Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

it also sounds like they are saying that if they were more corrupt and greedy and less satisfied with the lot of the humble constituency MP then they'd be more likely to hold the government to account, rather than keeping a low profile.

I will be joining this boycott. and I would advise all trans, non-binary, LGBTQ+ people and allies to join this. The @Guardian should not be publishing fact-free mendacity about trans people in the way it does. I was beginning to think the paper was...https://t.co/RTKq2C6YGo

— Protect Trans Kids 🏳️‍⚧️ (@natachakennedy) June 9, 2022

Guardian:

Starmer’s allies say people should not underestimate the challenges he has faced since become leader: mending shattered party morale, fixing the antisemitism problem, and struggling to get Labour’s message across during the pandemic.

“I think he doesn’t get enough credit for segueing out of Corbynism without being pulled into a betrayal narrative,” said one senior party figure. “The membership know what he’s trying to do. He’s taken them on a journey and they’re now his members and they’re his people.”

i stand in solidarity with the trans journalists who have expressed disgust over recent editorial decisions by the guardian.

i have pulled my upcoming pride article with them, as a cis ally it’s my responsibility to work towards enacting change. sending love x https://t.co/KhmBuYBxko

— buy my book, link in bio 🔪 (@sharandhaliwal_) June 10, 2022

Kieth is such a smooth operator that apart from the 100000+ members that cancelled their debit/cut their cards or got purged, they are on a journey and barely even noticed his pivot towards a depressingly vacuous brand of politics that is even more negative and unappealing than 2nd term to late blairite Labour (austerity, racism, authoritarianism, ...etc). lol there was a type out there that was enthusiastically "his people" but now they've had their head turned by another bland PLP centre-right machine politician cos he's taller than him or more *talented* or something like that

“I think he doesn’t get enough credit for segueing out of Corbynism without being pulled into a betrayal narrative,”

this is maybe the stupidest thing i've ever read

Yes.

From the same article:

In the meantime, as one shadow minister put it, “I think we’re all a bit puzzled, really. Everyone wants to help and wants to make it succeed, but how do we do that?”

The puzzlement of people who stand for nothing and believe in nothing, wondering why potential Labour voters don't display the same levels of Blairite vacuousness in their own worldviews.

xp

the Graun will uncritically quote anything from seasoned old bullshit merchants in the PLP, no matter how implausible and stupid it is. Most of their more senior writers built their careers on doing a lot of this. But also it says they don't really think that the 10k per week members Labour were haemorrhaging at various points of his leadership is part of any narrative, because they simply don't count as people.

I’m fed up with discussions positing that various cohorts of voters are more ‘real’ than others.

the realness vibe is the essence of Nu Lab's patronising, social worker/missionary excuse system

when i started at SureStart i piped up in an early team meeting that we weren't fucking missionaries and the point was to support people not rescue them

it didn't really play, sadly

"Experts say that no matter how righteous, extremist protests are risky: they may turn people against the cause"

i can't think of a better epitaph for the guardian

Good.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/13/arron-banks-loses-libel-action-against-reporter-carole-cadwalladr-guardian-defamation-brexit-russia

tbh, I don’t think this is a great outcome if we’re looking at journalism having baseline standards.

Cadwalladr accepts that the meaning of her words was defamatory. She accepts that the defamatory claim was untrue. If she repeated it again today, she’d be guilty of libelling Banks.

Her defence is that there was a public interest justification for what she intended to say, rather than what she said.

My reaction is more to do with that vile creature than Carole. She's not exactly a model to follow.

What seems to have happened here is that Banks overplayed his hand. He could not demonstrate significant distress or damage, and by pursuing the case beyond Cadwalladr's apology and retraction, he strengthened the 'public interest' defence. https://t.co/T8RX0XfaKP

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) June 13, 2022

Looks like Banks will appeal.

not to me he won't

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

It amazes me that in the face of such a fascistically evil policy that self-important posh graun liberals are affecting the view that it's all about them. Well no it doesn't really surprise me that much, but it amazes me the way they seem not very good at masking what awful fucking people they are when UK govt is almost literally doing a version of the Madagascar Plan and rather than talk about the human cost of this, this is ALL ABOUT THEM!

lol they changed the title pic.twitter.com/4zpHJM5tCW

— Mimi "means ear in Japanese" McGann (@MimiMcGann) June 15, 2022

Corbyn:

“I have absolutely no illusions in the Guardian, none whatsoever. My mum brought me up to read the Guardian. She said, ‘It’s a good paper you can trust’. You can’t. After their treatment of me, I do not trust the Guardian.”https://t.co/c1l93JCb2Y

— Media Lens (@medialens) June 22, 2022

Apparently the Guardian is worse than it used to be.

On the subject of it being "all about them" I'm reminded of this piece from many years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/22/george-osborne-ruined-yoga-retreat

"*I just came back from my annual yoga retreat high up a forested Italian hill. All there is to hear in this delightful spot is the onomatopoeic call of the hoopoe and the oddly strangulated cry of whatever raptor it is that likes to swoop over the valley. ... It was into this idyll that I crashed - I and my mobile phone and my urgent hackish need to redraft a very long article on the state of the BBC, a redraft necessitated by George Osborne’s decision in the 8 July budget to land the corporation with the cost of licence fees for the over-75s, previously footed by the government.*"

There is in fact a "yoga holidays" section:
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/yoga-holidays

Flicking through the writer's content I'm surprised to see that they didn't write about their annual yoga holiday every again. I'm also reminded that these people - these people - have to write two pieces a month, one of which can be some guff about the correct orientation of toilet roll. It's just a vehicle to move money from the Guardian's fund into the pockets of the editor's friends, isn't it? As a reward for fighting the good fight. The opinion section at least.

