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My mother seems to be on the mend thank Christ. Hope you are all safe and well.

This '10k for MPs' story is yet more predictable cynicism for sale from the lazy teenage scribblers of the British gutter press. I work for an MP doing casework. As well as having to contend with what's going on out there like everyone else, every morning I sit at my kitchen table and have to go through a deluge of emails and voicemails from desperate people looking and even begging for help. This money is actually for equipment for people like me to work from home. Our boss won't be claiming any of it in case we get lynched, so I'm using my own phone to call people. Luckily I've got a laptop and my wife has got a printer. In ordinary times when I'm in the office, we clean our own desks and for over a year I was taking my own Hoover to work for fear of any of it appearing in expenses and ending up in the Daily Mail. Thanks to the demise of local press and slashing of council services - we are often the first, last, and only port of call. But the rest of the time when people don't need something your name is mud, and people will happily tell you to your face. I also have to think about my personal safety when I'm in public with him. (They actually offer you Krav Maga lessons as part of the job, if you can fucking believe that). We have our wins, last week I helped two small businesses stay afloat by getting them some urgent financial support, and got a nurse some transport to take her to her hospital as the trains had been cancelled. Currently in the middle of trying to get a big company to sort out the working conditions after being inundated with contact from staff who don't feel safe there. It's a tough job at times - a colleague has already gone off work with stress in the last week. I was already getting really pissed off with the negativity around this job from press and public, now this 'snouts in the trough' bollocks, our national press are just disgusting. They know it's not true, they just don't care.

Wouldnt normally post around very serious things as this, but my (trusted) friend who is a paramedic took King Kenny back home today. He's all good on the mend.

The most pressing issue isn’t the £10,000. The most pressing issues are Hancock’s subtle attempt to put the blame for lack of PPE on NHS staff, his failure to provide a figure for the number of staff who have lost their lives, and the still scandalous lack of PPE and testing for those staff and care staff going into private homes where people have the symptoms and working in care homes. The press, the media, and social media should be pressing questions about that continually until it becomes a fucking tsunami of questions they can’t ignore.

I don't know if Starmer will be good or not, just as I never knew of Corbyn would be, all we can ever do with these things is wait and see. I'm annoyed by a lot of the brazen disinformation out there though. Keep seeing the likes of the Morning Star refer to him as 'millionaire knight of the realm' Keir Starmer. If he owns a house in London he probably is a millionaire, as is Corbyn, but unlike Cobyn didn't go to private school (not that that bothers me, but glass houses and all that). Was the same when they were running Long Bailey's campaign. The 'Salford lass' who is actually a lawyer from Frodsham whose company worked on the PFI selloff of hospital estates. Her Wikipedia page was clearly changed by her team during the campaign too and was proper cringeworthy. 'It was while working for a pawnbroker that she became aware of the issues faced by the poor'. Aware of the issues? One could say making money out of them if one were so inclined. Again, I don't care either way how someone made their living or how they were schooled, but if you're gonna try and 'out working class' someone, don't throw stones from the Palm House. Alan Johnson hit the nail on the head recently when he said the problem with the 'hard left' as he called them was that they think everything should be grassroots-led, and that for me was the fatal flaw in the Corbyn project. What tended to happen at constituency labour parties is that they'd get bogged down in infighting and internal politics. There were tried and trusted methods for dominating them (if you got newbies there and didn't like the looks of them, you'd make the meeting as dull as possible so they'd never come back). Meanwhile, you'd stack all the top tier positions with your mates and lackeys. I think Corbyn thought that when he let loose the masses we'd all join these CLPs and lead a people's revolution, but what tended to happen was that they'd just become talking shops dominated by the same old people. There was no leadership from above, no strategy, no plan. When election time came it was every man for himself, MPs trying to cobble together some messaging, often being actively undermined by their local CLP, some members in which would often have their own agendas. It was lambs to the slaughter in the face of the simple and disciplined messaging of the Tories. I think Starmer can unite the party, he's won the backing of David Miliband AND Ken Livingstone. You can't get any more polar than that. Labour needs to be a broad church again, it needs to welcome everyone who - essentially - doesn't want to vote Tory. Whether they're left of Karl Marx, or a tree-hugging vegan, or simply just 2.4 kids who are sick of the status quo.

