Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Funnily enough, I quite like the Guide, partly because Joe Queenan and Byron Coley sometimes write for it, partly because it means I no longer have to buy that useless piece of toss Time Out anymore.

1. The simplification of the accusation may just echo what it asserts about the target (just as 'Dumbing Down' is a dumb, dull phrase);

2. If I don't like Triviality, why don't I read nothing but 10-page reports from the former Yugoslavia? It would be hypocritical of me to say that I simply wanted them to be SERIOUS and SOLEMN and RESPONSIBLE all the time. No, that's not it.

What I mean, I suppose, is that too many features, esp. in G2, now look dashed-off - half-hearted, half-baked, unconvincing, just cliché pies really. Today's Lara Croft piece was just the latest of a million examples. It feels (the terms are problematic here, I know) JOURNALISTIC in a bad way - trite, unconsidered, full of crowd- pleasing Received Ideas - rather than JOURNALISTIC in a good way (that is: dogged, resourceful, brave, mentally agile, snappy and what have you).

It's the world of second-hand Lifestyle phrases that bugs me. The way that adults can still write a phrase like "*that* dress" and not hang their heads in shame.

A rider to all my bile, though, is that my previous, more impressed impressions of the Guardian may just reflect youthful impressionability. (Sentence!) Maybe the same kind of crap used to impress me that now feels rubbishy, faux-zeitgeisty and embarrassing? Maybe, but I suspect it's a bit of both.

I agree about Queenan too. But most of all, I agree about Thomson. There's almost no point having a thread about Thomson, because people who know what they think about him already know it all and would just send in superlatives.

What the paper still has going for it: George Monbiot's column, the Diary, Steve Bell, giving review space to Ians Sansom and Penman, and the tv columns of Nancy Banks-Smith. (When N B-S finally pops her clogs I will have to think very hard about buying the paper.)

What is leading the paper ever closer to the abyss: consistently terrible pop coverage (honorable exceptions: Maddy Costa, Betty Clarke); the fatuous new Saturday mag (Zoe Ball on dressing? match the celebrity with the pet? that awful woman talking about words that should be banned??); Charlotte bloody Raven.

I agree with you there. They sucker you in with the G2 front cover (and the masthead of the main paper), but when you get to read the cover story it often appears cobbled together and lightweight. I imagine it must be difficult to fill that space with high quality stories day in day out though.

I actually like Peter Preston's awkward, staccato opinion pieces, come to think of it. But not the pompous ones of Hugo Young. Freedland is sometimes good at summing political issues up, but usually he 'sums up' too much - there's too much glibness in the way he marshals it all. (I admit again, though, that it's easy - even glib - to call someone glib.)

Penman strikes me as a red herring. I can see that he doesn't do that to you, cos you have some kind of investment in his career. I agree about Sansom (great left-back, mean penalty, blah blah) - in fact I think that the whole Saturday book reviews section is quite possibly the best feature of the paper. EXCEPT of course the footy. Heroes? How could I forget David Lacey?

BUT I think that you are wrong about N B-S. It doesn't surprise me that older folk make that judgement about her; it does rather surprise me coming from you. She has skills, I guess, but she's terribly repetitive; uses the same lines on the same topics year in year out. It's all too - yes - glib and easy, while dressed up to look aged and thus wise.

I only read it for the Guide and the job listings. Not that either has been particularly helpful lately... ;-)

There's a lot of irritating stuff, yes. My favourite columnist is George Monbiot, by a mile. Something I like about the Independent when I do get it is that its liberalism is less metropolitan and more about the common good. Needless to say, though, the Guardian's series of articles on public service under that very title were awesome.

Today's G2 seems designed to add fuel to my (f)ire: one page of 'Style' after another, including a column on Why We're So Disappointed That Madonna Employs A Stylist.

Also good in Guardian: John Patterson re. cinema.

oh god, ask hadley today is just... tooth-grinding.

"today"

"At what age is a man too old to wear band T-shirts?"

