Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I was a marquess's daughter with a privileged upbringing, an acting career and a flat in Notting Hill. Simon was an armed robber serving nine years who'd grown up on a council estate.

But in the confines of the prison walls, our very different upbringings didn't matter. As part of the acting workshop I ran in the prison, he played a handsome Macbeth to my Lady Macbeth.

Despite family and friends decrying the match, after a 15-month romance, we married. We went on to have a daughter, Hero, seven, and a son, Tybalt, six, and bought a disused church in Snowdonia. It could have been idyllic. The problems came when I discovered Simon's drug habit, then his affair.

This is incredible stuff. I just want to savour it before I read any further.

clearly the woman's a dobber, but the CiF feeding frenzy is kinda full of unedifying attitudes and assumptions too

I'm not going to actually read a CiF thread to find out.

archive of Times column: http://www.stcurigschurch.com/sunday%20times.htm

Her ancestor gave us the Queensberry Rules, and bankrupted Oscar Wilde.

I was a marquess's daughter with a privileged upbringing, an acting career and a flat in Notting Hill. Simon was an armed robber serving nine years who'd grown up on a council estate.

But in the confines of the prison walls, our very different upbringings didn't matter. As part of the acting workshop I ran in the prison, he played a handsome Macbeth to my Lady Macbeth.

Despite family and friends decrying the match, after a 15-month romance, we married. We went on to have a daughter, Hero, seven, and a son, Tybalt, six, and bought a disused church in Snowdonia. It could have been idyllic. The problems came when I discovered Simon's drug habit, then his affair.

This is incredible stuff. I just want to savour it before I read any further.

― Matt DC, Monday, December 20, 2010 12:13 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

lololololol

That's not a Cif thread, btw. Just sayin' like. Comment is free is the home of opinion pieces. It's not "any Guardian story with user comments enabled".

Comment is free is the home of opinion pieces fucking maniacs.

fixed

PLEASE CAN PEOPLE STOP CROSSING THROUGH THINGS AND WRITING "fixed" IT IS THE MOST ANNOYING PRISSY THING EVER, EVEN MORE ANNOYING AND PRISSY THAN ME.

PLEASE CAN PEOPLE STOP CROSSING THROUGH THINGS AND WRITING "fixed" IT IS THE MOST ANNOYING PRISSY AMAZING SEXY AND WITTY THING EVER, EVEN MORE ANNOYING AND PRISSY THAN ME.

fixed

almost, adhering to guardian proofing standards

and then someone...

YUP, guessed so (xpost)

big link from FRONT PAGE online to this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/24/view-from-broad-lauren-laverne

She's whip-smart

not sure laura barton is best-placed to judge intelligence

it looks like laverne is the anchor...

also

✤ We are positively itchy with excitement for Portlandia, the new comedy series set in the Oregonian city of Portland, co-written and starring Ms Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. It promises to take a wry look at the city's hipster-crafty-leftwing community. Sadly, the series has only just started showing in the US, so we are unlikely to get it for yonks. [continues on p. 94]

It's a very very long way down the front page to the extent that going 'FRONT PAGE' is a little excessive.

fair enough, it is below "the inside track: HARD BEDS". still too prominent imo.

Oh, the Guard comments on the Lauren Laverne amount to "no evidence of wit" from some kettles.

I assumed they stuck it there for SEO purposes rather than because they really think Laura Barton's opinion on Lauren Laverne is as important as Palestine.

I realise it's flagrant zingbait but I'm quite intrigued by the Portlandia thing (which I am reading abt for the first time in the quoted post above), if only because the late-teen versh of myself would be terribly disappointed otherwise

it wasn't so much the show as the paragraph hurting my eyes

yes. she also says 'those of us on this side of the pond' which I think Mark S banned a long time ago

She makes a very valid point about Lauren's deployment versus her experience on 10 O'Clock - the 'hawt blonde sidekick OTMing the nerds' space she currently fills there needs fixing, STAT.

