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

Earlier I noticed a ten deep queue of appropriately distanced people waiting on the forecourt and some waiting in parked cars outside a local Chinese takeaway. I thought all the 5g conspiracy nonsense and xenophobic right-wing press might have killed their business off, but some folk just want to eat!

I think the 5G thing is about 20 people tbh, plus a million or two more who picked up on it for a week or so then moved on. Fail!

Cummings in SAGE: apparently the one who made them do lockdown, finally.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/top-aide-to-u-k-s-johnson-pushed-scientists-to-back-lockdown

i heard he also personally built the nightingale hospital himself in one night and taught joe wicks everything he knows

According to two people, SAGE were hammering the table shouting “let them all die”

How much can an advertorial in Bloomberg cost nowadays?

One attendee at the meeting described feeling uncomfortable that the panel with Cummings’s input was taking more of a decision-making approach than simply drawing up options and giving advice to ministers. The attendee added, however, that it was also a relief that Cummings had pushed for a lockdown because there were concerns that politicians had not fully understood how serious the coronavirus emergency had become.

absolutely transparent counterspin from the government, fucking awful

the mercurial, enigmatic special adviser was simultaneously agitating for a lockdown whilst saying: protect the economy and too bad if a load of pensioners die. You can see why they pay him so much.

I remember @jeremycorbyn being ridiculed for putting questions from the public at PM questions? Or am I missing something? https://t.co/arLzrSs1BA

— Peter Dowd (@Peter_Dowd) April 28, 2020

if Corbyn was so bad why would the Tories bother trying to bite his style heh?

doesn't that give the government the choice of which questions to answer? the bloke just on radio4 was avoiding all the not-even-hard questions he was being asked by the pesky interviewer and this skips all that.

if someone says 'that is an important question' you can tell he's just about to not answer it. if he starts talking about how germany handled the situation but how things are different here he's not going to answer it.

yeah I don't think any of the questions that they use will be inquisitive enough to upset Lord Sugar.

Hey Boris how come your dog seems to have a better idea of what a pig's ear looks like than the lickspittle uk press?

His babby is born btw.

he's totally armoured against criticism now!

the bairn should have a borg type name like Sixteen of Four to avoid confusion

How about Thirteen? Imagine that’s how he keeps track of them.

the good news is that we can be assured that the babby won't divert his attention from being pm because he has years of experience in ignoring his kids

also, he's not paying much attention to being pm anyway

that could be good news because time he tried to be PM he set the country on a disasterous course to have the highest c-19 death toll in Europe

he's just delivering on his promise to put britain first

Wait hang on she's only been pregnant five minutes?

Another PMQs escaped there then

Are you suggesting she's not human?
xpost

She was due in early summer which in this country is June, right?

Disturbed by the headline 'Patel probe should be public 'as soon as possible'

I have just seen the phrase "Some much needed good news for the nation!" and am shopping around for another nation.

You’ve already got one 🙃

She was in big coats in December and I reckon his divorce (and its potential cost or delay if his wife wanted to play hardball) may have played a part in keeping any announcement back until it could’ve combined with an engagement.

Number 10 crowdsourcing less about biting Corbz' style, more about astroturf-fuelling the culture war between ordinary folx, joining together in knees-up Blitz camaraderie vs our disrespectful, perfidious fourth estate of {checks notes}... The FT, Panorama and Piers Morgan?

Oh and the Sunday Times, obvs.

our PM unquestioningly takes his public health strategy advice from useless incompetent crackpots that are completely out of their depth and takes his family planning advice from bin Laden. You can see why he's so popular.

Pesto seems to think if Hitler had managed to get one of his birds knocked up and survived a bout of the Rona he would have been a very different fuhrer!

maybe a case of 14th time was the charm

lads, lads, i know it's the game. but "wonderful"?

Wonderful news. Many congratulations to Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds. https://t.co/x3jD1cQUqY

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 29, 2020

There’s no good news, David. There’s only bad news and irrelevant news.

