Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Re: Suzanne Moore et al - have we noticed the new form of online arseholism where someone you’re disagreeing with on eg. Twitter pulls the dick move of telling you to stay inside? Or the thing I had last week from a random PR jumping into my mentions/conversation with my friend with ‘stay in doors’ (sic)?

Not a new article at all, but I've never felt as confident that the Guardian is a class enemy as after this: was searching for a good breakdown of what the best homeless charities are to donate to, and I found this article:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/22/how-do-i-help-rough-sleepers-homelessness-money-begging-street?fbclid=IwAR23kuKe2iDGTvKrEsn1L6uIryk-RcL_zjwjzSVjs-o2K7eC1iZz0yLFVrQ

Which included this:

UK homelessness charities are almost unanimous on the question of giving money: it is better not to. Some charities acknowledge the intended kindness, others are vociferous in saying don’t.

Thames Reach, which has been working in London for more than 30 years, says its outreach workers and the Metropolitan police find 70-80% of people begging on the capital’s streets are taking class A drugs such as crack cocaine and heroin, and in Birmingham all 43 people arrested in a crackdown on begging tested positive.

Across the country, four in 10 say they have or are recovering from a drug habit, and a quarter from a drink problem, says Homeless Link, the umbrella body for the sector. Charities and police also report that six in 10 people begging had a home to go to.

Not only does money often fuel addictions to drugs and drink (usually super-strength lager and cider), it also delays people seeking or accepting help with addiction or other health problems and moving off the streets, according to Thames Reach’s online advice, which says: “Giving to people who beg is not a benign act. It can have fatal consequences.”

How idiotic is to assume that:

a) ppl giving beggars money don't know it's for drugs and booze
b) helping someone get the quick relief of a dose of their addiction is morally worse than letting them suffer
c) those who can't get access to their drug of choice will inevitably drop the habit and go into rehab?

Not to mention the paternalistic tone of the charity, which seems more invested in getting ppl to submit to it than actually helping anyone. I know that's the charity talking but a journalist just taking these things as givens is pretty wtf to me.

i might feel okay about it if they were ordering gin and tonics or maybe a quick ricard. but super-strength lager? CIDER? not on my dime, buddy! hmph!!

begging a classic topic where ppl overcompensate for the combination of ambiguity & guilt with rationalist prescriptivism

disability and homeless charities have been abysmal during a decade of austerity where they could have done with being more about actively helping people and attacking the causes of their despair, their disenfranchisement and their deaths. Rather than signing gagging orders and being toothless govt lackeys just trying to mop up after a failing state and adopting that vile paternalism on display in that piece. fuck most of 'em imo.

when nearly everyone involved is doing a bad job I tend to think about the structural problems, which might suggest they've all been comprehensively fucked already

one of my fave examples of pathetic, toothless charity kowtowing was the National Autistic Society giving a heartfelt thanks and congratulations to the Conservative govt for u-turning on their policy for people with autism qualifying for blue badges. Without a mention of the test case they had just lost in the high court brought against them by the family of an autistic person, who they gave no fucking support to at all.

aristotle sez it's v hard to be good in a bad society, but afaik didn't really offer much practical advice on how to turn around a bad society, or realise that even pointing out what was bad wld offend ppl and make them dismissive

maybe aristotle was the first person to say: this is just like the thick of it..lol

grandad of all sensibles

counterpoint: "Marx's debt to Aristotle has been noted, but inadequately. Usually commentators focus on the parallels between discrete ethical theories of both writers. However, for Marx, ethics is not a discrete field, but is founded on a conception of social ontology. This thesis links the two by showing that, precisely because of its Aristotelian roots, Marx's political economy of bourgeois society demands an ethical view arising from alienated labour. Marx conceives of bourgeois society as an organic whole. But this entails that is social matter can only exist potentially, and not fully setting up a tension that points to the eventual supercession of its social form. In this manner, Marx's Aristotelian hylomorphism provides the link between the early and the later Marx, between the critique of alienation and the mature works of political economy."

as with dewey being influenced by hegel, appropriating someone's logic doesn't change their politics

I guess breaking news is where all the clicks are, especially in the current situation, but their 'Live!!!' section, which is always at the top, is basically unusable in that every time I see a headline worth reading and click through, the story is nowhere to be seen. Ok not every time, maybe 90% of the time.

yes otm

Same on the app.

Plan to open mosque in Trocadero in London sparks objections

A video posted on Friday by The Iconoclast, an anonymous white nationalist vlogger, urging people to oppose the plan because of the dangers it posed to the “native people of this country”, triggered a surge in objections to Westminster council.

