Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

the article i linked to wasn't joking at all tho. it was saying, "ignore the scare stories, ucl's islamic society totally doesn't host jihadi speakers."

i don't think it's new that the guardian has an upper-middle class outlook on the world that, though outwardly liberal in certain respects, conceals a strong social prejudice

don't think it's news

basically.

its definitely not new, but when you read stuff like this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainability/blog/diversity-inclusion-corporate-social-responsibility
i just think its all a bit hollow.

it was saying, "ignore the scare stories, ucl's islamic society totally doesn't host jihadi speakers."

I think it was saying the opposite:

The answer from the union emerged this week. Nothing doing. "Of course it is going to be difficult and I am sure we will get some stick, but we are going to defend the Islamic Society and its right to hear from controversial speakers

One member of staff commented in the staff survey that "GNM tries hard as an organisation to be inclusive and encourage diversity but there is a significant challenge due to the highly networked nature of the culture."

Some staff are more cynical. One wrote: "There is a liberal 'façade' presented to the outside world but indoors it feels coldly conservative on this issue (diversity) and it's agonising and very painful to be so unrepresented at senior management in this company."

all seems a bit futile anyway. they get black columnists in to write shit like hideously diverse britain!

not really onimo because hugh muir doesn't call the guy he interviewed on his shit, or interview anyone else. ucl has hosted some right rotters, which would never have happened in the 'no-platform' 1980s.

true that the article is not explicit about how the daily mail and telegraph are wrong to suspect anything. but what do you make of the tone?

"Before long, they were facing a clamour – generated via the web – for the Islamic Society to be closed, or at least reconfigured so as to shield its members from anyone who might conceivably be construed as a radicaliser."

I like the books section, that's always pretty okay the comments section is always amusing but I agree with this
"There is a liberal 'façade' presented to the outside world but indoors it feels coldly conservative on this issue (diversity) and it's agonising and very painful to be so unrepresented at senior management in this company."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2010/mar/03/toyota-automotive-industry

And I wonder how many Japanese toddlers have been crushed under the chassis of a poorly driven Hummer?

- And I wonder how many Japanese toddlers have been crushed under the chassis of a poorly driven Hummer? Ahhhhhhhh.
- No, not "Ahhhhhhhh"!

hahahahaha

Rod Liddle is repping for Laura Barton and Petridis.

The horrible irony is that it possesses great writers – Laura Barton, Alexis Petridis, Sam Woolaston, Vikram Dodd and the wonderful Marina Hyde, even Tim Dowling; yet they are largely hidden away in its little pockets and niches, and not allowed to alter the feel of the whole, which is the feel of a Boden catalogue boot stamping on a etc etc

what a horribly formed "irony". i don't think he's wrong about the gaurdian but apart from the harmless music critic alexis petridis, all of those people* are exactly what's wrong with the guardian. laura barton is the world's worst writer; sam woolaston is as thick as pigshit; *i don't know who vikram dodd is so; marina hyde is not wonderful; and tim dowling is... that really unfunny comedy guy, right?

He's right about Toynbee though.

all of those people* are exactly what's wrong with the guardian.

I mean, I'm not sure this is true. We tend to focus on the pointless fluff here but there are worse crimes committed in the main newspaper on a daily basis.

dowling = bad column in the weekend bit; their worst tv writer (woolaston is actually better than he reads i think)

petridis would be better if editor would tell him 'no, cut the prickish joke here and actually engage' on bits where he is doing prickish jokes instead of engaging

xposts

what are the worse crimes committed in the main section today, for the sake of argt.? (n.b. haven't had a chance to do more than glance at it yet)

Polly Toynbee. Jackie Ashley. Seamus Milne. Madeline Bunting. Peter Preston. All worse than the above, mostly because they're writing about issues of substance.

(Sorry, not today's edition, but you get what I mean...)

ha i was gonna say ...

Marina Hyde isnt wonderful, shes just another overly smug idiot trotting out yet more celeb fluff but under the guise of hating celeb fluff. not bad looking though. id smash. Tim Dowling used to make me laugh a bit, but now he just seems to be on autopilot. both those weekend columns are pointless and deserve to be hidden away. preferably in another paper. wollaston's tv columns are never insightful. theyre just dull and muddy. like most of their g2 tv reviewers actually.

liddle was kinda otm except for the writers he named.

stilll, i dunno what other papers to read.

