Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Emily Thornberry couldn’t be called on to do PMQs as she made the terrible faux pas of telling the truth about the European elections

erm yeah whatever.. wasn't her stand in Rebecca Long-Bailey you fucking weapon!

She’s done a massive flounce after being ratioed to Hell and back by annoyed women of colour, some of whom are pointing out that she mustered 258 votes when she tried to challenge Diane Abbott as an independent PPC in 2010.

This whole thing is shameful:

Disgusting to see @Haroon_Siddique and @jimwaterson laundering a flagrantly dishonest right wing hit job on Aman here. The actual story is "professional smear merchant attacks left winger", but Guido doesn't even get a mentionhttps://t.co/tZHZMpK1YD

— Sam 🌹 (@samfoster99) June 19, 2019

Labour activist asks question in the BBC Tory leadership debate

Guido Fawkes screenshots a tweet of his making fun of Candice Owen’s position on Hitler, misrepresenting it as his own view by cropping the context

Guardian, Independent and BBC report ‘controversy ensuing over tweets’ and ‘claims the tweet was a parody’, presenting his as contested, while removing any mention of Fawkes

Labour activist is suspended from job.

Solomon Hughes has a good thread on this clusterfuck

(1) For some years , UK Liberal media have warned reckless, bullying authoritarian politicians and their supporter mob will attack the press ,using smear stories. Now it is actually happening, with the BBC and Aman Thakar, and much of the same media are.....joining in

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) June 20, 2019

a new low for the graun. I wasn't shocked that they were GCHQ bootlickers, but they seem to be breaking new ground here.

I’m really surprised that Leigh Day gave into the narrative and suspended this guy (for those who don’t know, they’re a reliable lefty practice of the sort that activists write on their arms in case they get caught in a kettle at demos).

Hopefully he will be reinstated and be able pursue legal action.

Guido is fully integrated into the UK media ecosystem. Fully collaborating with the right-wing media as well as the liberal media that doesn't give a shit if a Corbynite is rinsed.

is the times worse than it used to be? genuine question - I have no sense of whether or has always been this utterly deranged. it is fully a rag at this point, yet despite this is still read by Serious People

Yes, it’s much, much worse than it was. Yes, it’s still widely read by Serious People.

Going back six or seven years, the Sunday Times had the stronger hard-right edge to it and The Times was still fairly centre-right Cameronite on most stuff. Today they’re both as nuts as the Mail.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/03/labour-mp-faces-deselection-threat-over-chris-williamson-criticism-ellie-reeves

A pregnant Labour MP is facing the threat of deselection after she signed a statement criticising her party’s decision to readmit Chris Williamson.

Shocking! Shameful! Etc.

Now, the constituency Labour party chairman in her Lewisham West and Penge constituency, John Clark, has reportedly received an email from a member who has requested a motion of no confidence in Reeves, who has been MP for the south-east London seat since 2017.

Such a motion would not be able to begin the re-selection process, given that a trigger ballot can only be forced if the move has the support of a third of local party branches or affiliated trade union branches.

It is understood the move would not take place in any case while an MP is on maternity leave.

So, in short, one person is reported to have sent an e-mail that couldn't be acted upon even if it had the support of a third of the local party, which it doesn't.

I should stop getting annoyed about this stuff but there has to be a better way to cover / follow politics.

Doesn't bother me as much as who is sharing it:

A small group of members are trying to bully another pregnant MP out of the Party. This reprehensible behaviour cannot be tolerated. We will not accept bullying and threats in our ranks. The entire shadow cabinet will want to publicly condemn this too. https://t.co/7imry32iOP

— Tom Watson (@tom_watson) July 3, 2019

Jess Philips as well, inevitably.

Maybe there is something to this after all:

If it's fabricated, why have loads of Labour MPs - including Tom Watson and Jon Ashworth - responded by making clear their support for Ellie Reeves?

— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) July 3, 2019

raf behr’s piece today is one for the ages

real reality distortion field stuff

If it's fabricated, why have loads of Labour MPs - including Tom Watson and Jon Ashworth - responded by making clear their support for Ellie Reeves?

— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) July 3, 2019

Yeah, weird that Tom Watson would throw himelf into a total non-story like this, really out of character.

— Dan Hancox (@danhancox) July 3, 2019

Gaby Hinsliff too, questioning Corbyn's intellectual capacity to sit down and read 100 documents a day, as if we didn't just have May looking like doing just that, or whether that's massively important in the grand scheme of things, or like we don't see them on twitter mis-read tiny bits of information daily.

I was actually clapping (well figuratively speaking) one of the Graun adults in the room the other day: Polly Toynbee for saying on AQ that all this speak of "extremist Corbyn" is nonsense and it is the Tories who have truly been the extremists. Not exactly dynamite, but at least she's not speaking in unison with the dim-melt crowd.

credit where it's due

Did people ever say John Major, who didn’t even proceed to A Levels, couldn’t deal with his red boxes due to a lack of academic qualifications? I find this take on Corbyn fairly tedious.

