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

lol beautiful

Lol

Two weeks ago Keir Starmer privately raised concerns about the government’s handling of school reopening and offered to help the PM get it right. “I have tried to be constructive but boy he makes it difficult to support this government” #PMQs

— Lisa Nandy (@lisanandy) June 3, 2020

it's hard out there for a Labour leader to support Boris Johnson

'And then when I went to the parking lot where he said my Gameboy would be, there was nobody there. Except it seemed like I could hear somebody laughing in the bushes. I asked him about it the next day at school he got a kind of funny look in his eye. So I'm sorry I don't have the Gamebody dad, but I still think he's a top bloke'

Given that the government actually wants Starmer's fingerprints on anything that goes wrong I'm surprised they haven't called his bluff and offered him a job.

I sent a letter to the Government the other day
They never opened or read it because I'm a sucker

Heartwarming that Keir still wants to support the government that's responsible for the highest covid deaths per capita. He still believes in you Boris! 🥲🥲🥲 #forensics https://t.co/DshbZMlq5Y

— Simon Hedges (@Orwell_Fan) June 3, 2020

I'm guessing the intention behind it is to lodge "it makes it hard for me, an undecided voter, to support this government" in the minds of the public, but I don't think it quite landed. (Subtext 'we wanted you to succeed because success would mean saving thousands of lives but everyone can see you are failing now'). It's the only reason I can think of for using the word 'support' in that context.

just heard sir wotsisname from 1922 committee with a tacit admission this is the worst shithole in the world for the Rona by saying the govt plan to put incoming visitors to the UK into a 14 day quarantine "makes no sense" because where else in the world has a higher infection rate.

Also, The Disgraced Liam Fox castigating it for "unnecessary economic isolation" despite having spent at least four years telling us that unnecessary economic isolation is a good thing.

Lads.

Update. I'm told there is currently a long suspension of the Commons while there is a 'deep clean' of the despatch box and nearby area after Alok Sharma's appearance. https://t.co/uTf6AMABNq

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) June 3, 2020

fingers crossed for Comrade Rona

it's a good job they don't have mike gapes on the front bench

Rona got some serious deselecting to do, don't be shy it's a big room!

That picture of their stupid fucking queue should haunt them. And what now? Are they going to isolate basically all of parliament, as they'd have to do under their own t&t rules, or are they going to Barnard Castle this next phase too?

LADS.

NEW: Business Secretary Alok Sharma self-isolating and has been tested for Coronavirus.

He began feeling unwell in the chamber today, spokesperson says.

— Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) June 3, 2020

Comrade Karma also reporting for duty

Jacob Rees-Morgue

— Robin Flavell (@RobinFlavell) June 3, 2020

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte this evening:

Tourists from the 🇬🇧United Kingdom and 🇸🇪Sweden are not welcome in the 🇳🇱Netherlands from June 15 but people from other EU/Schengen countries are.

— Simon Gleave (@SimonGleave) June 3, 2020

literally the sick man of Europe

this fucking country

How many MPs of advanced age or with other underlying health conditions had to walk through the lobby yesterday?

thoughts and prayers for Peter Bottomley rn, my rosary beads are on fire!

and big bazza!

maybe the legendary miasma in the HoP of leaking piss will be some kind of antiseptic barrier

I once had this smackhead electrician friend who had his own "lungfish theory" that if you were a smoker, the layer of phlegm on your lungs created a protective barrier from the asbestos that we had breathed in on a school job. it sounds about as convincing as that piss theory!

his theory was based on this 80+ years old old smoker we once met who worked in a factory in the late 60's where his duties included sawing asbestos panels and having snowball fights with clumps of the deadly mineral on his lunch break and he said what people said about its deadly carcinogenic effects on the lungs were "a load of bollocks"!

a useful fact i just learned is that the word "empiric" means "1: one who is guided by practical experience rather than precepts or theory" and also "2: An unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan"

the lungfish guy is 1 and so am i

that's why you haven't got CB FRCP FFPH FMedSci after yr name!

CB DSc FRCP FFPH FMedSci.

oops I missed one

CB DSc FRCP FBPE FMedSci

the mekon, secret remainiac

Dan Dunty and the Mekon.

Gammons are from Venus, Remoaners are from Mars

Peter Bottomley and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day.

So, every front page (apart from the Guardian, Metro and the FT) have the front page given over to the latest 'developments' in the Maddie story.

More deaths today than the rest of Europe combined? pfft

it’s fine, global cases are only at 100,000

A DAY

lol

Figures obtained by the Guardian showed that in large parts of the north-east not a single primary school opened to more pupils on Monday, the government’s target date for reopening after the 10-week lockdown.

Data from 11 of the 12 biggest local authorities in the region, which has the highest Covid-19 infection rate in the UK, showed just 12% of their 856 primary schools admitted additional pupils on Monday.

Across England, a National Education Union poll of members suggested, more than two in five schools (44%) decided against admitting more pupils on Monday, contrary to government expectations.

In the north-west, the proportion of schools opening to more pupils was even lower, at just 8%, according to a survey by the country’s biggest education union.

So proud:

Yesterday the UK, population 66 million, had more deaths from #COVID19 than the *entire* EU, population nearly 450 million.

Not even @10DowningStreet can spin that fact away - it is utterly, irredeemably damning. pic.twitter.com/4NworFV1hb

— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) June 4, 2020

So so sorry we're not accepting you ppl from the UK, along w/ only Sweden, to smoke weed here lol

It’s really unfair to those of us who live here too. :,(

This is a remarkable piece

Why Scotland needs to acknowledge its role in creating the racial dystopia that is modern America https://t.co/hRboCSMzBx

— NeilMackay (@NeilMackay) June 4, 2020

Lol

I'm very pleased to say that @Keir_Starmer is joining @LBC for a new, monthly phone-in. He'll be taking calls with @NickFerrariLBC starting at 9am on Monday. #CallKeir pic.twitter.com/ualYlKxOm6

— Tom Cheal (@Tom_Cheal) June 4, 2020

That Madeleine story is such a dead cat. "All Lives Matter"... but we've decided a missing white girl from thirteen years ago does matter more than the failure to protect BAME people from being three times as likely to die, during our catastrophically mismanaged handling of a pandemic.

Ok last ones:

No coincidence, IMO, that political movements offering the kind of fundamental change (via democratic process) urged by young people generally, BAME communities specifically, have been thwarted both sides of the Atlantic in last half year. A wellspring of impotent rage out there.

— barney farmer (@barneyfarmer) June 4, 2020

Another commonality is that both were turned back in large part by a coalition of white middle-aged and older people apparently representing the spectrum of acceptable politics in both nations, and this most evident in the media treatment of both movements.

— barney farmer (@barneyfarmer) June 4, 2020

(xps) I've talked on ILX before about the fact that Scotland has a history of producing, and exporting, dangerous fanatics - though I usually just blame Ayrshire. The Wha's Like Us tendency of Scots to blow their own trumpet about being 'more progressive ' than the English hardly stands up to close scrutiny when there are Orange Walks the length and breadth of the country every summer. And how's that 'we don't vote Tory' thing going?

spare me most of all from "Scots were slaves too"

The way in which Corbyn energised the black working class vote (especially amongst younger men) was pretty much never commented on except for a few weeks in the summer of 2017. Did Sanders have the same appeal? Genuinely don't know.

Yeah, pretty flagrant how Corbyn's popularity in BAME communities was glossed over by the commentariat in favour of brocialist momentum stereotypes.

From what I heard Sanders had a roughly analogous relationship to latino voters in the US but not black voters.