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

He looks like one of his own cartoons

Holy shit. According to #Panorama, the government counted EACH glove rather than each pair and counted paper towels as PPE given to hospitals, to inflate the numbers.

— Laleh Khalili (@LalehKhalili) April 28, 2020

Today is the ten year anniversary of Brown calling that woman a bigot. So depressing to think how much the last decade has been shaped by his refusal to stand by that assessment.

10 years since Brown called Gillian Duffy a "bigoted woman". I wrote this about it in HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT 👇
What's interesting isn't 'Brown was right' but that he said it behind closed doors while reproducing anti-migration messages. Anti-migration views aren't born in a vacuum pic.twitter.com/nPo269YtvN

— Maya Goodfellow (@MayaGoodfellow) April 28, 2020

Like so many politicians and journalists before him and countless who would come after him, it was as if he believed people's views to be entirely unconnected to the the political climate around them they has helped create.

Maya Goodfellow nailed it.

We didn't just get to where we are with this government and migration because Brown was criticised for calling Gillian Duffy a bigot.

We got here, in part, because of the ways New Labour - and Brown - reproduced anti-migration politics and helped entrench anti-migration views

— Maya Goodfellow (@MayaGoodfellow) April 28, 2020

Between 2005 and 2009 98% of all asylum seekers fleeing persecution because of their sexuality were refused refuge and extradited back to their home countries to face persecution https://t.co/QvqzMZeir1

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) April 22, 2020

Given what we now know about some of the unelected people advising Brown, and later Miliband, it's entirely likely they were instrumental in pushing these messages. It's obvious from that recording that Brown didn't really believe this shit but he went with what he thought the mob were demanding, and who was giving him that information?

There's quite a telling bit in, I think, Alistair Campbell's diaries from 1997 where Major writes to him and says that he and Paddy Ashdown had agreed not to go hard on immigration as an election issue and requesting that Blair do the same. And it wasn't an election issue at all 1997. William Hague in opposition *did* go hard on it, backed by the Mail, the Sun etc which pushed Labour to start parroting harsher and harsher rhetoric. The more Labour did it, the more it gave license for IDS and Howard to push further the right, and we ended up where we ended up.

The stupid thing is that New Labour derived no real benefit from all this, because for all the rhetoric of good vs bad migrants, they were also significantly expanding immigration, particularly from new EU states, and that's what the gammons remember, not the untold suffering that thousands of migrants experienced, and continue to experience, in their name.

Also the Home Office as an institution, and successive Labour Home Secretaries, were enthusiastic proponents of the line, not reluctantly dragged along.

shurely not racist cunt Jack Straw?

Care home deaths have been updated:

At least 5,500 care home residents in England have died with coronavirus, says ONS official
Nick Stripe, head of the health analysis and life events division at the ONS, has been speaking to the BBC about today’s coronavirus death figures released this morning. He said there have now been around 27,000 excess deaths - that is more deaths than you would expect on average for this time of year - in the four most recent weeks for which figures are available.

Of the 12,000 excess deaths in the most recent week (see 9.42am), he said that around 25% of those did not involve coronavirus being mentioned on the death certificate.

He also said that there total number of coronavirus deaths in care homes in England was probably now at least 5,500 - which is higher than the official most recent ONS figure. (See 9.55am.) He explained:

In care homes we are now seeing over three times more deaths in total in care homes, in that last week, than we saw four weeks previously. And 28% of those deaths are from Covid.

Now, we’ve also taken data from the Care Quality Commission over the last few days. The Care Quality Commission collects death notifications of all deaths of care home residents. And we have been able to compare that data against our death registrations data, and it’s a good match.

So from the 10 to 17 April, for example, we can see a very close match.

If you take that data, we can see the Care Quality Commission has figures for England of 4,343 deaths in care homes between 10 and 24 April, so much more current, that’s last Friday.

And we know that we had 1,000 deaths registered in care homes prior to 10 April.

