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

Dorries (who has consistently been a piece of vile fucking garbage) deleted a tweet from far-right account that recently tweeted that BAME c-19 deaths are higher because they live in "overpopulated shitholes". The deleted tweet was some typical neo-fash grooming gang misinformation re: Starmer's shift at the DPP. Good job the EHRC approves of them keeping their racism investigations strictly internal.

Lucy Allen and Maria Caufield retweeted it as well

The UK Freedom of Movement people who are organising mass meetings across the country are a registered company with one officer.

Step forward Britain First's Jayda Fransen pic.twitter.com/eGFNM8YXge

— Otto English (@Otto_English) May 14, 2020

I would be quite happy to see the pigs administering a good old fashioned shoeing to anyone involved with dangerously irresponsible neo-fascist "freedom" protests tbh

hit em with da 5g canon

Even the Stupid Old Hippy protestors are preferable to that lot.

By the way, I just saw my first ever "Keir Starmer has them running scared" post on Facebook, it got slapped down pretty quickly.

expecting some establishment on establishment homicide soon or he needs to resign!

oh I forgot he smoked some boris yesterday!

YouGov today has his net leadership rating at +23 while Johnson is down to +22

hmmm

A team of researchers from The University of Manchester, Salford Royal and Res Consortium, have shown that a significant proportion of people in the UK- over 25% - is likely to have been infected already by the COVID-19 virus.

The study - published this week in the International Journal of Clinical Practice - is the first to use the published local authority data to assess the cumulative impact of infection since the COVID-19 outbreak began.

This has enabled them to calculate the R-value - the number of people infected by one person with COVID-19 - within each local authority area.

The published case data from the 144 Local Authorities analysed by the team now gives an R value of well below 1.

The value – which was over 3 at the start of the outbreak in the middle of March 2020 – fell as a consequence of social distancing combined with the natural consequences of cumulative community infection.

Daily reported cases peaked at the beginning of April 2020 and hospital deaths a week later in England. By the second half of April, based on extrapolating the variation in infection rate between local authorities with more or less cases reported depending on location, over 25% in the UK population could already have had the virus, the team have found.

Dr Adrian Heald from The University of Manchester, one of the researchers, said: “COVID-19 is a highly infectious condition and very dangerous for a small group of people. However a much larger group seem to have low or no symptoms and have been unreported.

“This study tries to provide an estimate of the number of historic infections – and gives us all a glimmer of hope that there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

“We show how effective Social Distancing and Lockdown has been. Though this is a tragedy, it could have been far worse”.

What do we think about this Roche antibody test? Apparently it's actually effective and the government hasn't bought any yet, so presumably there will be a worldwide shortage by the time it actually gets round to it.

xxp
can't wait for the Boris fightback when he turns up at PMQs with a neatly combed hairstyle that fails to cover his baldness, trying to talk in a more lawyerly fashion but getting it completely wrong by congratulating tory mp's who raise stupid questions in a completely inappropriate accusationery tone. Starmer might even be good for 5 minutes!

By the way, I just saw my first ever "Keir Starmer has them running scared" post on Facebook, it got slapped down pretty quickly.

I don't understand the disdain here, he's been effective so far, he's seen a problem and been quick to address it. Already anti-semitism has been almost completely eradicated due to his quick actions, and how he is turning his sights on the government.

he fired his papermate of truth at the Labour AS bubble and popped that mofo!

lol not suggesting Labour AS was a bubble btw, Jesus got be careful with my wording!

Well whatever the truth of the matter its almost gone now, and thats the main thing.

next Conservative leader needs to be a forensic as well cos forensics are great at making racism disappear it seems

anti-semitism has been almost completely eradicated due to his quick actions

is this irony

no, starmzy did a zoom call and sorted it all out iirc

when Pesto give him the nod at the Jewish Labour hustings, antisemitism within the party was on borrowed time

Reading and weeping some more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19

ONS reckons that 148,000 people have been infected in the UK over the past two weeks. That's over 10,000 a day - most of which was in supposedly full lockdown.

Definitely a good time to start relaxing everything lads, enjoy the garden centre.

My reading of their data is that, on average, between Apr 27 and May 10, 148k people had the virus in England (=0.27% of the population). Not that there were 148k new cases in two weeks.

Yeah the Guardian article is ambiguous - "the first national snapshot of Covid-19 rates has revealed that 148,000 people in England were infected with the virus over the past two weeks" but they can't really know whether they were new cases. Your read makes more sense and feels slightly less apocalyptic so I am choosing to believe it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/148000-in-england-infected-with-coronavirus-in-last-two-weeks

Here's the source:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/england14may2020

Depends on the quality and accuracy of the data collection but we'll only really know the trajectory after two or more weeks of these announcements. Could be really useful more generally. 148k is more than enough for the virus to start increasing exponentially if things are relaxed too much, though.

I've just seen the Guardian article - it's the lead too. They've misinterpreted this, I think.

Lol ok Keir
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EX_X5VJWsAA9Jxv?format=jpg&name=large

Let's see how he feels about that in 2024 when they're everywhere.

