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

the moonshot doesn't exist! it's like basing your plan on Jesus coming round and curing everybody

in other news i'm kinda bored of life being fucked now

does "moonshot" have other some vernacular meaning i haven't encountered: "hugely ambitious project that certainly succeed"

bcz to me its plain normal meaning is "our one shot is at best a wild gamble"

Spaffing at the moon. And other unused Coil album titles.

They can't deliver it because the technology to deliver it doesn't exist. It's narrative over policy, to make it look like they're doing something.

Also how do you enforce it? Say there's a guy who's got tickets for, say, City v Liverpool, it's a gigantic game, they've paid maybe £70+ for the ticket, they feel fine. They do a test, it comes back positive, can you really say that everyone is going to stay at home in that scenario? Or do you do it in a controlled environment outside the ground? If so, who administers that, how do you cope physically with the queues that will build up or, y'know, tens of thousands of people in a bottleneck outside the stadium.

Also as normal no one in the government is thinking about the train beforehand.

Even with a high threshold of success, 10m tests a day would mean a hundred thousand or so false positives a day as well.

pretty sure you're right, mark.

i.e. the "shoot the moon" strategy in hearts where you try to lose every trick

If so, who administers that, how do you cope physically with the queues that will build up or, y'know, tens of thousands of people in a bottleneck outside the stadium

look when somebody invents the test that doesn't exist yet they can just invent a pill that makes the rona disappear instantly at the same time

Well, the original moonshot was putting people on the moon - it cost 2% of US GDP - the comparable amount in the UK would be £4 billion (er, based on 2019 GDP, not 2020!)

Government haven't even built a proper test and trace system have they? This moonshot scheme sounds like a cover for that failure

what we need is the Russians to start working on a moonshot so we have the incentive to spite them

or fake it in a disused warehouse, loads of them available

https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50074/1001463752/original/krtek-traveled-space-in-2011-thanks-to-an-american-astronaut-photo-u2?w=375&q=60&fm=pjpg&dpr=2

thread of people who aren't the Prime Minister

https://img.discogs.com/WcyNZs2k6VEyqZ_bsDEHH1wBWQM=/fit-in/600x589/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-797300-1387703058-8183.jpeg.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EOgZDiLW4AAC8sD.jpg

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uz2VwR0ZQEX-LcobfpxJOvXB7GE=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x800/filters:focal(807x387:1113x693)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59605469/melies.0.jpg

this moonshot is basically a tube rocket in your drunk uncle's back garden and it fell apart before the end of Today

a model rocket made of crudely painted cardboard boxes, if you will

Yesterday, over 2,500 spectators at Doncaster watched horse racing for the first time in Britain since the outbreak of the pandemic as a government-endorsed pilot event.

However, during the day the council told race organisers not to allow fans in for the remainder of the St Leger over fears of a spike in the number of virus infections.

Arena Racing Company, which runs Doncaster Racecourse, confirmed the remainder of the four-day meeting will be held without spectators.

that went well

nobody wants to see Donny become a quarantined wasteland of shambling half corpses aimlessly coughing and spluttering around the oh never mind

I mean

And I would drive 400miles
And I would drive 400 more
Just to be the gal who drove 800 miles to drop dead at your door pic.twitter.com/cRdfkNdZ0s

— Your Mum says Black Lives Matter (@judeinlondon2) September 10, 2020

👏 MUST 👏 PAY 👏 RENT 👏

this is because they want to make sure they're locked into rental contracts first, right? that's what matters isn't it

— 12 oxen (@HINIONGE) September 10, 2020

"a quarantined wasteland of shambling half corpses aimlessly coughing and spluttering around"

there is no "new normal" on the great spice routes of The North!

xp

"The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent." Karl Marx

— Irishmonk (@castlvillageman) September 9, 2020

So much awful stuff. The illiterate deleted Phillips tweet. But the Tom Watson picture tweet - really? When you thought he couldn't go any lower.

