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

Or he could have just been as appalled as the rest of us?

Or probably didn’t want the worst people on twitter repeatedly retweeting and commenting on that old tweet.

What a country

NEW: Department for Transport confirm Transport Secretary @grantshapps is on holiday in Spain.

He will therefore be among thousands of travellers forced to quarantine for a fortnight when he returns to the UK.#COVID19

— Joe Pike (@joepike) July 25, 2020

Keystone Fuckin' Cops

This quarantine thing is an absolute shitshow. There are stories of people turning up in Spain for a two week holiday and then having to pretty much head straight back because they can't afford not to physically go to work for a further two weeks.

Isn't gyac's tweet above not - by accident - an example of how it should be? No exceptions for the ruling class etc?

There are basically no circumstances that would get me on a plane right now but how many thousands of Brits are there out there right now?

It's probably the right thing to do medically if they're on the way back from Catalonia but if they're going to be constantly lifting and then imposing quarantine restrictions at a moment's notice then it's going to be a disaster, not least because people will choose to just ignore quarantine rules altogether.

LBI, agreed. Also a good thing to throw in their face when said minister inevitably turns up at some barbecue.

I don't think there's any evidence that the quarantines (or rather social isolation - you can still go out once a day for sport and etc. under official guidelines) are being enforced in any way, afaict if you don't want to comply all you have to do is...just come and not comply, the thousand pound fine seems strictly theoretical.

Showing up at work might be a bit too brazen tho, tbf.

It doesn't actually matter that much to you if you're a member of the ruling class because, in common with most white collar workers, it's pretty easy to work from home for a fortnight. Even if laughing at Grant Shapps is to be encouraged at all times.

Completely different if you're, say, a Spanish national working in a service industry in London who has just flown to see your family for the first time in months.

I suppose it isn't really much different to having to self isolate because you've been in contact with someone who's been diagnosed, except for the extra cost involved.

I just heard someone on the radio saying they'd feel safer in Barcelona than London because more people wear masks and still adhere to social distancing. I saw a huge party in a field last night with a marquee + at least a hundred people, lots of booze, a sound system blasting out "we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time"! lol we're all going to die

"the tories are struggling to find a way to make keir starmer look bad" -- andrew rawnsley

yes he's very forensically undertaking this job all by himself

this remains an anti-rawnsley ilxor account

uh

There are a number of people who are exempt, regardless of their country of origin, including:

Road haulage and freight workers
Medical and care professionals providing essential healthcare
Seasonal agricultural workers if they self-isolate where they are working
UK residents who ordinarily travel overseas at least once a week for work

Shapps just has to decide his job involves checking out the transport infrastructure of the Channel Islands once a week and he's good.

Rawnsley also complaining about antisemitism in one paragraph, closely followed by one where he uses North London as a signifier. Git.

look again Rawnsley you tool! the tories called him "the Roy Cropper of politics" last week and Starmer makes himself look bad every time he fucking breathes!

"cant find a way to make me look bad if i find all the ways first myself" taps_head_wisely.jpg

I just heard someone on the radio saying they'd feel safer in Barcelona than London because more people wear masks and still adhere to social distancing. I saw a huge party in a field last night with a marquee + at least a hundred people, lots of booze, a sound system blasting out "we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time"! lol we're all going to die

In Portugal atm to see my mum and yeah, masks and social distancing as far as the eye can see. If you go to a mall you actually have to disinfect yr hands before entering every shop. Mind you the flight experience might be terrifying enough to outweigh the confidence of being here.

Wouldn't medical professionals coming back with the rona be amongst the riskiest possible situations??

Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said "you couldn't make it up" that Mr Shapps was on holiday in the country while being in charge of the department announcing the rule change.

He told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme the government's re-imposition of the quarantine rules was "shambolic", adding: "I think that tells you everything about the government's approach to this."

Are they saying the quarantine shouldn’t have ended or that it should not have been reintroduced?

Ashworth is worse than Shapps by a country mile, such a vile man.

maybe Rawnsley hopes if he rim jobs Starmzy regularly enough he'll find a portal up his butt hole that will lead to a place where what he writes has any relevance at all

I don't think ever read anything otm by Rawnsley. what the fuck is his brand? I don't know wtf I'm talking about but pay me to do it.

His brand is having centrists and Blairites on speed dial.

Are we seeing the report (Mail so at your own risk) where some of the complainants have said if Starmer kicks JC out of Labour, they’ll drop their legal actions?