He’s not going to have to wait that long.

the most damaging Starmer deepfakes so far were his leadership campaign videos were he pretends he isn't Starmer!

it looks like Baddiel has realised that poor people aren't sentient beings and have no internal life to speak of, so it's fine to project a grateful serf type persona onto his cleaner, who just lives to clean his fucking million quid townhouse.

Timely:

Jeremy Corbyn opens up about his relationship with the hostile media. God love him he only wanted us to have nicer way of life & they made a monster out of him. The UK failed Jeremy Corbyn.
pic.twitter.com/fjmYU8jGjU

— Ben (@BenJolly9) May 14, 2020

"I'd never live on the same street as this evil Corbyn fellow.."

yeah your brother is a complete dickhead tbf!

Because it's "un-Labour" we are starting proceedings, as floated previously, to change the party name to #CAPITAL rather than correct the policy.

Well done @ThangamMP 👏 this is how we progress as a party (Progress, get it?) https://t.co/EBECqOpSWo

— Sir Kier Blobby (@kier_sir) May 14, 2020

Debbonaire is a fucking joke

Totally.

Gotta say I don't agree with Corbyn that The Daily Mail and attacks by the papers had an effect. A similar hit piece was run in '17 to an audience that was never going to vote Lab left. What perhaps changed is the whatsapp type conspiracist guff that is shared more widely. Some of which has been saved for Starmer today.

latest kantar poll has a big tory surge, so perhaps having a very agreeable tory in disguise with oh so impressive approval ratings as LOTO doesn't really amount to shit and not enough ppl actually give a fuck about Boris getting slightly sweated for 15 minutes on PMQ as some suggest is the model of a govt being held to account. They used to accuse New Labour of electoral bribery via tax credits but now Rishi is in a position where he is in a game of electoral bribery to the point where they might drop an unprecedented 10-15 pts within weeks or even days if he fucks with the furlough! When this does happen I'd rather have a Labour Leader who wasn't Starmer and wasn't surrounded by some of the garbage in his shadow cabinet. But hey ho, I'll probably never vote Labour again in my life anyway tbh.

Thangnam is my local MP and got my vote in the last election, glad to see she has not got my back in the slightest. Top work.

Biden Proposal: Cancel Rent And Mortgage Payments; “Not Paid Later, Forgiveness” -> Interesting ideas from the moderate democrat presidential candidate. https://t.co/fjaE0e09Mj

— Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP🌹🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 (@lloyd_rm) May 14, 2020

Paying For The Bailout:

The million dollar question for Biden’s proposal, as with many other relief ideas, is how will it be paid for. According to The Hill, federal relief funds would be created for landlords and mortgage lenders who would be able to recoup costs. Access to the relief funds would be contingent on abiding by a set of renter protections for five years. As of publication, no estimates on the cost of Biden’s proposal could be found, but it’s safe to say, the figure would be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions.

Possibly positive Labour MPs and ’Corbyn outriders’ are boosting a story that highlights that the government would pay for this, and it should cover mortgages, rather than just going ‘cancel rent, lol’.

latest kantar poll has a big tory surge

No, it doesn't, it has a 7-point swing from the Tories to Labour (but still a big Tory lead).

Some places reported the swing compared to the general election, rather than compared to their last poll in mid-April.

right a 7 pt swing is big though, when this govt is fucking up as much as it is Labour would be 20 pts ahead with a p .....

obv the surge (I'm a polling expert and i'm calling it a surge so rah!) is all down to the furlough extension or as Bush put it the guy at the bar who is getting the drinks in.

striking how much more many lib dem voters hate labour than the tories, even with a guy they likely personally admire now in charge https://t.co/kuM081qZDA

— tristandross (@tristandross) May 15, 2020

oh christ I listened to Today this morning. Brandon Lewis expressing disappointment in Starmer for "playing politics" with a football stadium sized number of care home deaths.

The mayor is 'playing politics'

We needed to secure a deal to keep @TfL operating, but the Government has forced Londoners to pay a very heavy price for doing the right thing on #COVID19 - by hiking TfL fares, stopping the Freedom Pass during busy times and loading TfL with debt. https://t.co/OJeQnZycsG pic.twitter.com/N328yC0tbd

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) May 15, 2020

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/the-numbers-streets-going-rocket-18254318

Govt quietly cancels the "everyone in" funding, meanwhile numbers of homeless set to rise by the thousands, probably boosted by evictees that Debbonaire feels don't need no radical "un-Labour" policies to save them from the streets.

Renters are facing immense worry & hardship as a result of the pandemic. Radical action is needed to support them & nothing should be ruled out including suspension of rents, rent controls and, of course, the longer term supply of the decent homes needed. https://t.co/zf2Lmh0Q1Y

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) May 15, 2020

"nothing should be ruled out" that's the kind of urgency needed here it's an emergency situation.

miss u king

My song.

Russell-Moyle and whoever posting those Biden remarks should also look at this:

House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK

— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020