Starmer devastated by this in the replies
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWwxFEqXgAALZ9d?format=png&name=large

Cromblyn: special day you say?

Today is Postal Workers Day and it is right that we pay tribute to the fantastic work of postal workers across the country.

I also call on Royal Mail to ensure workers have proper #PPE and an end to the delivery of advertising mail. #PostalWorkersDay pic.twitter.com/avNF3n2ZEu

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 29, 2020

Pesto getting a glorious Twitter reaming for pondering whether "having a baby" will change Boris

he's been plumbing deeper depths than Cousteau in 2020. From thinking aloud about why zero contracts are mostly bad for him when the rona is in town to unquestioningly parroting Herd Immunity and thinking aloud whether furloughing people rather than forcing them to die at work might be removing the incentive to work.

Is this sort of always-on credulity an editorial guideline or something? I remember him covering the financial crisis pretty well when he was Economics Editor at the BBC so maybe he's just a shit political journalist, or maybe he's just terrible at Twitter, or he doesn't even consider what he does journalism any more? Even Marr isn't this bad.

I can recall him doing a half reasonable, well compared to the BBC, job of holding the Maybot to account on one occasion during election 17. Not seen much since then to justify having Journalist on his passport.

Didn’t he cause a bank run when he was doing economics?!

That always felt like shoot-the-messenger stuff to me, he probably knew that a bank run would ensue but you can't just not report that a major high street bank is on the verge of collapse.

the daniel davies line on the bank-run* is that mervyn king was primarily responsible but the way peston handled it absolutely did not help, and thinks he wasn't good as an economics journalist

*(also apparently there was an unrelated greek run or near-run)

Davies wrote a short piece on it:

https://medium.com/bull-market/how-do-you-report-on-bank-runs-ee0d7e962b9b

didn't realise it was a reporter's job to protect banks

I've noticed something in common with France re-opening schools, the drumbeat towards easing lockdown restrictions in the UK, and Republican efforts to ease various lockdowns in the United States. That the 'pressure' to do so is largely - or entirely - coming from 'senior' people in government. Yes there are 30-40 percent of people who when asked will say they want to ease the lockdown, for whatever reason. But not enough to make politicians or their aides jump up and reverse literally the only tool anyone has for slowing the spread of infections and deaths. No the pressure is from above. And I may be going out on a limb here but I reckon most of these senior figures are getting an earful from their buddies who sit on the boards of big firms in various phases of completely flaming out. They don't care that reopening will actually hurt small businesses, who either can't reopen or if they do will face such pitiful demand and onerous restrictions that they might as well not (and who now will be responsible for unemployment $, rent etc and insurance won't cover it). In fact, they might be happy to see those guys gone. Anyway, I just find it astonishing that this dynamic isn't front of mind for reporters and the opposition. Where's this 'pressure' coming from? From the 1 motherfucking percent.

the pressure certainly won't be coming from people who plan to match their c-19 hawk tough-talk by getting on crowded buses and trains every day. no sirree, they won't be so cavalier with their own precious health and for what for what cause? for an nth of a % improvement on GDP for a month until the death toll starts spiralling out of control again.

That seems correct about France, where I have hopes of a general strike coming on 11 May. The media has portrayed the clash as Macron vs Philippe (the prime minister), with the latter being the président des riches & the latter trying to defend the interests of the people (by following the scientific commission). But I don't trust that portrayal: it's too facile, too much "good cop, bad cop". They can't make us work, and this will be the easiest general strike ever: just don't go back to work! Are they going to enforce anything under these conditions? For students it's easy, since going back is voluntary. For teachers it's not. But if they just don't show up, then kids can't be forced back so that their parents can go make money for the rich.

The plan is to reopen region by region (with a new color system to say how safe you are!), and I reckon the Paris region will be all red, and things won't be that different here. Actually I expect 11 May to be a total failure, and that a general strike won't be needed.