Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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.

Pffft I would issue an acceptable birthday presents list to my mother, because of past experience of duff presents I hated, but everyone else is OK to freestyle.

i'll just send money. buy your own damn gifts.

Passive-aggressively didn't buy gift for my last friends who got married. was feeling a) unemployed and ii) depressed and 3) fuck wedding lists. I still wonder if they harbour resentment but I don't see 'em very often so hey.

I didn't buy my last friend to get married a wedding gift. But they married in August and were separated by December, so I was I right or something.

do like creed in the office imo

weddings w/wedding lists are fine. weddings without them are fine. it's their day. you don't get to decide how you want it organised, and bitching about it is bad form.

I didn't buy my last friend to get married a wedding gift. But they married in August and were separated by December, so I was I right or something.

― ears are wounds, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 10:10 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have a friend who, for quite some time, has gone to weddings saying he will only give gifts after people have been married for 5 years, recently he has had to start coming good on these promises (too his credit he has turned out not to be the cheapskate we thought he was).

xp bitching about it in a national newspaper could be considered something of a faux pas!

The thing about buying wedding presents is that people get 200 of them at once and so yours disappears amid the flood. But the pressure of buying an acceptable wedding gift is still huge. Wedding lists remove this pressure in a guilt-free way and therefore rule.

i did the stationery for the wedding i'm going to this weekend instead of a present. all you graphic design nerds: never do this. major hassle. next time i'm buying tea towels or something.

WTF is all this wedding present bollox

I wouldn't buy anyone a wedding present

the fact that you turn up is enough

caught in the middle of a order of service turf war between grooms father (anglican vicar) and bride's family (major, major papists)

xp