Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

yeah. insane. don't see how that passes any bar for newsworthiness partic given how transparently self-serving it is. it suited Boris to kiss Trump's ass until the moment Trump was deemed a liability.

just picturing the pitch session at 6am on that one - 'what have you got Chris?' 'Well I have a highly placed source that says... ' 'Yes?' 'that the Prime Minister....' 'Yes?!?' 'actually is happy, on balance, that Trump lost' '.....'

Newsnight was dire last night as well, which is of course the rule now. Nicholas Watt's two-way with Wark was sourced exclusively from govt sources on what the chancellor 'might' do, and all other points of view, dissent, etc, sourced also exclusively from Tories. i'm aware Labour is now not actually providing opposition but i guess i'm still surprised when reporters don't at least go through the motions of communicating their views.

I had a BBC survey yesterday, said some measured but honest stuff about the lol news output

just nitpicking here but when the BBC headline is about floods in South Yorkshire you don't have a pic of the River Ouse in York. York/Sheffield is like the same distance between Cambridge and London ffs, you can't just use random "The North" pics for every news item.

Westminster Voting Intention (Wales):

LAB: 36% (-7)
CON: 33% (+1)
PLC: 17% (+4)
REF: 5% (NEW)
GRN: 4% (+1)
LDM: 3% (=)

Via @YouGov, 11-14 Jan.
Changes w/ 26-30 Oct.

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) January 18, 2021

Welsh Labour feeling the benefit of that Starmer Surge!

it suited Boris to kiss Trump's ass until the moment Trump was deemed a liability.

Plus it’s pretty well known that Biden & Harris hate him for saying racist shit about Obama! Yeah I’m sure he was fuckin thrilled they won

Not to mention trying to sell Ireland down the river a couple of months ago.

wasn't there a biden ultimatum about irish border as well? which made eu negotiations harder. (xp?)

it pains me that the bbc can't do better than reporting second hand what some lord said he believed in the daily mail, especially when they end up getting flack for it.

Hat mancock self isolating, I reckon they just do this whenever they want to lie low for a bit and achieving the worst death rate on the planet might be such an occasion - plus it’s a chance to pretend the nhs app is an actual thing that does anything

this was good

Ten days at the Royal London Hospital. Our reporting from the frontline of the war on coronavirus. All this week ⁦@BBCOne⁩ bbcnewssix #bbcnewsten. pic.twitter.com/Nc0bO2pZzF

— Clive Myrie (@CliveMyrieBBC) January 17, 2021

The BBC doing something good? Does the government know?

keep it under your hat!

do some fucking work you lazy cunt

Exclusive:

“It would not be entirely uncommon in the diary for him to shut the door and have a kip for half an hour or so." https://t.co/RHbc38DhCv

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) January 19, 2021

I fancy a power nap in the afternoon, sure it'll be cool with my employer

I stay up late, get up early and have TWO naps in between. This could be the key to immortality. I will get back to you on that one zzz zzz.......

Churchill was an drunk in his 70s, what's Boris' excuse?

to clarify i think working hours in the UK are gruelling, stupid and discriminatory. i only wish Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in a position to take a stand on this cause he obviously believes in.

fresh off setting records as the country with the highest covid death rate in the world, there's a decent chance we'll breach 2,000 deaths a day before long

Due to technical difficulties, today's update to the #COVID19 Dashboard is delayed. An update is expected by 16:30 GMT.

There have been 33,355 new cases and 1,610 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

A total of 4,266,577 people have now received the 1st dose of a vaccine. pic.twitter.com/k0Y6f4cezR

— Public Health England (@PHE_uk) January 19, 2021

that is of course a new record for uk deaths, fuck this stupid shitty backwater of a country

Even taking the weekend reporting lag into account it's still 1100+ on the 7-day rolling average, and climbing. Not to mention those who died after 28 days since a positive test, which is a pretty contrived metric to begin with. I'm guessing state media aren't mentioning these figures much?