The resulting piece was presumably this, which to be fair is a long, complex, sourced, well-researched thought piece of a type that would utterly defeat me:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/14/battle-for-the-bbc

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/26/labour-has-now-claimed-the-centre-ground-and-has-shown-it-can-win

Nothing like a frothing hate-read to start your Sunday off with a bang

I would argue with any PLP gonad that supporting striking workers and wanting nationalisation of utilities and monopolies, as favoured by 60-70 per cent of the voting age population, is now the policy of the centre.

courageous stand by sir kieth to pledge to improve the economy, don’t know why no one has ever thought of this. tories caught flat footed once again by this inspiring leader

of course The Observer has to maintain its rep as being even more frothingly sensible than the Graun, also nice of them to let Kieth get his own obituary piece in

This trans 'debate' is going over to the sports pages. This is a really good piece, which followed up from a favourable write-up of Dorries' remarks a few days ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jun/28/nadine-dorries-offers-the-illusion-of-easy-choices-while-trans-athletes-pay-the-price

That is indeed a really good piece. You love to see it

There was a counter to that piece. Really vile.

---

Meanwhile,

This information is factual untrue. The military air base is not involved. Please contact belgian armen forces press office.

— Belgian Air Force🇧🇪 (@BeAirForce) June 28, 2022

Is Matt Hancock worse than he used to be? Seems about the same tbh - a wastrel thicko in the pocket of big business, why the Graun feel they need to print this piffle is absolutely beyond me.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/30/covid-uk-cases-vaccines-matt-hancock

Delete this

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/06/nadhim-zahawi-is-new-chancellor-going-to-change-direction-on-economy

I can think of some other people who should step down. pic.twitter.com/coBM4eSID3

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) July 7, 2022

This article isn't helped by the profile picture, which unfortunately makes it look as though the author is smirking:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/04/im-sure-robots-are-very-nice-but-i-dont-want-them-picking-my-fruit

"I once spent an interesting few nights in New Zealand, sharing a motel with about 50 apple-pickers from Vanuatu, Samoa and beyond. We listened to reggae, washed our pants in the sink and smoked cigarettes as they told me about thinning out baby apples, and picking pineapples and peaches.

After nursery, I often cycle my son half an hour out of town to a farm where you can pick strawberries and raspberries and rip artichokes off huge green thistles. He loves it. He is animated and delighted by the smell of plants, the feel of soil, the art of guessing which is the most delicious.

I fear that robotic fruit-pickers might be just another step that takes us away from understanding how our food is grown: the swarms of plastic packaging, the brightly lit supermarket aisles, the insulated doorstep deliveries and plucked, cut, washed and sliced ingredients."

You can tell an article is juicy when it has hundreds of comments but the Guardian Pick only has a dozen upvotes, or in this case there isn't a selected comment because no-one was on the author's side.

Hot weather warning: rosé wine becomes 350 times stronger in the heat
Zoe Williams
Boozing in the sun can lead to ejection from Wimbledon finals – or falling asleep in your clothes two days in a row. I’m only guilty of one of those

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/11/hot-weather-warning-rose-wine-becomes-350-times-stronger-in-the-heat

windmill jolyon going off on nick cohen, u luv 2 see it

I have in my possession some relatively recent screenshots in which Nick Cohen offers to go to the toilet at the newsroom at the Observer, strip off, take a naked photo of himself and send it to a junior female freelancer.

— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) July 13, 2022

much more in the thread, none of it good

"i'd like to see how Cohen wriggles out of this one"

Needs to lose everything, and more.

watching jolyon maugham slowly realise that he actually does have the institutional privilege the left were yelling at him that he has, and deciding he can also use it for good, is q something. im still blocked for calling him a fox nonce or something in 2019, but i wish him well

— michael wave (@SzMarsupial) July 13, 2022

Care to comment, Dorian? https://t.co/1S8ZMitoL6

— Nathan Oseroff-Spicer (@nathanoseroff) July 13, 2022

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

I was not aware. This was some time ago

— Dorian Lynskey (@Dorianlynskey) July 13, 2022

jolyon the good fox nonce

‘i was not aware’ is lynskey’s entire worldview in four words

‘because it advanced my career to remain unaware’ would be the whole truth

I think he may even have read about it here when posting!

As you might've deduced, I am W2 in the thread that the brilliant @JolyonMaugham has posted. Do read if you are interested in how hard it is to report sexual assault even at an institution like the Observer, part of Guardian Media Group that claims to be invested in #metoo etc

— lucy siegle (@lucysiegle) July 13, 2022

Just an awful place to work.

I made a formal complaint to GNM after being subjected to predatory sexual behaviour when I was a student intern at the @guardian. Their complaints procedure was an absolute shambles and despite repeated requests they refused to inform me of the outcome https://t.co/kElhpL58JK

— Ana Caistor Arendar (@AnaArendar) July 13, 2022

very naive of me but I'm not shocked that nothing would come of complaints but I am shocked that somehow their procedure doesn't allow for the complainant to know the outcome of any investigation into their complaint. how is that even possible? like I genuinely don't get it.

remembering the guardian’s 2+ years of contending that the flaws in labour’s complaints process under corbyn was tantamount to antisemitism. what’s this tantamount to eh?