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

Boris, earlier

https://i.4pcdn.org/tv/1448848060136s.jpg

Always fun to check the letters pages and see that another couple of Express readers have basically reinvented slavery. pic.twitter.com/TkOzf2tBM8

— Pointless Letters (@pointlesslettrs) April 17, 2020

clap for enslaved labour!

calzino fun fact we basically do that in America

not with crops but with prison labor (paid at pennies an hour)

We have prison slave labour too, it’s how our shitty plastic poppies are made just to join some dots

Aye Silby, a few years back i read some book called A Colony Within a Nation or something like that. Since the days of abolished slavery the US exercises legalised slavery - even more of an evil failed state than the UK.

Wasn’t workfare the second letter basically?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom

One good thing is that Boris isn't around, so I assume he must genuinely be fucked... either that or he's done an Eden and has gone gaga under the pressure, doped up to the eyeballs, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth.

Oh and on another note entirely, this is peak

These days you can't even buy golden syrup for your 5 year old son to make gingerbreadmen without an enforced 5p donation to people who shot several of his extended family. It's genuinely political correctness gone mad. pic.twitter.com/WOXhRBwKpY

— Tre Vorba-Stard III (@TreborRhurbarb) April 17, 2020

xp
well yeah, only marginally less evil than the US. I'm very lucky in the respect that my last dealings with UK benefits system as an unemployed person were often short and before the evil UC reforms.

I'm going to stop buying Lyles fake maple syrup just because of them pulling wanker moves like that!

Councils on the brink:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-52331282?

Give it Tommy Corbyn at the end of the season.

Seriously, hats off to Rosie who's been furiously tweeting for 4+ years saying that I'm getting a healthy salary as dads "chauffeur". I think it's time to come clean and say I don't actually have a drivers licence. https://t.co/5Dj4bVCNGE

— Tommy Corbyn (@TommyCorbyn) April 17, 2020

fuck he’s been driving his dad without a licence for four years???

The large Lavery donk sons and the Corbyn sons are proof that you don’t have to melt if you’re a child of a leftist.

This lockdown is doing strange things to some people pic.twitter.com/yWlwxJmkI1

— Liam Lavery (@LiamLavery1) April 17, 2020

look at Lavery - doesn't look a day over 34 there - respect!

Lol he has an incredibly Irish-looking face tbf.

I’m currently being baited by Chris Williamson supporters alleging I supported the West’s bombing of Libya, which is unfortunate because I explicitly campaigned against it and he *voted for it* https://t.co/w2bnWYG3oB

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) April 17, 2020

starmer voters vs williamson apologists, which suck most shit?

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/18/britain-one-party-state-tories-coronavirus-power?

If Tom D were to write for The Guardian..

We've hardly had a government for the last five years, what with referendums and three general elections, people have been thinking an awful lots about politics.

In one sense, our democracy is healthier now. Labour and the Tories disagree much more profoundly than they did during the Blair years – voters have a proper choice.

Labour has never been allowed to forget its smaller failure to halt the winter of discontent, more than 40 years ago, when strikes notoriously delayed the burial of some people who had died of natural causes.

He forgot the uncollected rubbish in Leicester Square, a crime not far short of the Nazi death camps for right wing wankers who were born 10 years after it.

And anyone who uses the phrase, "I'm old enough to remember British Rail" should be held in an internment camp indefinitely.

They reported he was convalescing at Chequers. If he had a bad case (and I am not a truther), then he’ll be fucked out of it with exhaustion most of the time.

Cummings meanwhile seems to have completely disappeared since he was seen running away from Number 10 and no one has been suggesting his case was anywhere near as serious.

Oh wait the Mail is on the case:

Mr Cummings, 48, finally returned to Downing Street this morning with a very healthy-looking lunch in a clear plastic bag, containing what appeared to be an unpeeled carrot, a clementine and a processed soft cheese, plus a soup carton.

"right wing wankers who were born 10 years after it."

Wes Streeting got a bit confused about the General Strike of the 20's and the so called winter of discontent, but he only joined the Labour Party by accident.

(xp) Ah right, I was about to say there wasn't any reason for him to be seen in public and he might be working away behind the scenes but was hoping his absence (and Johnson's) had allowed the Tories to quietly bin him like the rubbish he is.

speaking of boris at chequers, this is from the grauniad’s bojo-at-death’s-door retrospective today

Johnson had experienced a scare, no doubt about that.

