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

Brockwell Park in Lambeth 30 minutes ago; importance of "one form of exercise", "minimising time spent outside" and "2 metres apart" not getting across to many. My second outing in two weeks, but next time think cycling along normally busy roads a better idea pic.twitter.com/tHNg6qTlKB

— Alex Swanson (@alswanson) April 4, 2020

Update: Governor Larry Hogan has confirmed that Bobby Kennedy's granddaughter Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean and her son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean drowned following a boating accident on the South River earlier this week.

Endless tragedies for this family for 75+ years. https://t.co/71lWMacwwJ

— Pixie D (@AdrienneC123) April 3, 2020

Oops, wrong tweet above

Where do people with children go now?

— Nancy (@NangcyP) April 4, 2020

there are people about, but they are keeping their distance, mostly.

walking on one side of the pavement, 5 yards behind the people in front, people coming the other way, but the pavement was wide enough, everybody was happy. until the woman behind me decided to overtake...

and the woman in the supermarket carrying a ukulele and who was more focused on her phone than the other people

and the other woman stood by the door, opposite side to the queue, making it impossible to avoid to get out the shop

> to avoid to get out the shop

me fail english? that's unpossible

Camden sent out an email to everyone in the borough asking those with gardens to leave parks for people who don’t have gardens. In Notting Hill, the farmers market was very well-run although the coffee van was a casualty of the ‘no street food’ rule.

FYI south Camden/Islington Londoners looking for better coffee than Leon: the Greek deli by Chop House and the Eagle that’s taken over the old Gazzano’s space is doing proper barista coffee.

Brockwell Park looks like Finsbury Park did today - lots of people but the space is big enough for most to stay apart. Endless huffing joggers of course though, and the usual casualties coughing their guts out on the benches. Kind of stressful, next walk I take will be round some quieter streets. We might drive out to Hampstead Garden Suburb, it's deserted round there at the best of times.

Didn't see this but I heard it from my window. The Rye was less crowded than the pix of Brockwell Park upthread. This seems ridiculous to me.

A police van is going around peckham rye blaring “no sunbathing... exercise only” pic.twitter.com/cQw92CtNxv

— Griff Ferris (@g__ferris) April 4, 2020

lol just hop the fence at the sign for brockwell park gardens or go in through cressingham. I don't know why this is hard.

I was in Brockwell Park this late morning sitting on the grass for a while and thinking how relatively quiet it was at that point. Most people out were either jogging or walking dogs. I'm sure it was a lot busier by the afternoon though.

Rest assured I don't have a garden.

i was walking in brockwell park earlier and that pic is representative. people were out and sitting down but v far apart and i reckon no more than 70-100 in the entire large park.

i was hoping to run round there tomorrow morning first thing when it was quiet. :(

and btw to the tweet stet posted YES u prick cycle on the v quiet roads not in the park plz? cyclists really congested the park paths. (i say this as a committed cyclist)

The horror!

Brockwell park ( approx 125 acres) taken from my window today 16.04 hrs , people with no back garden need green spaces pic.twitter.com/3SJ1GcpsJS

— Robert Harrison (@ieattothebeat) April 4, 2020

tbr I accept I should have just kept walking and not sat down. If I were them I'd open it for a few hours in the morning at least.

I was already jealous of Facebook friends with gardens, thought about taking a book out today and finding a quiet spot but figured "fuck it, rozzers"

really. i don’t think it’s a problem with people sitting down. what is exercise for one person ie jogging maybe a breath of fresh air and a sit down for another. like your picture shows, people were generally quite dispersed. and where they weren’t it was people on the paths not those sitting in the park.

xpost.

I feel a cunt for FFS-ing that lambeth council tweet now i've seen the pics!

I'm very lucky in that I've spent the last 5 years needing to find out all the little shady short cuts, obscure ginnels etc that I can get to very quiet green open spaces without even needing to pass many people or getting seen by cops on the road. I remember going on a "greenbelt chain" walk when i lived in London and never feeling more homesick for genuine greenbelt!

Also this entire country is vitamin D deficient and taking the sun is one of the best ways of getting a bit more of it in you. Bonus: lifts depression, helps with cold and virus resistance. If sunbathing in public were explicitly banned, the BMA might have something to say about that.

