Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

The idea of Dan Trilling as a centrist is pretty funny tbh.

^^^^^

I'm in a grumpy mood today, everyone at the Guardian looks like a cunt - even Chakrabortty can fuck off!

suzy, as a US trans person, thank you for fighting the good fight for my UK trans sisters and brothers. I follow a *lot* of UK and Ireland based trans people on Twitter and it sickens me what they put up with every day. I just can't conceive of the mental and emotional exhaustion from this level of hatred all the time.

Eliza, I am really not worthy of that praise because I could fight a lot harder. About 15 years ago I needed and used ‘female-only’ space and one of the women sharing it with me was trans. This was no big deal and in my area had been going on for years, and I am glad she had a safe space too. Most of the terfy women in my orbit will never require this kind of help, but their ~pontifications~ on these issues are causing a lot of upset and confusion to less privileged women who do.

My only real "run in" with terfs was when a bunch of eejits showed up at the Hampstead heath men's pond and sky news reporters in beards to say they were self declared men to, you know, draw attention to the lunacy of the gender recognition act. It was so obvious that there was absolutely nothing really at stake here for these women. For a start they were all quite happy to be getting changed alongside *actual men*.

I’ve had to drop a friend because she got well terfy on Facebook - I think she caught it from Mumsnet and then got into a hate group and she kept posting all this absolute shite. It was very easy to hit the unfriend button.

Woman’s Hour has broadcast some insidious stuff too - this week they were talking about the National Women’s Register and I tuned in because my mum was a member back when it was the National Housewives Register. Although they didn’t mention the word ‘trans’, it was all safe-space this and safe-space that and I ended up shouting at the radio.

Yeah, I want to believe that the increase of TERF visibility is just an inevitable consequence of the increase of visibility of trans issues full stop and not a situation where prejudice is actually growing, but it is pretty scary.

It is, but this isn’t exactly an organic campaign either. There’s an awful lot of astroturfing and well-organised and funded campaigning behind this.

She's only an occasional Guardian writer, but I just looked up Helen Lewis online. She's annoyed me for a long time (after I initially thought she was OK!), but I actually think she is getting worse -- becoming more smug, more self-congratulatory, more right-wing, more the kind of person who would retweet, say, David Aaronovitch or Philip Collins, posting things like 'What if Trump was write to kill Soleimani?' and sort of passive-aggressive support of Tony Blair ...

She didn't use to be quite this bad! Is she going to end up as a Telegraph columnist or something?

*right.
I am ashamed to have somehow misspelled the word 'right'. My career heads sharply downhill from here.

She is awful. White feminist TERF arsehole who, it has been alleged, online-bullied a fellow undergraduate into a breakdown and ofc now is very Be Kind and touts herself as an online behaviour expert.

It now strikes me that she would get on with Kuenssberg. The twaddle about 'shooting the messenger isn't big or clever' -- HL would dig that and think it's sassy feminism that puts the Left in its proper place.

HL has been fuckawful for a number of years, think she was at that secret meeting of terfs with extremely online comedy writer and other pricks. She brings trans people up in any number of unrelated topics and is responsible for mainstreaming this shit esp as she had and to some extent has a rep as a sassy white liberal feminist.

I can’t stand the people in the generation of pundits 5-10 years above me who are “I marched against wars and for gay rights and women’s rights, how very dare you call me a reactionary!” but HL and her online circle of jerks are running them hard.

She went to the convent next to my high school.

I can see and understand that lots of people have big disagreements with HL over gender issues, but the curious thing is how she's bad on so many other issues also.

She hates JC; disdains people who speak for socialism or its values; is the kind of person who says 'your regular reminder that Tony Blair won 3 elections'; also likes saying things like 'Sorry to the left misogynists out there, but yes, Theresa May is a persecuted feminist icon - my column for The Atlantic'. She doesn't seem to have a view on whether the UK should stop going to war and bombing more vulnerable countries, but probably thinks that people who bring it up are irrelevant.

I think she's not actually terrible at basic journalism skills - fact-gathering, looking at data, etc - compared to some; but her opinions are so contrarian anti-left that they trash whatever is good about her.

I mean she’s a boilerplate White Feminist (UK edition), I sincerely doubt she gives a fuck about war or suffering abroad experienced by foreign women unless she can use it to punch left.

