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

hope you realise i'm not radge and shouting for "let's all run wild in the streets" SV,

Yes, of course, and this stuff should all be critically assessed, particularly in a country where a fair proportion of voters would be in favour of fines for people outside of their houses without good reason even if there wasn’t a pandemic.

cheers i just didn't want to come across like a dick whatabouting it all lol

I've been getting the bus c.twice a week to go to (NHS) work and the fact that five London bus drivers have died so far shit me up

Also infuriating that the week on March where this really kicked into gear was when the decision to stop routemaster buses boarding at the back and middle was implemented

Like the one fucking time a routemaster could have been useful to anyone

I'd have thought the risk for drivers is more from other bus drivers if they're sharing vehicles. Otherwise they've got more protection than most shopkeepers.

Starmer: I would support ban on outside exercise over rules flouting

auspicious start

austere finish, no doubt

There are reason levels of supportave that could possibly be vindicated right now but Starmer is basically a suppository

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

― ymo sumac (NickB), Sunday, April 5, 2020 12:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm lucky enough to live on a road that backs onto royal ashdown golf course which itself backs onto ashdown forest. just been out and there are people about but you can see them coming from 100's of yards away and p easy not to get nearer than 30 yards of them.

I've got a similar thing, but with less auspicious sounding places on my doorstep but still nice! it's like winning the lottery during a lockdown

I suppose to an extent it's like "Why is there a speed limit when it's already illegal to drive a car unsafely?" - you set a high target as a crude measure. There will be people who are safe over the limit, much as there are people who can go about their business carefully - but there'll be a lot more whose vision of themselves aren't matched by reality.

but clearly very nearly everybody *is* obeying the rules.

I am incredibly envious - it's wall to wall cunts up here. Well-meaning cunts by and large, but that hardly matters.

Gotta say, the only people I’ve seen flouting social distancing in Holborn are little clusters of police officers, standing around chatting.

Scottish CMO getting absolutely slaughtered at today's presser for going to her holiday home at the weekend. She's the public face of the stay at home campaign here.

I get that she fucked up but you'd think she'd spent the weekend smothering grannies by the reaction.

The undercurrent here is, we need the stay inside shit because of the wholesale Tory attack on the NHS. We're having to do this so that the hospitals can cope. I dunno what I feel about it, been following the rules, only going out to shop a couple of times a week. I don't hold out high hopes for people being able to do this indefinitely.

xp lol just observed some of that reaction on social media

It's all our fault, do you see? And overpaid footballers.

The people with burning stakes for the CMO didn't ask too many questions about the heir to the throne travelling from London to Balmoral while symptomatic.

Or the Secretary of State for health having covid for like three days before leaving the house for a press conference.

i'm pretty tipsy now so this is half-formed and badly thought but it seems to me that this situation is a huge stress-test on the way government and society works, and what we're seeing is mostly that "the system" isn't up to the task, fundamentally. the infantilisation of the relationship between people and authority, the supply chains, social welfare, some of the basic ways we interact with one another, the way we conceptualize the nature and function of the state.

that's all immaterial and drunky in the face of the pragmatics of trying to minimize a death toll but every stupid problem we're gonna come across comes out of that stew. global "society" - this is a wrong and inadequate word but i can't nail down the right word at the moment - has effectively had its head chopped off and the most likely, common response is "how can we get our head back on asap?"

this isn't a judgement or anything, these are probably questions that don't bear considering outside of academic contexts, but it's...interesting how fragile the mental order of things is, tho i'm sure power and sublimated violence and the very real desire for the safety of routine are gonna step in as hard as they can to fix the breach.

it can't be repeated enough just how relatively *feeble* an apocalypse it's taken for the "developed" world's wheels to loosen

Yes it's exposed the fragility of nearly all our existing structures, virtually everything will need to be strengthened or rebuilt differently. Whether that can be kept at the front of enough people's minds when life begins to return to a semblance of normality is a different question.

Central bank functions seem to be broadly doing when they're meant to but everything else feels like it's at breaking point.

The system isn't working because the system just isn't designed to be deliberately stopped, virtually in its entirety, for months on end. That doesn't even happen during a war.

Being pessimistic here but an oligarch-ish land grab feels like the more likely outcome than any kind of serious reassessment of the relationship between the state and the wider economy/society. There will be a lot of distressed assets out there in the private sector waiting to be hoovered up and the government itself will be desperate to be seen to be clawing some money back.

yes, that's what i was trying to get at. my best guess is still a desperate push to return to the before times, but we'll see.

The Times published an article during the election with the words “the Muslim question” and Starmer makes his first address in the same paper

— Aniqah (@AniqahC) April 5, 2020

he's certainly done nothing to assuage anybody's concerns in the last 24 hours

(official US-style response) HEY AT LEAST HE'S NOT BOJO RIGHT?

no self-respecting LOTO deals with Murdoch scum press, never mind doing it exclusively behind a Murdoch paywall. What a fucking waste of skin.

remember he told the scousers he wouldn't do it and told the fabians the next day he would. fucking worthless melt.

I've actually got more respect for Boris than Starmer.

Nobody has any respect for Boris, be fair.

Point stands

at least Boris is a Tory Cunt in the Tory party

pic.twitter.com/bBaBTzXbvz

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) April 5, 2020

time for the fuckin’ queeeeen

she didn’t eat a single baby, what a load of shit

Mad props to her for using her personal wealth to pay for respirators tho

Thread:

hi @metpoliceuk, walking through finsbury park alone just now, taking exercise, i witnessed a woman being confronted by two police officers looking distressed. a concerned citizen, i stopped briefly - over 2 meters away - to see what was happening. 1/

— michael segalov (@MikeSegalov) April 5, 2020

Doing more opposition than the Lab party, an ongoing series:

Wayne Rooney, nailing it. pic.twitter.com/pfrLhZlWp1

— Jake Gallagher (@MatchoftheDave) April 5, 2020

Fuck anyone shouting right up in anyone's face right now especially in the name of protecting the public.

FTQ

Boris in hospital!

fair play to the lad, he’s committing to the bit

This is a precautionary step, as the Prime Minister continues to have persistent symptoms of coronavirus ten days after testing positive for the virus. - Downing Street on PMs admission to hospital

— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) April 5, 2020

In for 'tests'. At least somebody's getting tested.

The rest of us don't get taken in on day 10 when still feeling grim, natch.

oh my god if he died tho

Of course, we have to wait until we're virtually breathing our last.

Might say a prayer tonight

They are trolling us

take it on the chin, boris, but if you must die so that others can be dissuaded from sunbathing in the lark, then so be it

jfc UK twitter is absolutely packed full of cunts wishing well to BJ and dribbling over the queen, shit fucking country populated by cunts.