As someone else said. All we'll get is people being outraged on the internet. It'll take for people to lose the roofs over their heads and we might get a bit of a murmur. That's the line they want you to believe and that's how it'll be spun. This whole fucking thing has been handled shambolicly since day one. As Mook (I think) said, they were warned about the consequences of not being prepared for a pandemic over three years ago. They could have acted then but chose to ignore and bury it. It wouldn't have prevented the pandemic from happening but had they chose to heed the warnings, we would have been better prepared to deal with it. Lives would have been saved. Ventilators ready to go with the expertise in using them. But nar, we'll just ask a fucking hoover manufacturer or F1 racing team to come up with a makeshift alternative. A fully staffed, trained NHS. But nar, we'll be OK. We'll just put a call out for ex NHS staff to return and put themselves at risk. We'll just expect our front line workers to put their lives on the line because we know they're so passionate about their jobs, it's not in the nature to say no. Proper PPE ready to go if needed. But nar, we'll be OK. We'll just scramble around and grab what we can here and there. The cottage industry can chip in a bit too. But no, it's not be our fault. Remember that Borris got i'll and the Queen made a speech. We did our bit. Blame Joe Public. They'll fall for it.

Tremendous: Donald Trump: “This is a very brilliant enemy. You know, it’s a brilliant enemy. They develop drugs like the antibiotics. You see it. Antibiotics used to solve every problem. Now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can’t keep up with it."

I think the government's reaction is not 'nothing' compared with the arrogance of ordinary people. They're still letting people from virus hotspots walk off flights & straight into the country untested, what sort of message does that send to the fucking idiots we have running about in our streets. And that's before we start on Johnson's 'shaking hands with everyone' boast, Hancock blaming the NHS staff for the PPE issues yesterday, the buried pandemic dry run from 2016 & the 10 years of chronic underfunding. These cunts are paid to run the country & personally I think some of them should be looking at jail time after this mess is over.

Jesus skateboarding Christ

She is a virus, and she will only be beaten when people stop spreading her words.

Fucks sake. Give it a bleeding rest.

Would though

How? The current policies are in response to a once in a generation event that has shattered the economy overnight. Why does that vindicate his manifesto for governing in what he would have perceived to be at the time ‘normal times’. If anything it shows the opposite, that they are only relevant for times of crisis.

If you're ever up here, I'll get you a few pints in there then ram you up my arse.

She definitely spent most of her childhood burning ants.

The Eagles are a great band. I think their use of simple chords and melodies makes them an easy target for music snobs.

BBQ sauce on a breakfast sanrnie, you durty fucker.

;

Without wanting to wade in on this ‘you’re a Commie’ ‘you’re a facist’ binary debate that you seem intent on raging. Rico is pointing out the rank hypocrisy and self serving nature of symbolic gesture leftism, which is responsible, in part, for the distain some of the left attracts/attracted. This is a very sensible, thought through idea, unlike much of what has come before, but the left in their ever increasing rush to score cheap political points only read the regurgitated twitter bile and assume it the most despicable, disgustingest thing ever because a random bloke on their algorithm/echo chamber has claimed something pathetic which nobody fact checks because we’re all so convinced we’re right. Critical thought and reflection seem be scarce in quantity at present. Dame the evidence, damn the person it’s easier and quicker and makes me look cool and clued up on the internet. NB I’m as far from Rico’s political views as it possible to be , the facist cunt.

Good god Rico do you have to defend every single little thing the government does? You are beginning to remind me of the fella in this clip, blue hard hat who appears (then disappears) on a cliff edge around the 2 minute 40 second mark.

To put the sorry state of bbc political journalism into perspective I've had a quick scan through the main bbc employees twitter feeds and the one asking relevant questions and holding the government to account is Gary Lineker, and he presents match of the day.

Unless the people making the decisions are on trial within weeks of this shit calming down, then there won't have been uproar other than the usual social media pish. They won't either, Johnson will be hailed as some sort of modern day Winston Churchill & they'll go back to quietly selling the NHS off & loudly 'getting Brexit done'. Unfortunately our country is absolutely riddled with spoon fed fucking morons.

At least he's not showing any symptoms, hopefully he'll ride this out without too much bother. Curse this fucking virus, what a nightmare everything is becoming. Really sick of this now, the only positive for me is that I'm finally getting back to normal after 3 weeks in bed and isolation due to this fucking thing. Best of luck to Kenny.

