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

everything is 'surprising' or 'disappointing' rather than 'wrong' and 'unacceptable'. It's like he wakes up every morning to be freshly perplexed by how badly the government is letting the side down.

I haven't heard him speak since I learned that he sounds exactly like a muppet, and can't see that changing any time soon but I don't have a problem with this kind of language per se.

One of Labour's long standing issues going back decades has been around perceptions of credibility and professionalism (and on a gut level it seems at least some of the public appear to believe that the opposition is an actual wing of the government...which in a weird way 2017-2019 was even sort of true)

I don't know how much mileage there is in taking the moral high ground when the practical high ground might be better.

Everyone knows the tories are unacceptable and wrong, but there is a perception at least they know where the goal is. Attacking them on their weak spot doesn't work.

and because Labour are seen as a de facto permanent opposition, they're just this thing on the sidelines always criticsizing, because thats all they do, thats all they've ever done, always carping never contributing

Yeah, i get why he does it but i can also see why his critics to the left find it infuriating.

Lads people are dying unnecessarily, if you don’t get angry about this what will you get angry about?

When I say I would like some more forceful opposition from starmzy I’m not really thinking about 2024 or whatever, more that there’s a catastrophe on the doorstep and people are being told to go back to work. If nothing labour does will have any effect on govt policy why not err on the side of actually saying something? This stuff has to be coming from somewhere, it won’t just magically enter the “national conversation”

People getting most fucked by this are BAME workers, casual workers, London workers, low-paid workers - all the people a Labour Party should be speaking up for.

all the people the government has just told to go back to work

“back”

i mean maybe being a tiny tiny bit angry-looking might be acceptable to the great British public or look like something an actual human being might do

xp well yeah

(1)Nick Thomas-Symondsreally struggling on #R4Today trying to avoid the q "should workers refuse to work if they feel it's unsafe"? What's really weak is there is a decent not-too-scary Labour Party answer and it's "Ask their union rep. And if they aren't in a union , join one"

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) May 11, 2020

it would be if starmzy et al didn’t think unions were a detriment to the party rather than its strength

BBC broadcasting a forensic response to the PM tonight at 18:55 this will be interesting.

oh boy

just listening to a former Ofsted bigwig on the news and remembering why everybody stopped trusting "experts" in the first place

When I say I would like some more forceful opposition from starmzy I’m not really thinking about 2024 or whatever, more that there’s a catastrophe on the doorstep and people are being told to go back to work.

I'm afraid when people itt talk about the next election my eyes glaze over, I can't really think that far ahead at the moment.

it would be if starmzy et al didn’t think unions were a detriment to the party rather than its strength

Aren't they the ones who put him there?

No it was also lots of dodgy right-wing billionaire donors and hundreds of thousands of melted brains that had more of role in putting Starmer there. But the some of the biggest unions didn't help for sure!

In terms of votes I meant.

He won the union members vote in absolute canter didn't he?

Though tbf he won all sections of the Labour Party in a canter.

I'm hearing his clips are doing big numbers on BBC website: they are staying in most watched a good while, too

Those are all calzino ragewatches

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/laden-300x300.jpg?quality=80&strip=all

I got a frontal lobotomy and won a million on a scratchcard. I think Starmer is good now ftr

One of the biggest challenges is that it's going to be hard for individual workers, or their union reps, to know where the degree of safety falls below statutory limits without some pretty specific guidance. The government and unions have discussed what that guidance should be, and how employers should be ensuring distancing, hygiene, etc, but Johnson has preempted publication with the announcement of the return to work. Unions, wherever possible, should be pushing for full-scale industrial action until it's published and the government has outlined how it'll be monitored. I can't see a case-by-case approach being effective.

Which workers have gone back to work today who weren't already physically going into work for the last few weeks anyway? Lots of people angrily sharing a photo from Canning Town Tube but maybe it's been like that every day. Canning Town is likely to have a much higher proportion of people who are non-white, in low-income or precarious employment and unable to work from home. Photos from other stations suggest that they're much emptier.

it seems like the only effect this announcement could have would be to make it more likely that unscrupulous employers will turn the screws on staff or illegally lay them off

which i'm sure there'll be a lot more of, mostly unreported, over the next few weeks

Here we go: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-rebuild-the-uk-governments-covid-19-recovery-strategy

subject to successfully controlling the virus and being able to monitor and react to its spread

lockdown forever then

A lot of yesterday's announcement was officially green lighting stuff that was happening in an small, undercover scale.

