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

And in the same edition, an astonishing lack of irony from Vikram Dodd over Met “funding fears”. Not a sentence on BLM, or the suddenly thinkable demands to defund police departments.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/01/police-warn-of-cuts-to-funding-even-worse-than-in-austerity-years

tbf this is a country where cunts get the vapours if you suggest cutting down expenditure on weapons of mass war criminality

Even the political journos are starting to call out Labour's Janus-faced position of supporting the easing of lockdown while raising worries about it pic.twitter.com/NrEoeYTnfK

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) July 2, 2020

FT hack otm

A thread about some of the worst takes on Covid, from UK pundits.

Herd immunity is the strategy: https://t.co/9FsDU3QuWZ

— Richard James (@RJSHutton) July 1, 2020

Good overview of our great journalists holding the government to account

I'm still trying to acquire wanker immunity, but it just ain't happening!

so the 'New Deal' in Cornwall is basically enough money to upgrade a single roundabout (£14m). the largest allocation is to the South East, which gets enough for some fairly minor A-road improvements or ~four miles of railway (£85m). and it's not new money https://t.co/AZgHoisB4e

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) July 2, 2020

rooseveltian

Got to say I share the astonishment that it costs £14m to upgrade a roundabout.

chucking a bit of chump change about after a decade of austerity sure does remind me of FDR's radical spending plan.

That really depends on the roundabout and the upgrade, Matt.

Tell me more...

what is all this talk about "there won't be more austerity" when did it fucking finish?

Haha maybe in (or near) a pub sometime.

I'll do the roundabout for 7 mil, where do I write for my cheque?

ffs I can do it cheaper and my Irish DNA gives me a natural disposition for bodging the fuck out of groundwork and running with the dosh!

Yeah my plan is to hire a couple of lads for a grand apiece and keep the rest of it

They're renovating the swimming baths round the corner from me and there's a sign up saying it's a million pound project and I just can't imagine. The scaffolders that were up there the other day must be minted.

when did it fucking finish?

around the time the hostile environment ended I think

*burns Daphne & Celeste playlist*

@MaxTundra
37m
Wild that Corbyn fans are out there criticising Starmer for adopting a different strategy to the guy who gifted Johnson an 80-seat lead. What happened to “get the Tories out”?

love Max but he's always been a bit melty and wish he wouldn't talk about it, same goes for a lot of other artists on twitter

That Max and Mutya collab can't be far now.

Luckily I've never knowingly listened to the cunt's melt-tastic music

Corbyn fans out there saying maybe it would be an idea to stop gaslighting Black and Muslim people who want overeager policing and structural discrimination towards them acknowledged by the leadership?

I've heard MT is the musical equivalent of a Dunty barbershop quartet covering Belle & Sebastien. Never heard either tbh!

I'd never tell anyone not to vote for Labour, and some smug prick telling you it's practically your duty to vote for them really gets my blood up.

scientists have been warning us for years about tundra melt

lol!

I am low-key Twitter pals with the great man but I certainly don't engage him on politics, lol (and not because I completely agree!)

So basically an semi-informed semi-celebrity called Max is going to indulge in a bit of vote-shaming every Thursday from now on?

Meanwhile, schools basically back to normal in September with all the difficult stuff left to headteachers to decide.

imo we should all hold hands and forgive the melt friends we all have, they know not what they do

alternative point of view: execute the fuckers, they will never be of any worth

my son is going back tomorrow. they've closed the dinner hall and food is brought to the classroom, they have a serious social distancing regime as much as is possible for an autism school. They have fucked off local authority transport and doing in-house transport. He is only going one day a week to acclimatise him to the new regime. Barnsley where about three quarters of the staff come from is a Rona hotspot, so I'm slightly nervous about all this still.

i know how important respite can be for everybody involved, best to hold onto that thought and trust the teachers to do their best

not had a day off for 5 months and I'm running out of t shirts and on the verge of becoming a f/t smoker again so a day is needed!

it's nice to know that Tundra sometimes takes a break from venturing on a Fantastic Voyage up his own arsehole to do smalltalk and make great music, what a relief!

obv also Alex is missing the fuck out of school!

meanwhile, what? the? fuck? does? this? mean???

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb6dWfIWoAE23g-?format=jpg&name=900x900

"i encourage the Prime Minister to go for it, but also i am putting you on notice that i will say 'i told you so' when this thing i'm encouraging you to do goes tits up"

must be a lawyer ting

Johnson has worked out how to play that one back at him now, I'm surprised they're still going with it.

good news chaps

https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/07/01/boris-new-deal-creates-a-loophole-for-developers-to-ignore-biodiversity/

'terminus house' the most appropriately-named building in a while

when he isn't being Schrödinger's Melt he's saying he supports what the tory govt are doing but he's morally superior to them, because he feels bad for how many needless deaths their bungling inaction is causing?

what i will say for sir kier is that he is playing a bad hand badly

good luck with the school thing calz

cheers

as a fifty push-up real man he Starmzy doesn't wanna stop the lads going dahn the boozah to catch the ronah

He's following the polling there, definitely. The majority of the country agrees, dunno if that's lockdown fatigue, worry over livelihoods or that people have absorbed the government messaging that really everything is going to be fine now.

Be interesting to see how that breaks down according to region, though.

i opened that biodiversity report btw, with one part particularly in mind

In the recent past the GB has intercepted two species (Asian hornet Vespa velutina
and raccoon Procyon lotor), eradicated three species (African clawed toad Xenopus
laevis, fathead minnow Pimephales promelas and black bullhead Ameiurus melas)
and eradication is underway for a further four (water primrose Ludwigia grandiflora,
topmouth gudgeon Pseudorasorba parva, monk parakeet Myiopsitta monachus,
American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus).
GB’s first contingency plan for an INNS, the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) has been
adopted and measures implemented, leading to the destruction of two confirmed nests
in England since 2016 so far preventing their spread into the UK (Defra 2017).
On a larger-scale, the GB Ruddy Duck Eradication Programme, which began in 2005,
is almost complete. The population has been reduced from 4,400 to around 20-25
birds. Control is ongoing.

tf is wrong with monk parakeets and ruddy ducks u fucking loons

also raccoons! altho i can see why they'd be disruptive. but raccoons!

xp combo of lockdown fatigue and the government somehow conveying the impression that they've got covid done and wow a thousand deaths a week became background noise even quicker than I predicted