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

are we still on the italy trajectory?

Think the corona traffic controller's shifted us to France

No we are growing more slowly than both, only a bit slower than France though.

Idly wondering how that Smurf festival worked out for the participants now.

Never seen the Stereophonics called that before

reckless smurfs gather in defiance (regret at leisure)

:(

the stereophonics’ singer is smurf-sized iirc

And he works blue

lool!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUcUBu6XgAcHo93?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Catch 'em all!

BoJO sure looking like he's suffering from something tbqh

There's no test for cuntishness

worst livejasmin lineup ever

Dom Raab

Truss with the fucking flag behind her

Matt Hancock still trying to work out how to get the camera on his laptop to work.

neither smurfs nor stereophonics have good names for bad puns

That pic's like a modern-day version of King Arthur's round table - come one, come all and no hierarchy (Cummings aka Merlin lurking offscreen)

Nice unredacted username for Gove there.

mute all

Fuck me there are 738 other Michael Goves?

worst livejasmin lineup ever

Don't know how I missed this, just made me lol painfully

Nice unredacted username for Gove there.

Oh my god why are you still using Zoom you have an array of secure videoconferencing tools and you use a commercial app banned by the Ministry of Defence AND YOU’VE LEFT THE MEETING ID VISIBLE. https://t.co/0cdUvlNR8Y

— Nick Stylianou (@nmsonline) March 31, 2020

https://twitter.com/Lokinash06/status/1245359163955273728?s=20

I proper cracked up laughing at this on my phone on the way home!

https://t.co/oWWImCflC4 pic.twitter.com/ullAd1eqZx

— Steffan Loki (@Lokinash06) April 1, 2020

They spelled miwk wrong

We were super excited to get an Amazon food delivery slot. Less delighted when someone stole it from the front of our flat. Most people have responded positively to this situation. Some people are just scum

— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) April 1, 2020

omg ha ha ha

Love to know who stole that, so I can buy them a food parcel too

I'd be making videos of me feeding his chateaubriand to my dog whilst laughing my fucking head off!

lol

Just went to sainsbury's in angel for the first time since 22nd of march (10 days, maybe my new record!) and it did feel extraordinarily dystopic.

And speaking of dystopic, this BBC article struck me as incredibly alarming, especially the convergence of paternalistic sentiment in how both the BBC and the ethics advisor frame the notion of consent and privacy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52095331

In short, the gov is clearly planning some kind of SK style tracking app, and elite universities are clamoring to be the ones to design it. the article features the rather chilling insights of Prof Michael Parker who handwaves over the problematic idea that the government would need to enforce participation by positing an opt-in approach, largely enforced by private industry.

""My favourite restaurant might ask me to show that I was low-risk before allowing me into a crowded place, and I think that would be a perfectly reasonable price to pay for this step towards returning to normal life," Prof Michael Parker told the BBC.

He added that employers might also be justified in requiring staff to use the app if they worked "in an old people's home, with vulnerable groups or [were based] in very crowded places"."

I know this question answers itself, but jesus christ where do these goons come from who cannot see the social and political ramifications of these ideas? The notion that these are not also essential to what is ethically at stake, but rather that ethics is a kind of simple semantic game to rationalise and enable whatever kind of ghastly intervention you have already decided to roll out. Oh, PRIVATE industry will regulate the movements and social eligibility along a whole new matrix governed by this new 'opt-in' app. well that's okay then, PRIVATE industry has shown itself as so adept at managing equitable outcomes for everyone in the past. I can't see how this would help support an already extant health apartheid that punishes the ill or the elderly, or exacerbate an emergent enmeshing of surveillance capitalism at work in the state.

To clarify some, of those statements are *very* sarcastic.

what's doubly galling about this article is the standard BBC 'analysis' bit, we've all got used to, that doesn't analyse or question any of this but just sortof, reiterates it? Maybe this should be in the BBC thread. I do think its a good insight into the government/media/expert-knowledge axis of paternalism that has underwritten the response to C19 here, for e.g. the opportunism of the Home office realising that they can now indict windrush generation people via skype for not having old payslips from 1975.

anyway, now that i have nothing else to do, expect this thread to be bombarded with my outrage daily

Goodo 😊

Germany is reportedly introducing some kind of certificate that states you've had or are immune to coronavirus which in itself might be necessary if people want to travel anywhere in future but is full of dodgy implications for the job market.

The proposed app sounds like that x1000.

Trump doing more opposition than the Lab party

I know this is tongue in cheek but otherwise its such a classic Dan Hodges move.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I was trying to recall what I thought Dan Hodges was about but basically I was expressing (a half tongue placed in cheek) a desire for Labour to find a critique that could cut through. I think it might have to find some of this language, which could be destructively negative however it's not like anyone should look at the polls anyway...at least this would show there are alternative responses.

Took them long enough to move on from their ridiculous romanticisation of Boris Johnson being the new Churchill. This isn’t a war it’s a virus and you beat it by listening to the World Health Organisation — test, test, test! https://t.co/GnJk2BOoNx

— Matt Zarb-Cousin (@mattzarb) April 1, 2020

fuck me, even some of the right wing shit-rags are asking better questions than Laura K, Pesto and de facto LOTO Sir Meltalot.

Testing is totally going to be the thing that cuts through, and has the benefit of being an actual and obvious scandal where very little defence can apparently be made. Tomorrow's papers are scorching on it.

(Herd Immunity isn't it - that's more like their equivalent of "Labour trashed the economy": plays well with people who already hate them, but isn't actually the case and you get bogged down in it. While I love to see that getting done back to them, testing failure and poor preparation of the NHS is a massive weakness.)

I thought when the daily mail had a headline about doctors being off sick that started with the word NOW that the tide might be turning

There are more people dead of this in the uk than nhs staff tested for it, this is where you’d want to see labour harnessing all that clapping energy

it's so glaringly obvious a scandal even the telegraph can't ignore it - that's something I haven't seen much of in the last decade. Rona doesn't give a fuck about the british class system though, most the other scandals just killed the poor or poor disabled people!

or black people

They're having another round of applause tomorrow, that's better than being tested, right?

i'm not optimistic of leview of books chances tomorrow but there's still hope that the quivering quiff's poll lead was grossly exaggerated, as i can't really see a milliband style opposition hounding the tories properly on this

an opposition ? that's generous! it'll be an extra Tory party that will probably end up attacking them fiscally from the right.

YouGov have apparently never their Labour leadership polling wrong - so all hope of an opposition is dead imo

i was feeling generous

what a time to have someone like Starmer as LOTO. There never would be a good time for a such lame tory cunt to move the party back to the centre right of 2015. But ffs now of all times :(

i think i prefer most tories to him tbh

Just a hideous empty shell of politician, weaker than kaliber.

My theory is that Blue Labour and those melts saying "continuity Corbyn won't work" + saying "lessons need to be learned" that have been critical of Sir Melty Hairstyle are all laughing their heads off and know their boy will deliver he isn't interested in any reforms and the project going forwards will be more about challenging the tory party to be more like they were in the Cameron era.

all this "nothing will be the same post-Rona" stuff is a bit fanciful imo. It will be more of the same - but worse!

just short of a million people hitting the UC in a calendar month. If the large parts of UK electorate weren't such self-hating masochists this would be the end of the Tory party for decades. I hope they are cooling the sanctions down for "better standard" applicants who turn up two minutes late or eschew work in the sex industry.