Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Don’t snark – this ‘Brexit festival’ may turn out to be just the tonic we need
Gaby Hinsliff

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/27/brexit-festival-eu-national

if it works, there’s a useful lesson here for the left about telling a modern, upbeat, inclusive national story – something any aspirant prime minister must learn to do – without being either painfully jingoistic or embarrassingly naff.

Sounds like Gaby Hinsliff thinks she is on 'the left'.

So what is this 'modern, upbeat, inclusive national story' she's talking about?

It's odd that Hinsliff has this sinecure.

Freedland has been there for over 20 years - and though a dreadful, mendacious person, he has a kind of talent for glib narration. Freeman is a bad fashion columnist who enjoyed mission creep. Williams is another long-standing staffer who sort of earned her status. Hyde is bad in the ways everyone says, but has talent for it, and a big following. Jenkins is a substantial, experienced journalist. So is Toynbee, in another way. Harris was quite significant in the music press and worked his way in to political writing. You can see a certain logic with most of them.

But Hinsliff writes this stuff for a major outlet every week, despite being a nobody. Has anyone ever said 'I'll buy, or even click on, the Guardian for the Gaby Hinsliff article?'; 'I can't wait to hear what Gaby Hinsliff has to say today'; or 'Gaby Hinsliff should appear on TV discussion programmes more?'. Does anyone know or care anything about her beside the terrible opinion articles she cranks out?

She seems an anomaly in being awful, like others, but also in such a nondescript, nobody, beige way.

Will this inclusive national story include the nation of the UK that voted 62/38 to stay in the EU?

it's amazing how passionate and principled these m/c guardian-wanker Remainer ultras are, just inspirational.

This might not really be the right thread but I've enjoyed (no, not quite the right word) reading John Crace. He often sounds sad and broken and as if he's really struggling with the world of Covid.

It is the right thread. But do you mean you enjoy this because you like him, or don't like him?

I think ... he just sounds human.

My guardian is worse than it used to be - the guide is missing pages 19-42 but has two copies of all the other pages, so I've no idea what's on TV until Tuesday.

You are quite old fashioned aren't you Koogs? (not meant in a zingy way ftr)

Why, I oughta...

It's probably the last reason I buy a paper. Used to get it Thursday for the tech section, but they stopped that. Friday for the music section, but they stopped that.

The radio times would be cheaper but I like the exhibitions list too, although not so useful these days.

Zoe Williams, expert parent

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/29/i-raised-my-kids-on-pixar-and-it-has-ruined-classic-cinema-for-them

I know this column probably isn't the worst of her crimes, just, they pay her how much for this utterly pointless shit while getting rid of loads of half-decent writers and closing every interesting section?

lol i always think the observer is just lots of columns like this and that people like to read them on a sunday and still feel like they're reading the grownup newspaper

"listen to this...!"

I mean if you could paid for such lazy shitposting any of us would take the money, but some really stupid and horrible movie opinions in there as well.

i actually started reading it but my blood pressure was getting dangerous by the end of the first paragraph so i bailed.

it finished before it even got started. was 4 paragraphs of luke-warm takes which felt more like SEO or shilling for disney+ than something you'd pay money to read.

So sad that her teenage daughter just isn't into that film where Ben Stiller wanks onto his ear lobe.

lol just weird what people consider 'classic' movies *in this day and age*

Yes, ZW is nearing 50 and thinks THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) is a great film?

Has anyone sensible every thought that was a great film? You couldn't even charge £1 for it in a charity shop at this point.

guardian, still sore about backing iraq now signal boosting the rants of unhinged twitter *presence* oz katerji having a go at robert fisk.

Great piece by @OzKaterji, hard to read even having heard all similar stories about Fisk. Like so many, he was inspiring to me as student & so depressing the evidence that he fabricated so much and how he was so badly on wrong side of history on Syria https://t.co/aZjQMoNmJ0

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) November 28, 2020

lol @ this in particular

Case in point by the great @Burke_jason https://t.co/szoThcYWjU

— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) November 28, 2020

like what is the underlying insinuation here? that like there *were* weapons of mass destruction...?