Martin McCall, by email

"About 15 - that young enough for you, Martin? And to follow one rhetorical question with several more, what in God's name is the point of band T-shirts anyway? To show your allegiance to a band? Do you think anyone else cares? To impress onlookers with your esoteric musical knowledge? See previous reply. To make people stare at your bony chest? Again, I refer you to the first answer. To show that you once attended a live gig? Wow, like, a pair of golden headsets to the guy in the Nirvana '91 T-shirt. In case you happen to bump into the lead singer on the street, he sees that the two of you are kindred souls and therefore invites you to join his band and you then go on the road and have all the manly bonding sessions followed by groupies that your heart could desire? OK, I'll give you that one, although this does suggest that you still harbour the fantasy that you might bump into Joey Ramone in Waterstone's.

"As for ladies in band T-shirts, give me a fricking break. First, gals, a badly cut, poorly made, oversized T-shirt is good for nothing other than wearing to bed and the gym. Second, too often women who wear band T-shirts appear to be going for what we shall call Groupie Chic. It is a style amply modelled by Kate Moss in recent years, and can pretty much be summed up as skinny faded black jeans, ankle boots, a ripped band T-shirt and a cropped fur jacket. In other words, a girlified version of Marc Bolan's or Keith Richards' wardrobe, as though the woman has been so busy, um, sleeping on the band bus she hasn't had time to clean her clothes, so she's now wearing ones belonging to her musical companion. This column has no time for such nonsense."

Yeah, because women have *no* interest in music whatsoever except for sleeping with musicians. What CENTURY is this cretin from?

I think I stopped wearing band T-shirts by the time I was 23. It wasn't necessarily a conscious move tho. I doubt I will ever wear one again tho - I guess it seems lame unless it's an old obscure or overlooked thus hip act (even this I dunno about). I don't notice many people over 20 wearing them. Does Matt DC still have that Save Ferris T?

I only want to sleep with musicians if they are hot as they are (their musical ability is pretty irrelevant in fact).

dear teh grauniad - a long time ago/we used to be friends...

It went downhill after I left.

or were you PUSHED?

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2007-09-02%2015.37.57%20-0700/Image-D15E03FF59A011DC.jpg

heh. (sorry alex, no harm intended)

http://www.abc.net.au/sport/thesportsdesk/images/200607/20060707henrydive_derblog.jpg

xp

i was being harsh really. i don't care what's on other people's t-shirts that much. just trying to work out why i stopped wearing/wouldn't wear band t-shirts myself.

Any t-shirt which isn't plain white clearly sucks that's why.

i couldn't agree less

I still wear band t-shirts if I like the band. Why not? I don't *define* myself or my personality by my music tastes any more, I haven't done that since I was about 18. But that's not the same thing as wearing a band t-shirt.

I suppose the fashion journalist in discussion cannot fathom the idea that clothes are just something you put on, rather than a definition of or statement about your personality.

This is definitely something that happens as you age - or rather, has happened to me as I aged. There's a subtle difference between Statement Clothes and just things you put on.

Guardian editorial worldview circa 2007:

http://www.astucia.co.uk/images/sce/galibier%20tunnel%20_three.jpg

why else would you buy a band t-shirt if not as a statement or definition of personality?

I didn't know it was a band t-shirt okay?

because you're cold xp

In the past I've usually just bought them as a keepsake of a gig I've enjoyed. The piece tracer quotes is idiotic fluff, obv. I'd be embarrased to admit I'd written that.

Because you like the design? Because you like the music? Because it was given to you (this is where most of mine come from)? Because it was a souvenier?

x-post

you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

because you like the music = statement/definition of you/your taste

given to you = not you buying

you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

No, plus I've only ever bought them @ gigs.

because you like the music = statement/definition of you/your taste

Probably yeah, but w/smaller bands there's also the knowledge that in buying it, yr helping to supposrt the tour.

i actually bought a comets on fire t-shirt solely because the design was so awesome. (it was at a gig, but they hadn't come on stage yet.) then i heard the music and i liked that too. i suppose if i hadn't liked their music, or thought it was boring, it would have posed a problem.

a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless so that alex in nyc doesn't stalk and kill him, bought a huge iron maiden patch when he was 14 and sewed it across the shoulders of his denim jacket. he had never heard a note of iron maiden, but he wound up becoming the biggest iron maiden fan i know, and even sung in a band later, where his vocal style was almost inseparable from bruce dickinson's.

my take on this: do not read hadley freeman.

this resolution made some time ago, stands as strong today as it ever did.

it's a crass and deliberately invidious piece of writing. such an attitude, if sincerely held, could be turned around on pretty much ANY choice of clothing. so forgeddaboudit

the last band t-shirt i bought - robyn!

alan i can't help myself, i know i'm sick and need help.

is there a thread for best band t-shirts? must see

Taste is something that I have. It does not define me. Clothes are something I wear. The statement I am making is "I don't really care about clothes any more."

