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

All those things sound more a lot more fun and interesting than the press conference.

I'm trying to imagine if I didn't have a burning hatred in my heart for BJ would there be an asmr quality to his bullshit voice?

NEW: 17 Labour MPs – including former leader Jeremy Corbyn – have described the Prime Minister's coronavirus statement as a "thinly veiled declaration of class war": https://t.co/UDNw3xdTEH

— LabourList (@LabourList) May 11, 2020

But he says everyone understands what the government is trying to do.

He says he thinks people will apply “good, solid British common sense”.

lol we're all going to die.

Also as soft as Starmer is, it's amazing that it takes him to actually raise the childcare issue with Johnson.

"On childcare, Johnson says the government expects employers to be reasonable. If people do not have childcare, they cannot be expected to go to work."

(obviously 'expects' and 'reasonable' are fuck all use to a lot of the people that Starmer should be speaking up for)

employers: famously reasonable

I’ve joined @ZarahSultana, @ApsanaBegumMP and @ClaudiaWebbe to ask Government to attach some basic conditions to state support for big companies:

No loans for companies registered in tax havens.

No shareholder payouts with public money.

No more excessive executive pay. pic.twitter.com/3WRTcyoj4J

— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) May 11, 2020

I keep coming back to a line the Guardian used to explain this, which is that the freakoliberatrian Tory wing wants "people to be able to use their personal judgement of risk" in deciding how to handle CV, and that's what Johnson is trying to reconcile with the "don't kill everybody" majority.

But (and I get this is obvious beyond words, I don't know why I'm typing it here tbh), they don't really mean "people", they mean "capital" or perhaps "people like us". Of course some prole employee shouldn't be able to decide the risk for themselves, beyond deciding whether to keep their job or not.

It's almost beyond class war, it's suffrage-level "who even counts as a person" thinking.

It's also basically impossible for individuals to accurately assess that risk, or the risk that they'll pass it on to someone else if they do get it.

That's why they helpfully remind you to be alert

I keep coming back to a line the Guardian used to explain this, which is that the freakoliberatrian Tory wing wants "people to be able to use their personal judgement of risk" in deciding how to handle CV

The Spikedbot I saw on Sky News was pretty much parroting this line.

Security guards had the highest rate, with 45.7 deaths per 100,000 following 63 deaths.

Other occupations with high death rates include:

Taxi drivers and chauffeurs (36.4 deaths per 100,000)
Bus and coach drivers (26.4 deaths per 100,000)
Chefs (35.9 deaths per 100,000)
Care workers and home carers (32.0 deaths per 100,000 males)
Construction workers (25.9 deaths per 100,000)
Sales and retail assistants (19.8 deaths per 100,000)
Process, plant and machine operatives occupations (15.5 deaths per 100,000 males; 242 deaths)
Sales and customer service occupations (14.3 deaths per 100,000 males; 54 deaths)
Administrative and secretarial occupations (13.9 deaths per 100,000 males; 66 deaths)
Healthcare workers (10.2 deaths per 100,000 males and 4.8 deaths per 100,000 females)

Keir Starmer just seems to have more time on the ball than everyone else. He's got an extra yard in his head

— Graeme Demianyk (@GraemeDemianyk) May 11, 2020

we all see events and people through our own lens, so I thought I'd post a thread where Starmer is considered that skilful and masterful at his game he is said to be the Iniesta of politics.

How many people in the UK actually have COVID? No idea. How many of your colleagues have it? No idea. How much does staying two metres apart reduce the risk of transmission in an enclosed space with shared surfaces? Maybe a vague idea but not something an individual can figure out. If i went back to the office tomorrow, i wouldn't know whether i had a 1/5 chance of catching it, 1/10, 1/100, etc. It's presumably not the chance of catching it or spreading it they're talking about, it's assessment of the risk of dying if you do we're meant to be weighing up.

I thought Starmer's questions were good but the 'more time on the ball' element is mostly because he asks them in two minutes, with added page references, when other people take thirty seconds to make the same point.

Can someone help me unpack the security guard thing a bit more? I guess it includes supermarkets where they're the first member of staff people see when they walk through the door, but there are a lot of empty buildings out there right now where it's easier to socially distance, so presumably the risk is in the commute?

they probably walk around more than most of those other jobs

Maybe means shop security guards and they're the ones who end up in most physical contact with customers being arseholea? Also those arsehole customers are least likely to be following safety protocols.

Probably lots of data to unpack around shift work and second jobs too.

They have a lot of people shouting at them for trying to do their jobs & shouting = spreading. xp

Demographically probably more likely to be from minority communities, poorly-paid, slightly older and concentrated in urban areas as well, i guess.

In a lot of organizations, security guards will be the only staff still expected to actually go to work.

Where I work, the security staff, cleaners and the postroom staff have all been working while the rest of us having been sitting on our arses critiquing Star Trek episodes.