Liberal hawks have been lying to themselves for so long I don't think they have any sense of what truth is any more

The jason burke post is especially interesting bc nobody can point to the subsequent fisk article implied in the tweet

THE CRITIC is a deliberately very right-wing magazine, isn't it -- the kind of thing that would choose to publish Toby Young or Rod Liddle?

Without recalling details, I've definitely heard that the Oz Katerji person is bad and dangerous - not just some kind of silly liberal but much worse than that - is that correct?

This leads me to say: Plax (ico) OTM. This is shocking stuff.

He’s an extremely aggressive and unpleasant advocate for war in Syria who has harassed countless opponents and he has aligned himself with a bunch of militia groups who would be considered extremely questionable if they weren’t fighting Assad but he also couldn’t hold down a job writing online filler for the Daily Mail for more than a few days without getting fired for being rude to Peter Hitchens so it’s hard to think of him as ‘dangerous’ in any meaningful political sense.

Can These Blurry Glasses Stop Me Perving Over Women?
If it's working for Orthodox Jews, why can't it work for me?

by Oz Katerji
https://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/166a886b2ec9d572654032f5634e8f4f.jpg

when he finally turns up itt after name searching
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2016/10/08/110681398_Mcc0072830__Jeremy_Corbyn_was_interrupted_several_times_as_he_gave_a_speech_at_The_Stop_Th_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqZTGkdds8SWJRzcZ4ZecXrXdJc07HAYL41V_gkWNKJsI.jpg

He’s also the cunt who splashed the Corbyn/Jewdas seder to the Mail - someone he knew was there and informed him?

he's an awful twit and a huge eejit

So the Elgot person does seem like an idiot for boosting and praising him.

she is a v senior journalist at the guardian

and yes

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoGqYAnWMAAbq9F?format=jpg&name=medium

Guardian covers where you feel like someone should be holding up a "A Joke" sign like in that monty python sketch.

A 'blow' that will ensure that Johnson's COVID plan continues as it was going to.

Helen Pidd using a Quentin Letts column to trash Starmer's Labour for opposing the deportation of people who came to the UK as children.

A common complaint i hear about Labour in the former red wall seats is that the party spends too much time debating and defending issues which have little resonance there. A case in point: trying to stop criminals being deported to Jamaica. Look who lined up to support removals: pic.twitter.com/DA1DUJbJsF

— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) December 1, 2020

when all the worst MPs in Britain are for something, then it only makes sense for Labour to support it too!

so wholeheartedly going all in on hostile environment is a redline that Kieth currently wouldn't cross, bloody hell he's a radical lefty after all!

A common complaint from people who saw what 9+ years of Tory MPs was doing elsewhere and thought yeah let's have some of that at last.

And now half my twitter feed is about this stupid tweet...

Thank you Helen for raising awareness of the issue.

fwiw it looks like Starmer is not actually opposing the deportations, just some Labour MPs.

lol I had a feeling that the very reconstructed tory knight of the realm that thanked the night courts for their hard work during the London riots wouldn't be too violently opposed to HE

KKKeir SStarmer

Keir Starmer
Angela Rayner
Anneliese Dodds
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Lisa Nandy
Ed Miliband
Jon Ashworth
Rosena Allin-Khan
David Lammy
Jess Phillips
Rachel Reeves
Wes Streeting
Yvette Cooper

^^
the great set of PLP lads + lasses who don't oppose hostile environment - the usual suspects

nice one ed

yeah lol at "red" Ed and fucking Lammy getting totally neutered by Keith.. pathetic excuse for opposition party MPs.

more people should be explicit about how specifically anti black this is and how serious a problem it is in this party (/country). and about how central anti black racism is to sir fuckface's new direction (and to british liberalism in general). online left media hasn't picked up on this enough imo

the guardian really hates black people

Appalling from Pidd.

Anti black racism is a vote winner in this country. What else is there to say?