When I arrived in the city in October 1989, it was a bit of ghost town. Boarded up buildings and businesses, the norm. Apart from the footy- and little did I know that was in decline too - it was reasonably depressing. Taking The Beatles "Magical History Tour" only furthered the feeling of good days being behind you. In the meantime, during the week, I lived and worked in London in advertising - with Tories for the most part. Lunch at Kettner's and so on. In Australia of course, I didn't get to see the snide "local" side of Thatcher.... we just got the "foreign" headlines. The Falklands etc... her "heroics". Grand relationship with Reagan blah blah. She was a "Statesman" to an outsider like me. I think the poll tax changed my perception of all that. In my room above a pub in Acton, I listened to and watched coverage of the riots and bolllocks in Central London and realised this was a person, a woman, who really didn't give a fuck about the consequences of her policies and so-called "convictions". I remember her being ousted in 1990, and I experienced corporate London's sentimentality about that as it unfolded. But yeah, I was young and unaffected by her actions generally. TLW, over the years, has given me a starker picture of her heartlessness. At the end of the day, she was a politician - just another cunt in a cavalcade of cunts - and I don't want to give her too much "credit" in a totally dishonourable profession... even "heroes" like JFK did utter shite things... death, destruction, the works. But, I see Liverpool's point about her specific cuntery to it, and the especial pointedness of its justified contempt.

Ok. Bye then. Hope you remember to Die Another Day, after all, you Only Live Twice or is it once?

Nah, its good this

Dredd, followed by Rogue Trooper.

For which I will be eternally grateful.

Patel is horrific. She’s just not bright enough and completely objectionable. She reminds me of Mrs Umbridge In Harry Potter. (It’s also nice we can all join in calling someone a cunt without being accused of racism. Because it’s obvious she’s fucking hopeless)

Looking forward to getting some updates on Johnson's spirits. Last I heard they were good, but I'm really hopeful they've now been upgraded to high. Maybe afterwards some questions about other things like the lack of adequate PPE for front-line staff, but only if there's time.

Disagree. If he’d come out unequivocally for full membership of the single market and customs union (soft Brexit / Norway plus) as soon as the negotiations started, he’d have kept hold of a lot of the Remain voters who ended up abandoning him, or threatened to abandon him if he hadn’t offered a second referendum, while respecting the result of the first and keeping lots of Leavers onside. This would have been a coherent and clearly articulated position which could have kept his GE2017 coalition together, rather than the fudge we saw for the majority of the negotiation period which didn’t please anyone. Going into GE2019 he had no choice but to take the position he did, but by then he’d boxed himself in through previous miscalculations.

Just hand us the title now, and we’ll discuss the options after.

You buy all your CDs at petrol stations.

This is fair, a lot of spouse's likely to get a nice top-spec surface or macbook air out of this.

Tory MPs are all complete bastards so I don't trust them not to abuse the new £10k allowance.

And yet when people take naked selfies, they make the house look as scruffy as possible.

Always makes me laugh

Breakfast al fresco. out of mushrooms, annoyingly, but otherwise pretty pleased with this start to the day.

10 fucking thousand pounds. Are you fucking serious? Why are they so special? Why does everyone else's hand have to go into their own pocket?

There's going to be some type of uproar if this carries on, they can't have 1k people dying a day and expect to carry on blagging their way through it. I'd like to see people taking things into their own hands shortly and mass wearing masks too. A lot of countries around the world are doing it but stupid cunt Tories still think they know best, even though we can all see now that they've screwed this up like pretty much no other country on the planet. So the cat's out of the bag now and there's no more hiding it. So maybe one of the best ways of resisting this crap would be for enough people to wear masks and make the gov look even more stupid than they look already (and join a lot of the rest of the world which will highlight again how wrong they are.) Then we'll at the same disrupt their herd immunity plans. If that happens at some stage they'll almost 100% cave and advise us to wear masks I think, because they won't be happy with allowing the plebs to think they made some type of important contribution to easing this crisis themselves. No, they'll have to try to twist it into something that they'd "always considered an eventual scenario" or some stupid shit. I'm guessing at mask wearing because it's easy to start doing, could be effective and it's not like we can protest or do much else right now. And something's surely going to change shortly with these death figures, we might be as a population in general really fucking stupid, but we're not complete zombies.

Apparently, he's been holding it off with his arse.

Give it Huawei, Give it Huawei, Give it Huawei, Give it Huawei now. Catchy.

“He’s cumbersome and sluggish yet his pace saves him” ...Makes as much sense as a bloke pushing 60 still wearing an earring