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

xpost.

I feel a cunt for FFS-ing that lambeth council tweet now i've seen the pics!

I'm very lucky in that I've spent the last 5 years needing to find out all the little shady short cuts, obscure ginnels etc that I can get to very quiet green open spaces without even needing to pass many people or getting seen by cops on the road. I remember going on a "greenbelt chain" walk when i lived in London and never feeling more homesick for genuine greenbelt!

Also this entire country is vitamin D deficient and taking the sun is one of the best ways of getting a bit more of it in you. Bonus: lifts depression, helps with cold and virus resistance. If sunbathing in public were explicitly banned, the BMA might have something to say about that.

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Spent all day trying to work out the one place absolutely nobody else would want to go to. Then, inspiration... pic.twitter.com/BFBH955Gun

— Dave Rowlinson (@Dave_Rowlinson) April 4, 2020

First good news for some time. Congratulations @keirstarmer who can bring back intelligence, principle, judgment - all essential for #Labour to be of service to the country. The Corbyn years brought terrible shame and monstrous defeat. The clearer the new start the better.

— David Miliband (@DMiliband) April 4, 2020

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck OFF

this is a terrible look, as if we hadn't seen enough of the melts's true evil already

Tony Fucking Robinson tho

If nothing else DMil has given the lie there to any claim he might wanna make about being concerned for the party

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Baldrick dismissing the Corbyn era as a "moral disgrace" is just so fucking pathetic and hateful. Let's do a Top Trumps of the moral disgraces of the "unelectable" Miliband Labour vs Corbyn Labour. The former was a fucking moral disgrace alright, even he Ed himself admitted later they went way too far to the right.

The rhetoric is insane

still, got the queen carking it to look forward to at least

my telly isn't plumbed in rn (don't ask) so I'm more relaxed/excited than most, at that prospect

I also don't see wtf Starmer provides if we're looking for charisma and a snappy, on-the-ball incisive persona

As in, I can see that Corbyn didn't score a perfect ten for that but ... what's the new guy going to offer?

exude competence and authority

he may've picked the wrong decade for that

Talking of exuding competence and authority, the leader Labour could have had has surfaced in Renfrewshire of all places:

https://www.renfrewshire24.co.uk/2020/04/04/video-mr-blobby-spotted-out-for-exercise-in-kilbarchan/

Any amount of money says that his mate Noel is refusing to social distance while also blaming 5G for coronavirus.

Funnily enough I was wondering the other day why that clown hadn't been sharing his opinions about the rona with the world

It's amazing today how little attention has been paid to Keir Starmer. Nobody I know posted anything about it on any social media, and it's the sixth item on the bbc news website. There isn't any big new coronavirus news today even, it's just nobody cares.

Re: Brockwell and Peckham. The campaign to blame people for their deaths is ramping up. Splitting people against the real culprits and it just might work.

> it's the sixth item on the bbc news website.

When I looked earlier the article at number 4 in the list was 'how to build an igloo'

I am 100% going to go and sit in the sun for as long as I can

matt hancock can fuck right off if he thinks he can make it illegal to stop me taking a walk when i have yet to come 5 metres within anyone else whilst doing so this past fortnight

Well done Keir, it's taken less than 24 hours to prove you are utterly fucking pathetic. https://t.co/pqYQw3SQRA

— Joe Kennedy (@joekennedy81) April 5, 2020

great we've got two tory parties now, Starmer is literally a fucking tory.

only way the pigs will stop me going out is by either putting me in a cell or breaking my legs!

fucking hell a pure fucking cop wanker as LOTO, who could have seen this coming? :p

There was an otherwise predictable puff piece in the Guardian yesterday that had this one line in it about him picking up two aides and going straight to the office like that was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to be doing right now.

parks and open spaces should be considered key elements of a successful lockdown in densely populated urban areas, as long as social distancing is practised.