If I'm going to make a statement about clothes, I'll wear a bright green paisley jacket to a dronerock festival where everyone else is in leather.

I suppose my Hawkwind t-shirt is a statement, it says "ha ha, I'm wearing a Hawkwind t-shirt, I care nothing for fashion, I am wearing the shirt of a band so deeply uncool you can suck my left one because I love them!" But it's certainly not a statement saying that I want to f*ck any of Hawkwind or that I have a musician boyfriend whose Hawkwind t-shirt I'm borrowing, which is the assumption of that article.

> I don't notice many people over 20 wearing them.

*SOBS*

> you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

EAR t-shirt with the putney on the front = great. EAR live = terrible. (EAR on CD = ok, plus pram and stereolab were supporting)

I also take my birthday off and we are also expected to bring back post-holiday sweeties (never pre, though, that’s savagery ffs).

Take as long as you want off, the cake debt will be waiting when you return.

much prefer it when no-one knows it is/ it's been your birthday until you dump a box of brownies on the table. one workplace (not in uk) used to have monthly birthday cake to celebrate everyone's birthday it was that month and everyone had to gather in the break room to sing happy birthday to the list of birthday-havers.

A friend once caused an office scandal by emailing everyone to say "Don't buy me tortoise stuff again for Secret Santa" (It hadn't been an entirely random gift - he did have a tortoise).

It remains unusually bad and nonsensical that ZW is writing about missing the office, on behalf of people not in the office, when she didn't work in the office anyway.

The Guardian can't be all bad if it cites beloved ILXors:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/07/beethoven-was-black-why-the-radical-idea-still-has-power-today

Citing mark s is good not bad, but it’s the exception that proves the rule.

This:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/05/michel-faber-i-dont-read-fiction-any-more

Sad when it gets to his wife but I don't know how someone who seems to find getting through a book a chore ends up reviewing the stuff.

Of course you can pretty much get a handle on a book while you've read quite a lot of it, but this culture is so crazy around forming an opinion after you've finished something..

"You really don’t read fiction?
I used to review for the Guardian, partly to force myself to read a book from beginning to end: my usual practice from when I was 18 onwards was to just read maybe 15 pages [of a novel] to get a sense of how the author handled nuts-and-boltsy things like pace and description. Eventually I did think it was important, sometimes, to read the whole book, and [reviewing was] handy in that sense. Then when my wife, Eva, died… she was a great reader of fiction. She would read the books I was reviewing and we would talk about them. When that side of my life went, there didn’t seem any point any more."

An author who isn't a reader seems like a contradiction but then The Book of Strange New Things is one of the worst novels I've ever read so perhaps in his case it's not so surprising.

I on the other hand read a lot and can't write a decent sentence.

Yeah never mind actually writing the stuff. There was one twitter thread that was asking something like "do you have to be a reader to write?". I tried to forget it as soon as I saw it.

From what he is saying Faber got some mechanics out of it. That's perhaps a good angle to review something if you've assimilated an idea of correct technique and judged a book using that. Interested in how he landed the job in the first place.

ZW keeps going.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/brexit-opposition-government-decline-politics-division

Isn't this the reverse of what she, and many other anti-Brexit people, said from 2016-2019?

In ZW's particular case I don't think that was from reactionary hatred of JC. But from many other people, who are also now keenly accepting Brexit, it was.

the likes of ZW and these Remainiac pricks got exactly what they wanted and it wasn't stopping brexit, it was thwarting the last chance we had for a centre-left govt for a generation. Because in the final analysis they are a bunch of m/c tory cunts no less. Sorry for the classism .. not all etc.

I mean Corbz/McD probably made enough bad decisions to doom "the project" themselves but the amount of energy these bullshit melts spent chipping away at them for years probably played its own part.

ZW was on radio 4 this morning being consulted as an expert on um i dunno work or life or something?

