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Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

feedmegin posted:

Why does he only have, like, five chips

Could be taking seriously the government’s advice that being a fat bastard is strongly correlated to negative outcomes from Covid infection?

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Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Qwertycoatl posted:

The editor of the Independent showed up on twitter agreeing that it was right that she was sacked for liking an article is his own paper

why do you think this is some great gotcha?
reporting that Peake said a thing doesn't mean that the paper endorses that statement. and the editorial had already added a correction to the article anyway.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Pret have taken the standard coffee shop "buy 9 get 1 free" loyalty card to the next level.
Adopting the gym model of a monthly subscription that hopefully you'll keep paying for even when not using.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/04/pret-offers-monthly-subscription-to-boost-post-covid-pandemic-sales

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Jose posted:

Get fat now so you can lose it all then

advocating self harm is against the forums rules no?
fatties gonna die of covid

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

XMNN posted:

I agree with prioritising schools, I just meant that there are already schools with hundreds of students self isolating for a couple of weeks because of a positive test for someone at the school only a week or so into them reopening, so presumably there's going to be a significant number of students missing multiple large chunks of school this year.

Still better than every pupil missing the whole year mind you.
And if other activities have to be curtailed to reduce the spread enough that keeping schools open for kids is possible then so be it.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

e: nevermind

Cerv fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Sep 9, 2020

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Necrothatcher posted:

How are the FBPE types reacting to Keir "we must do Brexit now" Starmer?

we've already left the EU. it's happened and can't be undone.

the transition period ends on 31/12. so yes Labour's position of we should sign a trade deal before then is the only option. the alternative of not having a trade deal is strictly worse in all possible ways.
better options requiring time travel aren't worth talking about.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Not to get all FBPE about it but haven't Barnier et al said repeatedly that we can just retract before the transition deadline, or was that just before the exit date?

could've before the exit date. we can't revoke Article 50 now as we are no longer in that process. the UK has left and would have to apply to rejoin, but that's just not going to happen without a huge shift in our domestic politics to convince them it's worthwhile even considering the application.
the sensible thing would be to request an extension of the transition period while it's clear there's a risk of no deal getting done. we've passed the point the EU previously indicated that'd have to be requested by (July), but that was a practical matter of getting things approved rather than a fixed legal point so could be fudged if there was sufficient will on all sides. a big if that.

quote:

The sensible thing would be to retract until we work out a trade deal, but sensible has never been the real strategy here.
not possible. the EU was always clear that they'd not negotiate a premature trade deal with an existing member state. this was clear from the treaty even before the referendum took place.
they will only negotiate with a non-member. so if the UK had revoked Article 50 to remain in the EU (or never invoked it) there would be no progress on even an outline trade deal.
that's necessary to prevent a member playing games and just sitting in negotiations forever until they find a deal they like but not having to face up to the consequences of leaving.
hence the need for a transitionary period. although one year was always going to be too short really.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

thrashingteeth posted:

I guess saying she got a cheeky nandos didn't have the "SCARY FOREIGNER CLOUT" she wanted.
JK Rowling is such a cursed person, I do wish her cancelling actually made me hear less about her though. She seems to be constantly in the discourse for some other gross thing she did lol. Get in the bin, hen.

yeah some posters ITT are weirdly obsessed with her

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

FT is reporting that government advisors are pushing for a national lockdown of 2 weeks, to coincide with the school half term week break in October. Aim to cut off the spread then, but with kids only losing one week of teaching. Waiting a month from now though to see if things like the rule of six, that's a big risk :/

So don't make any plans for a half term getaway that you can't cancel.


https://www.ft.com/content/77a1e3b6-3864-4a24-88af-df19fd22f235

quote:

Leading scientists advising the UK government have proposed a two-week national lockdown in October to try to tackle the rising number of coronavirus cases.

The move highlights how Boris Johnson might come under increasing pressure to introduce a second national lockdown, even though he has said he is strongly against such a measure.

Experts on the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) and the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-m) have suggested a national lockdown that could coincide with the October school half-term.

