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

/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.

This from Morrisons (£35 for a box of random food, next day delivery) sounds like a good idea.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/morrisons-shopping-delivery-food-boxes-3978471

xps fucking horrendous case, no questions asked about it at the briefing and probably won’t be either

We have just received communication from @SussexUni that all temporary contracts should now be terminated where possible. Accompanied by, "I am confident that if we pull together we can get through this and come out stronger the other side." If by "we" you mean permanent staff.

— Kathryn Telling (@KathrynTelling) March 25, 2020

This is good

Huge WIN! 💪💪💪 WETHERSPOONS JUST DID A U TURN!

This is what happens when workers come together - WE WIN!

One demand met - no gap in pay ✅

Next demand to push for: Full pay 💯

— BFAWU (@bfawu1) March 25, 2020

This page is normally updated daily but hasn't been updated today, wondering if yesterday's big jump got even bigger

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public#number-of-cases

So this is probably happening tomorrow, about time

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-government-set-to-pay-self-employed-workers-80-of-earnings

*down* to 643 in Italy in the last 24 hour cycle, which is better than going up again I suppose.

onimo, The Guardian just said it's up 41 to 465.

ugh, my employer not covering itself in glory today

Thanks Andrew, hopefully a sign of some kind of slow down but who knows

Looks like we are not quite on the Italy curve fingers crossed.

NN saying the figures might be misleading because (wtf) they need the consent of families to include a death in the count. Official number for today isn't out yet fwiw. Fingers still crossed.

sometimes I think that the british public are a lot more cautious than we are giving them credit for and then sometimes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM2lApW1kMU

Diverting poll thread for these troubled times

WORLD CUP OF STUPID CENTRIST HACKS - ROUND OF 80 - GROUP 1

— World Cup of Stupid Centrist Hacks (@centristhacks) March 25, 2020

I'd nom Keir Starmer, but he's not a journalist

cvmic

This guy is good on middle-east politics/culture, and does come with a whole range of tankie type stuff - he encountered Corbyn by chance last chance last week.

Last week, pre-lockdown, I saw a small gathering of ppl at an estate near where I live, I walked over & Corbyn was giving a speech to unveil a plaque for the writer, Andrea Levy (who grew up on that estate). He spoke about the racism Black Caribbean community faced/s in Britain. pic.twitter.com/W9WN9BOaxN

— Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) March 25, 2020

I’ll read the thread, but I’ve walked past that place a million times. Wonder how many times I saw Corbyn in the area before I knew who he was.

thanks Corbyn for at least bringing some hope and almost getting into power. Starmer Labour won't get the steam off my piss. I'm not going to register to vote in another era of two tory parties.

https://i.imgur.com/NIXIFbR.jpg

Guess who's supporting Sir Keir during #ToiletPaperApocalypse!

all the christians on the left - wap bam boogie

Looks like we are not quite on the Italy curve fingers crossed.

Italy kept bars and restaurants open way way way too late and long after closing schools. Spain was still holding mass gatherings, like big protests, when they were ahead of us in cases I think?

How's Ireland doing right now? Their government locked down early.

ffs don't they read the bible? Jesus didn't cleanse the temple and kick the fuck out of all the melts just for show!

On the figures.

Death figures update: last night only 28 new fatalities recorded.

Alas this is not good news, it is because there are now so many deaths NHS using a 7.30am cut off instead of 1pm.

So govt looking at changing how they are reported 1/2

— Chris Smyth (@Smyth_Chris) March 26, 2020

changing the cut off to keep the figures down would be what a desperately incompetent and deluded regime would do, surely that isn't what they are actually doing?

You only get that to look good for a day or so anyway, after that you're back in a 24-hr cycle again. You can't shift the goalposts every single day.

Perhaps they could redefine what a 'fatality' is instead, that might work?

Newsnight suggested that they were only releasing figures when they had the consent of the families - which doesn’t sound like it should be correct for anonymised data.

Can’t count people in the death stats if you’re not testing people!

Yeah we should get age and location so this needs more scrutiny

XP = I think you can do a post-mortem though?

I think there is confusion between consent and inform going on. They want to make sure families have been told before they release death stats which could (in smaller places) do the same thing.

My husband had a letter from the government today advising him that he is at risk from Covid19 because of an underlying condition. Personally I'm pretty sure he's safe since he's been dead nearly 4 years.

— trish (@trishtur) March 25, 2020

death: the ultimate underlying condition

Fuck this Dyson bullshit btw. Add GTech to the list of those who offered to make standard ventilators and got ignored

How's Ireland doing right now? Their government locked down early.

https://i.ibb.co/R0VchrV/irelandcases.png

2 more deaths yesterday brought the total to 9

"384 UK Deaths today"

Omg in a population of 66,673,191 there is something like a quarter of a million to one chance one of them could be my mam, how dare this callous govt release these figures without my permission.