Lawfarehttps://t.co/2oWO6yFaCp

— James Schneider (@schneiderhome) July 26, 2020

saw that on Twitter, then got depressed reading Twitter, then drew up some ground plans for gulags

Columnists like Rawnsley are almost entirely dependent on whether or not senior politicians will talk to them. No one cares (nor should they) about his personal opinion on anything so they stand or fall on the quality of their access and its pretty obvious his access is not what it used to be. I doubt there's anyone of any seniority in the Cabinet who will talk to him, for example, and for a long while that was true of most of the Shadow Cabinet as well.

Pretty sure Ashworth isn't saying anything either way about quarantine. It's a calculation that there will be sufficient numbers of pissed off travellers to make it worth jumping on the bandwagon without having anything of substance to say. It was pretty obvious that something like this was going to happen sooner or later (probably sooner) and the government did not exactly go out of its way to communicate the risks to people.

Also Nashwan's post shows there are enough holes in the rules to make it largely worthless and unenforceable as a public health measure.

It's probably true that the Tories themselves are struggling to find an effective line of attack on Starmer but also that might turn out not to matter.

Ashworth encapsulates everything I despise about slimy career politicians. A greasy shifty little vacuous shit in a suit who is an opportunistic, duplicitous non-human. It should be cunts like him getting kicked out of the PLP not Corbyn.

Scottish govt removing Spain from the quarantine list then adding them again 4 days later seems (for once) even more shambolic than UK.

Another thing about Ashworth is that Enoch Powell hairstyle. I bet he's an even bigger Morrissey lover than Starmzy. Never trust wankers with 50s hairstyles Lamarr, Starmzy, Comode etc..

He looks like John Parrott.

I'd love to snooker him so badly.. no I meant beat him repeatedly with a snooker cue!

saw that on Twitter, then got depressed reading Twitter, then drew up some ground plans for gulags

― À la recherche du scamps perdu (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 26 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Hope this cheers you up.

As my friend, Jeremy Corbyn, gets on with job of being an incredibly hard working local MP & throwing himself into huge range of international, humanitarian campaigns I see the campaign of character assassination continues apace.They just don’t get it. You’ll never break this man

— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) July 26, 2020

<3

McD sadly reminds me that I used to be naive enough to believe this country could have a future as anything other than a right wing hellscape and that it was worth supporting the Labour Party and voting for them. And like this was only 8 months ago and now all I see is despair and a party I despise as much as the tories, what a shitty turnaround.

“We had a lovely holiday, really relaxing, and it’s all gone out the window now because we’re just going to be stuck at home.

“I’ve got this beautiful tan – I’m not going to be able to show it off to my family or anything like that.

I'd kind of assumed that Shapps has done something to piss Cummings off?

The timing is weird, though, isn't it? I'm a big believer in holidays/time off and the need for people to look after themselves but it seems odd for Shapps to have taken himself to Spain, unless I'm missing something?

Surely there's other places he could have gone? I know no one's letting us in right now but Tory MPs are generally not short of cash and there's presumably some rona-free island he could have gone to.

little st james also not taking bookings at the moment

their laund(e)ry service is still operating as per

People with houses in Italy are also going, and two friends have gone to France in the past week.

One for Calz:

Camilla Long not happy with Twitter & I take her point on the appeal process funnily enough in her article I found the spiteful way she wrote about anther woman Ghislaine Maxwell equally offensive.

— Barry Sheerman MP (@BarrySheerman) July 26, 2020

Baz Sheerman, feminist

more power to the super rich paedophile sisterhood eh bazza?

the best holidays I go on are the two co-dydramol and a bottle of wine induced deep sleep dreams, where I travel not just this world but also deep intergalactic space and then get rudely woken up by a Yorkshire Water engineer in next door's garden shouting " yeah the shite should be coming through now mick"

lol

Could go for a couple of cocodamol now tbh

Surely there's other places he could have gone? I know no one's letting us in right now but Tory MPs are generally not short of cash and there's presumably some rona-free island he could have gone to.

Shapps certainly isn't short of cash hasn't he got a track record of ducking and diving.

Really get away from it all on North Rona.

it's been a pleasure listening to these brit wankers that own bars in Spain crying like babies on the radio, thumbs up to the tories here!

Westminster abbey begging for state charity while its parasitical royal owners are very quiet. Let the scrappers at it, burn it down imo - which is exactly what the Tories and Labour have effectively been doing to the rest of the UK's national assets for decades now.

can you get maccyDs on the #eatasstohelpout scheme