Was about to say the same - everyone else, including taxi drivers, is likely to be working at reduced capacity but security guards will mostly still be in.

even they had closed all the building sites they wouldn't be able to scale down security at all, if anything they'd need more.

some of the bigger sites will have hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gear on site, usually padlocked in steel container units, but someone still has to guard them.

if someone works in retail security it would be a miracle if they hadn't been near someone in the infectious stage of c-19

no one I talk to has any idea what’s going on or what they’re supposed to be doing rn

🙃

You can … you can stop saying this. pic.twitter.com/fDWkh5ejdm

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 11, 2020

profiles in courarrggghhbarrrrrfffff

This is massive. The @NEUnion has told its members that it’s not safe to return to school on June 1st.

The govt says prepare to go back. The union says don’t.

Who will education workers trust? pic.twitter.com/DzdtfA4a8L

— James McAsh (@mcash) May 11, 2020

it begins. fuck this government and its contempt for people.

Starmzy's hair increasingly becoming Sounds of the 80s touring musician

My autistic son watches some odd stuff on YouTube: domino rallys, bird table footage, aquarium cleaning tips on the dustin's fishtanks channel, japanese candy, screwed & chopped horror versions of cbeebies programs... but today he is mostly watching a boris johnson press conference from last week!

― calzino, Monday, 11 May 2020 14:29 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

omg POLL! i have watched like...most of these too

"The Blob" was trending a couple of days ago, expect a lot more of that bullshit in the coming weeks.

"i hope we will achieve a virus"

...

"er, er, er, i mean a vaccine"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/11/britain-economy-coronavirus-deaths?CMP

This is a savaging but one that bursts the balloon on the idea that the economy can just be restarted.

The Telegraph says it's a clever message shift.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/11/stay-alert-not-communications-blunder-clever-message-shift/

"In many ways, it’s rather clever. It echoes the “Stay alert, stay alive!” slogan hammered into US service personnel during the Vietnam War"

and how did that go?

That's a great piece Matt.

"It was a mistake that probably cost most of the 50,000 or so excess deaths we have seen so far as a result of the pandemic."

Just astounding as to why the opposition aren't hammering the fuck out of the government on this.

Hardly appropriate for someone that would like to be continued being called forensic for a while and not have the tabloids put his head on a hot air balloon above the headline of "Sir Gasbag, Britain's Windiest Balloon"

12m people privately rent, paying £63.6bn per year.

Buying up all 5.5m properties and transferring to social landlords would cost £7bn per year. £1,270 per home per year.

This would save £50bn a year in rents, and £9bn in housing benefit.

Astonishing.https://t.co/9qzJJE3vwa

— Paul Sweeney (@PaulJSweeney) May 11, 2020

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/11/bereaved-families-seek-justice-for-uk-victims-of-coronavirus?CMP

This is going to snowball I think.

that will be a group of people who it will be very difficult for the Tory media to paint as wrong 'uns, but who knows what's possible nowadays?

Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, justified the policy on 13 March by saying that if 60% of the population contracted the virus, most would only contract a mild illness and “herd immunity” would be achieved, which Vallance said was among “the key things we need to do.”

just for context, here's a graph showing the timescale for reaching just 55% 'immunity' under a series of periodic tightenings and easings of social restrictions:

https://i.imgur.com/j9YNVvl.png

(from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/health/coronavirus-pandemic-curve-scenarios.html)

The failure to consider the obvious alternative of a TTI regime and instead to go for managed herd immunity was not just a failure of the scientific advice: I still find it incredulous that a prime minister can be told of a strategy that will see tens of thousands die and not demand that alternatives are investigated.

One reason for this being that the endless parade of gammon the UK seems to consist of would never accept a strategy originating in one o' them foreign countries - esp. once the right-wing press started hammering it home.

Matt Hancock appears to have a Damien Hirst spin painting of the Queen behind him on the news right now.

This whole thing has been like the world's longest episode of Through The Keyhole

Part of the government art collection. He does not own it.

Someone has to disperse that crap britart about to keep up appearances , I mean who would actually buy any Damien Hirst these days? Well apart from Dave Stewart.

Jesus, a member of station staff at Victoria has died after being spat at by someone who said they had COVID. No PPE, no consideration given to removing people with underlying health conditions from frontline service, no government compensation for the family.

christ almighty

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2020-05-12/station-ticket-office-worker-dies-with-covid-19-after-being-spat-at/

I feel the scumbag who spat at her should be charged with murder, but would imagine it will prove impossible to prove he transmitted it to her. But at least attempted murder.

FWIW I listened to Starmer on the radio and thought his message was quite 'good politics'.

In other words I didn't personally agree with all of it or think it went far enough, but I thought it was probably quite good at 'positioning Labour for future success'.

I have a sense, possibly projected or exaggerated, that lots of people (including eg: 'centrist people') are now very keen to appreciate everything that KS does and create a 'narrative' in which he's like Blair was in say 1996 - the competent and principled leader we need and are waiting to get the chance to vote for. Beside which the Con government can, once you agree to follow this narrative, look like an incompetent and unworthy shower - which they are.

I suppose my sense is that all this is relatively politically good, because it increases the small chance of the disgusting and awful Con government getting into trouble and possibly losing some or all of its power in 5 years or less. Even though KS doesn't much convince me, I think that goal is very desirable.