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

xp The story is that no-one there was inclined to take a talking and overturning the barbecue seemed the easiest way to move them on. I mean, if it's that vs fines vs actually arresting anyone...

Lol some Tory asked about online delivery slots

thank fuck someone is asking the hard questions

I'm just imagining cops like that bad 80's comedy duo: You see these sausages I'm about to stand on with my size 14 doc martens? This is what I think of your human rights you bleedin' scrote!

JRM: God bless the Prince of Wales, some waffle about how the Queen’s actual birthday is the 21st April

Yeah let's not be taking cops at their word

The blame the public PR move looks to have been remarkably effective. https://t.co/SPuqa89iyh

— Tom Mills (@ta_mills) March 25, 2020

Oh he’s paying tribute to Corbyn now. Not a single Labour MP apart from Valerie Vaz doing the same.

as ppl have been saying on twitter, the british public does seem to have an unusually low opinion of the rest of the british public

The British Public: ‘how dare they tell me what to do! They should tell them over there what to do!’

belief in the wider community's feckless, selfish venality is a key part of british identity

This is how governments get away with murdering poor people tbf

the groundskeepers have come to mow the communal lawns for the block of flats, which is very nice and lovely and completely unnecessary, I'd have thought

at least they're able to keep well apart from a) each other (well, until they both get back into their van) b) anyone else

a self-conscious middle-class person writes: do people with less bad and shameful accents pronounce medicine as 3 syllables, or is -sɪn vs -sən the aspect in dispute here?

Can hear council lawnmowers here too

I usually go three syllables

They're still mowing the fairways on the council golf course at the top of the hill behind us, even though golf has effectively been banned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbbOw-UMqDE

so meddy-san is the MES-approved locution

surely there's an -ah on the end of that

no

tbh I rarely say it out loud and am not entirely sure whether it has a short middle syllable or none at all when I do, but I can hear my mother saying mɛdsəns

trying to remember what my more w/c nan would have said, and I can imagine either the same or a very methodically pronounced 3 syllables, but nothing in between

I watched most of PMQs but missed the last 10 minutes and any farewell to Corbyn, alas - worth going back to later or not?

hmmmm

Scotland’s chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, has said she is satisfied that Prince Charles was tested for the coronavirus for “clinical reasons”, after questions were raised on social media whether he had jumped the queue.

It emerged on Wednesday that Charles, known as the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, was in self-isolation with his wife, Camilla, at their Scottish home, Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate in Deeside with mild coronavirus symptoms.

He was tested by NHS Grampian staff, and Calderwood said she had contacted the team involved. “From the information I have been given it was clear he was tested for clinical reasons,” she said.

known as the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland

lol ok

guy incognito

🚨🚨 Professor Sharon Peacock, Director of the National Infection Service, Public Health England, says antibody test could be ready for general public to be tested in Boots or at home within days "not weeks or months". Simple finger prick test....

— Richard Vaughan (@RichardVaughan1) March 25, 2020

1) leave house for test
2) test negative
3) catch the ‘rona from a fellow shopper
4) ???
5) death

Prof Peacock said the tests themselves are being tested in Oxford this week. If they do work people will be able to order them via Amazon to test themselves.

— Richard Vaughan (@RichardVaughan1) March 25, 2020

!!!!

do dey actually have a Clue do?

Intriguing that they've bought 3.5m of them and ordered millions more without apparently having tested them to see if they work properly? They'd have to be at least fairly confident.

professor peacock in the boots with the finger-prick

Man it's gonna be crushing when loads of us do the tests and realise we haven't actually had invisible covid after all.

1) leave house for test
2) test negative
3) catch the ‘rona from a fellow shopper
4) ???
5) death

I’m afraid this is going to be as chaotic as everything else in the uk response but it’s something

do people with less bad and shameful accents pronounce medicine as 3 syllables

Less than three is disgusting savagery.

Man it's gonna be crushing when loads of us do the tests and realise we haven't actually had invisible covid after all.

God, yes.

meanwhile, away from the sunny uplands of today’s government messaging, there’s this thread (assuming it’s true, obv)

UPDATE. My mother was tested 14 days ago for COVID.

She’s a busy city vicar- 2 churches, 2 parishes.

TENS OF CONTACTS. Many elderly.

Today she got her result.

14 days later.

POSITIVE.

No contact tracing.

No testing of contacts.

No isolation.

We. Are. Fucked.

— Holly-Ann Perks (@HollyAnnPerks1) March 23, 2020

/do people with less bad and shameful accents pronounce medicine as 3 syllables/

Less than three is disgusting savagery.

Ah the tests must be the ones in the FT? Guessing they’ll be tested against the existing ones for accuracy?

what goes on in Professor Peacock's Study stays in...

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/mar/25/how-can-we-get-home-brits-stranded-abroad-covid-19-coronavirus-outbreak

My advice is to stay where the fuck you are for a few weeks

my wife's affluent and brexit-deranged aunt is staying in her holiday home in st lucia at the moment, posting on facebook both about how glad she is to be there where there are only two cases and the local hospitals have plenty of drugs and also about how angry she is that people are flooding to cornwall (where she usually lives) and putting the local nhs at risk

she's 74 and recovering from pleurisy so best of luck to her out there, i guess

They were told to come home tbf but yeah it won’t kill em to be “stranded” temporarily xp

Someone I know was in the Philippines and managed to get the last flight out but is now stuck in an airport in Dubai which is close to my idea of hell

i'm not paying for a fucking test

my eldest was apparently on his way back from New Zealand last night, dare say he'll update me at some point

seems there is more and more limits to Rishi's spending the further we go into this crisis, we'll have buy our own body bags from a*a*zon next.

Just appalling.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/london-woman-36-dies-of-suspected-covid-19-after-being-told-she-is-not-priority?

the real face of Herd Immunity

Fucking hell

Someone I know was in the Philippines and managed to get the last flight out but is now stuck in an airport in Dubai which is close to my idea of hell

mk1 and his g/f were in cambodia last week.
last tuesday they decided to book a flight for saturday to gatwick via dubai - they got back on sunday.
i don't think he had any idea as to just how lucky they were.
pointed out that article to him just now, and the penny has dropped.
to say my stress levels were through the roof leading up to their take off in dubai was an understatement as i was all to aware of borders being closed around them.
also, hours after they landed, their carrier, Emirates announced that they were stopping all long haul flights as of today (Wednesday).
they really did have a lucky escape.

xpost : they did not want to get stuck in cambodia - limited £££ funds etc.