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

the UK govt just got calmly savaged on the test figures part of their daily "number circus" show on the R4 stats program More Or Less, going to have another listen to that later it sounded good and they concluded that "they like big numbers" more than they like testing.

Gloves and masks mandatory for passengers, plus a decent disinfect at each terminus before returning to routes. I would like TfL to return to charging for buses because (while using them myself because of the part-time food job I have to help prevent late invoice anxiety, so am accidentally an essential worker) recently I’ve witnessed groups of youths/young men gleefully hop on the ‘free bus’ with no protection. Which means the people who need the bus can’t put distance between one another as they would like. Also TfL is on course to lose a lot of money.

Real feeling of anger right now, even a week ago there was a sense that, disastrous as the delayed move into lockdown was, we were at least starting to turn the corner, deaths were going down, you could believe that the rate of infection was going down, that if the country just held its nerve it could get this under control.

That feels entirely squandered now. Looking at that 2% fall in GDP, which reflects ONE WEEK of lockdown - you could feel that it was justified, that economic activity had to be suppressed in order to get the virus under control. Q2 is going to look much much worse and to what end? In terms of the virus we could very easily lapse into a significantly worse position than we were in April and with a gigantic economic crisis on top of it, with the country throwing away the gains that would have justified that crisis, no matter how severe it turns out to be.

Expect to start hearing the line - a lot - that the economic crisis will kill way more people than the virus so we should get the economy going again. Yeah well what about both at once, which is what we're on course for?

Killing ppl, for the housing market:

Today I am announcing our comprehensive plan to restart, reopen and renew the #housingmarket - safely.

You are now free again to move home whenever you wish. This unblocks 450,000 transactions that were paused due to #COVID19 1/4 pic.twitter.com/yOk0SDFgJL

— Robert Jenrick (@RobertJenrick) May 13, 2020

https://www.toptenz.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Child-Sacrifice-in-Carthage.jpg

🙃

BREAKING: The results for all national Covid testing has gone missing https://t.co/u104FWo0wp

— Alastair McLellan (@HSJEditor) May 13, 2020

whoops

We got tests two Thursdays ago, they got picked up by courier (no mask) on the Saturday, and we didn’t hear anything back until Sunday just gone. Result was: VOID. I assumed it was because they had waited too long to test the samples, but maybe they just lost them!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j2r7

check out the vexed topic of testing on this program from 08:35

Maybe they've lost it all down the back of the sofa, maybe they're bungling the tests and maybe they have no infrastructure to process that data but given what we know about this lot it is likely they're just refusing to share the data with the organisations that need it. That suggests it's much worse than they want anyone to think.

The Chancellor's crisis measures have been vital to support jobs and incomes. They also protect the income of landlords & lenders, & could deepen inequality between working poor & asset-owning wealthy

New paper from @oeufling @L__Macfarlane @shreyagnanda: https://t.co/KQ1rYhk3j6

— Carys Roberts (@carysroberts) May 13, 2020

apparently some of the figures suggest they are testing the same people twice and counting them as two tests. nobody was available to comment on this curious aberration!

One thing that struck me was that the tests were packaged and delivered by Amazon. I don’t know if everyone was aware they got the contract for that work? Felt weird getting these official government virus tests with big logos plastered all over box.

There probably aren't that many organisations out there with the delivery infrastructure to get all the required tests out there quickly and at scale, but I don't have any confidence in their ability to handle the return leg up to any kind of clinical standard.

Friend of mine had his test switched with his partner's, which seems fairly basic

Dying at the virtual/physical classification here

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmagenda/calllist200513v01.html#_idTextAnchor002

Friend of mine had his test switched with his partner's, which seems fairly basic

I didn't think Kmax Headstarm could even exist outside of virtual.

Unacceptable abuse of a van's...instant urine dispenser unit

'Photographers are being subject to threats and abuse from the public while covering the Covid-19 crisis, members have reported to the NUJ’s Photographers’ Council. One photographer had urine thrown at her by men in a van...' https://t.co/vnf5Gy155w

— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) May 13, 2020

throwing piss at photographer narcs is a bit out of order, they should throw rotten eggs at them instead.

