Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Pass Notes is like shooting fish in a barrel, it's the single worst thing in the Guardian.

12noon: BREAKING: Kiss couple will go on a second date, I've been told. More shortly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/apr/15/kissing-in-public-live-blog

what a farce...

guess i wasn't far off

OMG, dark-haired one on the right has been in a drinking situ with me and Lex! "Financial journalist" would be the pertinent clue re. the connection - dude knows a fair few activists, let's say.

really?! did not recognise at all (and still don't) - we had no twitter follows in common when i checked

― lex pretend, Friday, 15 April 2011 07:18 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Twitter doesn't come into it. Dude in question is a good friend of Hugo's and I'm pretty sure he came to one of my birthday drinks with him.

― a modest broposal (suzy), Friday, 15 April 2011 08:14 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah that makes sense, wondered if it was through hugo!

― lex pretend, Friday, 15 April 2011 08:22 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

reckon this piece of info can make tomorrow's guardian front page #slownewsdays

― Jlloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken (ken c), Friday, 15 April 2011 10:03 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there's a v well written tanya gold, i think, article on abortion today, fwiw

yeah but who will she bring with her tonight for the big kiss?

Libby Brooks, not Tanya Gold

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/big-society-abortion-advice

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/16/home-birth-trial-or-rewarding

The pictures that accompanied this article - even more so in the print edition - had me wanting to gouge my eyes out. I get that birth is a natural and beautiful thing but fuck if I want to see a woman spread wide with half a baby hanging out her while I'm having a lunchtime read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/14/hail-rock-roll-laura-barton

the summary is: Sometimes the meaning of a song is communicated not with words or explanation, but through the magic of the music itself

really blowing my mind, it's almost as if all instrumental music ever made somehow HAS MEANING, but no words??? and there is music with foreign lyrics, somehow that too speaks to me???

hang on a second, it's ALMOST as if lyrics are frequently just part of a wider collection of sounds forming pieces of music. jesus...and not actually separate pieces of poetry to be pored over in awful music columns.

I like how Alba maintains correctness.

Reading Laura Barton feels like biting down on the prongs of a fork.

I wonder if biting Laura Barton feels like reading the prongs of a fork?

Actually I doubt it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/22/bristol-riot-tesco

So, so many errors but this is some kind of horrific passive-aggressive threat bullshit:

Bristol City council has a clear choice now: continue to let Tesco trade and risk last night becoming a regular occurrence

This scuffle was about half a mile from my house, so I think I'm 'local' enough to have a point of view. Some things the Guardian doesn't tell you:

The self-appointed 'leader' of the troublemakers owns a fruit and veg shop about a mile away, but isn't motivated by potential loss of profit from her overpriced organic only shop, OH NO.

In addition to the damage to Tesco, a local independent bike shop and an independent cafe round the corner had their windows put in, and the Jamaican restaurant a couple of doors down had its waste bin set on fire in front of the shop and a storage trailer it uses run down the street then set on fire.

The postcard campaign and the survey mentioned were run by the Canteen, a cafe/restaurant a little further down the road and the centre of the anti-Tesco campaign. 2500 postcards were received from an unknown number of people, Tesco identified 3000 different people shopped in the store in the 6 days it was open.

The police turned up in the first place because there was someone on the roof of the squat shouting he was going to firebomb Tesco. About 18 months ago the same area of road was closed because a guy was on the roof of the squat throwing slates at pedestrians. That was also to protest about Tesco, according to his defence in court.

Still, never let the facts get in the way of an ill-conceived article.

the guardian is always worse than it used to be

which fruit and veg shop does the leader own? that one on picton street?

The Guardian circulation rose 5.47% to 279308 month on month and is now down 11.21% year on year.

Aye, the one on Picton Street. Bristol knowledge xpost

Interesting stuff, Aldo. I used to live in that part of Bristol, and it definitely had it's holier-than-thou crusty aggro veganism thing going on. Reminds me of similar nimbyism in Stoke Newington when an Nando's was being opened on Church St OH NO SOMEWHERE WORKING CLASS PEOPLE EAT IS BEING OPENED ON OUR PRECIOUS STREET!!!

ha, that place looks dreadful in a £15-for-a-pot-of-honey way.

i am just up the hill near st andrews park, but i was away this weekend and missed the fireworks. which cafe got a window put in? didn't see any damage at arts cafe or kino?

p.s. i tried to get some discussion going The nature of political protest in britain

I heard similar about the trouble in Stokes Croft from a Bristolian guy on another forum I'm on. I got the impression that the police had left an unattended vehicle like they did in London recdently? I wonder if this is a "thing", kind of a mechanical agent provocateur if so.

