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

Tommy Corbyn for next leader imo.

Shoutout to my most loyal supporter @GuidoFawkes! Always lurking around like a turd that won't flush. We have indeed shipped our first orders and look forward to many more 🥳 check out https://t.co/ZTVVTVD0Od and use code '555HEMP' at the checkout to get 5% off and 5% donated ✌️ pic.twitter.com/1d2nbRrWE3

— Tommy Corbyn (@TommyCorbyn) April 14, 2020

I’m sorry, lads. I know there is a pandemic going on, but I think we all deserve a laugh at these cunts.

Beyond everything else the cast-iron reason why Starmer shouldn't even consider rehiring any of them is that they are self-evidently idiots.

rather than pressing the govt on the disastrous PPE/testing failure or that currently 1.5 million people are in serious food poverty Kier wants to know how they are going forward post lockdown. They must love having such forensic opposition in a quivering comedy muppet voice.

The independent investigation will be “professionally, independently and quickly done”, he says. “We absolutely have to turn our back on factionalism. That was the whole purpose of my leadership campaign.”

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) April 15, 2020

he needs to resign immediately!

RLB would be so ruthless with these people :-(

Starmer isn't (and there might be an embarrassing court case or two) but it's...a really, really good opportunity to flush a lot of turds.

if he had a decent bone in his body he would be sickened to be associated with some of these ugly arseholes, but unfortunately he's Sir Kier Starmer.

Tommy Corbyn is being played by Elijah Wood

https://d2yoo3qu6vrk5d.cloudfront.net/images/20170614115223/tommy-corbyn-y-elijah-wood-482x320.jpg

bizarre the idea that 'we will turn our back on factionalism' as though political parties were not ways for groups of people to forward their political ideals. what is the labour party supposed to be, a firm? The issue is not with 'factionalism', it's with corrupt misuse of time, resources and failure to comply with standards within the organisation. Even worse its about evidence of bullying, harassment, and use of racist language and other slurs which do damage to the reputation of the party. This seems obvious.

xp the three Corbyn sons all look like him but in very different ways. Strong genes there.

Elijah Wood Should ask Tommy Corbyn to play him tbf.

Fuckin ludicrous tack he's taking. 10,000+ dead & we've not even reached peak. Frontline workers begging for proper lifesaving equipment for themselves & patients. Gov measures don't cover the subsistence of millions of workers. And this nobody is talking about ending lockdown? https://t.co/ykfWY0b4lC

— michael (@Sisyphusa) April 15, 2020

also lol that virgin is now skimming 4.5% off donations to the nhs after years of tax dodging and suing the nhs. the state is such an obvious cashcow for these despots, its strange that any of them claim to want a small one. you'd think they'd be worried about emptying the well for their limitless greed.

politics is all about factions/self-interest groups, this simpering "labour family" bullshit from the melts is a myth and always has been.

it's been 2 months and I still haven't heard anything about my Bereavement Support Payment application, I assume that is handled by the same department that does Universal Credit. I suppose I'd better attempt to phone them because you have to apply within 3 months of death, maybe the Jobcentre lost my application or something. And they are only going to get busier over the next few weeks

also lol that virgin is now skimming 4.5% off donations to the nhs after years of tax dodging and suing the nhs. the state is such an obvious cashcow for these despots, its strange that any of them claim to want a small one. you'd think they'd be worried about emptying the well for their limitless greed.

I'm told that senior Unison staff named in the report have been personally assured that their jobs are safe. "Dave's told them he'll back them," says a source

Yet issue is already pitting Prentis against section of his members. As with Starmer, seemingly untenable to do nothing. https://t.co/d5cFJMjmDU

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) April 14, 2020

The rot goes deeper than Labour.

the state is such an obvious cashcow for these despots, its strange that any of them claim to want a small one. you'd think they'd be worried about emptying the well for their limitless greed.

booming post

Indeed it does. Young Labour otm.

Our statement on the leaked reports about the Governance and Legal Unit of the Labour Party is below.

Complainants and whistleblowers must be protected, the serious allegations must be investigated by the NEC and the Labour whip should be removed from Ian McNicol immediately. pic.twitter.com/zMKlHhMOHb

— Young Labour (@YoungLabourUK) April 14, 2020

Left needs to get its shit together and ensure they win the NEC elections so these pricks don’t get away with it.

It's really, really hard to get fired from Unison if you're right wing

And this nobody is talking about ending lockdown?