So in total we are looking at around at least 5,500 deaths in care homes in England related to Covid by 24 April

As one senior minister said to me last week, govt has job to do to shift opinion and ease lockdown. ‘We spent weeks telling people to stay home & live or go outside & die. We have to tilt the narrative’ https://t.co/MVKakUalrC

— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) April 28, 2020

Lol they are going to kill another 30k for the economy

wonder what’s making brits so cautious

maybe those 40,000 dead people have something to do with it

what's this game where some people are pretending the likes of Rigby, Keunnsberg have been eviscerating the shit out of this govt on a daily basis and not feeling the national mood etc? Christ they always seem to be first in line to ask "probing questions" during that daily press conference which i stopped watching weeks ago tbh!

some people won’t be happy unless there’s total supplication before chairman boris

This is a scandal. Has @JonAshworth called an urgent question? Has @Keir_Starmer condemned the actions of this government and called for resignations?

All I'm seeing so far is hand wringing. Not good enough. Seems it's a slippery slope from being 'constructive' to complicit

— Universal Basic Income Now, Fuckers! (@holski_beat) April 28, 2020

mostly otm but I think Kier has bypassed the slippery slope and just gone straight to complicit. Once Rishi starts rolling out austerity 2.0 (presuming we all don't die lol) I have no hope that this insipid cunt will oppose it in a meaningful way, in fact I think he'll be right behind it being the fiscally responsible adult he is.

it’s cool that we’ve now had a moment of silence for carers killed by coronavirus and weekly claps for carers but holding the government to account for their continued failure to protect carers is forbidden

what's this game where some people are pretending the likes of Rigby, Keunnsberg have been eviscerating the shit out of this govt on a daily basis and not feeling the national mood etc? Christ they always seem to be first in line to ask "probing questions" during that daily press conference which i stopped watching weeks ago tbh!

yeah i just saw my mum share this on facebook (from someone of her age group who apparently owns a fucking yacht) and i just don't even

message to all our Negative UK Press - including Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC, Robert Peston of ITV, Beth Rigby of Sky, Piers Morgan of ITV, BBC News in general and all the other negative UK press.

Journalism is missing the "mood" in this great country of ours - the United Kingdom. We do not want or need blame. We do not want constant criticism of our Government who are doing their very best in a very difficult and unprecedented global emergency.

We want and need a constructive contribution to the national effort to help us out of this crisis. We need hope, optimism and faith, with less negativity and more positive support from these journalists. It is time you all changed your negative and political rhetoric for the health of this nation and start supporting our Government.

(row of british flag emojis)

Let's get this message VIRAL and they might just take note.

lol... Peston .. give me a break!

anyway what i actually came to share was this cretinous editorial from the shadow chancellor:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/rishi-sunak-coronavirus-rescue-plan-labour-britain-economy

It is the job of a constructive opposition, and of a shadow chancellor in the midst of the economic crisis brought on by coronavirus, to amplify the concerns we are hearing from the frontline and suggest solutions.

Those concerns are more acute in our country than in many others. There is evidence that key elements of the economic package are failing and that families and businesses across the country are paying as a result.

A key statistic released last week suggested that business confidence has taken a stronger hit in the UK than across the eurozone.

One in 10 of our workforce looks set to be unemployed as a result of this crisis
When it comes to the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme there have been significant issues in actually getting cash to businesses. Switzerland has a population of under 9 million, yet it approved four times as many loans within its first week as the UK has done in a month.

I welcomed the chancellor’s announcement on Monday that the government would underwrite loans of up to £50,000, as Labour has urged. However, it remains to be seen whether the new approach will be matched with capacity in the banks. And issues remain for those businesses that require more than £50,000 in support. Labour will keep pushing the government to ensure they get the support they need.

I don’t know where to put this so I’m putting it here

https://warontherocks.com/2020/04/covid-19-and-british-nuclear-deterrence/

If a submarine loses communications with British policymakers, the crew attempts to listen to the BBC Radio 4 Today show. If the show cannot be heard, the submarine crew is to assume that the United Kingdom has been attacked and should then access the letter of last resort to perform a politically designed task, such as placing the submarine under U.S. command, sailing to Australia, targeting the state responsible for attacking the United Kingdom, or deferring to the judgment of the submarine’s commander.

what if the today show has just finished? they just sit on their hands until tomorrow’s show or is hearing a bit of desert island discs enough reassurance for them to not immediately nuke moscow?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52455072