Couple of decent pieces in the magazine this sat I thought. The one about ppl who had been on Jeremy kyle show was a bit of an eye-opener.

The cafe that had the windows put in is the one right at the top of Picton Street, the Bristolian is it called? Painted green, a narrow triangular shaped place.

Darragh, the abandoning of the land rover came during the withdrawal which happened after the protesters tried to force open the petrol cap of a van full of officers. There's a pretty clear clip of it on YouTube.

"the bristol cafe" i think.

had no idea all of you were in bristol; kinda seems impossible to be more than one degree of separation from people here irl. & yeah, i wonder which cafe got beat up? i think i would get shutters if i were kino.

The postcard campaign and the survey mentioned were run by the Canteen, a cafe/restaurant a little further down the road and the centre of the anti-Tesco campaign. 2500 postcards were received from an unknown number of people, Tesco identified 3000 different people shopped in the store in the 6 days it was open.

i'm kinda with you here, but i don't really think use of an open supermarket is quite the same as opposition to opening a supermarket; once it's there the significance of your custom or boycott is kinda minimal. i think that there was, canteen-skewed or not, self-righteous or not, real distaste for the idea of having a tesco there, from people in that area, no? like it isn't hard to get that range of products from the sainsbury's ten minutes up the road or the londis on picton street, etc, esp. considering the latter's always surprisingly well stocked backroom vegetable emporium.

real good photos, caek, i have seen them all over.

xp, cafe mystery solved btw. currently speculating as to why protesters probably blew up their own HQ but n/m

In the Hare on the Hill just now with the local CSO on his break from the front of Tesco. He's coming out with some interesting stuff he probably shouldn't be about Thursday but claims to have been one of the people in the squat with the negotiators on the night.

He also says he thinks it is building to kick off again tonight.

weekend mag was partic strong this week i thought, agreed pash.

Agree re: the weekend mag - usually I'm done with it in a half hour but yesterday's I read pretty much cover-to-cover, I can't remember the last time I did that.

I use Tesco a lot, but I really don't like Nando's.

I was going to imagine how it would be if a Nando's opened near me, then realized there has been a big one round the corner for many years.

i'm not a nandos stan like others i know, but the nando's is EASILY the best thing on church street - would take an entire street of nandos and tescos over that child's clothing shop called "olive loves alfie"

what awful apostrophising. nando's. tesco. how does one pluralise "nando's"? i haven't caffeinated yet today ugh.

There was a lot of dissent when it was rumoured that Starbucks or Tesco were going to open on the site of the old Vortex but, from what i recall, most of it evaporated when it was finally revealed to be a Nando's. You can't fight a Nando's.

The Film Shop is still the best thing on Church Street though.

Actually, Rasa, Anglo-Asian and Abi Ruchi are all amazing. Church Street isn't so bad.

i'd pluralise nando's like "nandos". think they're a bit crap tbh but fuck a nimby

nandos situ just points how crazily segregated stokey is - like, on race/class lines, in stokey there are two entirely seperate communities living within each other, and doing their best to barely acknowledge each other. its pretty fucking bizarre, and weird.

but yeah, "nandos is best thing on church street" is pretty inexcusable challops: film shop is streets ahead, the spence bakery is not bad (though badly overpriced), the farmers market at the weekend is brilliant... nandos meanwhile is pretty fucking expensive for what it is, and you could get much cheaper and nicer food from any of the turkish restaurants nearby, not to mention millenium kebab, which is godlike, or the well-named best kebab shop.

haha it was challopy, there's nothing on church street i actively go there for except the barber out of habit. the cafés all seem nice, much of a muchness.

i used to go to that barbers when i lived nearer there, and the dude can tell you ace stories about the place back when it was a squatters paradise. i think he's amazed he's been able to stick it out there as long as he has; with so many hobby shops for the wealthy along that strip, shop leases are unrealistically high...

my only beef w nandos btw is that i think the food sucks: i certainly don't share that stokey nimbyism or blanket hatred of chainstores, etc - although all the tescos in the vicinity are remarkably dogshit. i really fucking hate fresh'n'wild/whole food shop, though: so egregiously overpriced, customers uniformly rude and entitled cunts who deserve to get fleeced by the store's hateful anti-unionising owners.

i was much happier in tooting, tbh, tho thats gotten crazy gentrified since i moved away.

