Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Are you sure you want to 'solve the problem'?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/09/jeremy-corbyn-mark-e-smith-politics-labour-leader-indie-band

Tim Jonze

What are you looking at? That is his best work :p

"We notice you're using an ad-blocker. Become a supporter from just £5 per month to ensure quality journalism is available to all."

what, you mean 'quality journalism' like that?

The text of Gordon Brown’s speech runs to around 8,000 words. It does not appear to be available online yet, but I hope at some point it will go up on Brown’s website. It should do. Apart from the fact that it is borderline unreadable, it’s excellent.

What makes it so hard to plough through is that it is saturated with figures and statistics. Brown joked earlier about not being very good with statistics (see 1.03pm), but that hasn’t stopped him overloading the speech with them. There are countless passages where fine writing is hobbled and swamped by an overload of numerical facts.

But it is worth (just) getting past them because as well as containing the well-trailed attack on George Osborne, the speech offers a wide-ranging analysis covering the historical nature of poverty, and how changes to the labour market have affected it.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/21/a-letter-to-my-godson-with-whom-ive-decided-to-sever-ties?CMP=share_btn_tw

uh what is this and why is it on the guardian website

because it's hilarious?

somewhat surprised and disappointed that the 'lbzc' did not manage to do a rolling dave simpson thread from that era when discussing guardian music writers was responsible for about 13% of ilx threads

Xp I could use 25 quid, I'm up for this

A letter to the bloke stood next to me at the bar who got served before me even though i was stood here first

I’m not sure when your father started to dislike me – perhaps when I had the audacity to betray my working-class background and go to college. Actually, not just college, university.

What age is this guy? In his 90s perhaps?

They do need to refresh a lot of the columnists.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/22/why-the-hidden-work-of-women-needs-to-be-recognised

I'm sympathetic to the argument, but I'm not convinced that this journalist is any longer in touch with modern Britain and its issues:

For example, as I’ve said before, the young women sent out to marry Englishmen ruling India had to control all the staff and cater for the whole outfit – the kind of stuff which would have counted as a serious job if a man had been doing it.

Otoh I'm sure the columnists are refreshed enough most of the time

somewhat surprised and disappointed that the 'lbzc' did not manage to do a rolling dave simpson thread from that era when discussing guardian music writers was responsible for about 13% of ilx threads

This would be premature and grossly unjust considering there is still no Paul Lester thread.

On the plus side, it was good to see news today of Max Gogarty, after his abortive gap year column some years ago.

Otoh I'm sure the columnists are refreshed enough most of the time

LOL, indeed. Earlier I wondered if the guy who wrote the letter to his godson was in his 90s, well Katharine Whitehorn is 86.

This obituary seems to be more about the author than the subject. http://gu.com/p/4ejb7?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Didn't seem too bad to me, though much of the material has already appeared in the Telegraph obit last week.

https://twitter.com/Ben_Everitt/status/679657860280758277

great stuff from the guardian.com

Now I do politicsy stuff in the countryside and strategyish stuff in the City. Views my own, etc

Recycling Twitter posts is quite lazy, isn't it?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/lemmy-from-motorhead-is-dead-and-the-internet-pays-tribute

There were five other piece though

http://www.theguardian.com/music/motorhead

Yeah, my irritation is with the idea that collecting Twitter quotes is worth doing. There might be an argument for an article saying something along the lines of "Traditional media doesn't cover this well or reflect how people feel about this or misses the point" but the link quoted just seemed silly.

As with many of the things posted on here, it's not a Guardian specific criticism, either.

Yeah, I kind of hate that these round-ups are branded as "the internet/Twitter reacts", but I think it's probably worth collecting these quotes. Ideally, they'd be combined with a ringaround for fresh tributes, but it was the middle of the night and tweeted reaction is there for the taking.

I guess I take issue with the word "lazy" as it implies nothing else was being done.

Not for a second suggesting The Guardian's coverage as a whole was lazy. Actually, it makes me wonder what I'd hope for from a new source - initial news story, fleshed out news story, obit and (later on) more considered piece, maybe? So, I'll be on here later whinging about too much coverage ...

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/08/alanis-morissette-to-be-guardian-weekends-new-advice-columnist

i don't want to hear one single joke about this.

