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

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)

employers: famously reasonable

I’ve joined @ZarahSultana, @ApsanaBegumMP and @ClaudiaWebbe to ask Government to attach some basic conditions to state support for big companies:

No loans for companies registered in tax havens.

No shareholder payouts with public money.

No more excessive executive pay. pic.twitter.com/3WRTcyoj4J

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) May 11, 2020

I keep coming back to a line the Guardian used to explain this, which is that the freakoliberatrian Tory wing wants "people to be able to use their personal judgement of risk" in deciding how to handle CV, and that's what Johnson is trying to reconcile with the "don't kill everybody" majority.

But (and I get this is obvious beyond words, I don't know why I'm typing it here tbh), they don't really mean "people", they mean "capital" or perhaps "people like us". Of course some prole employee shouldn't be able to decide the risk for themselves, beyond deciding whether to keep their job or not.

It's almost beyond class war, it's suffrage-level "who even counts as a person" thinking.

It's also basically impossible for individuals to accurately assess that risk, or the risk that they'll pass it on to someone else if they do get it.

That's why they helpfully remind you to be alert

I keep coming back to a line the Guardian used to explain this, which is that the freakoliberatrian Tory wing wants "people to be able to use their personal judgement of risk" in deciding how to handle CV

The Spikedbot I saw on Sky News was pretty much parroting this line.

Security guards had the highest rate, with 45.7 deaths per 100,000 following 63 deaths.

Other occupations with high death rates include:

Taxi drivers and chauffeurs (36.4 deaths per 100,000)
Bus and coach drivers (26.4 deaths per 100,000)
Chefs (35.9 deaths per 100,000)
Care workers and home carers (32.0 deaths per 100,000 males)
Construction workers (25.9 deaths per 100,000)
Sales and retail assistants (19.8 deaths per 100,000)
Process, plant and machine operatives occupations (15.5 deaths per 100,000 males; 242 deaths)
Sales and customer service occupations (14.3 deaths per 100,000 males; 54 deaths)
Administrative and secretarial occupations (13.9 deaths per 100,000 males; 66 deaths)
Healthcare workers (10.2 deaths per 100,000 males and 4.8 deaths per 100,000 females)

Keir Starmer just seems to have more time on the ball than everyone else. He's got an extra yard in his head

— Graeme Demianyk (@GraemeDemianyk) May 11, 2020

we all see events and people through our own lens, so I thought I'd post a thread where Starmer is considered that skilful and masterful at his game he is said to be the Iniesta of politics.

How many people in the UK actually have COVID? No idea. How many of your colleagues have it? No idea. How much does staying two metres apart reduce the risk of transmission in an enclosed space with shared surfaces? Maybe a vague idea but not something an individual can figure out. If i went back to the office tomorrow, i wouldn't know whether i had a 1/5 chance of catching it, 1/10, 1/100, etc. It's presumably not the chance of catching it or spreading it they're talking about, it's assessment of the risk of dying if you do we're meant to be weighing up.

I thought Starmer's questions were good but the 'more time on the ball' element is mostly because he asks them in two minutes, with added page references, when other people take thirty seconds to make the same point.

Can someone help me unpack the security guard thing a bit more? I guess it includes supermarkets where they're the first member of staff people see when they walk through the door, but there are a lot of empty buildings out there right now where it's easier to socially distance, so presumably the risk is in the commute?

they probably walk around more than most of those other jobs

Maybe means shop security guards and they're the ones who end up in most physical contact with customers being arseholea? Also those arsehole customers are least likely to be following safety protocols.

Probably lots of data to unpack around shift work and second jobs too.

They have a lot of people shouting at them for trying to do their jobs & shouting = spreading. xp

Demographically probably more likely to be from minority communities, poorly-paid, slightly older and concentrated in urban areas as well, i guess.

In a lot of organizations, security guards will be the only staff still expected to actually go to work.

Where I work, the security staff, cleaners and the postroom staff have all been working while the rest of us having been sitting on our arses critiquing Star Trek episodes.

Was about to say the same - everyone else, including taxi drivers, is likely to be working at reduced capacity but security guards will mostly still be in.

even they had closed all the building sites they wouldn't be able to scale down security at all, if anything they'd need more.

some of the bigger sites will have hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gear on site, usually padlocked in steel container units, but someone still has to guard them.

if someone works in retail security it would be a miracle if they hadn't been near someone in the infectious stage of c-19

no one I talk to has any idea what’s going on or what they’re supposed to be doing rn

🙃

You can … you can stop saying this. pic.twitter.com/fDWkh5ejdm

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 11, 2020