Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

i happened into pret yesterday and found it a bit awkward as the cashier didn't seem capable of sentences longer than two words. "take out?" "receipt?" no charming innocent-esque joy giveaways for me.

dunno how to break this to u but u got joy takeawayed blud

my tesco has been doing a 4-bottles-for-6-pounds deal of brewdog's 9% "American IPA" for what seems like months now and it has turned me into a docile addict of their product

I am pretty sure i saw Gerry Adams in Cafe Nero last week. Not sure if that boosts its leftist credentials or not.

my tesco has been doing a 4-bottles-for-6-pounds deal of brewdog's 9% "American IPA" for what seems like months now and it has turned me into a docile addict of their product

Sparky punky free-thinker, surely?

I get the impression that those people really are a wunch of bankers, fwiw. In this case iw not very much really but the point remains.

the supermarkets do have great deals on brewdog. think 660ml punk ipa bottles are about £1.80 or something.

i was going to say that this whole conversation was off-topic but i looked at the thread title again and, y'know

A few months ago, I got 2 free "choco-wafflewafer' things given, for the kids. Nice of them, but they were not good...

Ronan, as far as I can remember, that price is for the 330ml bottle (at least it is in Sainos).

The coffee thing in the G2 infuriated me. It's coffee. Just coffee. Who cares*.

* I am fully aware that I should stop taking the G2 into the toilet with me at work, it only enrages me. Maybe I'll read Monocle instead. LOL!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/15/becca-bland-estranged-parents

read this through three times now and it doesn't say anything about why the author is estranged from her parents, or even hint at it. which makes it really puzzling to try and get a handle on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/16/kraftwerk-at-tate-modern

haha this surely was specifically commissioned to earn a place in 'Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?'

read all the way to the end

should point out that that was actually in the comment section of the print edition of the Observer today - it's not just some CiF thing

Yeah, take it to the "Is the Observer worse than it used to be" thread, EK!

"It certainly gave me a few wry chuckles; and I feel much better now about not getting tickets. They sound like a modem! Ouch! Take that, electronic music!"

Where have all these so-called Kraftwerk fans come from? Fuck off and go and watch Mumford & Sons, you cunts!!!!!!!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/labout-address-migration-impact-britain

This is pretty infuriating.

Deliberately dishonest, factually inaccurate tosh that sees pushing even further to the right than Blair / Brown / Straw / Blunkett as 'opening a dialogue that wasn't previously being addressed' or similar nonsense. Ugh.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/dec/20/tv-review-young-apprentice

Patrick's idea is this: a choir of middle-aged women, singing Lady Gaga's Poker Face, in a shopping centre... They wander out among the shoppers. They sing about their poker faces.

Or, as I believe the young people call the song, 'Bad Romance'. Which is jam packed with references to poker faces.

I tell a lie, they had a second go at it which was Poker Face.

Is aldo worse that he used to be?

Yes. Yes, he is.

It happens to us all. :/

anyone heard anything about the print edition going saturdays only next year?

how successful is the ipad edish?

DL keeps the trolls fed and reading the paper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/01/pop-music-sick-2013-revival

leaveitallbehind

02 January 2013 12:06 PMLink to this comment
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@ladivina69 - totally concur with your comments. The majority of the current pop music is merely background filler!

When was the last time people actually made the effort to listen to an album?

You write about chart pop in the Guardian you get the cranks and their thinly veiled racism, although this thread's faring better than most to be honest. I've only been called a middle-class white hipster once.

At least 20% of the comments left on the Guardian website each month come from only 2,600 user accounts, who together make up just 0.0037% of the Guardian’s declared monthly audience.

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2012/12/guardian-comments-part-1057.php

That doesn't surprise me -- it seems like most newspaper commenters are made up of a dedicated group of trolls and/or right wing fanatics.

I'd be surprised if it was less than 50℅, particularly on CIF.

Sliders

Mini-burgers, as that nice man off Spooks explains on the M&S advert. First imported from New York, as most things are, by Soho restaurateur Russell Norman. Like the three-thirds-of-a-pint beer "tasting stick" – you've seen one of those, surely? – this is either a great way to taste several different burgers at once, or a ploy to make us pay over-the-odds for minuscule meat patties.

I have no idea what this could possibly mean.

First imported from New York, as most things are

!!!

Like the three-thirds-of-a-pint beer "tasting stick" – you've seen one of those, surely?

wtf?

