Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

We've never quite understood your fascination with Giles Coren, especially as his much more talented sister Victoria writes for us twice (yes twice) a week, but each to their own

that's probably true

they both appear to be fairly dreadful ppl

lol ismael

we don't really "get" why you plebs like jon gaunt, especially as we have richard littlejohn

Victoria *is* nicer - friend has known her since childhood, friend is not fan of brother.

Victoria's pretty fucking obnoxious in her own right. And Giles is a better writer. But also restaurants >>>>> poker.

victoria is definitely the better (and more sympathetic) writer

though does ilx think anyone is a good writer anywhere? like even most of the mentions of marina hyde are people slagging her off

Marina Hyde is also kind of smug and not very funny.

you see? sorry if you don't think marina hyde is an incredible writer then we have very different ideas of what good writing is.

I think we evidently have very different ideas of what "incredible writing" is.

yeah m hyde can def write

As baronet's daughters go, I'll take her over Sam Cam any day.

like not thomas de quincey level but for sure better than david brooks or shaun custis

You know the reaction you get with stand-up comedians? That's the reaction I get with Marina Hyde.

^^observational comedy

i have even read marina hyde on f***ball, that's how much i love her writing

though does ilx think anyone is a good writer anywhere? like even most of the mentions of marina hyde are people slagging her off

I think the answer is maybe no! I get the impression people here find the column format pretty insufferable? (I do too but I don't read a news-source so it's not really relevant)

Her tone worked great for the political diaries she used to write. "Aren't these politicians ridiculous" is a lot more fun for me than "aren't these celebrities ridiculous." But maybe this is just a way of saying the better her subject matter the better she is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/03/conservatives-cameron-labour-blair/print

There are columnists and writers I like a lot in the Guardian/Observer - David Conn, Will Hutton, Deborah Orr, David Mitchell, Nancy Banks Smith, Andrew Rawnsley has his moments.

What I don't like about Guardian columnists in general, and Marina Hyde in particular, is the combination of faux-mateyness and "we are so above this, aren't we?" Also she is NOT FUNNY, which surely is the point in the first place?

That said I don't think I can remember an essentially frivolous Guardian column annoying me as much as this crap Philip Roth from the Independent.

matt dc otfm

i did like marina hyde more back in the day, but seems really full of herself now. also giving a shit about celebrities/pretending to give a shit about celebrities/being ironic about giving a shit about celebrities/etc. is really something i don't give a shit about.

Piers. Morgan.

emphasize "really" coz i guess she always did

xpost

david mitchell?! isn't he just some jumped-up comedian who's inexplicably got a broadsheet column out of his terrible career?

will hutton is smart but not a terribly exciting writer imo. i don't know who david conn is offhand! nancy banks smith is marvellous. <3 <3 rawnsley.

marina h is very funny. not belly laughs obv, but i love her bone-dry humour.

david mitchell?! isn't he just some jumped-up comedian who's inexplicably got a broadsheet column out of his terrible career?

A terrible, jumped-up career including being the star of 5+ award-winning series of one of the better UK sitcoms in recent memory, more critical praise for his sketch show with Robert Webb, a handful of movies, regular appearances on Have I Got News For You and other such panel shows etc.. etc...

a handful of movies, regular appearances on Have I Got News For You and other such panel shows

In fairness these are not proof of being a non-terrible comedian. The Lex pretty much wishes jihad against all comedians anyway so this is not really a battle worth fighting.

I, for one, look forward to watching I Could Never be Your Woman.

I'm not a massive fan of comedians myself (waves hand vaguely at generalisation), however, I quite often find myself mildly surprised with the thoughtfulness of DM's column. Not always by any means, and the little sardonic comedic touches leave me cold, but he attempts to engage with his subjects more or less seriously (sometimes). I guess I got low expectations, but he's far from being the worst, I think.

marina hyde is dire....she hasn't got a clue about football and that parasite on the back of celebrity writing is just nasty/ugly/pointless. if you want to say "a good writer" in some abstract "can get a meaning across" way then great but that's not worth a lot if the tone and opinions are such drivel. it's just fuel to the fire of people who think disliking populist thing x makes them smart.

and i don't even agree she's a good writer, the columns are unreadable half the time due to being so overloaded. eg last thing i read, here's a random sentenceL

No one really expected Fabio Capello's side to have learned how to pass or anything since last Saturday but they seemed to have mastered the art of remote delegation, somehow contriving to ensure that several obliging nations (and the odd referee) helped them out of the hole they were in, though possibly not out of a German-shaped one threatening to engulf them further down the road.

is this really good writing?

