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

"Is that up on the end of last week?"

I'm on my phone rn but think it is almost the figures approaching the weekend.

Double

Proposal to revoke suffrage from those who use ‘should of’.

Why is the Dept of Health on 32k but the ONS are saying its 40k?

ONS figures for England and Wales are 33.3k *where C-19 is mentioned on death cert*, up to 1/5/20.

So, if you extrapolate from that to 11/5/20, *or* if you add in Scotland and NI, *or* both, you're surely approaching or beyond 40k. There's no reading of the ONS stats that could possibly mean it's only 32k.

And then you tally the excess deaths, as above, and it's likely far worse than 40k.

Thanks.

But the Conclusion section of this explains differences between DHSC and ONS numbers pretty well. Basically: former is based on date of registration (not occurrence), so there's a lag in numbers, and there has to have been a positive test (not just mentioned as cause of death on cert). So lag + tests-only = several thousand behind ONS numbers at any given point.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/comparisonofweeklydeathoccurrencesinenglandandwales/uptoweekending24april2020

I’ve changed my mind, end lockdown now

Like a coiled spring.. ready to go for Defence Questions.. pic.twitter.com/1vUsdVf0J1

— Johnny Mercer (@JohnnyMercerUK) May 12, 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52606982

It occurs to me I haven't said 'fuck this guy' for ages because he appeared to disappear entirely for months, but really, fuck this guy.

it is vital that when we are asking other people to work and go to their places of work if they cannot do so from home we should not be the ones who are exempt from that.

Exclusive: Treasury blueprint to raise taxes and freeze wages to pay for £300bn coronavirus billhttps://t.co/KesbeEbEQ5

— Gordon Rayner (@gordonrayner) May 12, 2020

Is hiking taxes, freezing wages and slashing state spending a good way to get out of the biggest recession in 250 years? No.

Is telling people you’re going to make their life hell for the next decade a good way to get them to turn against the idea of lockdown / furlough? idk

that "you will have to pay for this global crisis by eating the bark off trees for the next 3 decades" line needs to be strongly challenged by Labour, not tag teamed. Not saying Starmer is doing that but he is very fucking weak from what I've observed.

Half the price of the bank bailout to save hundreds of thousands of lives seems cheap tbh

It is totally irresponsible for teacher unions to advise their members not to engage in planning for a safe reopening of schools on 1 June

— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) May 12, 2020

christ I hate tories so much.

Re: Piers Morgan

There's no points for giving reactionaries props when they stumble into the right position

if you boost them as someone now then when after this they go right back to attacking black people or trans people or any other group with the same ferocity, you've promoted them as someone worth listening to

Thoughts on this? I can see the argument behind it but ultimately I think its the wrong take, actions should be supported

I don't see him pulling off a Trojan horse move here. People are still massively distrusting of him and anything I've seen praising his criticism of the Government has been prefaced with "usually I hate him, BUT..."

Broadly, Chris Rock on ‘good dads’ WRT above.

Schapps has suggested that public transport can carry no more than 10% of the usual capacity without distancing rules being breached, which sounds about right. Absolutely clear that, unless social distancing is abandoned completely, it's not going to be possible for anyone other than key workers to commute. I can't see that changing this year.

I’ve really had enough of this coverage

Buses in London are packed with passengers this morning, despite the govt asking people to avoid public transport if possible when the #coronavirus lockdown eased.

Follow live as England gets back to work: https://t.co/HxzgZFnXnJ pic.twitter.com/pjTNBlg8ib

— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 13, 2020

the UK govt just got calmly savaged on the test figures part of their daily "number circus" show on the R4 stats program More Or Less, going to have another listen to that later it sounded good and they concluded that "they like big numbers" more than they like testing.

Gloves and masks mandatory for passengers, plus a decent disinfect at each terminus before returning to routes. I would like TfL to return to charging for buses because (while using them myself because of the part-time food job I have to help prevent late invoice anxiety, so am accidentally an essential worker) recently I’ve witnessed groups of youths/young men gleefully hop on the ‘free bus’ with no protection. Which means the people who need the bus can’t put distance between one another as they would like. Also TfL is on course to lose a lot of money.

Real feeling of anger right now, even a week ago there was a sense that, disastrous as the delayed move into lockdown was, we were at least starting to turn the corner, deaths were going down, you could believe that the rate of infection was going down, that if the country just held its nerve it could get this under control.

