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

pm corbyn forced to prove fitness by launching a new airstrike every week

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/27/we-are-in-desperate-need-of-a-recovery-plan-but-the-treasury-has-gone-missing?CMP

Once again I'm struck by how much more substantive and useful Brown's interventions are than Blair's.

I'm guessing the don't mention Israel quips here are at least partly tongue in cheek and I understand where they're coming from but the UK has some historic responsibilities here (which is also why De Subjectivisten should release a statement on the Indonesia/West Papua situation asap).

going off topic here Daniel Rf, have you heard that latest Sara Serpa album, recognition? it's a soundtrack to an experimental doc about Portuguese colonial history in Africa and rather beautiful in places - just saying because I lack thread discipline!

Re: Scotland this is a good review of the possibilities:
http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.com/2020/06/where-in-scotland-going.html

TLDR: digging his heels in and saying "no" has only (short-term) upsides for Johnson, even if it inevitably pushes Scots even deeper towards indy in the longer term.

calzino, I learned about it from your post on the Jazz thread, don't think she's very well known in Portugal! It's lovely stuff.

that spoken part about Queen Nzinga is so powerful, wonderful album!

The battle on the blob is beginning, that’s Sedwill out.

See also

.@michaelgove delivered the annual Ditchley Lecture last night. It was one of the most compelling critiques in modern times of the British state and its ability to deliver reform to tackle inequality. This is the "hard rain" coming to Whitehall very soon.

Some highlights:

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) June 28, 2020

(Apols for Payne editorialising)

Blaming the Civil Service for the Tories ten years of inadequacy mostly I guess

it was the deep state wot dunnit

Setting them up to be overtly politicised is my read. The idea that the civil service doesn’t have brains able to comprehend the staggering awesomeness of the Monte Carlo method is obvious bs. The actual problem is they repeatedly produce the “wrong” answers.

DomCum plotting to chuck out The Blob, that contains deeply troubling imagery

"Britain has <....> experts"

#BLM isn’t some school project. It’s about dismantling the racism that allows something like this to happen. pic.twitter.com/3VqWGmq3kr

— Your Mum says Black Lives Matter (@judeinlondon2) June 28, 2020

I am genuinely shocked about that, I mean wtf?

I can't even imagine the mindset of these scumbags and I don't lack imagination.

Gove and Cummings have got Mark Sedwill to quit.

Not clicking on Unherd but the graphs in this PolProf thread point to why Cummings et al are so keen on ‘culture war’.

Here's another... pic.twitter.com/nVI2XKZrwZ

— Tim Bale (@ProfTimBale) June 29, 2020

Tory voters are consistently to the left of the MPs on economics but to the right of them on social conservatism, if the polls are to be believed.

christ that’s grim

Discovered a covid tracking app that I never downloaded on my phone this morning, haven't seen anything about this happening in the news?

Oh okay apparently it's an API, not really clear from the jargon attached

Making me feel very 5g truther

are you sure it's not just the new U2 album?

one of them is to *prevent* sickness

What does this thread think of Lloyd Russell-Moyle?

Genuine quotation:

Johnson says UK needs to address obesity

Johnson said the UK is significantly fatter than other European countries and admits it is issue. “It’s something we need to address.”

Need to speed up coastal erosion in suffolk a bit then

imo he wasn't *incorrect* on some dark unconscious level but it was a terrible unnecessary way to attack JKR given how many other non-gross ways of calling her an idiot are available

Johnson subtly laying down his approach to the coming famine, you have to admire that level of weaving the threads together

in this difficult times, we must all tighten our belts

(because we are starving)

the famine is good not bad we were all too fat anyway, can't wait to get down to my appropriate fighting (for scraps of dogmeat) weight

We must all be as the butcher's dog.

if we're going to wrestle him for dogfood definitely

"butcher's dog" just makes me think about gammon, also "the shapely ankle and the well-filled trouser"

I live a few doors down from a butcher and he has such an excellent dog that I feel almost personally offended by the comparison with Boris Johnson.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/28/just-6-of-uk-public-want-a-return-to-pre-pandemic-economy?CMP

Going back to SV's post upthread this would explain why the government are so keen to marry all this culture war bollocks with a much more interventionist approach to the economy then we've seen from previous Tory governments.

One of the reasons we're unlikely to see a straight up return to Osbourne type austerity is that Labour and the Tories are going to spend the rest of the year trying to outflank one another on the rhetoric of job creation.

THREAD: Why Boris Johnson is taking a *huge* risk over Covid.

On Saturday, pubs and restaurants re-open and people will only have to keep a 1m distance from others rather than 2m. Yet polls continue to show the public thinks the government is moving too fast to end lockdown. pic.twitter.com/5PzPxhIj0R

— Christabel Cooper (@ChristabelCoops) June 29, 2020

What does this thread think of Lloyd Russell-Moyle?

On gender recognition, Starmer concludes: “I’m convinced there’s a way forward here if everyone is prepared to stop chucking bricks at each other” #R4Today

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) June 29, 2020

both-sidesing trans rights, you love to see it from the leader of the labour party in the year two thousand and twenty

I was asleep with the radio on when Robinson was interviewing Starmer this morning and it bled into my slipping between sleep and semi-consciousness state and I was dreaming he was on a building site, Gideon style in a high-viz vest and hardhat and I wanted tell him he looked ridiculous and he's a complete cunt, but I was unable to speak over him!

Going full legit concerns is so stupid and cowardly. Fuck him

https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/styles/homesection_image/public/blogs_2020/06/gettyimages-1222018755.jpg?itok=j2sH_DFI

Keir Starmer Googling for a way forward on trans rights yesterday.

can tell he is just being frivolous there, he hasn't got his forensic pen in his hand for starters

Look I don’t want this to be the 24/7 Starmer hate thread myself but he makes it so easy ffs

Call Boris Johnson a clown, don’t boast you cando “50 press ups”, my god: pic.twitter.com/GqqL1YUnLg

— Dawn “Join A Union” Foster (@DawnHFoster) June 29, 2020

.@eduardosalas300 nonstop 81 pushups just did it 😐🏃

— More Pushups Than U (@ididmorepushups) February 22, 2015

good "wtf have i just seen?" face from Susanna their

i also don't want to go full "let's rag on Starmzy" because it's too easy for one thing but for all his forensic leaderliness sometimes this really weak Owen Smith stuff happens and lol lol lol

didn’t we have enough of this dickwaving from joe biden ffs

starmer / johnson soggy biscuit challenge when

Starmer with his milquetoast won't say boo to a tory opposition, but the minute the opportunity for an old man dick measuring competition .. erm .. arises, he's fucking in there like a shot! truly a pathetic man.