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

LADS

a cousin of mine from Dublin who is a bit of headcase once told me he to do a runner from one of the channel islands, i can't remember if it was Guernsey or Jersey. He was working in a butchers and during a bit of friendly horseplay with a co-worker he accidentally cut his face with a cleaver! This co-worker was from some top family on the island and he said he had to run for his life, or they literally would have buried him alive or something!

burned alive in a wicker horse iirc

ofc henry cavill, one of the most uncanny stepford/lynchian humans in existence is a channel islander

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naa0znjb7nQ

Barclay Brothers the poster boys for evil residents here

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2020/06/keir-starmer-colston-bristol-slave-statue-protestors-labour-response

"The unfortunate reality for these people is that Starmer has very little incentive to keep them happy on every issue: even if he isn’t as strong on certain issues as they would like, they have nowhere to go."

I love the worrying about the black vote that followed just as Starmer triangulated on the slave trader statue

love that it's Keir disappointing "the Left" and not "black people and anybody else who doesn't enjoy white supremacy"

"they have nowhere else to go" is not exactly a strategy with an impressive recent history

They have nowhere else to go - that old mandellson chestnut! In a first past the post system taking bame votes for granted is a dodgy game, because they might just reply fuck you then!

Especially as direct action can get results, why beg Sir Haircut for crumbs?

I have a feeling that how they respond to anti-black racism within the party is going to be more of an issue than a fence-sitting response to the statue being pulled down.

This is fucking outrageous. The British government co-opted the image of Angela Davis for propaganda targeted at black and Muslim women, reveals investigative reporter @IanCobain.https://t.co/yhBJkfKkML

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) June 9, 2020

Periodical question of whether Tribune is worth reading - the issues have been piling up, have they sorted out the layout yet?

I have a feeling that how they respond to anti-black racism within the party is going to be more of an issue than a fence-sitting response to the statue being pulled down.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 9 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

It's more about law & order and migration type policies and if they are always going to go on about more cops, etc. a lot of BAME voters may not bother. The statue throwers aren't going to be fence-sitting.

can't believe parents don't have more faith in the exemplary leadership of our great nation

Only one in four children returned to schools in England last week, wrecking Boris Johnson’s ambitions for a phased reopening of schools to allow parents back to work to boost the economy.

According to official statistics published by the government, just over half of primary schools in England reopened to more pupils last week.

Only a quarter of pupils who were eligible to return from 1 June, the first week that schools in England began admitting more children in reception, year 1 and year 6, actually turned up.

Figures published by the Department for Education show that just 52% of schools opened to these three year groups, reflecting continuing safety concerns among headteachers, parents and local authorities.

Ministers say numbers have gone up this week, but the government has been forced as a result to back down on its ambition to get all primary school children back in class for a month before the summer holidays.

xps, as ever, the only two news outlets particularly interested in the machinations of the British security services are Middle East Eye and South Africa's Daily Maverick.

There's been a lot of discussion about how the police and intelligence agencies have infiltrated / astroturfed protest groups in the US. It seems unimaginable they're not still doing it here too.

Re: Tribune - they have belatedly sorted out the more blatantly annoying layout issues, but 80-90% of the content is so determinedly earnest and stodgy, presumably requested by union funders, that I cannot in all honesty say it is worth reading :( Think they would have been better off just doing a UK focused version of Jacobin.

important counterpoint: they ran a very nice piece on my book

I haven't yet seen a hard copy of Tribune, but my impression of Tribune from their online presence has been good.

Yeah Esther Leslie on Poly Styrene is just the stodgy content I pay my union subs for.

if you're not Black, just try to imagine for one second what it must be like to be Black and live in a place like this. https://t.co/DxwPsTVEi3

— michael (@Sisyphusa) June 9, 2020

https://youtu.be/I3s13jbmrn0

Surely they're just anti-racism critics.

PG and Yorkshire Tea tell anti-racism critics 'don't buy our tea'https://t.co/hlf6NbOnp9

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 9, 2020

Although the tea brands built and maintained on indentured labour and sub-povery wages can also do one if they think tweeting 'um, actually Sandra, slavery is bad' in any way absolves them of their ongoing crimes.

It's a fucking WW1/WW2 memorial, do these people think the no doubt gigantic BLM protests of Hoddesdon are just indiscriminately targeting monuments or something?

(I'm aware that protecting the monument isn't really the point here)

can confirm that the football-adjacent racist gammon faction thought that war memorials were being targeted over the weekend

They'll be pissing on the bleedin Dambusters next if we don't stop 'em

Some fine zingers in that tweet's replies at least.

BREAKING: Statue of slave trader Robert Milligan in east London will be torn down 'as soon as possible' https://t.co/3RNpBXnkkN

— Nadine White (@Nadine_Writes) June 9, 2020

Ok so for those who say racism doesn’t exist... this was at a recent BLM protest in Hoddesdon,a town in the Broxbourne borough of the English county of Hertfordshire, watch the thread pic.twitter.com/a4shMfiQ7i

— Medina (@Miss_Meddy143) June 8, 2020

thankful tbh that the pubs are closed and i don't have to listen to the 'experts' at the bar.

antichrist advocates for widespread adoption of the mark of the beast

When Tony Blair was prime minister his government legislated to introduce an identity card scheme. The plan was hugely controversial, by the time the law got introduced it was to a large extent voluntary, and it was enthusiastically repealed by the coalition. But Blair has not lost interest in the concept and, at an event today, he said that coronavirus made the case for digital ID more compelling than ever.

As PA Media reports, Blair said that only if people can show easily whether they are clear of coronavirus will industries like international travel be able to restart. Speaking at the virtual CogX technology conference, Blair said that such a system would operate alongside track and trace programmes as the economy reopens.

I quite like Esther Leslie, and I wouldn't mind hearing her more on music, but ... I don't think I'll pay £7.50 for that article.

Fair play, it's free.
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/05/lets-submerge

Performative kneeling while burying the Labour report with its racism, is it

Hoddeston is one of those towns up the A10, just outside the M25, built on white flight from north and east London.

let's hope they fly further

Real Ben Bradley country

Performative kneeling while burying the Labour report with its racism, is it

Confused because Hoddesdon is not in the Midlands or the North, where all the racists, who are all working class, live.

Yeah usually Essex has a great reputation.

Rip Little Britain. Heaven need a tsunami of ‘computer says no’ jokes

I heard Starmer couldn't find a knee pad in his office for that kneeling photo and said oh I know what, I'll just grab a clutch of pages from the anti-black racism section from that superfluous leaked Labour report I'm never going to read.

There are gammony types on Twitter demanding the removal of statues of the Prophet Muhammad. pic.twitter.com/Nd410ZDUVv

— Jon (@ormondroyd) June 9, 2020

What's the culture war equivalent of death by friendly fire?

A tragicomedy.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/09/derbyshire-towns-bust-of-black-man-seized-by-defiant-locals

it's a fertility thing, also it's not black it's turkish

they decide its fate, not the Netherlands

it could be any colour

that said, we’re going to give it a lick of black paint

That head reminds me of one of those fortune-telling simulacra things you still get at some decaying seaside towns