Another said: “I think it’s a travesty that we should sacrifice a building that was built before our time in such grand detail to Islam, which is not the religion of this country.”

Neo-Nazis rallying on social media to stop part of a building being converted into a mosque doesn’t strike me as particularly newsworthy to begin with - reporting it uncritically, not challenging errors and signal boosting one of them by name is a bizarre choice,

https://i.postimg.cc/xCxTmDht/76586-A37-E599-4698-81-EE-98-C107526-D4-B.jpg

👍

Ah, the trocadero, historical home of the traditional vr arcade, alien live experience and a big hmv.

sheeit, which particular buildings in central London exist in some time vacuum that precludes them having "historical" status? There must be hundreds of historical buildings that have been repurposed as mosques and synagogues, it's part of the rich tapestry of London history that the Graun have always embraced as the leading liberal voice of the UK ... oh scratch that last bit.

I think the UK's racists and far right wankers have got their work cut out for them if they think they can turn this into the UK's equivalent of You'll Never Believe It But They're Building A Mosque Near The Site of 9/11.

Last time I set foot in that place it was dispiriting to the point of almost triggering a panic attack. Repurposing it as a mosque could only improve it, and the thought of daily calls to prayer echoing across Piccadilly Circus would piss off the gammon to the point of apoplexy. Win-win!

(Funland, the arcade was called. there was a Sega connection as well, videos on youtube. i remember it being mostly empty)

Have to wonder whether the complainants have been inside the Trocadero in the last decade, right now almost anything would be an improvement.

I already consider the site of the old Funland arcade a sacred ground of worship tbh

When I worked at the Guardian and they had a mtg after Trump was elected and asked us what we wanted to talk about, I said, "I wanna talk about why you've cut the contracts of all the other Black opinion writers."

They ended the meeting.

They did not renew my next contract. https://t.co/uS3jsO1IEW

— Dr. Steven W. Thrasher (@thrasherxy) June 8, 2020

guardian is a racist liberal rag and tracey is a nazi fuck

the headline they've used to cover this JK Rowling story is utter nonsense too

surely not in the terf paper of record?

christ that's disgusting. I thought it would be something like "rowling defends feminism against trans activists" but they've outdone themselves

I mean I didn't expect them to cover it fairly but this is particularly dismal

Honestly struggling to come to terms with how repulsive this is pic.twitter.com/dGvXB5pYyX

— Tom Williams (@shirleymush) June 12, 2020

i wonder if we can have some sort of sweep/thread on what Starmzy will have to do to get critiqued in the Graun/melt Twitter

signal any kind of move to the left, obv

good news is that’s not gonna happen

Zoe Williams was criticising him last week fwiw.

fuck me he really has lost the Left

something uniquely repellent about these proud anti racist dinner party types who are clearly sick and tired of hearing about racism, but only feel able express the sentiment indirectly through something else, for fear of sounding gauche. slimy bastards

sir condemning rowling's bigotry would surely be the quickest way to turn them against him right now. a rhetoric turn to the left might even be humoured for a bit, with no election in sight, since they know the people they fear most are less to come around anyway

*rhetorical

*less likely. sorry

Irrespective of whether Heather Stewart is right, it’s bold to make the argument that banging on about sculptures and Fawlty Towers is a culture war trap set by Johnson from the position of Political Editor of a newspaper that has done almost nothing else over the last week.

That Zoe Williams piece from last week is as critical as it will get. Most will be happy that it isn't Corbyn and for the next few years they can pretend this is enough.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/the-far-left-origins-of-no-10s-desperate-attack-on-all-things-woke-?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet

Nick Cohen - The far-left origins of No 10's desperate attack on all things 'woke'

Lol ok a+ trolling

"The presence of the ex-revolutionaries in a rightwing debate shows the distance from asinine far leftism to paranoid conservatism is nowhere near as great as the innocent imagine." if you want an authority on asinine

Telling how this thread is routinely bumped on Sundays.

guardian giving known sex pests a platform again is it

they've also given four stars to debut album by voice-of-tory-heartlands indie wankers Sports Team if you want another reason to hate them.

Indie is the voice of Tory heartlands tbf

apart from Belle & Sebastian, the slave trading founders of ILX!

I always thought of indie as more lib dem but I’m out of date, what’s the difference anyway

apparently now the LibDems are plotting to outflank Starmzy in that sweet indie spot just slightly to the left of the centre right.

I can only think of that wanker from Coldplay and that wanker Dom Joly as prominent LibDem supporters from the entertainment industry, but I'm sure there are more.

Brian Eno. I knew there was one I'd forgotten.