Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

If you could buy it without G2 or any of the supplements, it might concievably be worth picking up again.

Have you considered just throwing G2 away or burning it or never bothering to ever read it?

Careful there Pash, she'll get her father on to you (xxp)

I don't think there's a newspaper that wouldn't be improved by removing the lifestyle supplements and the columnists. Except The Sun of course, a paper without real talking man of the people Gaunty is like a month without sunshine.

Hey! But then you'd miss out on that excellent crossword!

I only get it on Saturdays, mainly for the Review. And that crossword.

Araucaria's the only real crossword dude on there, the rest of them used to be suck.

(Apologies if this has changed in the last 5 years or however long it's been)

Have you considered just throwing G2 away or burning it or never bothering to ever read it?

-- Matt DC, Monday, 31 March 2008 09:35 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I think I've mentioned a couple of times, I buy it once or twice a week on the way home, Jill likes to do the crossword. I never read it, it's too boring, too London/Westminster-orientated, too media-covering-the-media-ish, like a lot of former "quality" media - everyone they ever do a vox pop on seems to be a "journalist and a broadcaster" I don't think Jill ever reads it much either, she's a bbc news website addict.

The Age and SMH are Australia's equivalent to the Guardian, and you'll all be pleased to know that they've gone to shit in exactly the same way.

xp I'm not surprised, it's probably the closest thing to proper news outside The Independent.

everyone they ever do a vox pop on seems to be a "journalist and a broadcaster"

This is because what happens is the hack writes a piece, and it's shit because it's something they don't care about like a new dating service that instead of normal speed dating uses chilli cook offs. Then the editor will come back to the hack and say "We need some quotes on this", so the hack goes to their MSN Messenger and asks the first five people online what they think of this. So then you have "Peter Peterson, a freelance journalist, doesn't see the appeal of chili dating: 'What is this rubbish?", he quipped"

'left wing' paper yet again with "I'm All Right Jack" piece. next week, "Let them Eat Cake: Now I make a good living, I don't believe in redistribution of wealth".

Though, to be fair, every 'lifestyle section' of every newspaper is basically "Hello I'm Rich, please be quiet"

Though I guess we're moving into the "Hello I used to be rich, then I realised it was all on credit, please feel sorry for me now" stage

I'm fairly sure you could program a computer to just churn out Laxalt posts at this stage.

Rosie Millard lols

i kind of feel that this chick's editors could be done for soliciting -- anyway hope she's a better 'dancer' than writer.

Surely all responses to all Guardian threads could be automated quite easily

i kind of feel that this chick's editors could be done for soliciting -- anyway hope she's a better 'dancer' than writer.

-- banriquit, Monday, March 31, 2008 9:56 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Like Perp.

Expect about a years worth of ditzy articles in which the lifestyle columist downsizes, moves to heckmondwyke, bleats in 52 x 1000wd article about IE why oh why does the local supermarket not stay open till 3am, then moves back to London, has some rank soul-crisis about it`which translates into a cover feature in the saturday magazine. TBH I envy lifestyle columnistsSurely all responses to all Guardian threads could be automated quite easily

-- laxalt, Monday, 31 March 2008 09:56 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Well, yes.

iirc 'not linking to guardian articles' was my new year's resolution.

IN 2004!!!1!!

I need to find a Stalinbot jpeg.

http://b3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/00115/38/39/115689383_s.jpg

anyway hope she's a better 'dancer' than writer.

Maybe cock-grinding is harder than it looks

That article is pretty sharp. It's nice to feel for once that I'm not the one being trolled by the Guardian.

aren't you?

i mean unless you too are a narcissistic, libertarian, alt.sex-worker who grinds commissioning editor cock...

Aren't we all these days?

Tits oot for the commissioning editors!

Cancelled my subscription. If they're so keen on Raefists to read them then they can take their money, not mine.

Incredibly long, dreadfully bad interview, like a parody by 1980s Amis maybe:

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/celebrity/story/0,,2269466,00.html

not sure what it has to do with 'health'

Wow, terrible!

She has a hangover. So it's about binge drink Britain. Clearly.

I like to turn Freshly Squeezed on in the morning. Two seconds of those smug wankers has me out of bed and running to get to work.

eggs benedict is not healthy, that article made me think

i was stuck in such a deep thought i stopped reading pretty much after that.

i just read further. i don't like how the article described her as "stupidly beautiful". What does that mean? She is beautiful in a stupid way?

Does listening to Roy Orbison make you cool and a hep-cat and whatever-the-fuck Alexa Chung is meant to be*? Really?

* and how cool is someone who serves as a comic foil to Ben Elton? Eh?

Btw, those hepcat party pix are at cobrasnake.com and not .co.uk

Rubbish and pointless hackdom but her favourite book is Revolutionary Road (does that mean she's ever read it?) so that's supposed to make it OK holocaust.

the estuarine straggle of her voice

But she's a posh girl from Hampshire. Also makes me think of that Syd Barrett line:

"She straggled the bridge by the water"

God forbid the Guardian should ever feature working class writers writing about working class people.

i think working class is fine but that article was just beautifully stupid

http://991.com/newGallery/Beyonce-Knowles-Beautiful-Liar-395266.jpg

"I'll never forget the first time I heard the strains of "Beautiful Liar." The strains were emanating from just the other side of the Everest summit, as I sat on the icecap sipping Doritos and munching Django Reinhardt strawberry plectra."

* insert Bobby Gillespie skit here *

"Aw, Django hud his haund stuck in the pencil sharpener an' ah pulled it oot too quick like and wan a' his fingers goat stuck in there and ah goat the belt...no' a bad guitarist, right enough, but ah suggested gettin' in the fiddle the same as ah told LaMonte Young when he wis playin' pies and peas back in Newarthill."

Laura Barton says her favourite book is Yates's RR - I've never read it, but perhaps it squares with her musical Americana tastes (she likes the Boss and J Richman)? Chung says you have to be obsessed with Nabokov to be her friend, but says nothing about what she thinks of VN or what he actually did. Even if she knows the work, I doubt all those friends of hers do.

It really was an unbelievable interview, one for the Max Gogarty era, I thought; though perhaps the Guardian is already beyond belief?

I guess the moment when she says she doesn't have time to read cos she has to read 'scripts' - ie: for gameshows or breakfast TV - was what reminded me of Amisworld.

Does Ms Chung see the spoken word as her tool? And can she get on with prince or pauper?

actually, as someone said above: amazing idea that loving Roy Orbison makes you hepcat / It Girl - if this were the case, then half the counry's grandparents / great-aunts / sentimental 50sth geezers leaning on the bar of Charlton boozers, et al, would be the in crowd. For heaven's sake, is there no limit?

If Robin C were here he could tell us where 'Stranger On The Shore' might fit in to this new cartography of taste.

Sorry, that's been appropriated by Dissensus hauntologists and thing.