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

lol we’re all gonna die

Still wonder what would have happened if they'd been intelligent or flexible or strategic enough to vote through Kenneth Clarke's customs union motion last year.

Do they actually think the country will be back to normality by next February? It's almost as if they're clueless fools, yoked to their pet project as it rolls over the Cliffs of Dover and twirls downward in stately billows of idiocy to the cruel waters of the English Channel.

it's almost as if any consequences for them and their backers will be positive

It's a good job nothing's going to happen in the next few months that might take the EU's attention off negotiations.

Boris on TV at the moment looking like an extra from a George Romero movie.

back to himself then

LOL director obv. got bored with his crap and cut to the adverts in the middle of one of his perorations.

This Brexit-or-death thing today is probably the answer to PF's question. They're laying turf for a constitutional crisis here – the deal as planned is going to do hard-to-guess but likely extreme things to N. Ireland politics, and the Scottish elections are coming up next year post-actual-Brexit too. It's going to make the poll tax look like accounting regulation changes.

Brexit AND death svp

NEW: Emily Sheffield has taken over as editor of the Evening Standard. George Osborne will move to the role of editor-in-chief after three years as editor.

— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) June 12, 2020

Emily Sheffield 'Samantha Cameron's sister' Emily Sheffield?

That's her. Oh also: Sage announcing R is up to 0.8-1 in England, up to 1.1 in SW.

Osborne has also been appointed official ES Milk Monitor.

I must say he learned on the job fast, imagine getting a promotion like that after only three years! Ooh he's so clever, that George fella.

that rise in the southwest must be because of BLM oh wait

Emily Sheffield started her career at the Standard and is at least qualified for the job.

1.1 in the SW isn't great but it's had the lowest infection rate of any region I believe so it isn't a disaster as long as they can get it down again quickly.

so we’re lifting restrictions as the R0 is rising.

brilliant!

churchill in a coffin, i know, i know, it's really serious

https://i.imgur.com/i6Zqb36.jpg

There was some Tory MP ranting that at the moment they're relaxing everything too slowly to really help the economy and too quickly to keep the epidemic under control. Brilliant stuff.

Tory MP otm

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/C771/production/_112875015_optimised-covid-uk.gdp_monthly-nc.png

The difference between 2008 and 2020 is making my head spin, given how enormous, wide-ranging and lasting the consequences of the financial crisis turned out to be.

i keep saying this but 2020 is going to look like a lost paradise compared to what i suspect is on the menu.

at least some of those ww2 cosplaying wankers that were born after the mid 50's can finally get to experience rationing or at least some of that legendary postwar style austerity for real! Personally, I'm not looking forward to the prospect of food and booze becoming too expensive through hyperinflation and shortages, it's going to suck shit.

Good stuff:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/12/oxford-black-professors-cecil-rhodes-british-empire

Disappointingly, the otherwise astute and justly celebrated Cambridge professor, Mary Beard, argued that RMF is “a dangerous attempt to erase the past” and suggested that minority students should be empowered to look at the statue “with a cheery and self-confident sense of un-batterability”.

oh deary me, another white reactionary arsehole at the BBC with a terribly upper middle class blinkered position on institutional racism.

try "a cheery and self-confident sense of un-batterability” when you are getting battered by coppers

I know Mary does some good history tv, but seriously "a cheery and self-confident sense of un-batterability” is just ... just gtfo!

Priyamvada Gopal says MB has offered her zero solidarity whatsoever.

Priyamvada Gopal says MB has offered her zero solidarity whatsoever.

Priyamvada Gopal was invited to a 5 live tonight and didn't even get a second of airtime and isn't amused.

So @BBC Radio 5 live book me to come on their programme, keep me waiting, just didn't call. Just sat here.

This is how you are treated if you are a woman of colour, however old, however senior, by the BBC.

— Priyamvada Gopal (@PriyamvadaGopal) June 12, 2020

Hopefully any number of Oxford dons will be able to look on with the same cheery and self-confident sense of un-batterability at their racist fucking carvings rolling gracefully into the Thames.

well I'm shocked that the person who used "heart of darkness" logic to defend oxfam rapists in haiti, responded to criticism by posting a literal white tears selfie on twitter, incited her white liberal fans to harass any minority critics who called her out, while her guardian pals patted her on the back- thinks minorities just need to toughen up and smile more over monuments to white supremacy

"the person who used "heart of darkness" logic to defend oxfam rapists in haiti"

she'll love Brendan Cox then!

*Braziiil, Braziiiiiiiiil*

done by a sweet Ronadinho free kick

I thought Bolsonaro had stopped putting out the death toll on what he calls "the sniffles"

UK can still hold its head up high, only Brazil (pop. 209 million) and the USA (pop. 328 million) ahead of us.

plucky little perfidious Albion, like some thugball era Wimbledon FC of non-league countries, kicking their way to the quarter finals of the Rona-Death Cup. Inspirational.

"We shouldn’t have to rely on leaks. Enough of misleading statements and lack of transparency."

for a second then I thought Jonathon Ashworth might be good, but he isn't talking about the PLP's leaked internal report here. Fucking hideous slimeball of a man with his stupid Enoch Powell hairstyle and 2nd most punch-able face in politics next to Gove, slow disembowellment would be too good for this wanker.

1982:

A. Sivanandan, 1982:

"I don't care about whether the police officer or the immigration officer is racist.

I want the policeman punished for his racism. I want the immigration officer's laws changed.

But don't ask me to give you Racism Awareness Training." pic.twitter.com/Nl5umIY0Tz

— Institute of Race Relations (@IRR_News) June 11, 2020

That's the spirit

Here is another graph comparing various recessions

Can't believe the little 1973 one happened and everyone was like, "oh no, better do neoliberalism forever". Losers. pic.twitter.com/X0G9FA4RR2

— J.A. Smith (@NuPopulism) June 12, 2020

i keep saying this but 2020 is going to look like a lost paradise compared to what i suspect is on the menu.

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 12 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Burning a police station might be the only thing that could save us all.

Anyone else making plans for the best time to start stockpiling food for the crash-out? I imagine there might be a pre-rush rush, so maybe I'll pre-empt that and start hoarding tinned spaghetti etc in September.

another garbage BBC "historian" Neil Oliver is "concerned" that "anarchists and communists" are trying to "eat into the fabric of British society". How are you supposed to trust these clueless cunts on the past when their tenuous grip on the present is such total trash.

sure enough

@Nigel_Farage
Jun 12
I’m live on
@talkRADIO
at 10am.

As I keep saying I'm not really sure you can even call 2020 a recession - a recession is something you don't want and try to avoid, this is using the deliberate suppression of economic activity as a weapon.

Not enough attention has been paid to what the government intends to do to support and boost any recovery or reconstruction because its very likely to be inadequate.