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

McAlpine hadn’t been arrested iirc.

I suspect the distinction in the current case is that it’s not, legally, a problem to say someone has been arrested and also fine to detail allegations against an unnamed person but a risk to do both. I’d guess that they know he’d be named anyway so prioritised getting the details in.

It's not libel to say someone has been arrested, no — but the Met themselves haven't confirmed they've arrested him. They're sticking with "a man in his 50s". So to name him you'd need to say "we understand X has been arrested" which is the additional (at this point not massive tbf) risk on top of the other two.

+UPDATE+

Conservative Party chief whip & Jacob Rees Mogg hid details of Tory MP rape allegation for over a month before police became involved.

— Nick🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@nicktolhurst) August 2, 2020

I'd written that off as fake news earlier today - the article that was being widely shared on Twitter was from something called Dorset Eye, which appears to be something of a conspiracy farm. Also it was quoting Sky News but there nothing I could see on the Sky News site itself. Maybe I was wrong?

From the BBC:

It is understood that Mr Spencer spoke with the complainant in April, but he insists that she did not make any allegation of serious sexual assault.

A spokesman for the chief whip said that he took all accusations of harassment and abuse extremely seriously and had strongly encouraged anybody who has approached him to contact the appropriate authorities.

According to sources, Mr Spencer had not known the "magnitude" of the allegations.

But a report in the Daily Telegraph suggested the woman became frustrated after they spoke that nothing was done.

It is also understood the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was told by an MP in recent weeks about the claims - with sources saying he had said the woman should contact the police.

Weird how the ever-present Angela Rayner was elected deputy leader and then just wandered off into the woods, never to be seen again

— keewa (@keewa) August 3, 2020

In other dubiously-sourced twitter embeds:

Opinium - Westminster VI
CON: 41% (-4)
LAB: 38% (+6)
LDEM: 6% (-6)
SNP: 6% (+2)
GRN: 4% (+1)
PC: 1% (-)

Flavible Projection
CON: 299 (-66)
LAB: 264 (+61)
SNP: 58 (+10)
LDEM: 6 (-5)
PC: 4 (-)
GRN: 1 (-)

*Changes with GE
31 Jul 2020https://t.co/MocPWMJVf3

— Flavible Politics (@flaviblePolitic) August 3, 2020

newsflash: Starmer still isn't 20 points ahead and considering the state of this shambolic govt...

“Do you mean women?”, and when Rosie Duffield, MP for Canterbury, liked Morgan’s tweet, she was accused of being a transphobe. Duffield then tweeted: “I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing that only women have a cervix...?!” Progressives who presumably want to win back those “red wall” seats called for her sacking.

lovely stuff

If I understand correctly: crazy how those poll figures above still produce a map overwhelmingly blue.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that first past the post is no way to create a democracy that represents even the chunk of the electorate that votes

There’s also a lot more people in the red bits.

polling can be all over the place and dodgy af, it also can frighteningly accurate at times when pollsters need to show they aren't just fucking about. flavible is just someone fucking about f/t iirc

An affront to any kind of claimed system of government that this guy isn't in stocks somewhere.

Documents on UK-US trade talks, leaked ahead of the 2019 general election, were stolen from an email account belonging to Conservative MP Liam Fox, it has emerged.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53642923

It has been described as a 'real hammer blow' for landlordshttps://t.co/aSaXp3uQiz

— BBC Wales News (@BBCWalesNews) August 3, 2020

No, a real hammer blow to the head would be good tho

u can't touch them!

we'll take the landlord's stick!

it's emotionally devastating listening to landlords crying and bleating about how the Rona has disrupted their parasitic lifestyle, much empathy to these unfairly maligned bloodsucking leeches in this difficult period!

I Pity The Poor Landlord

we'll take the landlord's stick!

TUNE

The South Bank Centre plans to make 400 of its 577 staff redundant this week, &, when it reopens in 2021, to model itself on a start-up, with 90% of its spaces for rent and only 10% for art.

There's an open letter of protest you can sign here: https://t.co/SPTIqnPrcx

— Tom Wilkinson (@TMOWilkinson) August 4, 2020

This is disastrous. I have no idea who wants a) office space b) event space or c) retail space at the moment either.

Absolutely fuck this shit.

There isn't really anything else that fills the role of the South Bank Centre in London, it's irreplaceable, and as SV points out is just going to add to a glut of commercial space on the market in any case.

"We want to be like a startup" is a horrific red flag for out-of-date and out-of-touch management, if one were even needed here

'We want to be kept on life support by venture capitalists year after year'

They could always ditch the arts and culture altogether and restart up again as a much more profitable insolvency practitioner!

I don't really know what else they can do right now, they clearly aren't going to be selling tickets any time soon and probably not much in the way of food and drink either, it's insufficient support from central government that's the issue.

