking and cycling is all total bullshit as long as you have people still going out to work and not being paid to stay at home because idk communism or something

The PM has a young baby and a young girlfriend at home...

It’s not like BJ doesn’t have three huge parks within Molotov-throwing distance of home and (very reliably informed by friend consulting for Oxford-based pharma company) long Covid.

He's still looking like death warmed up, I know that for sure.

Half encouraging

lols at the implication that BJ has ever lifted a finger to help with taking care of any of his hundreds of children

xxxp is the implication that Johnson's ride in the olympic park is a kind of Chairman Mao swimming the Yangtze type stunt?

did he ride there? because my first thought was that he'd been driven there in order to ride around. one acceptable, the other not so much.

Riding 7 miles+ doesn't seem consistent with long Covid.

Google Maps reckons it's a 40 minute cycle ride from Downing St to the Olympic Park (assuming that's where he started from), although on the upside it's 'mostly flat'. So almost 2 hours of cycling, including a circuit or two of the park itself? I'd guess he was driven there. Maybe he could take the entire cabinet with him next time on a kind of team-building exercise, I'd love to see Priti Patel wobbling around the ArcelorMittal on a stabiliser-enhanced bike.

<extremely Milhouse through-the-looking-glass voice> what if... he was driven there, cycled for not long at all, but has allowed the story to leak out in such a way that it sounds like he cycled there and did loads of cycling once there. The sort-of-almost breaking the rules being the hook for why anyone would pay attention at all

I’m going to bleed out my eyes if I have to read this stupid argument again, come on, seven miles isn’t anything on a bike. Come on. This isn’t it.

i heard he rode there no-handed and pulled a monster wheelie at the lights on Kingsland Rd

I’m going to bleed out my eyes if I have to read this stupid argument again, come on, seven miles isn’t anything on a bike. Come on. This isn’t it.

The story falls apart completely under even the tiniest piece of scrutiny. Boris is clearly unable to ride a bike seven miles, or even at all. This will be one of his doubles, or possibly a local malcontent

doesn't he have a security detail escorting him everywhere? Just passing my notes on to some terrorist friends of mine.

I've said before about your grassing

while he was still mayor i was cycling into town from stoke newington and he was cycling back and we faced each other across a junction at angel and it was a great delight to be able to - very very slowly - raise two fingers at him and back down again. tight non smile in return.

Sentence commuted

I have a photo somewhere of the time he was ahead of me at the lights at Monument (back when he was mayor), with an unzipped backpack on.

You can tell nobody likes him irl when you see stuff like that

btw this was the olympic park at ~11-12 on Sunday.

https://i.imgur.com/JHmz6le.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/eHaG1Ot.jpeg

photos taken without intending to prove anything either way, but generally it was very quiet because it was so cold! some people exercising, some families.

Chernobyl has let itself go a bit these days

not picture: freezing zombies marauding, and a death-warmed up local strong man.

mutant little match girl selling strips of human flesh and bottles of that spirit of 2012 before Avalonia failed!

They truly have a cheek calling that Ballardian nightmare a park, it should be called The Zone or something.

Lol yeah, that’s bleak as fuck

When the Spectator was on John/Doughty Street, BJ could regularly be found in the Duke of York pub on Clerkenwell Road playing table football with the cycle couriers (it was also a major place to score weed/Class As from same).

> He says he would like to see the PM doing daily press conferences.

and the problem with daily press conferences is that occasionally p patel gets to do one (today at 5). what would she have to say that requires a special press conference?