I don't get who its for. Its like the last 5 years haven't happened, no one gaf about any of this reading a document shite. The people who spend time reading documents in front of correctly angled cameras are the ones that trashed everything. Such a pointless and tone-deaf line of attack

this starts off as a comically bad "dystopian post-Brexit future" story then abruptly turns into a half-baked analysis of the Tory leadership election
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/autumn-2020-no-deal-britain-conservative-party
worth every penny of that 6-figure salary!

i almost feel it's a net positive of brexit that so many people have unequivocally shown themselves to be pricks, barmy, stupid or otherwise gaping arseholes. bad with words, bad with thoughts. Tear them for their bad verses. (i think mark s used this recently, but it's also i think my favourite shakespeare line so)

and by people i mean commentators, op-ed journeymen, pundits, chancers, grifters etc. apologies for any confusion there by using people so indiscriminately.

I didn't realise that was Shakespeare when mark used it, it's an absolute classic line.

timon of athens. iirc it’s a point where he starts becoming unhinged. the moment mental violence breaks out into state sanctioned populist violence and tyranny against a (not v good) poet. both deserved and totally undeserved because of the disproportionate power behind the critical words.

something some blue tick fuckers on twitter could afford to learn.

Climate change
Enough of the climate nightmare. It’s time to paint the dream
Ed Miliband

Posting here because it's probably not just a bunch of pictures what Ed done

i cannae actually bring myself to read that

No black women available to write this one, huh https://t.co/MitSjuQdEk

— old man bangers (@FindusPancake) July 5, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/04/the-guardian-view-on-classical-music-art-or-status-symbol?CMP=share_btn_tw

couldn't care less about the proms, but is this dickhead actually saying people are listening to the classical canon for the wrong reasons? Anyway it's just more garbage clickbait - but I hate whoever wrote it and couldn't give less of a fuck what they consider "challenging" listening in 2019.

when adorno coined the term "culture industry" he already included (and indeed was largely animated by and against) stuff very much like the proms and indeed the guardian

it's true that he didn't much like (or necessarily always think clearly abt) pop culture, but the argument that somehow the current situation undermines his position is an excellent example of how and why he was correct: this bad editorial is itself by-the-yard fake seriousness passing itself off as something socially deeper

caveat: except for the bit abt playing vivaldi loudly to drive ppl away, this is good critical science bcz vivaldi is annoying and bad -- his re-entry into the canon was effected in 1939 in italy by a crew that included ezra pound (tbf vivaldi is just boring and bad, he wasn't actually a fascist as he died in 1741)

That’s a lazy bunch of bullshit. Last year I was lucky enough to hear one of the most remarkable and refreshing renditions of Beethoven’s 5th at the proms. It may have been part of the cannon but it was very different. People still got in for 6 quid.

canon: bach, beethoven etc
cannon: tchaikovsky 1812 overture and that's it

I'm sure Beethoven and Bach's contemporary audiences sat in rapt appreciation at all times and there was no conspicuous consumption or groups of rich twats treating it as a social occasion at all.

I get the feeling the writer would consider Thom Yorke with a banjo and a sequencer avant garde. What really is avant garde is Cannon without any balls!

When i say i don't care about there has undoubtedly been loads good stuff in it over the years at affordable prices.

*about the proms* i meant

vivaldi is shite, but you said that about mahler as well mark (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

beethoven's 'wellington's victory' also has parts for cannons and muskets

In their book Men of Music, Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock termed the piece an "atrocious potboiler".

Beethoven had no illusions about its merits, and responded to similar criticism in his own time: "What I shit is better than anything you could ever think up!"[3]

wait what i said mahler arrived in the canon on the back of a fascist stunt? if true i am cancelled for being an idiot

(he is boring though, that's different to being fascist imo)

not even got any feelings for no 6?

"this is tragic stuff" :D

it did inspire some good shade from berg (directed at beethoven): "Es gibt doch nur eine VI. trotz der Pastorale"
webern's recently discovered reply: "zu lang, also sehr mimpy (genau wie du, wirklich real zu sein)"

they're not doing much Mahler at the proms this year, only 1, 5 and Das Lied I think. I couldn't be arsed to book any of those (saw Das Lied earlier this year).

In fact it's just 4 and Das Lied. Duh.

I seriously cannot be bothered to read the article. Would rather prefer to sit through a Mahler symphony, even no 8

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/15/theresa-may-legacy-feminist-champion-women

Aw yeah.

Don’t give them the clicks, imo, the url tells you 95% of what you need to know.

Nah, there's gotta be a good top comment

Oh sick, it's one of the ones that doesn't have comments

I presume they are pretending the two child rape clause didn't happen for the sake of a very wrong controp.

https://www.theonion.com/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does-1819566746

Theresa May’s positive legacy? She’s a feminist champion | Martha Gill https://t.co/vH0iJ1YaV2

— The Guardian (@guardian) July 15, 2019

here are the comments :)

I guess they got exactly what they wanted. Played right into their hands