The government is keen to avoid the reclosure of schools, having shut them during the national lockdown in March and only fully reopening them this autumn.

That helps to explain why the government’s scientific advisers have looked at how a two-week national lockdown might coincide with the October half- term as part of efforts to bring Covid-19 under control.

“As schools will be closed for one week at half-term, adding an extra week to that will have limited impact on education,” said one scientist who is a member of Sage, confirming the body had considered the case for a national lockdown in October.

Another scientist who is a member of Spi-m said the body had also looked at a national lockdown that could take place next month.

The number of positive Covid-19 cases is doubling every seven to eight days in England, according to statistical analysis released last Friday by Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori.

The analysis estimated the reproduction rate of the virus, or the R, the average number of new cases generated by an infected person, stood at 1.7, meaning the disease is spreading exponentially.

The scientist who sits on Sage said if the R number continued at the same level as currently, it would “break the NHS”, adding that the test-and-trace system was “creaking at the seams”.

On Wednesday, the prime minister told MPs that a second national lockdown would be “disastrous” for the economy.

“I don’t want a second national lockdown — I think it would be completely wrong for this country and we are going to do everything in our power to prevent it,” Mr Johnson said.

But much is likely to hinge on whether the government’s new “rule of six” rule — restricting social gatherings to six people — serves to halt the rise in Covid-19 infections.

“If it doesn’t work, a whole range of unpalatable options come into view,” said a government official.

The official added that at the top of the government there was “a very strong reluctance to go anywhere near another national lockdown”, but said: “There’s a difference between not wanting to go back to another lockdown and having to go back.”

A government spokesperson said: “The government is continuing to closely monitor infection levels and taking decisive action to protect people such as introducing local lockdowns and banning gatherings of groups larger than six.

“Scientific and medical professionals have provided advice throughout the pandemic.”

On Thursday, the north-east of England became the latest area of the UK to have a local lockdown imposed on it because of rising Covid-19 infections.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, held talks last week with Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, and local council leaders to discuss contingency plans for new restrictions in the capital, but such an outcome is not seen as “inevitable”, according to government insiders.

Meanwhile Dido Harding, who heads the government's test-and-trace programme in England, “strongly refuted” suggestions that the scheme was failing.

Following widespread reports of people struggling to obtain tests, because of capacity limits at laboratories that process results, Baroness Harding defended herself against accusations that the government had failed to prepare for a predictable surge in demand when children returned to school.

She said lab capacity had doubled between the end of May and September and emphasised that this had been done in accordance with information supplied by Sage. “We built our testing capacity plans based on Sage modelling,” said Baroness Harding.

After Mr Hancock announced on Tuesday that for the time being certain groups would be prioritised for tests, Baroness Harding said hospital patients would have first call, followed by those in care homes, then NHS workers.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Guavanaut posted:

Government poo poo at trans rights as expected.

In the middle of this Vice article there’s a point might be of interest.
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/akzpj4/conservative-party-culture-war-uk

quote:

Asked what the reasoning was behind the letter, one of the signatories who wished to remain anonymous said: “Its purpose was to make sure that Boris knew, on this and actually all LGBT issues, that he had the party behind him. I mean, the Sunday Times piece a few months ago that said we were going to roll back trans rights – that was bullshit. It was just people wanting us to roll back rights, thinking that if they leaked to the media that we were going to do it, that somehow we would therefore do it. And therefore it was important that the party also had voices saying we are behind GRA reform.”

Referring to an earlier ST article saying much the same thing based entirely on anonymous leaks.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Lungboy posted:

Could have sworn the numbering system went in the bin when people started asking annoying questions like "why are you unshielding the vulnerable which is at level 1 of we're still on level 3?"
before then.
the numbering system went in the bin at the same presentation at which the numbering system was unveiled, when the government said we were at "3.5" which is not a point of the 5 point scale.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

kingturnip posted:

Also, did anyone else see the story about Tory mayoral candidate and massive racist Shaun Bailey suggesting that the names of London Underground stations could be 'sold' to raise money.

