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

The weird meme is correct.

Diane and big John truly out of fucks, a small bit of light in these dark times.

Just realised that today is #DianeMojitoDay Thanking you all for your kind thoughts and raising a glass to everybody🍹 pic.twitter.com/53WwZcjI5V

— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) April 19, 2020

This is quite good on the restaurant industry and yes, government support and communication will need to be very sensitive to that industry and many other sectors too. Expecting some bug fuck up somewhere post-lockdown with more damage than necessary.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/apr/19/will-britains-restaurants-survive-coronavirus

I had been thinking about that too, especially reading about how it went in Wuhan. The restaurants reopened but people didn’t come back. Me personally, if we’re back in London then I’ll be going to places, because I’m probably at far higher risk commuting than in a restaurant.

Also, fuck the landlords trying to evict restaurants! Who are they going to be renting to?!

i don't know how it works for retail landlords but i've seen plenty of places left to stand empty for years, presumably rather than offer affordable rents to would-be businesses

Just thinking about those thousands of pubs and restaurants sitting there in perfect working order - they're just going to be hoovered up by whoever does have money at the end of all this.

Tbh if I can afford it I will be straight back into restaurants at the earliest opportunity. There is nothing I want more than to have a stranger pouring wine for me right now.

I hope you’re right. All I want to do is book a massive table somewhere if it’s still open and get roundly fucked up with about fifteen of my friends.

i don't know how it works for retail landlords but i've seen plenty of places left to stand empty for years

As a trip down the High Street in Paisley and hundreds of other towns will quickly demonstrate.

hoping some of these fuckers are going to get ruined by being unable to service their own debts shortly

"Of course, I want nothing more than to see schools back, get them back to normal, make sure the children are sat around, learning, and experiencing the joy of being at school."

rofl

how benign of the bizarre creep who once offered putin out on sky news!

all cops are brilliant

Black guy being told to leave Clissold Park by 2 police officers while white guy practises handstands nearby. pic.twitter.com/xGjm6Ybz6Y

— Rivkah Brown (@RivkahBrown) April 19, 2020

Has the government's furlough website crashed yet?

#jobrejectionscheme is trending so i assume everything is going swimmingly

oh god

That #TonyBlair has a lovely smile. #bbcnews pic.twitter.com/sesFRUyLGT

— Peter Laws (@revpeterlaws) April 20, 2020

ha.

Pretty sure that happened in an Aphex Twin video.

I think #jobrejectionscheme is for people who started a new job in March and are now ineligible for furlough cash.

from what I've read so far Tony Blair is doing a better job of opposition than Starmer today. He's that forensic he's got rid of all evidence of himself.

calz you just kind of praised Blair have you checked your temperature this morning?

it's just a measure of how lousy Starmer is. I've stopped checking my temperature because according to google my average temperature of 96.4 f means I'm either dead or hyperthermic!

:D

i believe that's known as Rentoul's Syndrome

oh well I'll be able to sit out another 50 years of Labour being a completely useless opposition party and it'll be no biggie!

THere's always a chance they'll be a completely useless govt

I think by the time that happens it won't even make any difference.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWC6OvPXkAA8wiu?format=jpg&name=small

that first great meme of the day is always the freshest one

iirc he hasn't been seen since they weekend-at-berniesed him out of the hospital approx one COVID-19 ago

https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11826304-3x2-700x467.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWC3fDCWsAAqnVU?format=jpg&name=900x900

the image used by itv news tweet attached to his statement where he forbids anybody from the proletariat outliving him and to start digging now or he'll rain diseased blood on us!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EWDDAI3XsAMyGXy?format=jpg&name=small

in case you were in any doubt that we are living in profoundly cursed times

We would be in so much better a place if Tony Blair were prime minister

— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) April 20, 2020

I mean he's not exactly wrong, we'd be in a better place with literally any former PM but Brown is probably the one you would want around in a crisis. Don't even want to think about how Blair would be around Trump.

idk where to put this but i'm deeply depressed by the apparent inability of basically anyone left right or centre to imagine a way to handle this whole thing without state repression

same lack of imagination behind so many leftists' support for the police state under corbyn. not that i have much idea how to proceed but i wish less was being taken for granted

i hear you, and yes

unfortunately I don't think it is a good time for thinking outside the box - the only viable option seems: whatever has prevented spiralling death figures elsewhere. I might lack imagination but I can't see any better ideas rn.

There is no imagining away the material facts of an epidemic & how a virus spreads; lockdown is no more authoritarian in principle than eg evacuation and if everything was in place as it should be to actually look after people this would not scan as repressive but as entirely excusable paternalism in the public interest, and for a limited time.

Unfortunately I think our physical liberty stopped existing in any meaningful sense when the virus hit. Lockdown is collective responsibility as much as anything else. Doesn't excuse a lot of the police behaviour, clearly.

Not the fact of the lockdown but the ways lockdown plays out in policing and public imagination.

OTOH I'll likely feel differently in a year when all these new draconian powers have been retained for migrants, black guys, Muslims and no one else.

And tbh I don't believe any pandemic is an automatic trump card over civil liberties. We don't seem to have reached a point where they're being eroded yet but I think eternal vigilance over politicians and bourgie fascism sympathisers is always a good idea

(eroded any further than the pre-existing trends, Matt otm)

The tracking app on the other hand reminds me of ID cards in that it is only going to introduce a new layer of authoritarianism without solving the problem. Like, it just isn't going to work.

feels like a good time to get an old phone

This govt and IT - they need to ditch professor Vardy or whoever it is before attempting a Rona app. It will probably end up causing total societal collapse in a week!

"I'm a sovereign human being, I stand under common law only" - Thread of Freemen

re: lack of imagination, the rise of mutual aid groups is somewhat of a positive development - grass roots, just ppl trying to help each other out and started before any of the govt initiatives. One good argument I saw for keeping them going is that undocumented ppl aren't going to call govt-related help groups

I'm just thinking a dysfunctional government app that ends up working in tandem with the disease and helping it spread would not be unlike a subplot from Rick and Morty.