Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Lex, it's dim low ting.

has anyone here read Tim Dowling's novel, 'The Giles Wareing Haters' Club'?

Giles is a freelance writer of amusing articles for a national newspaper. One day, feeling particularly fortyish, he happens to type ‘Giles Wareing+unfunny’ into a search engine. And that’s when he discovers the thread. The thread is called ‘The Giles Wareing Haters’ Club’, and is entirely devoted to holding everything he has ever written up to excoriating criticism and ridicule. As Giles becomes obsessed with the thread, with tracking down its participants, his angst begins to focus on one particularly scornful contributor, and it soon becomes clear that things are going really quite badly wrong . . . A tragedy, a farce and a detective story, The Giles Wareing Haters’ Club is an absorbing, hilarious and razor-sharp look at the modern male in all his dysfunctional glory.

There is a fine line between "write what you know" and "so autobiographical as to be utterly unfunny to anyone outside of your tiny soap bubble world."

(Assuming that is not an actual parody as opposed to thinly veiled self parody.)

He has a new book out later this year:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Yp0jezNzL._.jpg

there's this as well, but I think it's a different Tim Dowling?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NRxBhLNpL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_SX385_SY500_CR,0,0,385,500_SH20_OU02_.jpg

also looks like it's saying Tim Dowling is the nation's worst problem

Is the is the guardian worse than it used to be thread worse than it used to be?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/03/max-clifford-meeting-him-morality-media-sexism

This headline/standfirst combo is basically everything the Guardian points/laughs at when other papers do it:

Amal Alamuddin faces a very different engagement in Libya trial
George Clooney's fiancee is fighting to be able to defend Muammar Gaddafi's enforcer at a trial in which both Libya and the international criminal court are coming under attack

Observer, though.

oops wrong thread

There's something i find insufferably smug about this:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2014/may/05/first-dog-nigeria-girls

It doesn't appear to be a consciousness-raising exercise, as anyone reading the Guardian is likely to be familiar with the story, rather an effort to shame (largely female?) others for not caring enough to do anything about it. idk.

More than 200 Nigerian girls are still missing after having been abducted by extremists, and you spend most of your days drawing dogs.

not as heinous as I was expecting, seems to be portraying the bleak futility of squaring quotidian life with the colossal horrors existing in some nebulous 'out there'

Englanders not getting Firstdogonthemoon is one of life's current joys.

in terms of reducing me to incoherent rage, The Guardian succeeds far better with absolute fucking shit like this

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/quiz/2014/apr/29/quiz-how-good-taste-films

http://www.theguardian.com/film/quiz/2014/mar/18/how-highbrow-is-your-film-taste

those really are shameful

Guardian columnist Tim Lott now writing irritating commentary in the Indie:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tim-lott-crime-down-good-things-on-the-up-youve-got-to-admit-its-getting-better-9287706.html

I just took the first film quiz.

It was odd. Lots of the choices were mainly blockbusters or films that have always sounded terrible and overrated.

15.Pick a film about a boat

Titanic

Battleship Potemkin

https://medium.com/p/7f4f88ade648

^ A lot of people I know who live the North East have been unimpressed with Andrew Beckett's "The north-east of England: Britain's Detroit?" article.

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/zico

this is a bit of a coup

And that column is good like the interview too:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/13/zico-brazil-world-cup-nation-team-football?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

also this isn't bad at all: http://www.theguardian.com/football/series/25-stunning-world-cup-moments

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/may/15/claudia-winkleman-fringe-politics-michelle-obama-strictly-come-dancing

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/quiz/2014/may/20/which-years-did-cher-wear-these-fashion-quiz

Pets in the workplace: share your photos, videos and stories
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Crepy headline

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/08/damon-albarn-and-sister-jessica-special-relationship

"'Jessica was more popular and sociable than I was': Jason Albarn with his sister."

treeship's assailing (darraghmac) wrote this on thread OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever? on board I Love Music on 19-Mar-2014

its 2014 ffs have we not gotten over mansplain

the plural of cannon is cannon

Ahaha that was literally the only thing I took from that story

the person who wrote the headline clearly did not get that from the story

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/11/passport-office-holiday

Now, I'm the first to admit I am bleedin' useless at filling in forms. So is my partner. We are so useless that we left Maya's passport until pretty much the last moment because we know the Passport Office is a stickler in the extreme, would joyously return the form with a big cross through it, highlighting all the errors, we'd have to start again, and it would result in a minor existential crisis.

Liveblog!
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/19/facebook-down-global-outage-website-and-apps

Users worldwide were unable to access the social network for 20 minutes

fuck's sake

can definitely see the appeal of producing content purely to annoy the angry-at-everything cross-eyed morons that make up most of their commenter base but it also seems like it would feel like shooting fish in a barrel by now

Why I, a 15-year-old grammar pedant, took on Tesco

Can't believe the Guardian would devalue their liveblogging brand with that FB thing.

defend the indefensible: Whose idea was this?

Might have been a bit more interesting if it wasn't 100℅ smug snark. At least the ILX threads only run at 50-60℅.

Cameroon infighting update. Former Cameroon coach Winfried Schaefer expected African sides to do better at the World Cup but was not surprised with the squabbling in his former team's camp, it says here. Was anyone surprised? Really?

"It's always about money," said the German. " It's always ahead of big tournaments. They work hard for four years and then they destroy everything over silly fights over money. "

Schaefer, who in a four-year spell coached Cameroon to the 2002 African Nations Cup title and took charge of them at the World Cup in Asia the same year, said the current squad lacked unity.

"It's like a cage of lions and they need a manager who disciplines them and is a strong leader. I've spoken to Samuel Eto'o and told him 'you don't play if you are not part of the group'. But in general the boys are good boys. The team is split in two groups. Eto'o and [Alex] Song. They need a strong group."

http://i.imgur.com/TiWhU7F.jpg

In disarray they stand. Photograph: Robert Ghement/EPA

http://i.imgur.com/3bABCG0.png

This week's bestsellers

[How to be a Husband] 1. How to be a Husband

by Tim Dowling £8.99

i feel compelled to say this every time this is brought up, i have no problem with people hating tim dowling, i just want the world to hear that i really enjoy his useless silly columns

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Hannah Jane Parkinson is a writer on pop culture, music, tech, football, politics and mental health. She lives in Camden, London, and previously lived in Russia, Oxford and Liverpool. She likes reading, sauvignon blanc, laughing and Liverpool FC. You can follow her on Twitter

HannahJane Parkinson @ladyhaja · Jun 29

I am drinking leftover amaretto from when @stuheritage did an Oscars drinking game. We liveblogging #Glastonbury

HannahJane Parkinson @ladyhaja · Jun 28

We're live blogging #Glastonbury in the office. We got hungry but couldn't find Chiellini so we went with pizza.

someone's got a new cruuuush

.....

haha nah she's fucking terrible of course but what do you expect from the fucking guardian