Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Found one of the Big Bread
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paisleyorguk/4745444303/in/photostream/

Thinking that, in Paisley, fake shops might be a popular idea, you don't have to spend any money in them for a start

I took a photo of the fake Italian deli in Dumbarton High Street the other month.

aldo, did you post yr Bristol info on that grau thread alba linked in the end? think it's the kind of stuff that would be really useful in the non-ilx public domain.

I thought about it, but after reading the comments thread it seemed fairly pointless as everyone seems to have made their mind up already.

What I love best about that Paisley Flickr is the captions all calling the imaginary shops by their original names, eg "this is 'Littlewoods'" or "this is 'Burger King'" - I think that's why I've never really took in the absurdity of the fake shops, in my head it's still 1995 and there's still lots of shops. At least the fake shopfronts give a glimmer of hope - there are shops inside Paisley's shopping centre which have been sitting vacant for ten years and more which haven't been touched at all.

fair enough

xp

Ailsa you forgot M&S

So I did. It's not even a real M&S, it's an outlet store selling stuff that was in real M&S stores four years ago anyway.

The fake bistro on the corner of Causeyside Street looks nicer than anything left in Paisley.

fuck...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255162/Fake-shopfronts-built-improve-look-recession-hit-high-streets.html

― Some other race (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 26 April 2011 07:40 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

We have something similar to this in Pittsburgh, although rather than throw up tacky vinyls the Urban Redevlopment Agency pays for facade restoration and curtains are typically hung in the windows. It makes the street look much neater. Its a 'Broken Windows' thing.

I thought about it, but after reading the comments thread it seemed fairly pointless as everyone seems to have made their mind up already.

But if people like you don't post then that's way it's going to look blah blah. Oh well, thanks for thinking about it.

I know we've got the Ayrshire/Lanarkshire thread, and the Glasgow thread, but is there an actual Paisley/Renfrewshire thread? I imagine ilx would be able to offer a fair bit of knowledge regarding local hidden gems and regional nostalgia.

(also, bear in mind that many more people read those threads than actually post to them - the people on the thread aren't necessarily representative of the people reading something you post)

Sorry, should probably disclose that I'm working for the Guardian again and have an interest in making those those threads as good as they can be.

is there an actual Paisley/Renfrewshire thread? I imagine ilx would be able to offer a fair bit of knowledge regarding local hidden gems and regional nostalgia.

I think most of trying to forget, not remember

I have no regional nostalgia, having inherited this dump through marriage. Feel free to start one though, I may contribute stuff about pubs (since that's all I really go into Paisley for these days. That, and to look at fake shop fronts, obv).

Alba, if you want me to post something then I will later tonight. IS that still the most appropriate thread?

Yes. Cheers!

Brilliant. By the time I hit send it linked to a page that the website said didn't exist any more, having rejected a valid login twice, and hitting back showed the page had deleted it all as temporary data.

I'd love to help but frankly I'm not typing it all in again. Maybe this is a contributing factor why you don't get the web attention you might want.

Err, blimey, I've not heard of problems like that. Sorry aldo.

(you're not qwan, then?)

Not your fault, don't worry about it. Unless you're the webmaster, obviously.

I probably need to read it again then if qwan is putting some things forward - I believe my friend colin_cusion has been commenting too.

Alba, I've been back in and have commented a couple of times. We've just all been moved on from there by the writer into the response thread for Zoe Williams' latest column, which completely ignores the things that have been written in the other one and trills the same party line without question (although adding a line about middle-class anti-Sainsbury's guilt as well) and repeats things which have been consistently disproven. Seriously mate, when your own journalists don't read your own relevant web content for an article they're writing that very week, it's hard to see why there's any value in it for members of the public. Either that or the Guardian are employing people who are a fucking disgrace to the notion of what a journalist might be, in which case I'd rather stock shelves than associate with this kind of oxygen thief lest I be tarred with the same brush.

I'm half-tempted to out why I was in there in the first place to expose the shame, but nobody associated with the paper would read it on this evidence.

All I can really say here is that I'll raise your concerns.