history mayne otm when he said: also giving a shit about celebrities/pretending to give a shit about celebrities/being ironic about giving a shit about celebrities/etc. is really something i don't give a shit about.

this all too prevalent style is even worse than say, heat mag, or whatever as it has pretensions to being better. plus it's the basis of most of the guardian's desperate fiending for hits (lets face it marina hyde and charlie brooker are shaving off bits of their brain every time they're wheeled out to suck in 500 comments and a load of hits with some woeful piece of "snark")

david mitchell on the other hand, so unbelievably boring. in real life he basically is like a smug and arrogant mark corrigan.

what i like in the guardian: nigel slater, barry glendenning's rumour mills, oliver burkeman can be good sometimes, at least is thoughtful, probably some other stuff i'm forgetting.

Can't help thinking that the Guardian is bring deliberately provocative in profiling this doubled-barreled walking cliche as an example of a graduate internship:

Victoria McKendrick-Ness is currently doing an unpaid internship at a PR company, despite gaining a degree from Leeds university

They should offer her a guardian blog of her experiences for the lolz.

apart from everything else, why not have one of the guardian's unpaid interns write the piece?

in terms of reliance on unpaid [via the bank of mum and dad] upper-middle-class labour, you can't beat the media

Come back Max G0garty, all is forgiven

That's a small profile as part of a larger spread surely? If so, don't see what's wrong with it. I mean, it's not particularly illuminating but those things never are. It's not really a Max Gogarty situation and a comments box pile-on would feel kind of dickish.

Oh it's in the higher education section. What exactly were you expecting?

it isn't terrible, but at the same time

it will be pretty depressing trying to find a job and living at home with their parents. [...] I've signed up for lots of websites and recruitment agencies, but there's nothing that fits what I want to do – just administrative jobs and call centres.

ehh, suck it up princess. it was exactly the same when i graduated back in the comparative boom time of 2001, and i took shitty admin jobs to make rent. tbqh i don't think i've ever found something that fits what i want to do + pays a living wage lol.

Come on, like you didn't whine about it at the time?

"Back in the comparative boom time of 2001, i took shitty admin jobs to make rent, but you try telling kids that today and they laugh in your face..."

i whined (not in a national newspaper) that i had a shit job, but i didn't feel entitled to better just by dint of having got a degree. i turned down an unpaid internship -- that, this is how they get you, could have turned into something nudge nudge -- because i was indie. most people would call that a mistake, but i dunno, still pondering that one.

xpost

lol. £6 an hour, i was on. with my education.

Are we really going to single someone out for a double-barreled name? A young person carrying one of those around in the 21st century could just as easily be from a lower-middle-class West Indian family. ARGH, PEOPLE.

Turning down 'work experience' is not 'indie' - it's principled. I did expenses-paid internships *while I was on my course* in addition to retail and admin work, but once I graduated, there was no way in Hell I would agree to generate revenue/do a job of work for an employer without being paid for that work (besides, if I were working for free and made the company any sum of money at all, I'd wanna whip my hand out so fast). The promise made by many people trying to get people half my age to work for free - 'you'll get paid work soon on the back of this sort of thing' - is more than a bit disingenuous, because that promise doesn't feature a hand-into-pocket action on the part of the promiser.

hydes smug sanctimony is horrendous. but the way she always overloads a lot of her writing to make it more dense makes it even harder to slog through.

also Victoria McKendrick-Ness should have studied harder and got a first.

My favourite Guardian article ever

^^^ Awesome.

I think they're all from James Delingpole.

like not thomas de quincey level but for sure better than david brooks or shaun custis

― nakhchivan, Monday, 5 July 2010 15:00 (Yesterday) Bookmark

Hahah, Shaun Custis! Fond memories of Jimmy Hill's Sunday Supplement are flooding back to me

Hang on hang on hang on-

Whilst reading the Guardian Guide today (well, someone Of This Parish was doing the singles column this week) - noticed something a bit... untoward going on in the One Last Thing interview.

So this is the same Guardian newspaper that last week, had a massive front page article taking The Times and AA Gill to task, quite rightly, for calling Clare Balding a "dyke on a bike" - that this week, on the last page, is engaging in a puerile sniggerfest about an actor's use of the word "bender" in a recent movie.

I understand that the front page news section and the Guide have different editors and different tones, but isn't this a bit... you know... hypocritical?

that last page feature is always, always terrible, and obnoxious in a way that the writer's wit can't support

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/11/jay-z-hymn-to-modernity

this is dreadful

the guy doesn't even realize how much a tool he is of the capitalist status quo. intellectually lost. also that jay-z song fucking sucks and it's hecka old anyway.