ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

Peston does not seem to be pretending to be a serious journalist now.

Actively encouraging members of the public to come up with derogatory nicknames for MPs is something I have never seen from a supposedly mainstream and respectable journalist in the UK.

I expect him to talk garbage, but I'm still a bit surprised by this.

it's an improvement on last week when he was jovially encouraging the banning of teaching/reading materials in schools

just to return to our elected representatives' love of war crimes and spooks for a minute, it's nice to see the bold leftists of the SNP and the Greens taking a stand

Fair play to the two from Plaid Cymru tho.

or to hope to drag the Tories in a similar but more respectable-looking direction.

Do they really need any help with this? I know it can always get worse but the days of Cameron's pretense at being socially liberal are far gone, govt pretty open and gleeful in these matters. And unlike with the EU there isn't really an economic downside...

UK political journalism explained in 3 images: pic.twitter.com/V6lZG8GH5G

— Spooky 'Client Journalism' Expert (@ClientJournoExp) October 6, 2020

The UK has recorded 76 more deaths. This is also a big increase on yesterday’s total (19). It takes the headline UK total to 42,445. But this figure only covers people who died within 28 days of testing positive. If you include all deaths where coronavirus was confirmed or suspected, the true UK death toll is currently 58,101. (See 10.04am.)

Yesterday's total was a Monday so that might have something to do with that jump, it was nowhere near as low as 19 for most of last week.

I expect we'll be at >100 daily deaths this month. Fuck knows what BJ's idea of 'bumpy' is.

― here we go, ten in a rona (onimo), Sunday, 4 October 2020 19:25 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I said this month not this week ffs

I hadn’t seen quite how wide the gap has grown between the cities. London is at 60 cases for every 100k people, Glasgow is at 160 and Manchester is nearer 600 on today’s numbers.

I think Manchester is possibly the result of the insane %age of students in the city, themselves and infecting others. Glasgow very high for students too, same for Sheffield. My hunch is that the levels of infection are actually not that different across most of the urbanised UK, we just don't know it yet.

(but that's they'll be showing in cities with very high uni populations for now)

Kieth's whole PMQs steez is like everybody's least favourite line manager at your quarterly review

ever since I had a complete mental breakdown and joined the Conservative party I think he's a brilliant Labour leader and the greatest orator since Bye Nevin!

My hunch is that the levels of infection are actually not that different across most of the urbanised UK, we just don't know it yet.

I doubt this a little bit, in that some places (eg London) had the virus spreading unseen in high concentration throughout a lot of February and then absolutely raging throughout March, so levels of immunity might be higher, slowing the spread now. But more importantly it was also a lot further along the curve by the time lockdown was eased than several northern and Midlands cities where restrictions were just relaxed too quickly - lockdown ended at more or less the right time for London but not for, say, Blackburn, there was just a lot more virus around in the latter group and it's come back faster as a result.

The university thing is a slightly different issue but it's obviously exacerbating the situation hugely in areas that were experiencing big outbreaks even before the students went back (like Manchester). But it's going to get worse virtually everywhere.

BREAKING: The U.K. government will pull out of Brexit trade negotiations with the European Union next week if there is no clear deal in sight https://t.co/TYgfLOyz0l

— Bloomberg Brexit (@Brexit) October 7, 2020

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.full-stop.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2Flolnothingmatters.gif&f=1&nofb=1

b-b-b-b-b-but

it's the freedom that gets you

'i'll give you 20 for that watch'

'no'

'15?'

it's almost like this was always the plan

a crematorium-ready deal, if you will

Pubs closing in the central belt. Wee Nicola's popularity might just take a hit.

Sturgeon has chosen to deliver “short, sharp action”

I see she's dropped the shoving a nail into an old cartridge fuse talk and toned the Borstal talk as well!

Posting in here as I’ve seen Tom D in another thread, hi Tom 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

whole balance of ilx goes to shit when the grumpy Scot quotient goes down!

Isn't Tony Abbot in charge of negotiating on behalf of the UK now? Giving up that quickly, eh?

glad my uncle just got back from Portugal and has to be in lockdown anyway, the pub closures would have hit him hard

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/10/rishi-sunaks-freudian-slip-on-the-arts

Lot of people having fun with this:

https://beta.nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/

Various suggestions that people might want to become boxers, artists, horse groomers, etc.

crashing a lot tho, presumably because lots of people are having fun with it

ffs i'm allergic to horses

the currently unemployed mrs g was curious as to what careers she could retrain in, the site suggested judge, bomb disposal expert and marine commando

Judge g

it's got a nice ring to it, she'd better get cracking on developing the decades of legal experience she'll need

i got computers, hooray, i like computers

Going through government retraining quiz results pic.twitter.com/tZbA4asXrO

— Tom Campbell (@TomCampbell) October 7, 2020

i wonder if Kieth's done this and discovered he should run a cafe?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ejzpiu9XkAAmYEZ?format=jpg&name=large feel like this as much as Johnson pinning Eat Out To Help Out on him will be damaging to his PM prospects

No job roles were found that might be suited to you

He genuinely looks like they shrunk him on photoshop

i for one think it's great that this unusually dapper make-a-wish kid got to see some tanks

https://i.redd.it/pgqfqb4ttuc31.jpg

"step aside lads and we'll get a shot of you you standing next to the tank, Rishi"

how this mf’er manage to be both tiny AND gangly

it seems quite appropriate that when he was a hedge-fund manager he worked for one that was funded by billionaire's young kids' pocket money!

just because this rich mf'er has some freakish ability to photosynthesise (well he looks like he's never eaten a proper meal), he thinks vast swathes of the UK can get by without food as well.

He reminds me of the kid in the Umbrella Academy (so much so I imagine thats a very unoriginal thought)

Coronavirus triggers borrowing spree by private equity managers https://t.co/E4GgiiMRcp

— Financial Times (@FT) October 3, 2020

"bespoke loans"

"we only pretend to break your legs when you default"

PM's new spokesperson everybody

Here’s Allegra Stratton completely misrepresenting a young woman who was in work as unemployed, while she was a reporter for Newsnight. Good practice for lying on behalf of the Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/ZsifUM56IQ

— Mic Wright 🏳️‍🌈🌋🏴‍☠️ (@brokenbottleboy) October 8, 2020

According to leaked slides, MPs were also shown early research by Public Health England showing that 41% of under-30s with Covid contracted it in a pub, bar, restaurant or cafe. A quarter of infections across all ages originated from those settings, the MPs were told.

Eat Out To Help out went well then. I agree with Gyac they're going to try and blame this on Sunak and just hope people don't remember those photos of Johnson and Gove standing around gormlessly with their Wetherspoons pints.

where's that quote from?