This is an absurd point. The lockdown is going to end. Spain, where nearly 600 people a day are still dying, has made an incredibly contentious political decision to relax restrictions and send people back to work, with a view to ending the majority of lockdown measures within weeks. As things stand, the government here will take a decision on when to open things up without any transparency or scrutiny. Starmer's right to say that the plan needs to be discussed by Parliament in advance of any substantive decisions being made, however much people hate him for other reasons.

It’s a fucking absurd point when care homes are having still-infectious patients released back to them, care workers are trying to do their job for £8/hour without PPE and people are starving, yes.

he's a fucking joke and an absolute insipid cunt, we haven't even peaked here yet and he's giving the govt a free pass on the social care crisis and asking a question that might be more pertinent next month.

It's completely legitimate for commentators to criticise Starmer for not doing enough to highlight those things - and to present an alternative strategy for holding the government accountable, but to pretend that one of the most crucial decisions to be taken in modern British political history is a side issue for #numbers is beneath anyone who aspires to be taken seriously, loosely including Segalov.

Commentators aren’t criticising him, though. People are dying now. It’s a ludicrous point when he should be speaking out about this constantly.

He is speaking out about it, not particularly effectively. That's what people should be attacking him for. It doesn't stop the exit strategy discussion from being important.

it's been 2 months and I still haven't heard anything about my Bereavement Support Payment application, I assume that is handled by the same department that does Universal Credit. I suppose I'd better attempt to phone them because you have to apply within 3 months of death, maybe the Jobcentre lost my application or something. And they are only going to get busier over the next few weeks

Friend of mine just had to do this after her husband died, and it went through really quickly. So yeah they've probably fucked up and will need chasing.

xpost

Questions of how we go ahead post-lockdown should be at the bottom of the list right now and it's obvious at this stage that on Thursday the govt will confirm the lockdown will be maintained for another 3 week block or whatever. Meanwhile the LOTO is giving them a free pass on some very pressing life and death matters that need addressing now, not later.

Starmer's response is not balanced to the rights of workers.

With Spain it's a developing situation. If infection rates go up and people start dying in greater numbers again the lockdown will be back on so by the end of May Starmer's line of question should be more about ensuring safety of workers and keeping the lockdown measures and furlough schemes going if necessary.

Even if measures are extended for another three weeks, that only gives three weeks to recall Parliament and provide any level of scrutiny of whatever comes next. The pressure needs to come now. As part of that discussion, Labour needs to be pushing for provisions to protect workers, restart lockdowns as appropriate, etc,

I do agree that he has been ineffective on the immediate issues, though. The Twitter posts attacking the lack of PPE and TV appearances criticising planning, etc, aren't resonating. The fantasy that Starmer taking over would immediately get the media onside looks incredibly hollow.

As someone else said recently, the government has a majority of like 600. How is reopening parliament - itself putting many people at risk - going to provide adequate scrutiny if Starmer isn’t doing so effectively now anyway?

i don’t think there’s any promise of return to “normal” life, only a long period of tracing and varying levels of lockdown depending on the rate of transmission. again, that seems to fit with what we know about the best expectation of an immediate post lockdown world.

Not to make this a pop at you, just at him, but I think that's exactly what he's saying. His opening summary is "Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks". To get there, he, like a lot of other amateurs (which ofc I am also one) are basically ignoring the second spike; he did this in his first, even worse, essay too.

He handwaves it away by saying "it won't matter because uh the hammer gives us time which we will use to ... prepare! So that the second spike doesn't matter when it hits". There are a few problems with that. The general one is the preparation required includes getting a shit-ton of ventilators, building a butt-load of hospitals, establishing mass testing, establishing contact tracing, masking everyone up, etc etc. All of those things take a lot of time, not a few weeks. Look how proud HMG were to obtain 30 ventilators.

It will take months to put in place, and yes, that's especially true now because we are now badly behind the preparedness ball: everybody wants PPE and vents and reagents now. Naturally the countries that survived SARS are better prepped. So when he simultaneously says "the hammer needs to only last for a few weeks" and 'the second spike doesn't matter because we use the time of the hammer to prepare for it" there is a pretty fundamental contradiction there.

(That's also putting aside the UK specific issue of the NHS Winter Health Crisis. Our second spike is likely to hit just as flu et al are ramping up. Brr)

This is why I'm for Labour going on about the exit strategy btw. Because if it is a version of the "dance" where we unlock but are better prepped for a second spike, they should be doing gargantuan amounts of prep now. Which they manifestly are not. Millions of xps

I'd like someone to start going on about the second spike too. as it is, feels like there's the impression that this lockdown will go on for another 4-6 weeks and then that will be that. we will be through the worst of it, the V-shaped economic recovery will start kicking in etc. that seems kinda short-sighted. how are things playing out in the countries which are reopening from lockdown (only china so far right?)

how are things going in sweden too, incidentally?

just feels like this whole year is going to be unlike any other. don't see a return to 'normal' anytime soon. it certainly doesn't feel like this will be done by the summer

Friend of mine just had to do this after her husband died, and it went through really quickly. So yeah they've probably fucked up and will need chasing.

