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

The second message she goes on to say “there are people obsessed with destroying Corbyn”

I keep mentally mixing up Rayner and Nandy which is probably not a good sign for Rayner

during Corbyn's leadership she did ok and I can't remember her being part of the sabotage squad, but it became very clear during the leadership election she had lots of friends on the right of the party, and opinions she kept to herself previously!

In the old days the Sunday papers only used to spoil your Sunday. In the digital world they aim to spoil your Saturday evening too.

— The Justin Horton Show (@ejhchess) June 27, 2020

How many different ways can you spell "conservative"? https://t.co/eRSNmINE14 pic.twitter.com/vAmoQD6MRl

— SW Carver (@invisibleste) June 27, 2020

From the context of the conversation, it looks like she’s frustrated with people on the left encouraging the party to split (so not RLB, Corbyn, etc) and with right-wing MPs trying to take Corbyn down. idk if it tells us anything about her we didn’t already know.

Wtf does it mean to be pro-family? Does she go round coupling up random strangers or is it just a codeword for "frothing homophobe"?

Starmer's choice of pro-brexit tory arsehole policy guru sounds like he's shifted a bit to the right from his fence in the middle of this culture war.

Tbf you don't need to be pro-Brexit just don't be a FBPEep in the face of the inevitable

The bad cropping on those messages (they’re talking about the TiG splitters), also tells us the splitters weren’t liked either lol

Starmer's controls on immigration mug is no mug!

BTW I'm not especially well-informed, but I know Rayner *reportedly* said to RLB at the time of the 2015 leadership election "why are you supporting that IRA twat?", so I'm sure that's common knowledge. Not sure what extra work this is supposed to do.

— Daniel Finn (@DanFinn95) June 27, 2020

Everyone should want schools to open in September if it's safe, and if isn't safe by then reopening then will be unpopular, and the public will be raging with the government whatever. So a lot of the public will agree with the teachers in any case and so will Labour if they're smart. Framing it as "Labour in the pocket of The Blob" isn't really going to play. Also it only takes one photogenic teacher to die of the rona and the government has a massive media scandal on its hands.

― Matt DC, Saturday, 27 June 2020 16:42 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i was chatting w/ some pals that i used to work with in a school for ASD kids (all teachers). they have no ppe (and have been told its unnecessary, they are routinely bitten or spat at by children), there are no additional cleaning measures, when children come in with temperatures they have to stay school for the day with no provision (or staff) for keeping them separate, staff who realise while at work that they are showing symptoms are 'encouraged' to stay in for the rest of the day and when the same staff have subsequently tested positive for covid the children in their class have moved into other classes rather than needing to stay home, they are not allowed to enter the headteacher's offices and the headteachers never venture out among the other children, they come to school but can only be reached over the phone.

This school has a student population that is at least 90% BAME and the families are overwhelmingly very poor and living in multi-generational housing setups. Although they've taken back a large proportion of the kids the school has been technically closed as they have not had full numbers. from tomorrow they will. I suspect that the effect of what sounds to me to be incredibly irresponsible practices (with focus on ofsted approval at the forefront of thinking) will have effects in the local community that are unlikely to be discontinued by track and trace. i'm sure there are many, many schools and other workplaces acting as garrulously. the management of so many schools are careerist vandals with little regard for the children in their care but i doubt the damage they cause will be visible and the young teachers working there will get sick but be fine ultimately, its the outward ripple that's likely to do major harm.

also, re: stephen bush's inscrutable defensiveness as discussed here a couple of days ago, was he trying to head off the new line about anti-racism being itself antisemitic?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/black-lives-matter-protests-catalyst-anti-semitism/

"Anti-racism movements often foster anti-semitism. This is because the most committed anti-racists see Jews as part of an imperialist racist Zionist conspiracy, represented by Israel. According to their political lights, Israel is the world’s single biggest problem, and they believe it exists solely to egregiously and brutally oppress people of colour – including, but not limited, to their Arab neighbours. Jews, Zionists and racists unite, for them, in one toxic brain fog."

My kid's school are looking at the possibility of him going back one day a week. He isn't happy that his usual activities including swimming baths and school have been curtailed since mid Feb and he does tend to deal with disappointment in a very violent and aggressive manner. It is a NAS private school with lots of space, but still doing social distancing with ASC students is practically impossible and he's very tactile and probably puts hand on his face or mouth about a thousand times a day whilst stimming. And also the school's staff all mainly come from Sheffield and Barnsley which are Rona hotspots. On the other hand I can deal with a few bad days in a row and a few torn t-shirts, even if it does drive me to smoking again! My partner's MS is really bad right now and she's on the strong painkillers again and even just one day of respite could be very beneficial.

As someone who starts their teacher training soon, glad I've left the Labour party so my subs don't fund clamping down on teaching unions

— annie 🤝 🌹 (@comradeannie) June 27, 2020

how is this even enforceable? are any exemptions being made for vulnerable children or kids with vulnerable people in their households? I hope parents are getting organised. pic.twitter.com/LSezE77ipV

— michael (@Sisyphusa) June 28, 2020

My kid's school are looking at the possibility of him going back one day a week. He isn't happy that his usual activities including swimming baths and school have been curtailed since mid Feb and he does tend to deal with disappointment in a very violent and aggressive manner. It is a NAS private school with lots of space, but still doing social distancing with ASC students is practically impossible and he's very tactile and probably puts hand on his face or mouth about a thousand times a day whilst stimming. And also the school's staff all mainly come from Sheffield and Barnsley which are Rona hotspots. On the other hand I can deal with a few bad days in a row and a few torn t-shirts, even if it does drive me to smoking again! My partner's MS is really bad right now and she's on the strong painkillers again and even just one day of respite could be very beneficial.