One specialist said he thought the prime minister had gilded the lily a bit – “I suspect there’s been an element of poetic licence there” – but at the same time stressed that he did need oxygen, albeit through a face mask rather than Cpap or full mechanical ventilation.

The specialist did not begrudge Johnson being put into ICU, reasoning “he’s the prime minister”, and “without that oxygen he would not have got better”.

The saga had a curious footnote.

Photographs taken from a public footpath showed Johnson and Symonds walking with their dog in the grounds of Chequers, the prime minister bundled up in a duffel coat and gloves. He looked pale but well enough to go for a stroll. Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

He definitely strikes he as the sort of guy who calls an ambulance out when he gets a splinter in his finger.

he was swinging the lead, gilding the lily, taking the fucking piss however you want to put it imo!

‘Public and media pressure pushed the lockdown. We didn’t want it’

-Cabinet Minister via ⁦@Telegraph⁩

-Astonishing #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/cp9IpNLiGl

— Paul Johnson (@paul__johnson) April 18, 2020

Suggests unrestricted herd immunity plan still has fans in Cabinet.

I see that the Telegraph ran a front page story about there being up to 7,500 deaths in care homes. Which strikes me as a warning shot?

Re ICU, not sure a “gentle stroll” really contradicts any of the above. He was only in there a couple of weeks, as far as we know not intubated. Not sure a few minutes walking will do him any harm.

Rajesh Jayaseelan died in fear of eviction. He starved bc he was worried his landlord would discover he was ill

His death is an utter tragedy

We need to make sure this NEVER happens again and end evictions for good. No one should ever have to choose between food or rent 🖤✊ https://t.co/XwtytTspOs

— London Renters Union (@LDNRentersUnion) April 18, 2020

let's liquidate the landlords (again)

The quoted minister is clearly Williamson or Shapps or some other fuckwit. I'd be surprised if there was any agreement in Cabinet on this issue at all.

Williamson is a cursed name.

Thread on Cheltenham.

In March, 200,000 people attended the Cheltenham Festival. Now, a month later, the NHS trust which runs Cheltenham hospital is reporting the highest number of deaths in the South West - more than double that of any other SW trust.

This is the anatomy of a disaster [thread]. pic.twitter.com/tUPAFOcAv0

— automnia (@aut_omnia) April 18, 2020

Was there an equivalent spike in Liverpool since the game with Atletico? Smaller crowd but still.

I can remember a short segment on what I think was played on the bbc news last month - a humorous interview with two drunk looking Chelts revelers joking about how much they didn't give a shit about the Rona.

Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

This will be handwaved as Johnson just being tough and his positive attitude getting him through. He was reported as being dismissive about sickness in the past like it was a failing. The question remains how many people he may have passed it on to himself with his idiotic attitude.

The Atletico Liverpool game definitely accelerated things - given the scale of the outbreak in Madrid at the time it absolutely should not have gone ahead.

tbf our PM was mortally wounded by a plastic fork during a champagne picnic that week, he needed a week or two to recover from that terrible injury, leaving a power vacuum that meant all that went wrong in that period was everyone else's fault!

> Cheltenham hospital

that's the one my dad was in a couple of weeks ago getting his pacemaker (and the one i was born in)

Passed 15k.

reminder that new zealand have had 11 deaths

The government has emphasised repeatedly that the relaxation of the measures is provisional and that continued progress will require the development of sophisticated contact-tracing programmes, including the controversial suggestion that smartphones be used in a widespread programme to track interactions between citizens.

yikes seems like that would be particularly fraught in germany, world capital of privacy*

*freikörperkultur excluded

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV0dBtLXYAEeamt?format=jpg&name=large
Only bad thing about this is it makes it difficult for them to publish lies/blatantly antisemitic cartoons and leave a physical record.

I thought they might have already stopped free paper print editions, which invariably get abandoned on bus/train seats + end up being handled by multiple people. Especially such a riveting read as the ES.

That's it - it's dead, no one is going to willingly go to the Evening Standard website.

Think they’re ready to swap out Boris

Remarkable from senior No 10 adviser: “What you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends ... There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared” https://t.co/rvWh9xYQFq

— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) April 18, 2020

goodbye xunt

Can't see them getting rid of Boris unless that poll ratings is really thrashed for the next three years.