Yep! They fucked up. They got all the documentation, and... did nothing! Our wonderful DWP. The person on the phone seemed quite confused about it. Said they had no idea why there was no case set up for the documents.

I suppose it's quite fitting that after the endless stream of bullshit the NHS shat on us that the DWP would add to it with their own, just to finish it off

If they bungle the transition out of lockdown then thousands more people are going to die unnecessarily. Absolutely he should be asking much more questions about the lack of PPE, what's being done about food poverty or just lack of access (even if the Tories don't give a shit about this stuff), but the government's strategy for ending lockdown needs to be published and properly scrutinised before they've had the chance to fuck it up. Otherwise it's No Deal handwaving all over again except with worse consequences.

how are things playing out in the countries which are reopening from lockdown (only china so far right?)

What i'm hearing is that things are re-opening slowly but there's potential for things to be tightened again very rapidly. Schools are starting to re-open but a lot of office workers are being given the option to continue to work from home. Beijing loosened some of the local measures but has started to tighten them again - anyone entering the city from another part of China needs to be quarantined for fourteen days, etc.

The biggest issue afaict is that there's no way to stop further spikes without stopping all international travel. They've got strict measures in place for foreign travelers (possibly a complete bar, idk) but they're really concerned about overseas Chinese returning from places like Russia and everything kicking off again.

seeing as he's got the dynamism of a sloth on diazies and is such a quivering feeb, do you any of you people believe he is actually going to effectively press the govt on how to plan and progress forwards?

all kicking off again kinda seems inevitable. hope we don't just get rolling lockdowns for the next 9-12 months : /

xp

when Top Scientists in the UK were like 'we don't WANT to suppress it now, because it will just pop up again in the autumn' i never really understood it. for all the SEO bullshit speculation in that guy's medium article, he does get at this basic point: if it pops up again in the autumn that at least buys us time to get ventilators manufactured, establish new facilities, and even recruit/retrain NHS staff.

I can see us in a situation where, if the rate of infections and deaths slows, we are moving round our towns cities again relatively normally by the end of the summer, although maybe not between them. Even parts of Italy are easing lockdown a little now (although obviously not Lombardy etc) and how that plays out will be instructive here.

One problem is that a regional approach will likely turn out to be necessary but the UK doesn't have a strong or effective enough system of local or regional government for that to happen. In fact these have been systematically undermined and drained of resources since Thatcher. The exception is perhaps in larger metropolitan areas and people like Khan, Burnham etc appear to have been kept at arm's length by the government and kept away from key decisions and information that directly affects them.

International travel isn't coming back any time soon, that's one thing. With proper lockdown measures you can envisage a situation where the rate of infection has slowed hugely and most people with it have either recovered or died. But as soon as you start reopening borders then the infection will be right back in. And this is a government that needs no encouragement to close borders.

There will surely be rolling lockdowns for the next year or more.

Things will be very slow in coming back, no normal here. The + 20% for Q3/4 really looks really fanciful if parts of the economy are shut and even then people won't be going out all the time lol.

That's the problem with the u-turn that never was. In the original plan you didn't worry about a second spike because we coped with the first one and had herd immunity etc. In the new plan you have to worry an awful lot about the second spike, and start preparing for it.

They seem to have mashed the two together in the worst way – no prep for a second spike, no management of the first one. They're firefighting as they go. Terrifying. xp

the UK doesn't have a strong or effective enough system of local or regional government for that to happen

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have separate parliaments. Not that the Welsh one amounts to much.

it's almost as if it's a government of incompetent chancers whose only real interest is enriching their friends

Borders will be shut both ways. No holidays to India or Spain for Brits, for a good year.

Whether they can afford one after a vaccine is found is another question as well.

There's a void in decision-making at the top of government right now as well, with Johnson and Cummings incapacitated and reputedly nearly everyone who worked in Downing Street has got it. Hancock is useless and Raab clearly isn't trusted to make any decisions of substance. I'm not surprised that nothing is being done, decision-making is clearly so centralised that it's a recipe for disaster.

And that's assuming they don't make the wrong decisions in the end anyway, and lol at that assumption.

There's likely also an ideological split between the Cabinet members more inclined to caution and the ones who were briefing to the press that schools should have re-opened already.