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

BoJo boasting abt “our NHS” made me chuck my tv out the window

starting to get nervous about how a uk of this character will start to view its smaller prosperous neighbour in the next wee while

I went to not-so-aptly-named Costcutter this afternoon, they had a selection of essentials including piles of toilet paper, but everything cost 2 or 3 times what it should usually. A man was having an argument with the cashier because she wouldn't let him buy three £5 bags of fusilli, he had to get his girlfriend in from the car to buy the third bag.

starting to get nervous about how a uk of this character will start to view its smaller prosperous neighbour in the next wee while

id ask how so but we have a thread for that

Instructed to use food delivery services as much as possible, which is great if you don’t need groceries any time before the first week of May,

I'm going to sound like pinefox wrt digital tv but I have never used food delivery services in my life!

Unfortunately for us, we have only used delivery for the most part since we moved here.

does butler count, before i answer

can anyone better versed in the logistics of British legal procedure than I am tell me what ‘the police will have the power to do x’ means in immediate and real terms? i assume it doesn’t just work on illucutionary force and afaicr there was nothing about police powers in the coronavirus legislation

There is an emergency powers bill going through parliament right now.

I'm going to be daily breaking the curfew, but responsibly where there aren't ppl and not where dirty fucking five-o can follow me without a helicopter.

If you mean with Douglas, they aren’t counting walking dogs I think.

I've also got a young adult with autism, he can't stay in the house all day and might fancy going out twice!

*got a* sounds fucking awful .. I'm a carer for I should have said.

thinking abt calz heading out where there are no people and where helicopters can’t follow and coming to the conclusion that he’s off to explore his local sewer system

glad i ventured out today to buy a bottle of glenmorangie before the sniper scope was trained on my front door

pretty pissed off about this the more i think about it - angry with all the pricks who couldn't follow the basic rules and have ruined it for everyone else, angry with the government for making such a botch of explaining things in the first place, angry about the herd immunity fiasco that lost vital time when we could've been implementing more tolerable control measures - not to mention costing however many additional lives, angry that the nhs is so poorly resourced that it's being overwhelmed so quickly, angry that all this is probably too late anyway

xp i heard they were going to give certain citizens drones so they could take out miscreants like calzino without having to venture out from behind their net curtains

I don't go to the places where humans go, and if I bump into any they usually run away!

calz in a drone based running man remake is the entertainment we need rn in this lazaretto nation.

oh yes i forgot about douglas. he needs to go and meet his friends the cows you need to explain.

totally legit orificer

not sure the police are going to be relishing trying to enforce this stuff, let alone have the resources for it

calz in a drone based running man remake is the entertainment we need rn in this lazaretto nation.

psyched for this brave new world tbh

not sure the police are going to be relishing trying to enforce this stuff, let alone have the resources for it

Can't understand why the military are not being put out, tbh.

Seems like people jammed into supermarkets and trains is more of an issue than everyone going to the park at the same time and these measures aren't really going to make much of a difference there

Where's Ant Middleton when you need him?

I know, New Zealand.

not sure the police are going to be relishing trying to enforce this stuff, let alone have the resources for it

― ymo sumac (NickB), Monday, 23 March 2020 bookmarkflaglink

They'll be under pressure once there are pics of more people raiding shelves and guess who is going to be pay for it?

A bunch of the dumbest dog owners on the planet are now arguing that ‘exercise once daily’ is about dogs AND humans. In my humble but correct opinion it’s not exercise if you have to pick up something’s poop.

Meanwhile, bosses at Sports Direct have told staff this evening they intend to keep their stores open because they believe they are “uniquely well placed to help keep the UK as fit and healthy as possible during this crisis”, the Press Association is reporting.

Mike Ashley, right?

yeah, let’s nationalise him too

is there a transcript of the speech or a list of what will/won't be allowed so we can find out how not to break the new laws without having to watch that awful man?

I've been trying to go to the shops less but we're not very good at it, which is no excuse but we don't have much storage space and we live right opposite a small supermarket so we've got fairly used to going nearly every day. it's going to be a hard habit to break

also right now they have sod all in stock so it's hard to stock up when you do go. we have rice and cereal and tinned soups but hardly any fruit/veg/meat and it'd be pretty boring but we'd live for a week or two, I guess, especially if (god forbid etc) ill and appetite-suppressed - but more than that is right out and online supermarket deliveries are booked up until the end of their booking calendars in May

transcript here:

https://www.gov.uk/search/news-and-communications?topical_events%5B%5D=coronavirus-covid-19-uk-government-response

detailed guidance here:

https://www.gov.uk/search/all?topical_events%5B%5D=coronavirus-covid-19-uk-government-response&order=updated-newest

thanks!

Posting part of this email I got from Paperchase here partly for me and partly for anvil:

Like many other businesses across the UK, over the last couple of weeks we’ve been working hard to find the balance between following government policy, looking after our customers, and of course doing the best we can for all of our Paperchase colleagues.

We’ve stayed open until today as we really felt it was the right thing to do. We wanted to ensure that our customers were able to send their nearest and dearest the kind of warm Mother’s Day wishes that mean so much at this difficult time.

