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

frank bough in a banana suit

nicky wire in a *redacted*

Can’t believe @Keir_Starmer just said to the camera man ‘did you get all you need?’ as caught on @SkyNews #ClapForOurCarers #NHSclap @DailyMailUK pic.twitter.com/Hr9YwszjdC

— Freddie Hickman (@freddiehickman_) May 7, 2020

have you got what you need says establishment lackey son of a tool maker.

Corbyn's version was more like: Have you finished tearing flesh off my face whilst superimposing the Kremlin into my backdrop and then completely misquoting me.

“Have you got what you need?” = “get the fuck out of my garden” or a VERY common interaction between broadcast journalists and their subjects.

Nobody on my street claps but the next door neighbour has played 'we'll meet again' at ear splitting volume exactly at 8 PM for the past 5 nights followed by 'YNWA' and 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Not sure what's going on there tbh.

One England flag and one Union flag across the rose garden, bleah.

i didn't realise that both that twat from the manic street preachers and frank bough are living in Scotland now

You'll have to be a bit more specific on which twat tbh.

top right hand corner and underneath!

oh yeah!

at least the manic street preachers aren't the stereophonics tho

“Have you got what you need?” = “get the fuck out of my garden”

it was spoken more like he was talking to friends tbh. Seeing as they are currently blowing so much smoke up his worthless arse he wouldn't that impolite to them!

nothing has been learned from the folly of 2015 Labour despite Ed being on the team, these wankers in his garden will turn against him at a later more opportune moment and meanwhile millions of people will really be politically homeless rather than the term just being posturing nonsense used by posh people to undermine the left and ethnic and social underclass self interest voters.

I’m that cameraman he was talking to - he asked me as a way to clear the path to bring his daughter over from across the road. https://t.co/IAhgybr5W2

— Marc Ward (@MarcStevenPhoto) May 7, 2020

I’m that cameraman he was talking to - he asked me as a way to clear the path to bring his daughter over from across the road. https://t.co/IAhgybr5W2

— Marc Ward (@MarcStevenPhoto) May 7, 2020

I gotta stop hitting “Post Anyway”

TELEGRAPH: ⁦@Keir_Starmer⁩ : we owe it to VE Day generation to protect them from virus in care homes #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/59BgkJvG6X

— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) May 7, 2020

that should win over the button-tuftons easily, great job starmzy

Picture of Johnson on today's Telegraph suggested he is still sick AF

Full moon tonight, the meltsplainers cycle has begun!

last night as i lay in bed, about to drift off, it occurred to me that yes, there is a twin crisis. of: 1) health 2) unemployment and the wider economy

and it further occurred to me that all of our/labour's ire, such as it is, is directed towards 1 i.e. why did bj waste february, where's the ppe, why has the nhs been allowed to become so dramatically underfunded for 10 years, why is procurement so shit, etc

and while yes, all those things are true, they are also the sorts of things that can bedevil any administration in any crisis to a greater or lesser degree. i tend to think voters will cut governments some - or even quite a bit of - slack for fumbles and fuck-ups in a 'black swan event' even if it leads to deaths. it's a war, bad shit happens in a war, let's not get too down on ourselves - we're all trying our best. labour shouldn't stop pointing these things out. but i think it will not get that much traction.

where labour has a moral duty to shout louder, and more forcefully, and with conviction, every day, and on a subject where it holds the trump cards, is on #2.

have you guys realised that there are now suddenly, without warning, tens of millions of people without work?? this sort of thing just doesn't happen! ever! it's just extremely rare in history - the volume and the quickness of it. it often presages Extremely Bad Shit for ruling elites but sometimes also for everyone else. we're all sort of skating past it at the moment but it is true that the govt can't just guarantee 80% of wages to prop up a collection of zombie firms that will never actually come back.

the only solution to #2 is a radical programme of work. it's actually not that complicated. let me put it to you this way.

1) there is lots of work to be done
2) there are tens of millions of unemployed

if the private sector can't match up these unemployed people with the work that needs to be done - for society, for the ill, for the environment, for our infrastructure - then the people need to act. it's that simple. the tories haven't got a fucking clue what to do here. but labour might.

Anyone know what time this stirring flypast is occurring, specifically in London?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/raf-jets-to-roar-over-uk-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-ve-day

RAF jets will roar over Britain to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, as Boris Johnson urged the nation to unite in tribute to the achievement and sacrifice of the wartime generation.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will lead a two-minute silence from Scotland on a day of celebration and commemoration which also includes a “national toast”, an address by the Queen, and a nationwide sing-a-long of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.