She was happy to join the Daily Mail grad scheme and gets extremely narked when The Left sledges her for it.

anyone who works in the media and does not understand what a stain the mail leaves on the reputation and the soul is clearly not up to the job.

She went to the convent next to my high school.

lol no way didn't know that

I had my first snog with a girl from that school 28 years old I was

Is she going to end up as a Telegraph columnist or something?

I was going to say nothing is more certain but who knows if the Telegraph will still be around in a few years from now.

xp they had the ugliest uniforms of all time, also they are now closed. I didn't bully the convent girls but pretty sure some other kids from my school did, wonder if this led to her obvious contempt for the plebs.

Her going to a convent school makes me respect her and her dogshit take on the referendum even less!

Before polling day, I’d been trying to work out which side seemed like the “establishment”, in case the vote followed the trend of recent populist revolts. But in Ireland, with its strong Catholic tradition, the Repeal side seemed like the insurgents, despite their broad political support.

Being British, I have been unable to stop making comparisons with the EU referendum of 2016, and with feminist campaigns more generally.

I can see and understand that lots of people have big disagreements with HL over gender issues, but the curious thing is how she's bad on so many other issues also.

She hates JC; disdains people who speak for socialism or its values; is the kind of person who says 'your regular reminder that Tony Blair won 3 elections'; also likes saying things like 'Sorry to the left misogynists out there, but yes, Theresa May is a persecuted feminist icon - my column for The Atlantic'. She doesn't seem to have a view on whether the UK should stop going to war and bombing more vulnerable countries, but probably thinks that people who bring it up are irrelevant.

I think she's not actually terrible at basic journalism skills - fact-gathering, looking at data, etc - compared to some; but her opinions are so contrarian anti-left that they trash whatever is good about her.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 5 March 2020 13:09 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a truly chefs kiss post

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/06/amber-rudd-hits-out-at-rude-oxford-students-after-talk-cancelled

Also quench your thirst on crocodile tears rudd

Why does Helen Lewis always do that...thing with her face?

I felt the strange desire to look at Rudd's daughter's tweet, perhaps just to see if anyone had replied to be snide about the v poor punctuation from people keen to mention "their old Uni", but a quick Google led me to this instead

Florence Gill (born 27 July 1877 – 19 February 1965) was an English actress and voice actress. In Walt Disney's animated films, Gill made a specialty for twenty years of playing hens, including Clara Cluck, The Wise Little Hen and other assorted fowl.

and tbh I think this second sentence has brought me more joy than I'd ever find in the other Florence's twitter so I'm going to stop there

This is spinning out into a bigger, wider employment problem. More than 330 Guardian employees - one fifth of the workforce - have signed a letter to editor Kath Viner expressing concerns about the recent pieces on trans issues. https://t.co/MCcmq2iNyw

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) March 7, 2020

Well they've been trying to cut staff for years. Maybe this is all part of the plan.

Spacecadet is so right -- the Clara Cluck biography puts the controversy of the day in its place.

This is an embarrassment

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/07/however-controversial-woody-allens-memoirs-had-a-right-to-be-published

Totally, considering everyone with even a tenuous link to publishing or journalism knows someone who has been blackballed by a publisher or platform because of existing relationships/conflict of interests with another editor or writer.

Justice4Woody

As far as reasons go 'my sister says that guy molested me' is a pretty fucking good one

Her, not me

if only Woody Allen had some way of making his memoir public without the woke establishment denying him freedom of speech

I absolutely laughed at this

when it dawns on you just how many people have read the ending to 'It' https://t.co/0807SxY0yv

— Wariotifo Classic (@wariotifo) March 7, 2020

“muzzled”.

i mean i know we know this but not getting published is not getting “muzzled”.

it's almost as if the Graun is deliberately trolling us for clicks

"gaslighting", if you will

in today's priggish, censorious culture would a classic of the canon like If I Did It make it to print?

conflating prudish and homophobic Mary Whitehouse style censorship with a publisher bumping a book by a filthy old nonce is a very dodgy argument.

it's just Brendan O'Noes using a nom de plum innit?

Moore out.

Moore out.

So good you had to say it twice.

This is also real. pic.twitter.com/8jq35GXzdm

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) March 8, 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/08/the-coronavirus-outbreak-shows-us-that-no-one-can-take-on-this-enemy-alone

gaslighting u say

People you were surprised and disappointed to find out were still alive