at least the new cases number has gone down a bit, but fucking hell

yeah funnily enough british media is not too interested in digging into the numbers or even reporting them beyond a cursory daily mention

but it’s fine though because 6.4% of the population has been vaccinated and thus are now superhuman

Cases are going down, so it’s a lagging indicator. Government aren’t going to face any consequences for it, especially as the fucking opposition went along with them the whole time, so what’s the fucking point? At least I saw a yougov poll saying only 8% of people here don’t want the vaccine, so that’s something. Yeah, I’m in a great mood.

very few have received second doses though i though? so like... demi-human

xpost

Seen lots of people posting on FB etc that first dose is 90% effective anyway thanks to that stupid fucking JCVI report

apparently some people who have had their first round of vaccinations are under the impression that they can instantly go out and start living their best lives again so we might end up with a post-vaccination spike in cases

something 2 look forward 2

Going by date of death, we have already had a longer run the last week or so of 950+ deaths a day compared with last April (and recent days might continue this).

I keep reading reports about how Johnson is constantly batting off the covid hawks/anti-lockdownists in his cabinet, well now we have highest per capita death rate in the world - perhaps what really happened is that they won and we are victims of an attempted gaslighting. Kudos to them for doing a better job than Bolsonaro and Trump though.

Imagine dying of Covid after you'd received the vaccination, I'll be squirreling myself away as much as possible after I finally get mine just to make sure I don't have that on my fucking tombstone.

On your tombstone and then circulated on facebook to PrOvE the vaccines don't work

Just fuck it, give the government 500 mps in the next election, i don’t care anymore
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsHMZEZXYAAtKqX?format=png&name=900x900

Kieth just so exponentially increases the "nothing matters anymore" melancholy and despair in the UK, just by being such a political useless Tory dipshit.

The alt-right and Momentum thugs are two sides of the sane coin to libs, pt.5785885883559

They really don’t like the idea of accountability do they? A tale in three parts: pic.twitter.com/YEo9lxQ2Pm

— Liam Young (@liamyoung) January 18, 2021

ahh yes, labour is guaranteed to win a landslide victory by simply saying ‘i’m sorry, i didn’t catch that, could you repeat the question’ and then feigning unconsciousness until the next day whenever the issue of trans rights comes up

lol, the does-Siri-recognise-your-voice guide to voter targeting, make sure you copyright it and sell it to them, bg

he's very good at feigning unconsciousness for very long periods of time tbf

i'm sorry but i just don't see any way that the Labour Party can win Michigan

i can't work out whether the highest rate of death in the world is not true or not notable but i can't find the BBC covering it anywhere

Sorry, I don’t know that one.

Did you mean 200,000 more people given first dose?

saw a bit of channel 4 news earlier where they were light-heartedly covering the news of boris’ napping habit with lots of footage of churchill and thatcher

oddly flattering comparisons for a news cycle where the uk posted some truly horrific death stats but i’m sure number 10’s comms office had no role in either the timing of the news of boris’ ickle snoozes nor the decision to frame it as a feat of churchillian proportions

I thought that was a bit beneath them tbh.

I'm just imagining telling a prospective employer at a job interviewer: listen pal I have two naps a day and you will have to work around that if you want me. But tbf fuck microsleeping it's got be a half hour nap at least to get the full rejuvenating benefits.

Nah, I'd go have 5 mins, it works for me..

I used to often steal a 15 minute nap on a bed of dust sheets in the back of the van at work and it never felt quite enough.

and once I woke up and some twat had put a dead crow in a bag right next to my head.. hilarious bantz!

Aye a nap is a tricky thing, like goldilocks' porridge

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55722168 <- the big covid news. it says 'updated 1 hr ago' but is timestamped 20:21.

there's a coronavirus section on the news website here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/coronavirus - but it's counter-productive because of the speed of it - 20 articles on the front page, 5 pages posted today (including an earlier version of the the above news iirc) but it also has crap like "'Harry Potter' village busy as summertime" and "Covid survivor celebrates 105th birthday" and "When could lockdown end?", non-news stuff hiding the news.

it is is the top story on the main BBC News right now tbf

why is the BBC not covering this though