Something good for a change:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/my-syrian-refugee-lodger-helen-pidd?CMP=twt_gu

Goes back to shit:

"David Cameron Leads Twitter Tributes"

At last some REAL front-page news!!!

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/19/twitter-down-over-web-and-mobile

how will they get their stories now???

The financial losses reported last week were brutal. I think they're planning to announce severe cuts later this month, though some of them are likely to be to the ambitious plans around arts venues etc. The report also pointed out that the Mail Online is also running at a loss despite being the most popular news site in the world by a mile so idk what the solution is.

The problem is that the world is not financially sustainable.

xp the Popbitch website of all places posted a p interesting how-your-sausages-are-made thing about the Mail website - think this is from 2014 but I doubt they've markedly shored things up since: http://popbitch.com/articles/Profits_Of_Doom.html

Thanks! That's really interesting.

obv the mail is vile but i have to say when i read the hatton garden stuff last week their account was just like immensely more detailed and interesting than anyone else's. i dunno if that's because they are more intrusive or whatever, but it just felt like better reporting. they really rinse a story dry when they cover it - i guess in the circumstances it's not a case where there's much possibility of them having a really offensive slant, pretty much everyone went for the lol old codgers with hilarious nicknames angle - but compared to bbc their take just had so much more info.

(speaking of that case - i can't be the only one who finds it hard to muster a sense of injustice about someone stealing from people who are so rich that they hide their expensive rocks in boxes.)

It was mostly small-to-medium family business (often with limited insurance) that lost out, rather than oligarchs iirc.

Outside of Hatton Garden, which does mostly cater to the local diamond trade, knocking off security deposit boxes has always been a winner if you can manage it as lots of the stuff that's stored in them is stolen and won't be listed on inventories / reported to police.

MailOnline's editorial team is fucking huge, I don't see how it can be anywhere near profitable.

It was mostly small-to-medium family business (often with limited insurance) that lost out, rather than oligarchs iirc.

fair enough - my bad. ]

Outside of Hatton Garden, which does mostly cater to the local diamond trade, knocking off security deposit boxes has always been a winner if you can manage it as lots of the stuff that's stored in them is stolen and won't be listed on inventories / reported to police.

yeah there were a lot of weird parts to the story that touched on this. and also some line about them leaving info for the police in one of the boxes.

weren't there rumours that they were targetting specific boxes that maybe belonged to the ad4ms family? (not the creepy/kooky ones)

This has some info on possible Adams links:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3402867/The-hit-got-Hatton-Garden-masterminds-hook-Goldfinger-gangster-gunned-stop-exposing-Adams-crime-family-revealing-identity-run-robber-Basil-Ghost.html
And yeah LG otm, I think the Mail still retains the traditions of and the infrastructure for classic British crime reporting - I suspect it's contacts as much as a willingness to be intrusive. I'll usually end up there if there's a crime family story or Real England murder that catches my eye.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hatton-garden-heist-leader-found-7196229

this is p weird.

The story of the break-in was made into 2008 film The Bank Job, starring Jason Statham and Daniel Mays.

Yeah, I remember this was televised fairly recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/live/2016/jan/22/britain-on-the-booze-live?page=3

The Guardian has decided to do a live blog version of one or those police-sponsored clip shows. Interesting time here, obviously it's entirely society is in the gutter, mostly reads like a police or hospital press release, lots of passive voice and dull, faintly sarcastic asides. P much worst thing I've ever read in the Guardian.

Damn my phone, interesting tone I meant. NB I am not drunk right now.

I usually hate lol @ feckless underclass stuff, but 'Booze Britain' was a guilty pleasure a few years back. I used to like the bits where they'd cut away from the drunken mayhem and interview some paramedic, or cop, on duty, who would be like "It's terrible, you see fellas glassed, women going to toilet in the middle of the road, vomit, broken glass everywhere... <shakes head> you know why it is don't you? <pause> It's the booze."

i kind of liked it too, but mainly due to the way the tone would want you to be on the side of the police but quite often they were provoking as much as on the receiving end.

i remember once, on either booze britain or like police camera action, the brummie narrator called someone a "valve". like "this valve decides an alleyway is a perfectly good public toilet, but dc briggs begs to differ".

never heard it before or since.

Are you sure that wasn't Ted Maul narrating?

I made up the context, can't remember exactly what that was.

I used to watch Booze Britain to put myself in the mood for a night out