My suggestions for fixing The 10 O'Clock Show mostly involve a rocket and the sun.

good call

Oh dear...

Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade gave it to The Sun with both barrels this morning over its “failure” to run the news that Sky sports pundits Richard Keys and Andy Gray had been axed in a row over off-air sexist comments.

“…the editor, Dominic Mohan, got it hopelessly wrong. By ignoring the story, he tends to prove the theory that Murdoch’s papers dance to Murdoch’s tune.”

Axegrinder understands that there was much hilarity at Wapping when perplexed hacks realised that Roy must have been reading an Irish edition of The Sun which was missing the Sky Sports tale. Sun readers elsewhere will have seen that the story was in fact splashed across pages one, four and five.

Roy’s misfiring blog post disappeared shortly after the mishap was pointed out. But it has not disappeared from the internet completely, you can see a version of it here.

"Get 'Em Off" was the Sun headline, I believe

has anyone ever described a man as "whip-smart"? also who is the "we" that barton refers to.

btw have we had a thread about that awful show yet? i can't think of a worse example of "omg ur soooo right, u should be president, i agree with u cos it makes me smart" bullshit than putting brooker and mitchell on a c4 show.

It's on a thread about the 11 o'clock show, I think.

has anyone ever described a man as "whip-smart"?

HA. Henry Root used to make the same running observation about the use of "corrosively intelligent" which only applies to actresses apparently.

in a way it is worse for The Sun to hypocritically decry sexism. in a way.

pretty funny given what barton's saying in the piece, "whip-smart" is such a cutesy twee term. why wouldn't you just say "smart"? why "whip-smart"? if you wanted to call someone smart you'd say they're smart.

It has a head-patting ring to it, yeah, like you'd tell a 10 year-old they're "whip smart" and then give them a shiny 50p coin.

yeah exactly, you'd use it talking about a precocious child or something.

http://drinksbyjohn.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wert.jpg

http://www.fti.asn.au/blogs/production-support-report/juno.jpg

i think it's ok to say 'whip-smart'

and like, yeah it's on the 'front page' of the internet but way far down and laura barton is one of their main writers. the big headline they have up is about a pay-channel football commentator getting the sack, so, you know...

Axegrinder understands that there was much hilarity at Wapping when perplexed hacks realised that Roy must have been reading an Irish edition of The Sun which was missing the Sky Sports tale. Sun readers elsewhere will have seen that the story was in fact splashed across pages one, four and five.

Roy’s misfiring blog post disappeared shortly after the mishap was pointed out. But it has not disappeared from the internet completely, you can see a version of it here.

also most of this stuff has been leaked by sky news.

andy gray is one of the potential litigants in the notw phone hacking thing. cynical, or just being honest?

For all the celebrity bollocks they go on for, the Guardian could now realistically claim to be the best newspaper in the anglophone world. Which means, of course, the world.

least worst

least worst might be right, but still.

Usually, the media would be going "this is going too far, no-one can compliment a woman now for fear of getting sacked", but ooh, it's Murdoch effectively doing the sacking, so....

apparently mMurdoch is also now NEGOTIATING with government about whether he gets his Sky deal.

not, government is going to make a ruling which will then be followed - but, government is going to NEGOTIATE outcome with Murdoch.

So it's "um, if we say no, can we still be pals?"

Murdoch's support couldn't even buy them an election victory, don't see why they're obliged to bend over for him.

I'm shocked by how old Murdoch looks now. He's lost so much hair that he's finally had "the haircut".

I'm wondering what's going to happen when he dies, whether the country and its media and politics will get better or whether the army of mini-Murdochs is too entrenched now. He does seem to wield an enormous amount of personal power that I can't quite see anyone else replicating.

Think someone needs to incept James Murdoch.

Even looks like Saito:

http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2011/01/25/60896-rupert-murdoch-chairman-and-chief-executive-of.jpg

Osama Hamdan is head of the Hamas international relations department