He's fucking murdering him at PMQs here

oh god I 'm already dreading the melt jizz-fest

Symptomatic of the current Labour leadership that I'm unsure of who will be murdering who

quite

Another journo:

I went into central London for the first time yesterday and was shocked. Not a single Pret, Costa or Starbucks was open. You cannot get a coffee anywhere. It is like World War III has taken place. This is not the London I know. St Pancras station was totally empty.

— Naomi Canton (@naomi2009) May 12, 2020

Simon Baynes, a Conservative, asks about the Llangollen steam railway.

Johnson says he has a picture at home of himself on it with William Hague. He wishes it the best.

Absolute fuckery.

Has Naomi just come out of a coma?

So it looks like Johnson either just outright lied to Starmer about govt advice over care homes or didn't know the answer, bullshitted and got it wrong.

It feels like one of those things that will ultimately have no affect on his support at all, but it will be nice watching him sweat about it (Labour has now demanded he answer for it in Commons)

There’ll be a lot of not feeling the mood of the country, playing politics bollocks levelled at anyone questioning the government’s approach. It’ll be ramped up even more if Starmer is effective.

If he's effective, it'll become more obvious than ever that the mood of the country is "let's not die, eh?" and it's the government that's not feeling it

I think there will be a steady erosion of trust in the govt's handling of things (there is already!) but this is likely to just be another stage in that rather than a turning point. This has its dangers as well as people are more likely to go "fuck it, they don't know they're what they're talking about, I'm going out".

There's surely only so far you can spin a performance like Johnson's, but i guess we'll find out. I can't imagine he'll continue to get minced for an hour a week for the foreseeable future without trying to find a way out of it.

need to hear what the big brain of Charles Moore is thinking about this!

it's hard to tell how effective discrediting the tories is, given how capable the tories have been at harnessing public cynicism. the SNP have made use of a lot of purely negative anti-politics sentiment by focusing it on constitutional issues, but there's no sign of much appetite for that from starmer and if he's just trying to earn trust, which seems quaint in 2020, then performances at PMQs, which are basically a wholly negative exercise (at least how he's doing them atm), or even the actions within parliament are not that relevant

I guess the Tories have suddenly been forced into the position of depending on credibility - politicians can’t use distrust in politicians to (successfully) fight a pandemic.

Also, even if it doesn’t win the election getting to watch a drubbing is good for the soul.

how has starmzy got a hairchop

So @BootsUK want volunteers to risk catching #COVIDー19 whilst testing people and not pay them a penny. They want volunteers to work at least 32 hours a week. People should be paid to do this and Boots can afford to pay people. Awful. https://t.co/MQP8x7FaF5

— Charlotte Hughes. The Poor Side Of life (@charlotteh71) May 13, 2020

Boots trying to tap into that Big Society energy slave labour for dangerous work requiring a 32 hour week. cunts.

The Tories' big asset is their ruthlessness and consequent ability to renew themselves - don't like these Tories? Fine, we'll get new ones. This lot have managed to get where they are partly due to distrust but also heavily on hot air and that isn't going to cut it any longer. But if it looks like it's going seriously wrong in the eyes of the electorate once the pandemic is receding then they won't hesitate to try and oust him.

They might be a little thin in terms of bench strength by now though.

how can you say that when Chris Grayling is still in the playing squad?

Chris Grayling has never announced his retirement from international football.

oh they'll go for Sunak like a shot. He is already making the right noises about protecting money above all else, he's across the detail and the melts wet themselves about him

He's also the key person behind the 'remove lockdown, let them all die' wing of the party aiui, which i guess will come out more in the event there was a leadership election.

Johnson is a last roll of the dice for Tories in some respect. That 'star quality' aspect so many seem to think he has is completely absent in anyone else within the party. They will gamble everything to maintain control but...who are the Etonians coming up to replace the class of 10+ years ago if any?

you won't know until it's too late

there's Prue Leith's son Danny Kruger for one

Toby Young in a backwards baseball cap.

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1260567659516747787

"My own advice was misquoted to me so, er, I had to lie"