What a oval office

that's something the Tories regularly trot out
but it's never come to anything. TfL have looked into it, and the costs involved just don't stack up against how much anyone would be willing to actually pay for naming rights.
notably it didn't happen in the 8 years that we did have a Tory mayor and he could've signed off on it.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Guavanaut posted:

I've not picked through the source code much, but the app doesn't request location permissions, so it can only do proximity pairing rather than where it thinks the phone actually is.

It's far better than nothing, but it sounds like an inevitability that someone who's bored (or actively malicious) and off work for 2 weeks with the Covids will build something like the BlueSniper and flag hundreds of people in an area just because they can, because there's no location awareness.
they can try
but in the many months that identical bluetooth based apps have been in use in other countries, has this happened yet that anyone's aware of?
you still need an official covid positive test result to trigger your ID as being a bad one that alerts the thousands in your areas that you've maliciously set up a proximity log with.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Here's What Happened When I 'Outed' Myself as Tim Martin's Son

What started as a laugh at British media nepotism quickly became a furious pile-on that revealed a predictability at the heart of social media.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/v7gwd9/heres-what-happened-when-i-outed-myself-as-tim-martins-son

anyone from the UKMT get quoted?

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

It would be less shameful if he were Tim Martins' son.

Jesus christ the state of this.

it's Vice magazine. the bar is low

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Not So Fast posted:

UBI is a centrist policy at this point anyway, it sounds like a good way to give some money to the poor while solving nothing about the fundamental problems.

Friedman was advocating a form of universal basis income in the 70s
it's never been inherently a particularly left wing idea. there're fans from all over the spectrum. so you can probably drop "at this point" from that.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Lungboy posted:

I'd have thought this was the perfect opportunity to get rid of Rishi and paint him as the bad guy. "He won't do what's needed to save lives" and "cares more about money than people" etc.

Not sure why he’d want to go through a third chancellor in less than a year though

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

“Ukip for culture”

what does that mean? that they want the nation to exit culture? leave that to the europeans to do and go our own way without?

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Doccykins posted:

Andy Burnham on R4 this morning: 10pm Curfews don't work, they just spit everyone out onto the street at the same time where people gather and make people drink at home more

Also Andy Burnham on R4 this morning: 9pm Curfew on supermarket alcohol sales

the supermarket is not a social venue where people congregate though is it. there will be no mass of customers being pushed onto the streets / public transport at once when closing time comes.

cutting off alcohol sales in off licences would be to stop people getting supplies for a house party or to hang out in the park after they've left the pub.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

This *definitely* won't cause people to not bother getting tested, no sir.

is there any good reason that checks aren't already mandatory when requested by the NHS T&T other than the chronic lack of supply & testing capacity?
I expect that'll change if the capacity situation is ever sorted out (big if)

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Doccykins posted:

Yeah, people are definitely not going to buy the supermarket booze before going to the pub

it's mitigation, not elimination.
if they did ban off sales entirely (like South Africa earlier the pandemic) you'd rightly complain that is draconian.

taken together arguments against any minor restriction plus against any severe restriction is just arguing for nothing to be done. don't think that'll work out well in the long run.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

https://twitter.com/IndieWire/status/1310914723034968064

I have some very complex feelings about this that are likely to end up in therapy.

dual roles can be challenging but Anderson's such a good actor I'm sure she'll pull it off. probably not too many scenes with both characters on screen together

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

OwlFancier posted:

Blairite prison ships definitely suggests keir will support the tories in their (hms) endeavour.

credit where credit's due, you can blame the tail end of the Major government for that one

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

bessantj posted:

I wonder if BoJo's dad will apologise.

quote:

“I’m extremely sorry for the slip-up and I would urge absolutely everybody to do everything they can to make sure they do follow the rules about masks and social distancing,” he said.