It might be worth asking Super Rishi instead of certain sections of the commentariat having a jizz fest every time he announces his spotty and often inadequate bailout schemes to huge acclaim

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 44% (+3)
LAB: 35% (-2)
LDEM: 8% (-)
GRN: 5% (-)

via
@Survation
, 31 Jul - 03 Aug
Chgs. w/ 12 Jul

they call him oh-dear-kier

Johnson's ratings are pretty terrible though

YouGov
@YouGov
· 42m
Who Britons would hold most responsible if the UK was to suffer a second wave of coronavirus:

The public: 52%
The government: 31%

it's not his fault!

Johnson's ratings are pretty terrible though

― stet, Tuesday, 4 August 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Yup so they can get rid of him and carry on as normal because people are blaming each other more than the government for covid...as long as the economic fallout isn't severe. And that's a big if.

https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/m7jxvn/corporations-receiving-bailout-billions-have-laid-off-staff-and-paid-investors?

Gordon Bennett, would you Adam and Eve it? Charlie Mullins says stick yer furlough scheme where the sun don't shine.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/03/boss-sacks-workers-who-refuse-come-back-furlough-13074431/

Blessed are the wealthmakers

Anybody seriously want to argue that guillotining the likes of Mullins would be immoral?

bleedin' well stick yer grand, could make that in 5 mins just tightening a bolt on Daniel Craig's dripping faucet!

x-post: I'm not going to argue with you on that one, Noodle Vague.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2020/aug/04/english-councils-with-highest-covid-rates-launch-own-test-and-trace-systems?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-53656852?

So I know it's the BBC but I'd like to be a bit more positive. Only time will tell, and it doesn't get the government off the hook for its messaging.

You simply won't hear a better explanation of what the number of cases around England actually means -- @robertcuffe on the News Channel earlier pic.twitter.com/jGpBvo9NDg

— Catherine Wyatt (@catherinehwyatt) July 31, 2020

The video in here is good as well, along the same lines.

The government is at least taking decisive action here, of sorts, the problem is the obvious inconsistencies regarding pubs staying open in Manchester etc. Thing is that we were always going to end up with regional lockdowns to prevent small regional outbreaks from getting out of control - this is a good thing and immeasurably preferable to another nationwide lockdown, which is where we'd otherwise end up.

That wasn't adequately communicated to the country when we came out of lockdown and the government is atrocious at communicating bad news. It was all sunlit uplands now, normality by Christmas etc etc. That's clearly not going to happen but the danger is that people either panic every time there's a preventative local lockdown or get fatigued and stop believing the government altogether.

Good John Burn-Murodch visualisation of where different parts of the country are now. None of the areas currently under restriction are anywhere near where Leicester was when it was locked down (including Leicester itself).

NEW: I’ve updated the chart of new cases in England & Wales to show two critical parts of the story:
• Differentiating between places with an isolated cluster (Swindon’s Iceland depot) vs community spread
• Showing where Leicester was when it locked down https://t.co/RlJcg1x4JG pic.twitter.com/ayu7KRFHDu

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) August 3, 2020

https://russss.github.io/covidtracker/map.html

Just leaving this here as well.

The New Statesman has done something genuinely useful for once and launched a local authority covid tracker that let's you know the number of cases in the past week, whether they're rising and also the risk of local lockdown - but it's also paywalled. Currently only Swindon looks like its at risk of lockdown but these things change quickly.

FIASCO: 50 million face masks bought by the UK govt, part of a £252m contract, can't be used because of safety concerns. Procured through Horlick family-owned Ayanda Capital, controlled through Mauritius, with 5 employees and £44,509 of tangible asset.https://t.co/7KPHyzPYBs

— Prem Sikka (@premnsikka) August 6, 2020

the stench of crony capitalism, one dodgy fucker who advises the board of a dodgy shell company owned by Tory donors and also advises the UK board of trade, in this case seemingly his "advice" was to piss away a lot of money on cheap tat masks he'd procured from China that are not fit for purpose for the NHS.

Was reading Maugham's twitter thread on it this morning.

Arsenal cutting off 500 employees. Surely the first of many of these announcements across football.

Even if it's not outright corrupt (and it certainly looks dodgy af), the government's procurement procedures are clearly a mess. Given the vast sums of money currently being printed, not to mention flowing in from bond investors, and the speed at which the government needs to do things, anyone with a plausible-enough looking Powerpoint presentation and an office in the Bahamas is going to be trying to siphon a few tens of millions off here and there.

Is the woman in the middle of that awful painting supposed to be Angela Rayner?

I think she is supposed to be the QT audience member who flipped from being a tory voter to someone who enthusiastically campaigned for Corbyn after an epiphany.

No she’s from a daily sport story iirc

Lol there is my complete misunderstood interpretation then!