(you might actually be amazed how much editors read and talk about threads. Writers, maybe not as much)

Seriously mate, when your own journalists don't read your own relevant web content for an article they're writing that very week, it's hard to see why there's any value in it for members of the public. Either that or the Guardian are employing people who are a fucking disgrace to the notion of what a journalist might be, in which case I'd rather stock shelves than associate with this kind of oxygen thief lest I be tarred with the same brush.

i hear money supermarket can get you some great deals?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/apr/26/dorking-homeowners-insurance-rise

Which specific things do you think should not have been printed in the ZW piece?

The specific thing is that she's still repeating the "residents don't want it" line - this has been robustly debunked several times and the majority figure claimed by the protesters comes from respondents to a website and domain specifically created to oppose the store.

The squat is not unconnected to the protest, as she claims, again comprehensively debunked. There has been lots of evidence presented that in Bristol it is not "self-evident", as she claims, that "supermarkets destroy local shops". She makes a point about licensing, implying that Tesco looked to exploit the previous use regulations to bypass alcohol planning issues, but has failed to check that Tesco have pledged not to sell alcohol from these premises (which they did in response to the second appeal by the protesters) and that the previous licence had lapsed as the building had been vacant for >12 months in any case.

The most annoying, which isn't the same thing at all, is where she says the whole point is about communities caring about their members and each other while not addressing the third brothel that opened in Stokes Croft to no protest whatsoever (the only area of Bristol this has ever happened in) which doesn't seem particularly coomunity-minded.

Also, the editors might want to read the bit in the comments thread where she blames them for the failure of any of the readers to understand completely what she means.

Ah no wait, she doesn't blame the editors. She just accuses people who disagree with her of not reading what she writes properly.

Actually, it's OK, I've read your post on the ZW thread. I actually think you're being a bit harsh. Her piece is a general op-ed about the issue of supermarkets and planning permission, making relatively little reference to the Stokes Croft case. It's a peg to hang it - and the headline - on, but the talk of the local objections is made in a deliberately cursory way because she's using it as a jumping off point for the meat of the article, and the case she can talk about with more authority: the Sainsbury's in south London. I do agree that the "Residents and some councillors insist" line in itself makes it look like it's all residents and some councillors, but given that it's in a paragraph about "irreconcilable assertions" it doesn't quite carry that force.

As for her section about licensing, well that doesn't mention Stokes Croft at all. Is the preceding point the Stokes Croft Tesco site having been a comedy club invalid re: planning permission just because it had been closed for a year? I'm not sure.

Anyway, yes, I can see how if you think the story has been misreported in the media then another piece that doesn't question the narrative of locals v supermarkets is annoying, but when a columnist like ZW is looking for (or is given) a news story as a jumping off point for a general piece they want to write, I'm not sure that's the place where you can necessarily expect that questioning to occur. The story is likely to diverge from the detail of the story at that point, not narrow in on disputed facts.

xpost

The squat is not unconnected to the protest, as she claims,

She doesn't claim this, though. She says the squatters say they were connected, again in a paragraph about "assertions". Is it wrong to say the squatters say this? If so, fair enough.

Also, it's quite possible to believe that "supermarkets destroy local shops" without believing that they do in all circumstances.

I can see your points, but I'm not sure repeated something discredited under the banner of "irreconcilable assertions" excuses it - if I said "all blacks are lazy" but caveated it properly so I didn't deny I thought it might be true, would that be OK?

I concede she's the one that says the squatters say they weren't connected but her claim is the first time I've read it. The closest I've seen is that they've denied having petrol bombs, and previous events have made it clear they are involved. In fact, the temporary occupation of the building last year was by the same people.

My understanding of the planning regulations is that a Community Impact Assessment has to be done for a new off-licence and that the details it needs is the alcohol available at the time of the assessment and not historically. It's conceivable it could conclude, however, that if everything else is unchanged then there is no added impact in a one-for-one exchange, but that can't be argued if there's a gap in ownership.

Agreed though, it's my frustration at the ongoing misrepresentation of the motivations of the protest and misrepresentations of the PRSC and their claimed altruism that grates especially if you think people should know better.