The Guardian is a lot like ILX, actually, You think it's tedious, smug, hypocritical, poorly written and badly thought out, full of pompous windbags flapping their predictable opinions - until you go around and check out the alternatives, and you realise that really, it's not half as bad as you think it is by comparison.

true

all of those people* are exactly what's wrong with the guardian.

I mean, I'm not sure this is true. We tend to focus on the pointless fluff here but there are worse crimes committed in the main newspaper on a daily basis.

― Matt DC, Friday, March 5, 2010 4:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Polly Toynbee. Jackie Ashley. Seamus Milne. Madeline Bunting. Peter Preston. All worse than the above, mostly because they're writing about issues of substance.

― Matt DC, Friday, March 5, 2010 5:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

alright ok, i can get behind this. im more likely to read the pointless fluff. i guess reading it online nothing is "tucked away" so marina hyde feels like a more visible presence than madeline bunting, who i never read. toynbee is "just there". i don't think jackie ashley is bad exactly; like martin kettle it's kind of interesting to get an idea of what the labour big shots are talking/arguing about behind the scenes.

seamus milne is a menace and an idiot imho

We're now taking Liddle's opinions seriously? Might as well start quoting Nick Griffin next.

Categorising Liddle as a racist is reductive and unhelpful and true.

The Guardian is a lot like ILX, actually, You think it's tedious, smug, hypocritical, poorly written and badly thought out, full of pompous windbags flapping their predictable opinions - until you go around and check out the alternatives, and you realise that really, it's not half as bad as you think it is by comparison.

Very much otm. I know it's not really a comparison, but the quickest way to send my blood pressure through the roof of a morning is to have a read through the comments on the Guardian blogs. By comparison to the incessant clusterfuck idiocy there, the Graun's actual writers are like dear and cherished friends to me.

Wow when did Rod Liddle turn into Jeremy Clarkson? That oped piece is atrocious. I can't believe something so thick-headed even got published in a "proper" magazine.

And, even though I'm repeating myself, is there anything more fucking stupid and culturally reductive than this white middle class journalist man as whiny victim of "PC", the "left" etc, which seems to have become a media trope @ sometime during the last decade?

(obv unrelated to the guardian, but, you know)

Hatred of "PC" only means someone female, or with views to the left of this type of correspondent, has called such a person out on his poor manners.

Wow when did Rod Liddle turn into Jeremy Clarkson?

ohhhh

there is much worse out there from liddle

it's not an article but a blogpost, though

A blog post? Maybe somebody guessed his password and posted it without him knowing.

darraghmac strikes again!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/11/generation-x-sarcasm-seriously

But by the time I was born, in the 1970s, some detached, too-cool Left Bank intellectual had taken a break from his doctorate in semiotics to invent postmodernism, and we were doomed to a world of irony.

good point darra!

tbh my reaction to that is 'haha u old'

It's about time someone wrote an article about Gen X and irony.

been waiting twenty years for it

it was on the tip of everyone's tongue; darraghmac just gave it a name

I used to like Peter Preston's columns for some reason, but I seem to have forgotten what it was.

i get blamed for everything around here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/09/finnegans-wake-nonsense

you just get worse and worse don't you.

Oh ffs

This cunt is now officially offensive to the point of it not being funny to jibe our darragh about it

yeah but but but
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/12/malcolm-tucker-election-briefing

a++ intervention guardianistas

didn't even read that irony article...basically clear it was some utter fucking moron. guardian actually hurts me as a human being once it goes beyond party politics and news.

I can't believe some people actually even vaguely considered the merits of Liddle's piece - what a hateful, hateful piece of crap that man is.

And also, James Joyce quite obviously couldn't read Finnegan's Wake because he was ALMOST BLIND during the writing of it. So shut up, dickfaces.

Was today's Weekend magazine photo feature on Cameron supporters supposed to be a hit list? Or just a sign that I should stop buying The Guardian?

Was today's Weekend magazine photo feature on Cameron supporters supposed to be a hit list? Or just a sign that I should stop buying The Guardian?

i only saw a couple of those pictures on the website - there's some horrendous audio-slideshow in which they talk about the virtues of 'at the coalface' governance and some other shit - but i kind of feel like as an article it has some anthropological value. they did one about the new breed of young, fashionable, glassy-eyed tories a few years ago (just after cameron became leader iirc) which was terrifying. these things should be kept for posterity so their protagonists can be tracked down in five years and made to answer a tribunal.

See, I'd like to believe it had anthropological value but ... it just felt like Cameronite porn ... and the Guardian clearly saying it's fine to vote Conservative because a gay man and a novelist are going to.