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Day of Chaos 2: a.Covid-19 thread.

Started by TordelBack, 05 March, 2020, 08:57:13 PM

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IndigoPrime

Quote from: sintec on 15 May, 2020, 08:23:13 AMI always felt Blair sat pretty firmly in the centre ground
In a sense, that aligns well with the balance of the UK. He had mixed policy, hence presumably why he won a landslide. (One of the criticisms levelled at Corbyn — I think fairly — was his group's tendency towards talking about radicalism, which scares the shit out of people on the breadline regardless of the actual policies.)

QuoteThe problem with it was it resulted in there being no real opposition from a left wing perspective for a long while and that arguably allowed the Overton window to be dragged towards the right. That is more a flaw in our 2 party system than anything else though.
Well, quite — and that is something I will never forgive Blair's cabinet for. They could have enacted meaningful electoral reform. They chose not to. Not that Corbyn was any better for that, also being firmly against any change to the Commons.

Blair arguably also existed through a period where liberalism got a bit of a kicking, and I'm not sure we ever recovered from that. It'll be interesting to see where Starmer's Labour heads in that regard. (The Lib Dems are a busted flush, and the Greens aren't going anywhere electorally either. That said, the former kind of need to if Labour's going to have any chance of leading a coalition come the next general election.)

Jim_Campbell

Not wanting to be that guy, but doesn't all this stuff belong on the Political Thread* so we can carry on depressing ourselves over the Coronapocalypse on this one?

*Yes, I get that it's impossible to talk this stuff without getting into the utter uselessness/callousness/bastardry of the current government, but this general chat about the left/right balance in UK politics seems to have drifted into Political Thread territory.
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Bolt-01

I made that point earlier.

Come on lads - this thread is about the other apocalypse.

TordelBack

Feel like I'm watching all the good work unravel here in RoI, as construction sites, hardwares, garden centres, farmers' markets (how do you maintain social distancing in a farmers' market?) and pet-hate fecking golf courses set to reopen Monday, and groups of 4 permitted to meet. Of course these places have already been packed with workers all this week as they get ready.

They might call this Phase 1, but as far as a lot of people are concerned lockdown ended the minute they outlined a strategy. No-one who has ever worked on a building site could believe social distancing will be observed, any more than HS&W is usually observed. And as for public transport, it was a joke before lockdown, it'll be a joke afterwards. I suffered through weeks of trying to keep my team safe in that environment back in March, I almost can't face it again.

Everyone busy patting each other's backs that the infection and hospitalisation numbers are way down.  Well there's a fecking reason for that. And as far as I can see that reason is now gone.

JayzusB.Christ

I know. I'm bracing myself for the spike and really hope my parents will be ok.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

IndigoPrime

Iceland, having done a pretty great job, is now planning opening itself up for... tourism. I don't even.

sheridan

Quote from: TordelBack on 15 May, 2020, 03:13:28 PM
Feel like I'm watching all the good work unravel here in RoI, as construction sites, hardwares, garden centres, farmers' markets (how do you maintain social distancing in a farmers' market?) and pet-hate fecking golf courses set to reopen Monday,


As a matter of interest, why do you hate golf courses?  I've never played anything past crazy golf-level, but I can think of worse things to 'build' on a flood plain - like paving and tarmaccing leaving rainwater nowhere to run to.  Though I may have a skewed perspective in that I used to walk through a municipal golf course which merged in to common land when I came home from school (just been looking in to it, not entirely sure how it works that they charge to play a game on land that you can walk through anyway) - so my perspective of golf is that it isn't entirely over-privileged elites jetting off to Scotland to play a round, or whatever a match of golf is called.

TordelBack

Quote from: sheridan on 15 May, 2020, 04:20:14 PM
As a matter of interest, why do you hate golf courses?

Totally off-topic, but:

Vast swathes of the country fenced-off usually for the benefit of 'members' or high-paying guests, with all the vomit-inducing tang of cartelist businessmen and political lobbying, generally stripped of wildlife habitat, pollen-rich plants and historic landscape features,  presented in planning applications as 'amenity' and 'tourism' but frequently actually a cynical long-term play to bring open-space/greenbelt zoned land into a future development landbank.  They disproportionately favour coastal and foothills locations, breaking up community access to the sea and uplands, and use an unholy amount of pesticides and water.

If land is going to be unproductive it should be available to wildlife, plantlife and the community, not some low-density playground for adults pretending they're playing a sport, and presenting a barren butchered artificial grassland as somehow environmentally friendly.

But it's really a wholly irrational dislike that I've developed an unfair justification for: plenty of perfectly ordinary people enjoy golf  including members of my own family.  I just fecking hate golf courses.

JayzusB.Christ

Just looked at American Covid19 statistics there. They aren't even close to recovery and Trump is acting like the pandemic is a thing of the past.
You know, I wouldn't wish the illness on anybody, but if you had a gun to my head and I had to pick someone...
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Tjm86

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 15 May, 2020, 06:41:40 PM
They aren't even close to recovery and Trump is acting like the pandemic is a thing of the past.

I'm just waiting for the moment when they reveal that he has Alzheimers or some other euro-degenerative disease.  The man stood up on international television and suggested that disinfectant should be internally administered to Covid patients.  You cannot tell me that is the statement of someone who is in full control of his faculties.  Then he tries to pass it off as sarcasm?

Funt Solo

I think it's been said before - but it's easy to mix up Alzheimer's and ignorance. Trump is ignorant. The trying to pass it of as sarcasm bit is his acute narcissism. So, y'know, I'm not saying he's not ill.

I was trying to figure his motivations out the other day, and I think the Republicans are positioning themselves so that whenever things get better they'll be able to say "I told you everyone was overreacting. We've said so all along." And in the meantime they get to side with the almost 1 in 4 Americans who are currently out of work by suggesting lifting all the lock-down measures.

I've been playing American Idiot in my head to make it feel better.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Modern Panther

Here's a lovely little ditty from Glasgwegian band Slime City, unlocking the complexity of government guidelines. Stay At Home If You Can Stay At Home.

https://twitter.com/michaelmphysics/status/1259602533196206080

I hope that's clear.

shaolin_monkey


Richard

QuoteBut it's really a wholly irrational dislike

No it isn't, you've convinced me. I previously had no opinion on the matter, and now I think they're awful!

Funt Solo

++ A-Z ++  coma ++