Police helicopter back right now btw, but can't be arsed going out to see why.

police helicopter is being a total dick tonight imo

If editors really are reading Alba, I'd imagine this is the sort of thing that would wind them up. If not, maybe their attention should be drawn to it. From the comments thread on Zoe W's piece that you think I might have been harsh on:

Zoe
After almost forty years of Guardian reading it has taken reading the comments of the three Guardian writers on this issue or the penny to finally drop. You don't do reporting any more but create social commentary around your particular beliefs but without an adequate basis in fact and without r interviewing a broad range of people. Is it a bit like derivative trading; in the end the same stuff is goes through the journalistic sausage machine so many times that every one gets a bit of sub-prime information? In the end you have regard it all as tainted.

I always thought Private Eye was unkind to label you Guardianistas but the tendency to brush up your radical credentials from a distance without really engaging with the community you write about as well as your relativism towards violence does give the label some credence (and all this between the odd car review)
But then I did have a Che T-shirt as well .......

While I'm not convinced it's entirely true...

Is that not more or less true for 'comment' pieces in general? They're usually wilfully biased or contrarian, or use a topical issue as a jumping off point for an opinion that might only loosely be connected to the matter at hand. Any shades of grey, so essential to reliable reporting, are removed. Balance isn't achieved by adding nuance to articles, it's provided by running two polemical articles saying completely different things.

As bad as those articles often are, i have less problem with Zoe Williams writing an opinion piece that can be robustly Fisked by people in the comments than journalists like Luke Harding editorialising wildly in what are meant to be news pieces.

googled 'fisked', felt vaguely made ill and dissatisfied w/ the world

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Is the homepage redirecting anyone else to http://users.guardian.co.uk/mydetails/0,,,00.html or is it just me?

A colour article describing the first day of the Queen's state visit to Ireland referred, among other things, to the security measures in evidence, and closed with the observation that ordinary people in crowds would have no opportunity to speak with the Queen. "Instead," the piece went on, "some questions submitted by children will be projected on screens at an event organised by the British embassy at Dublin's convention centre on Thursday night [19 May]. 'What colour is your bicycle?' says one. 'Do you have a pink hairbrush?' says another. 'Do you kill people?' asks a third." The article was entirely mistaken about the second two quotes, about which the writer of the piece was misinformed: the projections – on the rear exterior of the convention centre where the Queen was to attend a concert indoors – included neither a question about a hairbrush nor about killing.

Is it not about a bicycle?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/20/hugh-muir-diary-lars-von-trier

Have I stumbled into the Daily Mail by mistake?

1. Kate and Gerry McCann are lovely and their story is tragic. (Plus he can't even get the basic facts right, the thread was 'Grief Whores R Us')
2. The lovely Queen sticks one up to those nast Irishers.
3. The NHS and Tony Blairs are hoorid and NHS reforms can't come soon enough.
4. Foreigners doing made-up subjects at our universities are con artists.
5. Schadenfreude at your competitors.

1. well, obviously squaddies are models of compassion and good judgement.
2. is about heaney's hypocrisy when a posh dinner is at stake, not really about the queen's merits or otherwise.
3. is about how the same people who screwed up one nhs project are now in charge of the reforms, i can't see how you can possibly read it as anti-nhs
4. is about taking the piss out of a racist academic. fair enough.
5. not sure what is specifically daily mail about mocking rivals but you have read diary columns before, right?

why would u even read that

The anti-Heaney piece is nasty and lowers my opinion of this writer, which was not high.

bought the observer print edition today for first time in a while. god it's like self parody at times...what a load of shit. could barely read a single thing it was all such rubbish.

the rawnsley column is good today.

I could not make head nor tail of this article. Just terrible writing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/23/future-policy-elderly-care-on-own

"However, as we can see, though, from the contradictory advice given to the Queen, there is nothing inevitable about projections."

Looks like bad subbing imo - Dorling's books are very good.

think it was a turing test, in which case it failed

Even if (like almost every other nation state in Europe) we disband the households of servants that royalty and the super-rich have established to care for them, so that the cost of these servants can be redistributed to allow the rest of us to be cared for more efficiently, there may well not be enough younger people to go around in Britain.

also nice to see the graun run yet another piece by a hamas bro, keep up the good work :S

Yes DG that graf in particular was a bit whaaa