People being meaner to each other and more judgmental these days.

oh yes, she saw someone looking angry getting out of an uber.

can't believe as the hated United Kingdom reaches its long overdue death and millions more people are thrown into abject poverty while naked bigotry and hatred is openly celebrated across the media that people are being meaner and more judgemental

if people had only been kinder and less judgemental to fascists in the 1930s

apparently the "eat out to help out" scheme also meant that coarse working class people were going to restaurants and talking too loudly.

What was Zoe doing in a Spoons?

Please replace all the ppl we hate with this

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3

An old friend who writes about poker and horse racing said he lost some work at Betfair to AI.

GPT3 is better than most Graun columnists tbfttai

https://twitter.com/TheTrashiesUK/status/1303359484430082055?s=20

ffs!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhZ2aGHWAAAH-Oh?format=jpg&name=medium

Were there *any* Remain organisations in 2016-19 that weren't an astroturfed, anti-socialist con? https://t.co/FhJHOtjuIg

— Juliet. (@zinovievletter) September 8, 2020

some of them were pretty spontaneous and sincere, the liberal middle classes were happy to embarrass themselves without particularly engaging in or being led astray by all this backstage chicanery. it ends up looking like a conspiracy anyway when they have no real interest in noticing or opposing it either

some were even vaguely anti racist before the guardian/cameron crowd totally swamped them

I assume robots would be more consistent.

“This attempt to rewrite history is beneath you.” pic.twitter.com/mpyXy75IDR

— The Trashies (@TheTrashiesUK) September 8, 2020

I suppose a funny thing about ZW, writing all these supposedly insightful and practical articles about what politicians should do, is -- she has never been a politician. She wouldn't really have a clue how to do any of it in reality.

To quote Dr Johnson, I've never been a carpenter but I know a wonky table when I see one

I would distinguish between

a) values - we don't need to be politicians to see the government is evil
b) strategies - I don't feel able to advise politicians on how to defeat the government.

I think we can all do a) but ZW falsely assumes that she can do b) as well.

This terrible tweet worth it for the responses.

The latest genre of sub-tweeting seems to be "Lady! Office is mysterious space! Must work full time in one to understand one! Going into one probably once a week not count! Full mystery only understood by me, super understandy man!" https://t.co/RnwqObkHZa

— (((Zoe Williams))) (@zoesqwilliams) September 8, 2020

if we were going to guess which newspaper might leap to the defence of JK

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/sep/15/rowling-troubled-blood-thriller-robert-galbraith-review

standing shoulder to shoulder with Nick Cohen in the Spectator, always a great place to be

I mean so what if this transphobic writer has written a transphobic book? the tropes in there are all familiar from other transphobic books you've read before! idk what all the fuss is about. I have read this book and therefore I am qualified to tell you all that you haven't read it, so you should be quiet and stop making us feel uncomfortably aware of our transphobia.

The grotesque pretence that You Can't Say This Sort Of Thing In The Guardian Anymore, when for twenty-five years The Guardian has been the house journal of saying This Sort Of Thing. https://t.co/IvqZwQEwQ8

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 19, 2020

I knew you’d link this. Easily one of the worst people to work for the Guardian.

at least we still get her Woody Allen apologism and thoughts on Jared Kushner's botox in between the transphobic pieces in the "lefty" graun!

at least it's not the Telegraph eh?

She’s such an arsehole. She and her incredibly rich family are the only living people I can think of who’ve paid to have their own bench in Holland Park.

Lol pvmic

<3

Kind of a relief to see Freeman writing for The Spec tbh - get in your lane dingbat

When I click on that Freeman link the page shows a load of 'similar Tweets' (in effect) below and they are things like Kate Hoey, Brexit Party, John Redwood. That's literally the algorithmic company Freeman's keeping now.

I agree with Nashwan, I'd rather see her in the Spectator than getting credibility from publishing anywhere else.

Christ, her actual article is even worse than I expected - it's a 'diary column' or something.

It states: 'I am an innate people-pleaser'.

Toynbee is back on the 'Labour patriotism' sauce https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/22/starmer-challenge-defeat-tories-patriotism-labour

Slightly more voters trust Labour on Covid than don’t trust them, but the pandemic should be long over by the next election in 2024.

Did anyone else get a horrible sinking feeling reading this coming from Toynbee?

https://i.redd.it/h6mnve5xce651.png