well he's more limber
now he's shed some timber

I can't wait till he live blogs on the pulping of the ill-fated diet book he brought out just as the Rona was coming to Town and panic buying and comfort eating were all the rage.

there's a great take on the Jaccob Rees Mogg lounging in parliament shot in this week's 2000AD in the steampunk mini series about mystic worlds and Parisian detectives

I was really proud to act as Strategic Comms Consultant for this report. It's a really thorough piece of work, based on 11 focus groups and two polls carried out between December 19-July 20. Read Rob's thread for the key points. I'm also going to share some thoughts of my own... https://t.co/TPzH8W4rdu

— Ellie Mae O'Hagan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@MissEllieMae) September 10, 2020

O'Hagan goes into some of the findings about approval and defensiveness towards billionaires

To be fair to the cunts the universities thing is not just about rent, if students can't make it to their £9k a year universities it's one of those totemic things that show that the government just can't run a properly functioning society right now (which is true, it transparently can't).

Some of these students will have had the double whammy of disrupted university education AND messed-up A-level grades and while they've created a whole generation of people who won't vote Tory for at least another 25 years, their middle-aged parents might do and are likely to be thinking twice about it now.

That's a very good Ellie-Mae thread by the way.

rank the o'hagans

Sean at the bottom on the basis of his LRB articles alone.

critical support for this glum focus group participant: "you never see anyone down the pub with a jet ski"

fully automated luxury space communism (feat.jetskis down the pub) now

andrew is the LRB o'hagan, there are two seans (not-great writer for the obs & high llamas guy)

I like the sound of this O'Hagan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O%27Hagan

William O'Hagan (4 June 1944 – 15 May 2013) was a British journalist on the Daily Telegraph and a butcher, known for his virtuosity in the making of top-quality sausages. He is credited with revitalizing the British sausage industry.[1]
He was the son of Ebbo Bastard, a South African rugby union player.

ebbo bastard's wikipedia entry is a (short) wild ride

Are we not all, in a sense, the son of Ebbo Bastard?

this will make ranking the o'hagans a tougher ask

we will need to get the opinion of a professional butcher

and a bastard

London based media clans with Irish sounding surnames are usually pretty rank!

you have to make sure they don't start breeding together, that's how Brendan O'Neill happened.

Oof. EU post meeting statement on UK Internal Market Bill - remove the clauses which break international rules by the end of the month or we'll take legal action against you: https://t.co/dDLto9trAw

— Kate McCann (@KateEMcCann) September 10, 2020

Has been a while since i studied international law but i'm reasonably sure this is not how international law works:

🚨 NEW: attorney general @SuellaBraverman has set out her legal position in defence of the Internal Market Bill and the clauses which undermine the Withdrawal Agreement. pic.twitter.com/XtIZW8Cssg

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) September 10, 2020

Or rather, the ability of a country to pass laws domestically that break international law has no relevance to whether it's legal to do so.

^which is why it's called 'international' law.

I don't get the AG's statement, other than it attempt to say "the government isn't breaching international law, it's just saying that Parliament is able to". "I haven't robbed your house, I'm just standing in your living room holding your TV. You should trust me that I'm not going to walk out the door".

xp

In fact no, it's worse than that. "I've taken the TV out of the front door, you should trust that I'll walk back in and put it down again. Unless I don't, because there are exceptional times"

best country ever

I won't carry this telly across the border of your property to my property next door

(I may write "there is no border" on a piece of paper and use it when and if it suits me)

Attorney General @SuellaBraverman still hasn’t resigned, but she has broken her recent silence on the Internal Market Bill by publishing a statement of HM Government’s ‘legal position’ on it.

It runs to one side of A4.

And it is utterly risible.

/1 https://t.co/jx1Jy2cAIL pic.twitter.com/xJvwej8yL5

— Mark Elliott (@ProfMarkElliott) September 10, 2020