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

that prem sikka tweet sounds eerily like the opening to the vanity fair article about the scrapping of a nationwide testing plan in the US:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

Charlie Mullins saying furlough needs to be ended from his holiday home in Marbella feels like a perfect metaphor for late capitalism pic.twitter.com/FkXIP4P93P

— 'Client Journalism' Expert (@ClientJournoExp) August 6, 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/06/covid-jobs-crisis-rishi-sunak-safety-net

Nothing to see here, we've been discussing for months but it's goo to see this written up

Most were vastly overqualified, and a good number had PhDs. All were now fighting for part-time work in retail. “It made me sad,” Pringle tells me. “That’s not why they spent so long studying. But it says a lot about the state of the jobs market.”

there are a number of illuminating subtexts here that i would like to unravel sometime somewhere else when i've finished internally screaming FUCK YOUUUUUUUU at the author/quotee

Even the melts are losing patience with kier leader https://t.co/cdACJTOFjH

— Bort van houten (@DaleMur88720086) August 6, 2020

hah! Kier's gently gently style of non-opposition is even trying the patience of prominent melts now

My friend buries her sister today. Her body was found decomposed after her Universal Credit was suspended and her only source of contact, her telephone was cut off. She couldn’t visit her due to ‘the advice’ from @BorisJohnson #BorisHasFailedTheUK

— Christina Farrell (@CFarrell2009) July 28, 2020

Dear God don't read the replies

👍

Oh to have such faith in anything

He is being forensic and luring Johnston into a false sense of security.

— Doctor Neutopia (@oceanclub) August 6, 2020

Lol while also luring too much (to be 20 points ahead) of the electorate into thinking he's a useless milquetoast tory twat, clever game!

One dimensional draughts on a ZX80

That reveals all the scumbag donors that Starmer was too embarrassed to reveal tells the real story

That thread..

xxp I follow that account and it’s definite sarcasm!

I wouldn't mind reading some Mason style proStarmer lols, but I never see any. Everyone on my twitter wants him to die!

I did wonder xp

How does 6 months do this to a person?

Oct 2019 🤝 March 2020 pic.twitter.com/lixHSxz4nR

— Gwared-The Melancholic Legacy of Brazda & Seel ✊📕 (@Gwared) August 6, 2020

this melt mofo will look older than Dennis Skinner by the next election at the current rate of degradation!

it's all that property developer money corroding him from within.

Andrew Bailey told the BBC it was important that policymakers helped workers "move forward" and not keep them in unproductive jobs.

He said coronavirus would inevitably mean that some jobs became redundant.

Keir can take his place in the guillotine queue, serious work to do first

I don’t think that’s him in October 2019, this was him campaigning in the GE.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff73b7e62-1c07-11ea-84a6-10ccf4ec8de6.jpg?crop=6653%2C3742%2C33%2C103&resize=1180

yeah but this is what he looked like before campaigning started

https://martinplaut.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/keir-starmer.jpg

all them Big Macs bound to supersize you a bit

xxp
I'd suspect he was putting on a bit of fake ebullience sat next to Corbz there, if wooden personality free cunt wasn't his only setting!

all them eccles cakes and mugs of sugary tea in the caff bound to pile the weight on too

My hope is that Kier Starmer is re grouping and biding his time to re gain power bring honestly and sanity back to the U.K. political arena.

— Michael Llewelyn Day (@DayLlewelyn) August 5, 2020

I found a real Kier Stanner here!

even he can't spell his name right

lol just read some quote in the Graun from a PLP wanker complaining that the WhatsApp transcripts in the leaked Labour report where they were making sexist and racist comments had all context edited out to make them look racist and sexist.

Call the fucking WAHHHHMBULANCE.

Sipping a Cappuccino etc.

https://www.ft.com/content/e02992f6-cf9e-46b3-8d45-325fb183302f

It's the People's Vote long piece. Lots of '97 era politics just falling apart. But Rudd is failing upwards, so that's ok.

I happened to be in Labour Party HQ the day after Labour won the the Oldham by-election, Corbyn’s first test. Met with v senior comms staff.
Me (making introductory friendly small talk): “hey, good result, eh?”
Them (faces like thunder, through gritted teeth) “yeh” https://t.co/5avQEwL5WP

— CarolineJMolloy (@carolinejmolloy) August 7, 2020

Nice?

Staff at Lord Lebedev's Evening Standard have been told that around a third of employees will lose their jobs, including 69 journalists - almost half the editorial team - plus a bunch of casual employees. Free print paper is still being produced on reduced circulation.

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) August 7, 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eez-6SvWoAAZRV9?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

From Paul Mason's 2011 novel Rare Earth, lol never heard of this before. Not just a great polemicist but also a master of erotic fiction!

mods ban calzino pls

who is going to take one for the team by reading it

He actually called the character Chun-Li?

john lanchester would be proud

Stevie T, formerly of this parish, has read it:

Mason's own novel, Rare Earth, is quite enjoyable in a sub-Pynchon way. The Pinefox and myself were talking about going to the Mason event - impromptu ILB FAP?

― Stevie T, Thursday, August 14, 2014 11:42 AM (five years ago)

A paunchy middle-aged reporter called Brough – "a has-been hack with a Yorkshire accent" reeking of whisky – washes up in deep northwest China in May 2009, to make a documentary about the state of the Chinese environment. He is accompanied by his producer, Georgina, a ruthless blonde alumna of Cheltenham Ladies College desperate to swing a Chinese television distribution deal; by an even more washed-up cameraman called Carstairs; and by Chun-Li, their enigmatic Chinese interpreter.

that looks amazing

At what point does he discuss Modern Monetary Theory with an Indian mystic named Dhalsim?

An end to sonic boom and bust.

How has nobody done Chun-Li cum to Athens yet?

M Pason: For you, the day Pason graced Athens was the most unimportant day of your life. But for me, the revolution was happening.

in the general direction of her chrysanthemum

no one wants to hear this but can’t overstate how much the labour left- as some of the only prominent voices calling out (some of) the violence of british capitalism, while framing all their criticism in the same reactionary nationalist nostalgia that everyone else deals in- has stood in the way of the kind of serious attack on capital & empire required to actually stop these abuses (which would make their party irrelevant)

BA’s treatment of its workers is a betrayal of everything the company has stood for over the years as the national flag carrier.Using Covid as a cover for its long held aim of cutting jobs,wages & conditions is a disgrace. Just as bad the Government has stood on one side & let it https://t.co/9OufHzUOSx

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) August 7, 2020

no one wants to hear this

Maybe you should start all your posts like this?

Jesus Christ

SNP MP Alyn Smith calls for black and disabled members to be axed from party body as they hinder independence pushhttps://t.co/KA4w2U1nC8 pic.twitter.com/DqcPHDDSSd

— The Scottish Sun (@ScottishSun) August 7, 2020

In a leaked email, he wrote: “Equalities are close to my heart but not as close as independence.

“Too much of the party’s oxygen has been taken up by discussion of peripheral issues like Gender Recognition Act reform.”

Mr Smith added that wo­men’s, BAME and disabled members’ conveners could be replaced by an advisory “equalities forum”.

But disabled group rep Jamie Szymkowiak blasted Mr Smith’s remarks and accused him of wanting to ditch minorities for “daring to raise their interpretation of what’s important”.

Are we sure he's not in the PLP?

oh come on they were totally taking his racist and disablist comments out of context !