French dip

Not a euphemism for a sexual peccadillo (see also, pulled pork), but an LA export gaining a foothold in London. And little wonder. We're talking a meat sandwich

And little wonder. this article contains some of the worst writing i've seen in print.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/03/hipster-food-glossary-french-dip-burnt-ends

Like the three-thirds-of-a-pint beer "tasting stick" – you've seen one of those, surely?

It means three small glasses of beer, each 1/3 of a pint. Different beer in each one obviously. But that sentence is appalling and a needlessly complex and confusing way of describing three small burgers lined up next to one another.

I think he's also giving Russell Norman credit for importing most of New York's food ideas, not claiming that most things are imported from NY. The former claim would be pretty dubious in its own right, the latter would be too nonsensical even for this piece.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/28/worst-idea-2012-gourmet-junk-food?INTCMP=SRCH

this was good though

xps

That sentence about sliders seems to imply that Russell Norman was the first person to bring them to London, which I find v v hard to believe.

It's a horrible piece. That kind of perky incoherent lifestylese is too grim.

i think you could all save yourselves a lot of bother if you clocked the byline before reading. marina o'loughlin or jay rayner? read on! certain others, hit that back button asap

Ah Tony seems a decent sort, even if the writing isn't great. They're obviously just mining for "I live in the north, fuck off London with your kimchi, I had a pie last night, 1.50 it cost me, yer bloody daft hipsters" comment-bait.

When was the last time people actually made the effort to listen to an album?

love this, from upthread. i mean in our day when you bought an album you listened to it. really listened, you know. not today!

xpost - i like marina o'l generally but i am now definitely as bored of reading negative shit about posh fast food as i am about the hype. i don't tend to need somebody to repeat a view i hold ad infinitum in the mass media but that's just me.

The writing in that Marina O'Loughlin piece is terrible, Lex.

I mean:

There's no sign of it stopping, either. The latest junk food trend to land is ramen. At last something lighter and healthier, huh? Not a chance. This is tonkotsu, the Japanese version of dirrrty, with extra pipettes of pig fat in case your bowl of squeezed pig writhing with Pot Noodlyness isn't lardy enough.

Does anyone really consider stuff like this to be good writing?

ah sure who cares as long as you agree with her

Whenever I see the TN byline I'm wont to think 'they asked three busier/more clued-up people to write this first, and all of them said no'.

Aren't those tasting sticks normally known as a 'flight', as with wine? OMG the stuuupid in this piece. French dip is not gravy. It's a roast beef sandwich (think posh cheese steak) on a French roll with a ramekin of jus for dipping, melted Swiss on sandwich optional. And sliders? Fucksake, that was White Castle before it was anything else (although in my mother's house, we call them Gut Bombs).

Aren't those tasting sticks normally known as a 'flight', as with wine

no. no, they're not.

Tony's generally decent. but now I want a French dip :(

Tasting flight, actually - and yes; yes they are. xp

And tbf most Brits would call what you get with a French dip 'gravy'

I've had a beer flight, yeah

And tbf most Brits would call what you get with a French dip 'gravy'

that's the sort of logic that leads to calling a bit of wood a 'stick'

Stick o'bisto, next big thing

NB I don't know who Marina O'Loughlin is, I rarely read food writing bar the occasional Time Out restaurant review, and I basically agree with her central point but that's still a very very badly-written piece. And the "don't you just all agree?" schtick is as irritating as it is whenever journalists resort to it.

Whenever I see the TN byline I'm wont to think 'they asked three busier/more clued-up people to write this first, and all of them said no'.

Again, his decency and good spirit makes me prefer him to others. I wouldn't normally value that in a writer but he is fairly good on beer too. Plus if someone corrects him he's usually pretty gracious. I'm really being too charitable I guess.

On the burger thing, I just noticed Marina says something in the comments about "contrary to what social media would make you believe, there's more to London" - this see a point she should have made in the piece, that most of the hype/ennui, as ever, exists on the internet echo-chamber. And also that fine dining and grander establishments don't use Twitter.

I mean it's just reacting to Twitter really, not sure how hype about restaurants or even loads of them opening could ever be annoying in real life, you just wouldn't go, and nobody "talks" about things in the same repetitive, competitive and shrill way in real life as they do on Twitter.

Turn off the computer and go somewhere else for dinner, imo.

those tasting paddles are known as a flight, what are you on about.

more than the outdatedness (bubble fucking tea? is this the year 2000?) of all these apparent 'hipster foods' i'm irritated by the fact that he falsely got my hopes up by stating that Zhonghua was in Oxford (it's in cambridge).

i've been reading marina o'l's restaurant reviews for a while now - she used to be at metro