That feels entirely squandered now. Looking at that 2% fall in GDP, which reflects ONE WEEK of lockdown - you could feel that it was justified, that economic activity had to be suppressed in order to get the virus under control. Q2 is going to look much much worse and to what end? In terms of the virus we could very easily lapse into a significantly worse position than we were in April and with a gigantic economic crisis on top of it, with the country throwing away the gains that would have justified that crisis, no matter how severe it turns out to be.

Expect to start hearing the line - a lot - that the economic crisis will kill way more people than the virus so we should get the economy going again. Yeah well what about both at once, which is what we're on course for?

Killing ppl, for the housing market:

Today I am announcing our comprehensive plan to restart, reopen and renew the #housingmarket - safely.

You are now free again to move home whenever you wish. This unblocks 450,000 transactions that were paused due to #COVID19 1/4 pic.twitter.com/yOk0SDFgJL

— Robert Jenrick (@RobertJenrick) May 13, 2020

https://www.toptenz.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Child-Sacrifice-in-Carthage.jpg

🙃

BREAKING: The results for all national Covid testing has gone missing https://t.co/u104FWo0wp

— Alastair McLellan (@HSJEditor) May 13, 2020

whoops

We got tests two Thursdays ago, they got picked up by courier (no mask) on the Saturday, and we didn’t hear anything back until Sunday just gone. Result was: VOID. I assumed it was because they had waited too long to test the samples, but maybe they just lost them!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j2r7

check out the vexed topic of testing on this program from 08:35

Maybe they've lost it all down the back of the sofa, maybe they're bungling the tests and maybe they have no infrastructure to process that data but given what we know about this lot it is likely they're just refusing to share the data with the organisations that need it. That suggests it's much worse than they want anyone to think.

The Chancellor's crisis measures have been vital to support jobs and incomes. They also protect the income of landlords & lenders, & could deepen inequality between working poor & asset-owning wealthy

New paper from @oeufling @L__Macfarlane @shreyagnanda: https://t.co/KQ1rYhk3j6

— Carys Roberts (@carysroberts) May 13, 2020

apparently some of the figures suggest they are testing the same people twice and counting them as two tests. nobody was available to comment on this curious aberration!

One thing that struck me was that the tests were packaged and delivered by Amazon. I don’t know if everyone was aware they got the contract for that work? Felt weird getting these official government virus tests with big logos plastered all over box.

There probably aren't that many organisations out there with the delivery infrastructure to get all the required tests out there quickly and at scale, but I don't have any confidence in their ability to handle the return leg up to any kind of clinical standard.

Friend of mine had his test switched with his partner's, which seems fairly basic

Dying at the virtual/physical classification here

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmagenda/calllist200513v01.html#_idTextAnchor002

Friend of mine had his test switched with his partner's, which seems fairly basic

I didn't think Kmax Headstarm could even exist outside of virtual.

Unacceptable abuse of a van's...instant urine dispenser unit

'Photographers are being subject to threats and abuse from the public while covering the Covid-19 crisis, members have reported to the NUJ’s Photographers’ Council. One photographer had urine thrown at her by men in a van...' https://t.co/vnf5Gy155w

— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) May 13, 2020

throwing piss at photographer narcs is a bit out of order, they should throw rotten eggs at them instead.

He's fucking murdering him at PMQs here

oh god I 'm already dreading the melt jizz-fest

Symptomatic of the current Labour leadership that I'm unsure of who will be murdering who

quite

Another journo:

I went into central London for the first time yesterday and was shocked. Not a single Pret, Costa or Starbucks was open. You cannot get a coffee anywhere. It is like World War III has taken place. This is not the London I know. St Pancras station was totally empty.

— Naomi Canton (@naomi2009) May 12, 2020

Simon Baynes, a Conservative, asks about the Llangollen steam railway.

Johnson says he has a picture at home of himself on it with William Hague. He wishes it the best.

Absolute fuckery.

Has Naomi just come out of a coma?

So it looks like Johnson either just outright lied to Starmer about govt advice over care homes or didn't know the answer, bullshitted and got it wrong.

It feels like one of those things that will ultimately have no affect on his support at all, but it will be nice watching him sweat about it (Labour has now demanded he answer for it in Commons)