Looking at the graph in this - is there a reason why care home patients aren't being transferred to hospitals? Is it that the patients themselves are too ill/frail to even make the move or dying too quickly, or is there something else happening?

in fairness to the british navy when lauren laverne took over desert island discs many radio 4 listeners interpreted it as an indication that they were witnessing the end of the world

I thought it was govt policy not to transfer them to hospitals? Might have misheard this though.

what if the today show has just finished? they just sit on their hands until tomorrow’s show

Catch up on iplayer 👍 💣

Mike Soutar, chief exec Evening Standard, is stepping down after only seven months. "In the last few weeks I’ve taken time to reflect on my own ambitions and plans and it is on that basis that I have made the decision to step away to pursue other business interests."

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) April 28, 2020

hey maybe he's distantly related to my partner, but in her family people are named David and Andrew

Looking at the graph in this - is there a reason why care home patients aren't being transferred to hospitals? Is it that the patients themselves are too ill/frail to even make the move or dying too quickly, or is there something else happening?

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 28 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Guessing this would overwhelm the NHS and bring even more into focus the lack of nurses.

And they use the old "they were going to die this year anyway" type of stats to make it look like they were making more difficult but necessary decisions rather than just letting people die because of their lack of planning.

I was hesitating to post this chart, so depressing is it.
The lines here represent excess deaths.
No other major European state has excess deaths so far above “normal" levels for the time of yr.
In other countries excess mortality is falling. In England it's still rising #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/tZO37qZczd

— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) April 28, 2020

this is what boris can get away with calling a "success"

could really do with a proper opposition leader right now, more than ever.

Yes, well what they've learned from Trump is just to blatantly lie, as big a lie as possible, and people will believe it because they want to believe or else they just won't care that it's a lie.

There's no point in telling the truth if lying works better and you're going to get away with it anyway.

need something to replace "get brexit done", "this government's success fighting the rona" sounds like a good catchphrase to me

could do with the ice cream squad to debunk that graph right now. It's too depressing:(

I'm sure Dom's working on a snappy slogan right now, Boris Beat It and So Can Britain.

if only he'd actually learnt how to be some kind of super-forecaster after reading super-forecasting.

forecasting is one thing, using those forecasts to act appropriately in a timely fashion is something else entirely

Worth pointing out that Corbyn didn't ask Johnson a question about coronavirus until March 4th, by which time Italy had closed its schools and a lot of the damage over here in terms of poor preparation was already done. If it caught the government unaware then the same is true for the opposition, they didn't scrutinise the government when it might actually have saved lives.

The Labour response since has been woefully inadequate but the notion of an opposition that would otherwise be hammering the government and holding them to account is as fanciful as any "finally, a real opposition!" twaddle.

no it isn't!

if you trying to say Corbyn would be as useless as Starmer you are talking absolute shite

And he was an outgoing practically gone leader at that point.

No he would be better but I doubt it would be making any difference because they'd just be ignoring him.

Really the problem was that Labour disappeared into its periodic bout of navel gazing at exactly the time when it was really needed. Neither of the parties were paying sufficient attention in January and February and we are where we are.

At this stage they aren't doing enough to make sure the government is adequately prepared for the second spike and that's a whole other disaster in the making.

so the realpolitik position on how to do opposition is don't do it nobody listens anyway unless you take money from bet365 and broadly agree with the tories on most things ? corbyn managed to pressure the govt on austerity enough that they had to pretend it was over again. That won't won't happen awith sensible grown up opposition utilising the powers of politeness & civility that you apparently need if you want people to listen to you..

It was a really shit timing for a leadership election, but stuff happens.

They are pretending they've got the crisis under control now - pressuring them into lying about shit is the easy bit, pressuring them into genuine change is quite another. I don't really have an answer to your question sadly, the whole thing just feels like a gigantic fuck-up from start to finish.

sorry if I was a bit rude back there, just had a can of lomza and it went straight to me!

It was a really shit timing for a leadership election, but stuff happens.

It was only shit timing because they decided to make it longer than 4 General Election campaigns combined.

Nah its fine, it's the exasperation and despair talking for me as well.