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

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!

When it says Glasgow it mostly means Clydebank:

As a result of the raids on the nights of 13 and 14 March 1941, the town was largely destroyed and it suffered the worst destruction and civilian loss of life in all of Scotland. 1,200 people died, 1,000 people were seriously injured, and hundreds more were injured by blast debris. Out of approximately 12,000 houses, only eight remained undamaged[1] — with 4,000 completely destroyed and 4,500 severely damaged. Over 35,000 people were made homeless.[1]

allegedly part of the reason for bombing Hull was it was on the way home and nobody wanted to land with bombs still onboard

bomb map of london: http://bombsight.org/#13/51.5515/-0.0524

One dropped just round the corner from me!

where you in?

damn i meant "were"

I was queueing outside Morrisons at the time.

ditto, it was an unreclaimed car park for years tho now it has an ugly cluster of tiny but expensive flats

a neighbour says he once encounter a tiny little old lady on the corner gazing around and he asked if he could help and she said "i grew up in the square and then one night in the war there was an air raid warning and we all went down into the shelter and there was a huge explosion nearby and when we came out again my building was gone so we moved elsewhere straight away with nothing and i haven't been back since till now"

ditto to "near me"

One dropped just round the corner from me!

So I'm sitting here listening to the sound of the council van drifting over from Finsbury Park: "You should be here for exercise only. If not, then please go home." *sick Autechre-style electronic blips* - Loop back to the beginning and repeat
Do other parks have this crap going on? They seem to think that the pigeon-scaring noise loops under the recorded announcement will scare people away, not realising that everyone listens to music that sounds like that nowadays anyway.

Sounds like they are missing the mood of Sunday’s presumed directive to all go on a picnic

Watching the Welsh govt CV briefing just now and as with Scotland's yesterday it's full of press cunts continually questioning the right of a country's leaders to make decisions to protect their people.

I heard a R4 presenter suggest that some people might be throwing 40's themed tea parties and having a singalong to that Vera Lynn song today. I'm having dreams about leading one of them nazi flamethrower units through Middle England and raining flaming oil on this sick fucked up demented brain-worms version of nostalgia!

Does anyone even know it past the first 4 lines? It's like Auld Lang Syne

a drag bar near me used to finish off the night with "We'll Meet Again" which took on a wonderfully blurry buddhist quality tbh

A 'national singalong' at 9:10 apparently, just after the queen's speech!

When I was in primary school we did a VE Day musical that ended with everyone singing We'll Meet Again while a boy dressed as Churchill & a boy dressed as Hitler came on stage from separate wings, met in the middle & shook hands. Even as a small child it seemed a bit weird

— crosby stills nash & manners (@jamiemannersRIP) May 8, 2020

My national anthem is Treat Me Like a Pirate

any song can be good, apart from if it is appropriated by bovine middle england in a pervasive militarism sort of context!

I'm not sure I entirely follow Tracer's post - asking for unemployed people to be given jobs is surely asking them to risk their lives if we're stuck with insufficient PPE, ventilators, etc.?