“The fact this was my first day back in the UK after three weeks abroad is, I am sure, no excuse for not knowing the rules.”
it would be uncharitable to point out that the mask in shops rule dates back to late July, more than 3 weeks ago.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Guavanaut posted:

It's strange (fortunate, but strange) that the UK didn't switch over to meth like the US (and the whole of SE Asia) did when that happened.

you've never been on a weekend out in Vauxhall then

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

OwlFancier posted:

I'm not really sure he isn't just being arbitrarily contradictory occasionally. He hated lockdowns not so long ago. He was the one so keen to get the kids back to the plague factories regardless of what "the science" or "the teachers" or "his own education secretary" said.

first part ain't really true. "the science" as presented by SAGE has never said to keep schools shut this term, and warned of the long term harm if we did. you can find quotes from Whitty saying when things go pear shaped schools should be the last thing to close again after pubs, etc.
they presented a number of models for different re-opening scenarios. the government's gone beyond those and gotten ahead of having the effective testing & contact tracing which SAGE always said would be required. but Labour's always said "get test & trace working" not "gently caress it doesn't matter open them anyway".

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Borrovan posted:

Am a few pages behind but in case nobody picked this up: the second reading (there's no vote on the first) passed 182 to 20, so yes, Labour alone had easily the numbers to vote it down, never mind LDs, SNP, and yes even Caroline Lucas abstaining.

that's just not true though.

votes don't happen in a vacuum. it was already public knowledge that the opposition were going to abstain so the bill could progress to amendments. that's why the government didn't instruct their 80+ majority to all bother. in the hypothetical that the opposition voted against, there simply would have been much more votes in favour to counter that.
if you want to argue that they could've lied about abstaining and pulled a last minute surprise, well that's a trick that could only work once. and probably wouldn't even that since 200+ warm bodies aren't invisible.

the only event you could make an argument that a bill could've been voted down is if there were also enough actual rebels on the government backbenches. but in this case, that didn't happen. rarely does.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

good for Lindsay Hoyle banning ending alcohol sales on the parliamentary estate.
it's going to make him even less popular with MPs than Bercow was lol

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

radmonger posted:

That’s the charitable interpretation of the much mocked and misused phrase ‘political capital’. There are tricks you can pull that you really can only pull once every few years at most. Like those penalties where the taker just calmly nails it along the floor in the middle, relying on the goalie to dive out of the way. Once you have done that, you can’t do it again for a while.

Purely in a winning-the-next election sense, I think Starmer hosed up here with the way things have worked out. With the Greens overtaking the Lib Dems, there are more votes more easily available to the left than anywhere else. Just because there is probably some core of the bill he actually believes in doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of other stuff.
bolded part seems optimistic, unless I've missed a recent huge surge.

quote:

I mean, the clear implications of the code name ‘007’ is that Bond was an elite and special agent. Not the guy in charge of checking the local branch of Greggs was keeping its pasties warm.
fun fact: Greggs deliberately do not keep their pasties warm, for tax reasons.
cold takeaway food is VAT zero rated. hot takeaway food is VAT standard rated. but food which is freshly out the oven and only incidentally hot while it hasn't had time to cool down yet behind the counter sneeze guard is considered legally the same as cold food so zero rated.
Osbourne tried to simplify that so that Greggs and similar operating just-in-time delivery from oven to customer would pay standard rate too, and now he's not an MP anymore.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

What did Ardern do to achieve this? Nothing, really, much different from what Boris Johnson’s government did. Having tried a bit of social distancing advice first, she closed bars and restaurants on March 23, two days after Boris did. New Zealand went into full lockdown on March 25, the day after Britain.
This argument only makes sense if you think timing of response should be measured against the arbitrary point on the calendar, rather than against the timeline of local pandemic spread.

But he later even admits that the UK was ahead of NZ on that.

quote:

By the middle of March the virus was well set in Britain, or at least London. It had come here, before it was even known to exist, via skiers returning from Italy and Austria, and via hundreds of flights from China.

So Arden's government did act earlier than Johnson's, not "two days after".


Also, the virus was known to exist back in Dec and known to be spreading in Jan. Sure the ski season was open for a short while n Dec before "it was even known to exist" but I'm fairly certain the best estimates are still that it hadn't spread to the European ski resorts and onto the UK until much later.
Just straight up lying about that isn't it?