Sort of on the fence about the nando/nimby issue. Don't particularly like Nando's and don't really have a problem with people in a neighbourhood saying the don't want certain types of store there. There is sort of an irony I guess in that people move to certain areas because they have 'character' but then bemoan that loss of character when their move there was really part of that process

But then I'm not all that convinced by the class argument here, that it is middle class nimbys that don't want things like nandos or tescos on their street. Of course there's truth in this but I find this really reductive.

At same time - in a way - the 'battle' is already lost whether the nandos is built or not, because places like nandos are effects just as much as they are causes. The local place it displaces is no longer 'real' if it has to be protected

Its an interesting idea that increasing homogeneity of shopping/eating is killing character in places, when for many towns its a shift in homogeneity - from the workplace homogeneity of old, the mine, the steelworks, the docks, the mill, to a store homogeneity

ha weird, that makes 5 people i know who are, or have been, regular customers of that place now. (the one right by the corner of stoke newington high st, right?)

i've never exchanged a non-transactional word with him myself, but last time i was there i overheard the actual phase "i could've been a contender" from a fellow customer, w/r/t his failed boxing career ;_;

xp

please note i didn't specify middle class nimbys but tbh that concern with realness is basically a middle class ish imo. i think Fair Trade is a good thing but on the whole as far as i'm concerned a small capitalist is still just a capitalist hoping to hit big, so bollocks to paying thru the nose just to feel good about yrself

i shop too often in tesco to be able to say anything against it really - the saturation isn't pleasing but i prize the convenience, see why others actually need the convenience, and think anyone who suggests tesco customers should spend more time and more money on their grocery shopping by going to 805983398342 separate independent businesses to do it should fuck off

please note i didn't specify middle class nimbys but tbh that concern with realness is basically a middle class ish imo. i think Fair Trade is a good thing but on the whole as far as i'm concerned a small capitalist is still just a capitalist hoping to hit big, so bollocks to paying thru the nose just to feel good about yrself

― A Zed and Two Nults (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 25, 2011 7:05 AM

it is more a middle class thing overall but some distance from exclusively i think. 'realness' in this kind of scenario is sorta nebulous as the places trying to be saved have kind of lost their realness if they are to be museum pieces - but then small capitalists or not, there's still the issue of do we as a society want those with power, and use of economies of scale, be able to use that

[a small capitalist is still just a capitalist hoping to hit big,

better one tyrant 3000 miles away than 3000 tyrants one mile away:P

i mean to put this in catholic vs protestant terms!

ha i get the arguments but in a consumer society consumers are gonna decide what makes a business viable or not. i'm not all yay big business but as long as you have businesses they are gonna tend towards getting bigger, or dying

Speaking of Tesco, here is a tale from my former home town:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/wantage/8975401.Class_war__Waitrose_too_posh_for_our_town/

(The Tesco bid was supposedly rejected because it was too far from the existing town marketplace to encourage out-of-town Tesco shoppers to walk across and use the other shops. This makes a bit of sense I guess - town council didn't want to increase traffic on into town if none of the money is going to stay in town - but there isn't really anywhere to build a supermarket closer to the centre. The Waitrose proposal is more central but in a street that can't handle extra traffic.)

There are certainly things to dislike abt Tesco's business methods (to pick one of many similar stories, one round here selling newspapers on a buy-this-get-something-else-free offer right by the front door until the newsagent/corner shop opposite went bust, then stopped the offers and hid the newspapers in a back corner) but I keep using them so eh.

ha i get the arguments but in a consumer society consumers are gonna decide what makes a business viable or not.

Well this is the thing, really all this is a subconscious lament for the death of manufacturing