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

wonder how many strangers' floors he ended up sleeping on in the end

mayor of London starting to look a little too much like hard work.

I've sent him a white feather in the post.

Neighbourhood stasis in the Stokey group throwing a fit over Hackney having the third highest infection rate in the country, blaming sunbathers as per usual.

Turns out no it doesn't, it has the third highest MORTALITY rate, meaning the problem isn't ppl going to the park it's understaffed/underfunded hospitals.

But holding the government to account not as much fun as grassing on your neighbours.

The London Mayoral election is delayed for a year, isn't it? So Khan gets an extra year that he hadn't earned, though it may not be a very welcome one?

Labour used to ask me to campaign for Khan but I'm not sure I'll even vote for him.

Thinking a bit more about this furlough thing - the scheme is pretty much the only thing preventing hundreds of thousands of businesses from simply running out of cash right now. On the assumption that the Treasury doesn't actually want this to happen (because, y'know, economic disaster, widespread unemployment + soaring benefits bill + gigantic hole in the tax base + slower recovery) it feels like an attempt to push more of the debt burden from the public to the private sector. Which will become unsustainable pretty fast if it isn't safe to restart things. I suppose that's what the taxpayer-backed loans are for but both Dodds and Miliband have pointed out that these are inadequate.

We're also going to get soaring consumer debt as furlough money starts being withdrawn. The people most at risk are likely to be people working in the leisure or hospitality sectors because those aren't going to be restarting for months yet and even when they do they're likely to be on reduced footfall. And business confidence more generally is going to be anaemic until we have properly got the virus under control, regardless of any "back to work!" rhetoric coming from the government.

Being even more cynical, I suspect they've picked July because it's the start of Q3. But all this is pretty much a recipe for a financial crisis or mass loan defaults, with the government picking up the bill whatever happens.

That extra year probably wrecks Khan's own plan - because he'll still be sitting in City Hall by the time Starmer loses to Johnson and therefore unable to run for Parliament and the leadership?

I can't see Khan ever running for leader, tbh.

I bet he can.

idk, he's ambitious but if Starmer fails, i'm not sure the Labour centre/right is going to go for 'Starmer but Muslim', particularly when he's already a lighting rod for every racist and Islamophobe in the country.

Depends on how ambitious he is and whether he has sufficient support from the benches (I don't see why he wouldn't). I can't really imagine what it's like being a member of his immediate family and he's also very likely to decide it just isn't worth the trauma.

Love too live in a democracy.

Truly incredible video. Watch this and gasp (again) at the BBC: pic.twitter.com/9w0TfUw5Gk

— Liam Young (@liamyoung) May 6, 2020

Khan isn’t going to run. It’ll make the campaign against Corbyn look like Tony’s 1997 cruise into no 10.

jesus christ that Radio 4 thing

If I was Khan I'd already be concerned about the very real possibility of a Mair type deranged assassin coming after me as London mayor never mind Labour party leader and might think it too dangerous a move to make in what is a right wing emboldened and quite deranged political milieu right now. But that's as far as my sympathy and empathy goes with this fucking creep!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/01/matt-hancock-mp-app-released

so the app has launched will anyone be downloading it

not even with Starmers cold dead severed hands!

If I was Khan I'd already be concerned about the very real possibility of a Mair type deranged assassin coming after me as London mayor never mind Labour party leader and might think it too dangerous a move to make in what is a right wing emboldened and quite deranged political milieu right now. But that's as far as my sympathy and empathy goes with this fucking creep!

That Novara thing has been silently deleted, huh

'ending with a smile' is as old as the hills - that's all that was.

The attached graphic about trust in the written press, published last week, has not been widely reported in Britain. This is a huge annual survey by @EurobarometerEU across 33 countries. It's the ninth year out of the past ten that the UK has been last. We have a problem. pic.twitter.com/8eYoQR7XZw

— Brian Cathcart (@BrianCathcart) May 5, 2020

going out on top, baby!

British public are good again.

Clarification: This morning we shared a clip of a paper review on the Today programme cut together with the headlines being discussed in which the Guardian's headline was replaced with story about otters.

— Novara Media (@novaramedia) May 6, 2020

Interesting: PHE ordering govt comms hubs to take down all “Stay Home” messaging by Saturday night. Looks like we are getting a new slogan from PM... told: “Please ensure that all Stay Home messaging is removed from websites, social media and any other available channels“

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) May 6, 2020

“Wash your hands for the length of we’ll meet again and get to fucking work peasants” is it

Go Forth And Multiply.

boris 'regrets' the care home epidemic, apparently, which presumably means that he's neither apologetic nor responsible but he gets to say something platitudinous that cretins will give him credit for

Whatever this is I have a suspicion we're about to witness a fuckup of genuinely historical proportions.

i can't see how it leads to anything else tbh

to not even wait and see how easing lockdowns plays out in france and italy before we even start thinking about our next step seems basically genocidal

we still don't have enough PPE, capacity for adequate testing/contract tracing etc to cope with getting hit by a 2nd spike. I just can't think what could possibly go right.

but red line go down tho

still don't have enough PPE to even cope with now when we are supposedly past the peak

no it's fine now, i hear schoolkids are making it with 3d printers

Feels like Boris has a whole new coalition to try and keep together between the emerging ardent-capitalist back-to-work fucks faction and the, idk, let's-not-kill-the-olds faction? In other circumstances you'd love to see it – feels like they were united as a party for about three weeks after he sacked all the Remainers.

And it does seem like Boris is on the side of the let's-not-die faction, which is not where I'd have put him, near-death experience or no

give him some time

I doubt he would have been had he not shat himself over his clog-popping episode.

In fact, I'm certain of it as he doesn't care about anyone other than Boris Johnson.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXVKrS-UcAA43Ks?format=jpg&name=small

Juist a humble wee crofter wi' his bonnie tartan curtains!

I'm not really sure who they are planning on sending back to work next week? It can't be schools, surely? Non-essential shops?

I wonder if businesses themselves have taken legal advice over what to do if employees start dying because they've been rushed back.

media drip feeding of stuff about necessity of resuming bau asap has already been influencing the attitudes of my (usually anti-tory) IRL associates sadly. really terrible idea

Reinforces the idea that the reason business isn't being done is because of the lockdown, rather than because of the virus. Decisions were being put on hold, redundancies were being mooted, investment was being pulled before the lockdown and it isn't going to magically come back because it has been lifted.

if schools aren’t open how is anyone going to go back to work? innit

Take your kid to work day would be a right blast when pops' works at an industrial battery hen barn!

Schools will be at the start of June but likely to only be certain grades. I'd expect them to have stronger restrictions over the number of learners in a classroom, mandate lunch in shifts, etc, but can't realistically see them shutting individual schools down for deep cleaning, isolating classes, etc, if pupils show symptoms.

Wondering what the scientific consensus is about the R0 number right now and what that's expected to look like in three or four weeks' time.

Could it be they're floating random stuff again to gauge what they'll be able to get away with? Optimistic, I know.

Sounds like one malicious person could send thousands of people into self-isolation by riding around the Circle Line all day. Is this what happens when you try to get on the testing and contact tracing app bandwagon, without a proper testing infrastructure? https://t.co/NIda6ZtptZ

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) May 6, 2020

Oh dear.

Back to the drawing board eh lads? Well probably not