you'd need police to act with judgement and discretion so there's your problem

that sky video of a police bothering an old man sitting on a bench who said he was resting because of his sciatica and she said “i’d be able to see if you were in pain” and sky sticking their cameras in the face of a woman out for a walk with loads of space around her saying “HAVE YOU HEARD OF SOCIAL DISTANCING?” and she’s like yes i am out for my walk. ffs.

like i can see messaging like this can be difficult and a *perception* of people not bothering to obey *rules* can create an actuality of “why should i bother” but clearly very nearly everybody *is* obeying the rules.

lambeth saying “we’ve had to close brockwell park because of a minority of people”. yes that’s the point. it’s a minority of people. that’s good. you only change it if it’s the majority of people.

There are 48,000 acres of golf courses within London and the Metropolitan Green Belt (shown in red on map below)

Why not open them up to public for exercise, as @RosamundUrwin suggests? https://t.co/V2ioJj85yv

Easier to maintain social distancing if existing parks less crowded. pic.twitter.com/cOb1baLAXQ

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) April 5, 2020

We had two community warden vans and a police car up the wee country lane behind my house yesterday. Apparently someone spotted two lads with a football and a bag of beer walking past and called in the swat team.

when I was out earlier on a dirt road (where the only traffic is usually cows being herded by farmer's 10 year old kid in tractor) and the copper chopper was menacingly hovering about, probably passing on recon to the heavy "frying squad" boys who'll be smashing some BBQs later.

BRITAIN

I’m basically fine with public spaces being shut if there is a strong justification for doing so - Italy, Spain and China have all done it, but the U.K. position of avoiding an unpopular decision, prevaricating for a few weeks and then blaming the public for forcing them to make it is vmic.

I'd be a hypocrite to support anything like this because I pass through my own park a couple of times a day, but even at the height of summer you won't see more than 20 people in there at the same time. My fave part of the lockdown is no more fucking idiots rarsing quad/motorbikes about there in a reckless and quite uncaring about dogs and people fashion and cutting up all the grass. Earlier I saw this young lad flying down a main road on his mountain bike, doing it in showoff nonchalant none-handed style, no crash helmet on but he was wearing a face mask.

In a week where we've failed on tests and doubled daily fatalities and failed to produce or procure PPE and ventilators it's notable that the media focus is strongly on the public going for walks.

https://i.ibb.co/7XF9sQ0/FA6-F214-C-0034-4-D7-C-9-F42-BCEAE7-C1-A7-A8.jpg

It is a blame-the-public play like others have said. But there might be something in it all the same.

that and footballers pay. maybe one day we'll be talking about the likes of amazon paying their taxes, but don't hold your breath xp

Not a huge mystery why people are going to parks more in the countries where parks haven’t been closed, tbf.

what is the y axis stet?

Portugal's a week ahead of us in terms of social distancing and all my friends, especially those who live alone, are going totally stir-crazy and some have even started visiting friends on the sly (bad, I know). I feel like closing down parks will lead to more flaunting the rules, not less.

0 is the “baseline level” but it’s not described further. It’s using the Google Mobility data, which is what powers that thing on Google Maps that shows whether places/roads/etc are busier or quieter than usual.

Just to be clear I think closing parks is bullshit unless people are really dramatically flouting the rules inside them. London is too dense to sustain a summer lockdown without them, I think.

🖼

It is a blame-the-public play like others have said. But there might be something in it all the same.

an ever-increasing rigidity seems to create more problems than it solves, to me. there has to be a level of controlled flexibility that recognises that people need to get outside sometimes, and i don't think the UK gov and police have handled it at all well at the moment.

as i understand the facts of transmission people are still at far more risk from going to bullshit jobs that shouldn't be happening, travelling on public transport to get to those bullshit jobs, and visiting supermarkets which everybody is compelled to do, rather than sitting in a park several feet apart from anybody else.

I think I get the chart but I can't stop seeing "-40" in both directions.