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Spent all day trying to work out the one place absolutely nobody else would want to go to. Then, inspiration... pic.twitter.com/BFBH955Gun

— Dave Rowlinson (@Dave_Rowlinson) April 4, 2020

First good news for some time. Congratulations @keirstarmer who can bring back intelligence, principle, judgment - all essential for #Labour to be of service to the country. The Corbyn years brought terrible shame and monstrous defeat. The clearer the new start the better.

— David Miliband (@DMiliband) April 4, 2020

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck OFF

this is a terrible look, as if we hadn't seen enough of the melts's true evil already

Tony Fucking Robinson tho

If nothing else DMil has given the lie there to any claim he might wanna make about being concerned for the party

The largest group in those Brockwell Park pictures is maybe three people and for all we know they all live in the same house. Absolutely nothing like it would normally be on a day like today.

Baldrick dismissing the Corbyn era as a "moral disgrace" is just so fucking pathetic and hateful. Let's do a Top Trumps of the moral disgraces of the "unelectable" Miliband Labour vs Corbyn Labour. The former was a fucking moral disgrace alright, even he Ed himself admitted later they went way too far to the right.

The rhetoric is insane

still, got the queen carking it to look forward to at least

my telly isn't plumbed in rn (don't ask) so I'm more relaxed/excited than most, at that prospect

I also don't see wtf Starmer provides if we're looking for charisma and a snappy, on-the-ball incisive persona

As in, I can see that Corbyn didn't score a perfect ten for that but ... what's the new guy going to offer?

exude competence and authority

he may've picked the wrong decade for that

Talking of exuding competence and authority, the leader Labour could have had has surfaced in Renfrewshire of all places:

https://www.renfrewshire24.co.uk/2020/04/04/video-mr-blobby-spotted-out-for-exercise-in-kilbarchan/

Any amount of money says that his mate Noel is refusing to social distance while also blaming 5G for coronavirus.

Funnily enough I was wondering the other day why that clown hadn't been sharing his opinions about the rona with the world

It's amazing today how little attention has been paid to Keir Starmer. Nobody I know posted anything about it on any social media, and it's the sixth item on the bbc news website. There isn't any big new coronavirus news today even, it's just nobody cares.

Re: Brockwell and Peckham. The campaign to blame people for their deaths is ramping up. Splitting people against the real culprits and it just might work.

> it's the sixth item on the bbc news website.

When I looked earlier the article at number 4 in the list was 'how to build an igloo'

I am 100% going to go and sit in the sun for as long as I can

matt hancock can fuck right off if he thinks he can make it illegal to stop me taking a walk when i have yet to come 5 metres within anyone else whilst doing so this past fortnight

Well done Keir, it's taken less than 24 hours to prove you are utterly fucking pathetic. https://t.co/pqYQw3SQRA

— Joe Kennedy (@joekennedy81) April 5, 2020

great we've got two tory parties now, Starmer is literally a fucking tory.

only way the pigs will stop me going out is by either putting me in a cell or breaking my legs!

fucking hell a pure fucking cop wanker as LOTO, who could have seen this coming? :p

There was an otherwise predictable puff piece in the Guardian yesterday that had this one line in it about him picking up two aides and going straight to the office like that was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to be doing right now.

parks and open spaces should be considered key elements of a successful lockdown in densely populated urban areas, as long as social distancing is practised.

you'd need police to act with judgement and discretion so there's your problem

that sky video of a police bothering an old man sitting on a bench who said he was resting because of his sciatica and she said “i’d be able to see if you were in pain” and sky sticking their cameras in the face of a woman out for a walk with loads of space around her saying “HAVE YOU HEARD OF SOCIAL DISTANCING?” and she’s like yes i am out for my walk. ffs.

like i can see messaging like this can be difficult and a *perception* of people not bothering to obey *rules* can create an actuality of “why should i bother” but clearly very nearly everybody *is* obeying the rules.

lambeth saying “we’ve had to close brockwell park because of a minority of people”. yes that’s the point. it’s a minority of people. that’s good. you only change it if it’s the majority of people.

There are 48,000 acres of golf courses within London and the Metropolitan Green Belt (shown in red on map below)

Why not open them up to public for exercise, as @RosamundUrwin suggests? https://t.co/V2ioJj85yv

Easier to maintain social distancing if existing parks less crowded. pic.twitter.com/cOb1baLAXQ

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) April 5, 2020

We had two community warden vans and a police car up the wee country lane behind my house yesterday. Apparently someone spotted two lads with a football and a bag of beer walking past and called in the swat team.