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

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.?

he's saying that the focus of the opposition should be on reconstruction after the necessary safety precautions are no longer necessary

and a reconstruction that isn't an unseemly scramble back to the pre-rona shithole

Daniel, that depends with the jobs - Fruit picking is on the other end of the scale from meat packing, I understand.

We are now in that phase where the main task of the Government's morning messaging on a national crisis is to kick back against the Government's evening messaging from the previous day. https://t.co/1G7KDmj8VH

— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) May 7, 2020

street party going on in our very middle class road, they've blocked it off with cars and there are kids playing football, social distancing be damned.

and the red white and blue death held sway over all

in the passage the usual suspects are out in front of their shared houses (two households of eurostudents who dont social distance from one another and last night were playing the guitar v badly before and after the clapping)

Bad (public) guitar playing a far worse crime than refusal to social distance.

well yes

Celebrating VE Day by ensuring that anyone who still remembers the war will die a painful and suffocating death.

I've seen ripped young middle class lads from the posh side of town doing what looked like a mini kickboxing tournaments in the park and a guy was coaching group of children at the tennis club in the last few days. No bbq's or fools with tribal tattoos - no five oh it seems!

I should have added ..white ripped young middle class lads!

Celebrating VE Day by ensuring that anyone who still remembers the war will die a painful and suffocating death.