Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Is there anywhere on the net I might be able to find Melanie Phillips' oldskool 'liberal' Guardian writing? I don't think I've ever seen any of it.

Answering the initial thread question eight years too late, my suspicion is that there has always been a lot of bad writing in the Guardian and we are just in more of a position to notice it now.

Oh, dear. If you are going to puff this book at least mention some of the devastating responses from other scientists. That would be the intellectually rigourous thing for a lay person to do.

Well done that man.

There is simply nothing left of it when he has finished – and he does so from the perspective of real science which the theory has so shockingly betrayed.

Oh really? Melanie Philips not an expert on science shocker.

Or what Matt said.

Telegraph no better:

First cut a strand of hair from your head. Next, fill in a questionnaire about your state of health and send it, with your hair, to an address on the other side of the country.

Then sit back and, while not exactly by return of post, you will in due course receive relief from whatever ailment is troubling you. It could come in the form of a pill or a potion, but it's just as likely to come in the form of healing vibrations, transmitted from the person to whom you've sent your hair.

What is it? Magic? Witchcraft? A load of twaddle? No, it's radionics, the largely unexplained art of healing someone you've never met, who is hundreds, even thousands of miles away.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/5356013/Radionics-can-a-lock-of-hair-hold-the-key-to-health.html

o_0

It must be great not to believe in climate change. The worst thing that's ever happened to the planet Earth, the problem of such a scale that it dwarfs all others and requires us to change our whole way of life (not that we are capable of doing so, hence certain catastrophe of one level or another) -- this problem just doesn't exist.

Maybe that's why MP has so much anger to expend on other, lesser things.

It helps her to sleep peacefully at night, her mind entirely at rest <---- LOL

ummmm... pretty sure she believes in climate change.

But it wasn't us wot dun it

Amusing to note that one of the sources cited approvingly in that book (which is a waterfall of bullshit, obv) is MP herself.

go go reader mailbag —

In France, only cases where investigation by the presiding magistrate reveals significant evidence that points to a high probability of prosecution will be put forward to the court. Hence the 25% conviction rate. The great majority of cases go no further than the investigative phase.

Writing as someone who was falsely accused of rape in the UK by a disturbed and evil scorned woman that I'd known for five years and never even kissed or touched, I can only applaud French scepticism.

Let's have another article, pointing out that hard evidence is required for a rape conviction: certainty, not probability, nor likelihood, nor possibility. Perhaps that is the real message that women (and men) need to carry with them into situations where they find themselves alone in private with potentially predatory males.
Chris H, via email

Worth noting that Andrew Sparrow and Martin Kettle, doing the website's live-updating news and analysis pages on the results and the reshuffle, have been actually rather good: the latter certainly better than the paper's recent standard of comment on party politics

iirc, melanie phillips wrote most of her 'liberal' pieces for the observer rather than the guardian (well before both papers shared the same owner)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/09/battle-orgreave-miners-strike

C'mon Pinefox you really should let people have the joy of the first line without having to click through...

Dark and damp and deep, the earth gives up its secrets: scraps of metal, furls of plastic, rubble and pebbles and clay. Among them lie shards of coal, brittle and black and glistening. Rain speckles the soil, the mounds of earth, the stationary diggers. This is all that is left of Orgreave opencast mine.

Ever so slightly out of her depth there

alternately, not buried deep enough

iirc, melanie phillips wrote most of her 'liberal' pieces for the observer rather than the guardian (well before both papers shared the same owner)

― Ward Fowler, Friday, 5 June 2009 19:00 (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just seen this but nope - she was social affairs correspondent for the guardian, then a columnist, then jumped ship to the obs. a quick lexisnexis search suggests she was heading in a rightward direction at the observer: stuff about "saving the family" etc - think that was why she left the guardian?

can't link to them but i could c&p some examples if people don't mind a bit of tl;dr.

lol l-bart and david peace should do a write-off on the miners' strike. sixth-form purle prose vs overdone 'pared-down' ish

well he's done gb84 which is fine when he sticks to the actual miners' story and less fine when he decides to turn the book into tales from the crypt. maybe l-bart should write a book about jarvis cocker sitting in the greasy spoon reading slim obscure volumes of belgian poetry while being taunted by striking miners.

maybe l-bart should write a book about jarvis cocker sitting in the greasy spoon reading slim obscure volumes of belgian poetry while being taunted by striking miners

I think Lionel could give it a go but I don't see it replacing Oliver! in the nation's hearts

Hmm...Tommy Steele stars in The Jarvis Cocker Story!

You've Maeterlinck A Pocket Or Two

"Half a sixpence/ we signed to Fire Records for half a sixpence"

Blur could cover "Food, Glorious Food!"

Clever wording.

The one Broadway soundtrack where you wouldn't want the Original Cast Recording.

"Whe-eh-eh-ere is Blur?/ Whe-eh-eh-ere is Blur?"

Perhaps there could be song performed by Ocean Custos Scene?

Tanya Gold's spoon hell:

Wedding lists were designed to help a young married couple build a home, in the days when everyone got married aged 12 and a half, and were totally spoonless. But today, you are not buying your friends a new life. They are 30 years old and rotting. They have wrinkles and Botox and they sag, like dying balloons. You are buying them an upgrade.

saw that: disgusting woman

Note the comment from her friend.

That is actually great. As I was reading it I did wonder at the wisdom of mentioning the bride at all - like surely it is going to be trivially easy to work out which friend she is referring to?

I mean the comment is great, not the dreadful article.

could some1 c+p it?

joholland:

"As the bride referred to in the piece I should point out that Tanya was invited to my wedding but no wedding list was included in her invitation because I know how much she hates them.

I do have a wedding list at John Lewis which I can appreciate is bourgeois but we decided that it would be practical, though by no means compulsory. The irony in all this is that I really, really don't care about gifts and have never even brought the subject up with Tanya (my dress, I concede is another matter). It might sound trite but all I want is a happy unforgettable day surrounded by people I love. My wedding is less than a month away and frankly, Tanya I don't want any spoons but I'm not sure that I want you at my wedding either."

Ooh, pwned.

daaaag

hope it's real.

spwned

bobsyouruncle1
10 Jun 09, 1:10am (about 14 hours ago)
I would like to take you out, Tanya, you are a tubby, quirky, wonderful, crazy, beautiful woman.

this country...

hi dom

I'll call her J Holland... no, that's too obvious. Jo H.

JoHo?

jools holland perhaps

I bet TG has an Amazon wish list.

Fuck it, I'd rather get stressed out people SOMETHING THEY SAY THEY WANT.

I hate having to guess, because I'm always afraid I will buy people something they don't want or already have. Complaining about that sort of thing is very Seinfeld and misanthropic.

My sister got 3 fondue sets cos she didn't bother with a list. Three whole helpings of useless.