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

JustaDamnFool posted:

This entire Free School Meals controversy feels like a clearly marked open manhole that the tories continue to stoicly march into.

and it's not like they haven't been willing on state hand outs to the catering trade this year.
between massively overpaying for catering surpluses to be delivered as food parcels to shielding people, and eat out to help out that's surely more already than paying for school meals over the xmas break would be.
but those two were one offs and they're that scared of setting a precedent for future school holidays that they can't back out of.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Spangly A posted:


This isn't a rando disengaged man on the street or young person somehow unaware of the far right, they were suspicious and they asked him. They claimed to do further checks. They very obviously either did not do these things and lied about it, or they did ask these things and are ludicrous idiots.

you are jumping to conclusions massively there

you don't have to be suspicious of any ill intent to ask that. "what is the meaning behind your many tattoos" is just kind of thing you ask just out of curiosity, or just to make conversation. like if you'd just met, and were asking about the kind of background info that you'll write into the presenters script about the guests.

Spangly A posted:

this was spotted instantly and his answers were disproven instantly, I'm not suggesting familiarity with deep nazi lore, I'm suggesting the media should be able to write things that pass an internet bullshit detector long enough to air the show they all just signed off on
there's a bias there.
thousands of people saw the clip when Sky tweeted it and some of them noticed immediately. you can bet a lot more never noticed the particular tattoo or didn't realise the significance of two fat ladies.
but only a handful of people met him and decided to put him on the great British woodworking off.
several orders of magnitude more eyes are more likely to spot something just by weight of numbers.

it's a simple unfortunate mistake. not some big conspiracy to get nazis on the telly


Jakabite posted:

88 being a Nazi thing is not that arcane a piece of knowledge to have. You don’t have to be terminally online to know one of the single most famous Nazi symbols in modern history.
really single most? poor swastika's been demoted

stev posted:

Why is a show about woodworking on the history channel anyway?
got some bad news about MTV for you

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

do C4 still make that shoreditch tattoo fixers show? there could be a way they can salvage this 🤣

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Guavanaut posted:

But if I donated what I spent on food to a food charity during lockdown, I wouldn't be able to eat. He understands that, right? He understands that most of the country can't just double their food budget overnight?


he says "if they could" right there
a statement that they cannot in fact do that.

he's not really offering up anything in way of a useful suggestion though is he. just a statement that it sucks that the only people who care about feeding kids (their parents, the outraged public) can't actually do that. no alternatives proposed.

Cerv fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Oct 22, 2020

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

first thought was that must just be a poo poo summary misrepresenting the article. Par for the course on Twitter.
But no, he really is that stupid.

quote:

So, what can we do? How can we bring some semblance of normality to a country afflicted by a global pandemic? Perhaps we should consider a Christmas “circuit breaker”. A 24-hour lifting of restrictions on gatherings and celebrations, a break in the war on Covid, just like the pause in the First World War on the Western Front in 1914, when the British and German troops laid down their guns and met in no man’s land to celebrate Christmas.
Jesus wept
"just like" except actually he means "complete opposite" because in reality the virus can't be negotiated with and can't agree to cease spreading for a day.
unilaterally giving up is not the same as bilateral agreement of an armistice.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

now we are getting a Downing St press conference at 4pm today.
can only guess this is Monday's announcement being brought forward due to the leaks to this morning's papers.


itshappening.gif

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Vigil for Virgil posted:

Also had the gall to tell Scottish people that "Scotland going independent would be bad for people living in Scotland".

Meanwhile he hasn't lived there for 20 odd years.

you sure about that?
he was an SNP member and regular donor until 2001 when overseas funding became illegal. it was said the only reason he wasn't a big name appearance at pro independence rallies in the run up to the referendum was that it would have meant breaching the maximum numbers of days he could spend in the UK while remaining a tax exile.

Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

Jedit posted:

Given that he's busy turning the White House into Führerbunker 2, I'd say not.
an optimist?
you think he's going to shoot himself in the head

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Cerv
Sep 14, 2004

This is a silly post with little news value.

It only took a couple of hours from Thursday’s announcement for HR to send an all staff email that they would be continuing with all redundancies planned for December and not delaying to use furlough instead. Happy Xmas everyone!

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