― calzino, Sunday, 28 June 2020 08:07 (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this sounds great, i'm glad the school is finding a way to accom you and your family. i know that all the teachers I work with are really keen for the school to do the most it can. Lots of the families I'm talking about are living in small properties with parents and grandparents and kids in the same small flat. When you add a child with lots of behavioural issues stuck at home w/ siblings and everyones routines out of what, its impossible not to sympathise with everyone in this scenario, and teachers care a lot about kids. In SEN schools its understood that care IS a huge part of what schools do and so the idea that they're just daycare so parents can work isn't really controversial, its seen as a necessary and important component of the community function of the school.

its totally understandable that there will be behavioural issues and this is obviously 'part of the job.' I worked w. children with sever behavioural difficulties for years and I expected it and a large proportion of the children at the school i'm talking about have very severe communication issues and are very high need. but so little is being done to protect them. the school doesn't have enough bathroom facilities to protect their dignity, there is never soap in the bathrooms, important facilites around hygiene that get damaged are rarely repaired (toilets go out of action for months) basic things like gloves for changing are in short supply. money is always spent in ways that are eye-catching to ofsted etc. (play equipment that looks flashy but isn't appealing to the kids and gets ignored by them). while the teachers i know, all have deep concern for the kids in their class, senior management are nasty careerists who quite obviously do not like and are afraid of the children. the school is run at an executive level with all attention on what looks good. so getting kids in is all about ofsted and upping numbers and there is no plan about how this will work. Although as I understand it the union has been involved and forced some beneficial changes but could not get the school/local authority to provide any ppe.

its interesting how covid really brings out existing structural injustices and I think the appalling way senior management operate in this school is really emphasised in this moment.

also, re fines, its my experience that the schools can exercise a lot of discretion over whether or not to impose fines. its the nasty dickhead tory head teachers that do it and they are possibly even worse that the dickhead government ministers that scheme these things up bc unlike them, they actually see what people's lives are like.

I'm a lucky beneficiary (and very lucky really) of a postcode lottery where there is nothing in my area that caters for his age-group and the Local Authority have to stump up the fees for a shit hot private school, because otherwise all the woefully inadequate conditions for the staff and the students you've been posting about would make it impossible for me to send him back. I have been very lucky really.

i think the students and parents of the kids at this particular school are particularly unlucky but then i see so many TES opinions from headbangers with 'traditional' approaches to discipline or no-nonsense something else. there's that nut that Spiked likes that punishes kids when their parents are in arrears and makes them walk on lines in the corridor.

Rona has been a bloodbath for the learning disabled in the care system, that 93% spike in deaths last month really made lots of front page headlines as well. I get so depressed about this kind of stuff I have to block it out of my mind, because it is only going to get worse. We'll have Progressive Euthanasia within a fucking decade - I'm not joking.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbhmqsKWsAEQ7sK?format=jpg&name=large

lol!

We will have had two months of pubs, restaurants, hairdressers etc open by September - if the virus continues to decline for that whole period then opening socially distanced schools won't be seen as that big of a deal by the wider public. But if its come back in a major way then the government is going to have to ditch that fines policy because it will be massively unpopular and fuelling festering rage all over the country.

Also Scotland will have had them open for a month by then anyway so in theory the rest of the country should be able to learn from that - although they are probably ahead in terms of dealing with the virus it won't be gone for good.

Some talk about Scotland being Covid-free 'by the end of the summer'. How that's going to work when you have a border with England, I don't know.

Feels hubristic as hell to me.

could be a good time to start re-building the old wall!

It's not the Scottish government saying that btw, they're not that stupid.

Still we have INDEPENDENCE DAY to look forward to down here!

Beers gardens from the 6th and indoor boozing from 15th says we're going to undo all our good work (zero deaths reported since Wednesday) in jig time.

You never know, if England descends into booze fuelled anarchy on Independence Day that might be time a get out for the Scottish government.

It's weird to watch at the moment. We're really not a million miles from England in policies, legislation, guidance or timing (and we're arguably worse on care homes) but Nicola Sturgeon's handling of covid has massive support from everyone who isn't a screaming unionist.

Premier League fixtures for July 4th all look pretty sedate but that Derby Forest game is on Sky at 12.30 and is going to have people in the Midlands drinking at home early and then piling into pubs. They're not all going to be able to get in so if it's a hot day it'll just be loads of people drinking in parks.

Millwall vs Charlton is on the 3rd thank god.

oi we're the home team!

government not bringing back club cricket as 'the ball is a natural vector of disease' is the biggest load of shit btw given what they're allowing

You never know, if England descends into booze fuelled anarchy on Independence Day that might be time a get out for the Scottish government.

xp
a case of tories shielding tories!

Premier League fixtures for July 4th all look pretty sedate but that Derby Forest game is on Sky at 12.30 and is going to have people in the Midlands drinking at home early and then piling into pubs. They're not all going to be able to get in so if it's a hndence ot day it'll just be loads of people drinking in parks.

0_o at Derby v. Forest

https://ichef-bbci-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/590/cpsprodpb/6ECA/production/_113126382_mos-1.jpg

Joke country

ah finally a real pic of Boris when he was in ICU

What was the Mail's response to Corbyn and O'Donnell pledging to spend money on infrastructure projects to build sustainable growth?

McDonnell, sorry

God that press ups thing is embarrassing.

anyone with a minimum awareness of mid-life crisis jokes/themes would die of embarrassment

Boris Johnson has to be an entertainer, otherwise what's the point of him?

Not exactly putin doing karate is it?

Also Kate is showing some v poor manual handling technique there, whole country has gone to shit

hope the posh arsehole does her back in!

Only a matter of time I'm afraid

well obv the lazy brat doesn't get much practice with good lifting techniques when the cameras aren't there!