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

calum will be back posting come friday

I have to say, the amount of young british people going “whaaaaaaa????!?!?” and sharing their horror over Churchill and Colston is extremely good.

*mob respects colston furiously*

FFFS. Look forward to a Spiked “lawlessness is good not bad actually” column now

Funny how everyone's kicking up a stink about learning history when it comes to statues of murderers. I wonder how bothered they were by the years of deliberate underfunding to the heritage sector by Tory governments?https://t.co/33TT1oQe7G

— make no apologies (@RavenholmCLP) June 8, 2020

that duality of Tories saying "respect the statues" and then cutting the fuck out LA funding so much that museums are forced to toss experienced curators and archivists into the river!

They should re-erect the statue and then every year, as a tradition and reminder to people that these historical figures existed, tear it down again/throw into a river. I feel that this should please both sides of the discussion.

if they really want to teach the history, they should replace colston with statues of each of the 80,000 slaves he traded

https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/

thanks Nick i was just about to say that

also half the fucking clowns crying about its removal are the same people who would be whining about the cost to taxpayers were it done via official channels

Given what Thangam Debbonaire has been retweeting today even she appears to believe there was no chance of its being removed by any other means.

The Mayor of Bristol is also like "yeah fuck fishing it out of the water".

a yearly "throw the slaver into the river" is a magic idea. Sod putting it up for the other 364 days though

yeah prob just put it up the night before

yeah, could be a massive festival like the lewes bonfire except with less racists

another alternative would be a statue depicting people tearing down the original statue

Statues of families who've taken a picnic to point at the statue in the river.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J1J_iHC2Qw

Obviously the Colstons of this world approached people entirely democratically and through the proper channels, going out and asking the people of West Africa to vote on whether or not they wished to be sold into slavery.

i read somewhere that there had already been a 11,000 signature petition about removing it and they'd done nothing. could've easily moved it into a museum if they were that keen on keeping it (but add a note with the history).

Are there any good UK articles (from the last 7 days), about how BoJo & Co are likely to 'use' the covid crisis as a rug, sweeping under it the dire economical consequences and the chaos of the hard brexit they're apparently still chasing?

in an era when our former PM and a prominent member of Starmer's (and his pathetic bullshit wanker response) shadow cabinet can stan for a statue of a Nazi supporting anti-semite and proffer revisionist bullshit that she was some kind of feminist icon, then it is safe to say there isn't enough political will coming from Westminster to deal with these dreadful statues that blight our public spaces and alternative has to be taken.

action

Try here

https://www.ft.com/content/12d6832e-a73b-11ea-92e2-cbd9b7e28ee6

As a chaser, the pharmaceutical industry has written to the government to point out they've used up all their no-deal Brexit stockpiles during the COVID situation and urgently need to know whether there's going to be a trade deal. The government response to date has been that there won't be disruption without one in place but clearly not everyone is buying it.

the Mail is running a story that claims government wants to "reopen" restaurants and pubs before the end of the month, and while i doubt that i don't doubt it enough. story feels like a toe in the water but it's not like they pay public opinion any mind anyway.

On the long read front have been reading this on the Sage deliberations/slow lockdown etc. It says again that one of their early concerns was avoiding a second peak, especially in winter when the NHS can't cope.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2020/06/where-science-went-wrong

At the time the worry about a second peak was also one of their public justifications for pre-23rd soft lockdown. They said they worried that a hard one would hold for about ten weeks and then they wouldn't be able to sustain a second one. Which is now, partly, what has happened. (They probably didn't expect it would be their own govt breaking the lockdown, mind).

So I guess we're heading to the worst of both worlds: a late lockdown with more excess deaths than anyone, to be followed by a potentially worse second spike.

Was actually asking for a friend, so thank you Ed!

Somewhere in the back of their minds is the possibility of becoming the government that cancelled Christmas. If that happens it will be incredibly difficult to rely on the goodwill of anyone other than die-hard Tories and Brexit ultras, and they might need some of that for the gigantic recession and potential No Deal chaos on the way.

So yeah, I doubt the pubs will be open by the end of June but they will definitely reopen in the next few months.

ft has a piece about the 'save the summer six' (including sunak) who want to open the hospitality sector by June 17. they're definitely making big noises even if these are only performative/focus group prompts

When I saw this “save summer six” bollocks I had the same thought that it was a trial balloon but idk it felt like there was a backlash against schools reopening and they just pressed on with it anyway, they’re gonna open all the shops whether it’s safe or not... I kinda feel like if they’re mooting the 22nd it’ll be the 22nd. Mental as that is

yeah no doubt there's a lot of wishful thinking by the media but the government has opened up a propaganda push on this today i think

We won't.

pic.twitter.com/IcMHel4Sbv

— Tiahowler Jon Von Biltawülf (@Biltawulf) June 8, 2020

Wouldn’t surprise me if they base the decision on the weather forecast for that week tbh xp

the Mail is running a story that claims government wants to "reopen" restaurants and pubs before the end of the month,

More specifically they will only open to serving customers outside, from what I've read (elsewhere).

Good luck Britain.

glasgow cc better relax their outdoor drinking by-laws

(tbf ppl already drinking takeaway pints in the local park by me)

Local rumour with absolutely no evidence I've seen from UK or Scot govts (basically 2nd hand info from two friends who are friendly with two publicans) is that pubs with beer gardens will "soon" be able to open in a limited capacity and that other pubs may be allowed to place some tables and chairs on the pavements outside.

They are reopening in Ireland in a v limited capacity so they may have an eye on that, but we don’t have thousands of new infections a day, so.

(xp) Yes, I could see that happening. Then they'll call a snap election and Boris will be elcted Prime Minister for life.

Lockdowns had a dramatic impact on the spread of coronavirus in Europe with strict controls on people’s movements preventing an estimated 3.1m deaths by the beginning of May, with 470,000 deaths averted in the UK alone, researchers say.

yikes

in that case we should definitely open things up in a couple of weeks, what could possibly go wrong

Guy’s a joke.

Edward Colston was responsible for 100,000 people being moved from Africa to the Caribbean as slaves. 20,000 died en route.

The statue shouldn't have been taken down in the way it was. But it should have been removed from our streets a long time ago. pic.twitter.com/1vkhE0khan

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 8, 2020

Thinking about how different things could have been had Labour won the 2019 election. Perhaps some of the 10,000 extra cops could have saved the statue before it went in the drink.

anyone else surprised at quite how badly he's handled this? thought he'd come out with measured, bland statements but w/ this law&order shit it's almost like his most sceptical detractors were right all along

I must say, I didn’t see SV pivoting to “Starmer isn’t that bad” so fast, but 2020.

textbook white moderate bullshit from the haircut

what a cunt

Here’s how you respond to this bullshit btw

Lord Mandelson says people responsible for toppling Edward Colston statue in Bristol should be arrested, says “I find mob rule very disturbing ...that’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it?” But he should recognise that the real barbarism was the slave trade itself #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/z7wAJf3E52

— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) June 8, 2020

Labour’s alignment was lawful neutral all along.

Less 'Starmer isn't that bad' more 'the left of the party did next to nothing other than repeat the same extremely limited law & order mistakes when they had the reins'.

Abbott's signature policy was flooding the street with more police however many epic clapbacks to Mandleson she dishes out.

'the law of the jungle' eh mandy, that's an interesting phrase to use in this context