However, the time has now come to temporarily close our stores while the nation, and the wider world, deals with this unprecedented crisis. This is a step we feel we have to take in order to protect the health and wellbeing of our teams and our customers, and play our part in limiting the pressure put on our NHS.

While our stores have now closed, it goes without saying that paperchase.com remains very much open for business. You’ll find everything you need to while away the hours at home, and much more, 24/7 at paperchase.com.

Our values include being playful, being fresh thinkers, being bold and being kind. It has never been more important for us to live by these as we try and stay true to our goal of spreading a little joy every day.

Boris Johnson with the hair of Covid-19. pic.twitter.com/A9o0yMNh2n

— Football Manager Hair on Politicians (@visualsatire) March 23, 2020

xp I've learned a lot that I didn't want to about which shops refer to their employees as 'Partners'

Thanks to thomp for that link, just trudging through the bill now: as usual the things that the civil servants have thought to protect the government against serves as a menu of horrors to come.

Disclosure Scotland: PVG offences
The ability to enable the Scottish Ministers, during the period of a declared national emergency or pandemic attributed to an outbreak of coronavirus, to suspend the offence provisions applying to organisational employers and personnel suppliers in Part 1 of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 (the 2007 Act).

Rationale for intervention
In the event of an emergency, the Disclosure services will need to continue to operate in a way that enables the protection of children and vulnerable adult. The purpose of this is to avoid inadvertently criminalising healthcare employers like the NHS during the emergency period if they employ a barred person to do regulated work (for instance, if there has been insufficient time to obtain a PVG check in advance).

Other policy options considered?
There would be an option of ‘do nothing’, however, the route of dis-applying these PVG offences is favoured as a way of ensuring health services can recruit the people they need to quickly without fear of legal repercussions.

Key considerations
This is devolved.

The government document actually has a long list of exceptions:

Supermarkets and other food shops, health shops, pharmacies including non- dispensing pharmacies, petrol stations, bicycle shops, home and hardware shops, laundrettes and dry cleaners, bicycle shops, garages, car rentals, pet shops, corner shops, newsagents, post offices, and banks.

Someone loves their bicycle shops.

if garages can stay open, why not bike shops? it's a lot of people's mode of transport to work and -to a lesser extent- the shops and it's better for physical distancing than shared cars, taxis, buses and trains. and that inclusion also supports the option to ride your bike in a socially distant way once a day

No no I'm delighted, for all those reasons! I was worried yesterday that if anything happens to my bike, I'd have to fix it myself. It's just on the list twice, is all.

lol

that was a bit stereotypically cyclisty of a response tbf nick

oh right okay, i didn't spot that!

xp yes i'm sorry deems, my head is bowed in shame (but luckily i'm wearing my helmet to protect it from future kneejerk responses)

Andrew Farrell: i worked at disclosure Scotland.in normal times it can take 2 weeks for a disclosure to be completed. This was with hot-desking at banks of desks without much room between people and having people completing checks 24/7 (early, back,and nightshifts). Highly unlikely that there wont be huge delays. Wfh wouldnt be an option as the job requires checking both the scottish CHS and england/wales PNC

friend of mine (who has an auto-immune disorder) just got one of these today

🖼

The military need to be on our streets, in our supermarkets, in our hospitals NOW and it is a disgrace that this is not the case. This should have been done tonight. There's no way the police can deal with the number of selfish c*nts the UK has. What are we paying £40+s billions a year for, if not this?

Italian police: Fines people for gathering outside

Russia police: throws people in jail for 5 years

UK Police: pic.twitter.com/NlFdUvoCX3

— Timeline Terrorist (@Timeline2019) March 23, 2020

You can say "come on lads, you know you're not supposed to be doing this, you're gonna have to disperse now"

I realise it's a risk, moving forward and probably not a very popular opinion here but there's no way a "come on lads" approach is ever going to work in this fkng country. In most countries, Spain and Italy included, the line between the police and the military is a bit more blurred.

Jim - I'm not disagreeing with it, I'm more impressed I suppose that someone has thought "if we do this then that will happen, we should get some indemnity"

Hate these rules already tbh, yes they needed to be made in a hurry, but broadbrush curbs like this are draconian and dumb, and are just going to stir up resentment in the long term. Going to be a field day for all the little Hitlers out there spying their neighbours, but really - what for instance is the difference in effect between going for one hour long walk, and popping out for one short stroll in the morning and another one at end of the day? And what does it really achieve to apply these rules that may make sense in the context of central London, to a person living in a cottage up a mountain in the middle of nowhere? We're going to have months of fretting over interpretation and people coming up with dodges of one sort or another. If it was strict controls on people's physical proximity to each other, something like you're not allowed within more than 3 metres of anyone else in a open space, that would be easily understandable and would achieve the actual goal of social distancing. That's what they're basically going to be monitoring anyway, or rather, all that they can monitor at the moment, unless of course they start introducing the phone tracking that has been mooted in other countries. Maybe over the next couple of weeks they could devolve arrangements to councils / local police forces so that the rules can be set to suit local circumstances without inflicting widescale misery quite needlessly.