I'm sure we've all seen some construction however yesterday was giving every bit of construction on any scale the go-ahead?

And this is all a trial for a re-opening of more things, to be done at a faster pace, for all?

already fucked up with URL XD

Here we go: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-rebuild-the-uk-governments-covid-19-recovery-strategy

Lol at the government going 'Health & Safety is destroying our freedoms' or what have you and now having to implement these kinds of safety levels in the workplace.

wfh "for the foreseeable future", which raises questions as to how far in the future the government can foresee.

Workplaces to abide by the COVID-secure guidelines "as soon as is practicable"

Advice to use face-coverings in enclosed spaces.

As a fee-paying member who wants LOTO to do well, I will still laugh uncontrollably if this becomes the consensus among FBPE types:

Corbyn may bear brunt of labour's failings in relation to Brexit (I am talking about labour I know many will have thoughts on LDs)

But if Keir fails to grab this issue firmly & act he will completely toxify himself & condemn nation.

— 🔶️🌿⭐Chantelle #PPENow (@ChantellePPENOW) May 11, 2020

A message as confusing as the government's and reminiscent of Corbynesque fence-sitting 😭

— ex Brit (@philleehh) May 11, 2020

There's an admission in the document that this is likely to be a long-term crisis and that a lot of these changes are going to be semi-permanent, we aren't going back to normal any time soon.

Some of it is absolutely infuriating, there's a section about travel which states that social distancing rules must be followed on public transport with no indication of how to do that. How on earth is that supposed to happen on the Tube even when services have returned to pre-crisis levels?

I'm sure we've all seen some construction however yesterday was giving every bit of construction on any scale the go-ahead?

I've been living next to it for the entire duration.

reports are that today, our (first) deconfinement day in France, some lines of the métro have been swamped. just out my window there's an elevated section of one of the lines and this line, one of the busiest normally, hasn't looked particularly crowded today. but you have to have an attestation from your employer in order to ride during peak hours now, which will spread things out a bit. though the RATP doesn't patrol the lines even during normal times, so I'll be surprised if they give many fines today. So much of this relies on the "good will" of people.

COVID-19 has been perhaps the biggest test of governments worldwide since the 1940s. As the
Government navigates towards recovery, it must ensure it learns the right lessons from this crisis
and acts now to ensure that governmental structures are fit to cope with a future epidemic,
including the prospect of an outbreak of a second epidemic - for example, a pandemic flu - while
the Government is still responding to COVID-19.

This will require a rapid re-engineering of government's structures and institutions to deal with this
historic emergency and also build new long-term foundations for the UK, and to help the rest of
the world.

Cummings not letting a good crisis go to waste here.

the new build flats site around the corner from me has never closed. Although by the start of the lockdown it seemed to have been reaching the 2nd-fix stage, but there still has always been multiple work vans parked outside it every day.

https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/health-and-safety/revealed-constructions-coronavirus-death-rate-11-05-2020/

My autistic son watches some odd stuff on YouTube: domino rallys, bird table footage, aquarium cleaning tips on the dustin's fishtanks channel, japanese candy, screwed & chopped horror versions of cbeebies programs... but today he is mostly watching a boris johnson press conference from last week!

My autistic son watches some odd stuff on YouTube: domino rallys, bird table footage, aquarium cleaning tips on the dustin's fishtanks channel, japanese candy, screwed & chopped horror versions of cbeebies programs... but today he is mostly watching a boris johnson press conference from last week!

such a fine shitpost - I posted it twice

All those things sound more a lot more fun and interesting than the press conference.

I'm trying to imagine if I didn't have a burning hatred in my heart for BJ would there be an asmr quality to his bullshit voice?

NEW: 17 Labour MPs – including former leader Jeremy Corbyn – have described the Prime Minister's coronavirus statement as a "thinly veiled declaration of class war": https://t.co/UDNw3xdTEH

— LabourList (@LabourList) May 11, 2020

But he says everyone understands what the government is trying to do.

He says he thinks people will apply “good, solid British common sense”.

lol we're all going to die.

Also as soft as Starmer is, it's amazing that it takes him to actually raise the childcare issue with Johnson.

"On childcare, Johnson says the government expects employers to be reasonable. If people do not have childcare, they cannot be expected to go to work."

(obviously 'expects' and 'reasonable' are fuck all use to a lot of the people that Starmer should be speaking up for)