Original plans for VE Day 75 were cancelled due to Covid-19, so national events have been adapted. The public in lockdown is encouraged to celebrate Victory in Europe from their gardens, doorsteps and living rooms.

Right about 15 minutes ago? I was getting my walk in and they went over while I was crossing the Millennium Bridge.

Thought I heard something! Guess they couldn't be bothered with Manor House.

yeah, just then i think

(just heard *something* loud go over my flat (W12) and i often get the tail end of any queen's birthday flypasts on their way back)

Heard nothing here in Corbynville.

Is there lots of work to be done right now? To my eyes we're going through an almost unprecedented collapse in demand for labour beyond a few obvious areas - healthcare, food etc.

Centrally there are a lot of road works/pathway widening happening.

I think the Red Arrows went along the Thames and over Buck House?

look at the state of public transportation outside london. look at the state of mental health provision. look at how few people can afford a home. things need doing and building.

In the longer term yeah - these were the arguments that should have been made a decade ago but weren't because I dunno something about a deficit.

The problem for Labour is that it starts to look like forcing people into jobs and I'm sure the Tories will have a wealth of exciting workfare schemes up their sleeves in any case.

There are going to be a lot of people who aren’t traditional claimants (read: middle class swing voters) so I am thinking that some of the removals of conditionality now current will stay that way for an extended period.

I can't say I know what the 'national mood' might be right now (other than racist), but maybe for a lot of people the situation's laid bare the iniquities in a way that doesn't happen with the everyday drip-drip of disaster capitalist asset-stripping. These things don't usually happen all at once, as Tracer Hand said, and it's kind of pulled the curtain back a bit and revealed the tactical incompetence behind it all. Shame Starmer's the centre forward we have mind you, but even the shittiest striker fumbles in an open goal every so often.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/07/world-war-2-victory-day-russia-75th-anniversary/

The Blitz is invoked as an image of national solidarity while denying the rather harsher truth that the civilian casualties in London, Birmingham, and other southern cities of England were as bad as they were because of the threadbare air raid precautions deliberately adopted by a cost-conscious Conservative government.

good Tooze piece I was reading on my phone whilst walking past a load of flag-wanker houses. Him and D Edgerton are good at path clearing the propagandist ww2 lies still quite precious to many politicians and fantasists 70 odd years later.

good little barb about the "miraculous recovery" of Boris in there as well

Idly considering a half arsed troll of ww2 stans whereby I insist that we are appeasing the virus

Pity he forgot that it wasn't just London and Southern England that was bombed.

(xp)

Woman 'threw unexploded WW2 bomb across garden' https://t.co/pjwb3RCdoj

— BBC South (@BBCSouthNews) May 3, 2020

That's nearly a week old but feels apposite.

(xxp) Even Paisley was bombed! Though, of course, I knew nothing about it until, like, last year.

Some Luftwaffe stragglers flew over Huddersfield but they had got lost on the way to Manchester and didn't see anything worth bombing!

the Luftwaffe were a very haphazard amateur operation in comparison with the RAF who were much better at raining fire and death on civilian populations.

when they did the Hudds flyover they completely missed the huge ICI plant which had been a very important part of the British military industrial complex chemical munitions division since WW1.

before i catch up with the rest of it just wanna acknowledge that booming post of an hour ago Tracer

there's a long-standing kinda chip on the shoulder of people from Hull because it had the shit bombed out of it - maybe the 3rd most bombed city in the country? - but was never named in the radio broadcasts except as a north-eastern city

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_Blitz#Reporting

Got home to find potential SUSPECT DEVICE in Lamb’s Conduit Street popo and we’re all being told to stay inside - massive cordon all the way to Unite HQ.

xp
bombing the shit out a poorly defended big coastal city would have been a relatively easy option as well, if the Luftwaffe wanted to improve their stats for the war office "let's do Hull again that was a piece of piss"

In terms of tons of bombs dropped:

London (18,291)
Liverpool/Merseyside (1,957)
Birmingham (1,852)
Glasgow/Clydeside (1,329)
Plymouth (1,228)
Bristol (919)
Coventry (818)
Portsmouth (687)
Southampton (647)
Hull (593)

jesus they made every bomb count in Coventry

Same with Southampton - it's still fucked now!