Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

If you just press “not now” on desktop you can just continue reading.

Rats!

In a world of online everything, a real #PeriodOfReflection could benefit us all
John Harris

yes indeed John. People should spend more time away from wireless broadband and garbage opinion pieces by garbage people.

They are experimenting though so let's be hopeful! xp

i might be saying the obvious here, but isn't north london liberal elite considered dog whistle antisemitism?

It looks like you need to sign in to read stories now - which is possibly the push i needed to stop annoying myself.

― Srinivasaraghavan VONCataraghavan (ShariVari), Monday, 23 December 2019 08:41 (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

On desktop, at least. I can continue to annoy myself on mobile devices for the moment.

― Srinivasaraghavan VONCataraghavan (ShariVari), Monday, 23 December 2019 08:47 (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

If you just press “not now” on desktop you can just continue reading.

― glindr jackson (gyac), Monday, 23 December 2019 08:51 (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Rats!

― Srinivasaraghavan VONCataraghavan (ShariVari), Monday, 23 December 2019 08:58 (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol I had this exact journey yesterday

You have read 88 articles in the last two months. More people, like you, are reading and supporting the Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before...

at least they help you gauge how appalling your online media reading habits have become these days.. sheeit need to stop giving them so many clicks.

yeah i was shocked when it quoted me 90 the other day but i had a #PeriodOfReflection and decided i wouldn't have paid for any of them

It's sad, the thing they once were good for was investigative journalism but they have really stepped that down in recent years (I guess as they became MI5's comms office)

I think the web version is significantly worse than the paper because of the prominence it gives to puff (those live blogs and comment pieces particularly)

yeah i miss having a newspaper tbh, this is a really good example of the web as a backward technological step

i might be saying the obvious here, but isn't north london liberal elite considered dog whistle antisemitism?

"as they became MI5's comms office"

a lot of people seem incapable of grasping this development at the Graun. I causally dropped it in a conversation with some middle class gammon type in a pub and got scolded talking "absolute bollocks"!

Speaking of, I saw awful aristocrat Marina Hyde randomly deciding to have a go at Aaron Bastani on twitter yesterday. How singularly awful do you have to be to make me feel bad for Aaron fucking Bastani? Also, I just learned that she had a thing with Piers Morgan, how does she manage to pass as a liberal darling again?

Because nothing means anything

her and Brooker should be liquidated in the first wave of terror.. gulags are too good for 'em!

speaking of gulags


https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/23/the-expats-dilemma-i-want-my-child-to-grow-up-in-australia-but-i-didnt-want-to-come-home

You just now learned Marina Hyde has poor judgement re: Piers Morgan? It wasn’t just a drunken mistake either, and it was around the time she worked for the Sun. Yep, someone who doesn’t strictly need to earn/work (she lives in South Ken and you don’t buy there on a Graun salary) thought ‘oh, I’ll begin my career at the shittiest tabloid’.

She is now married to someone quite high up in the BBC, fwiw.

Legit just discussing this with one of my Aussie friends. Had some choice words about this piece, in particular this risible bit:

I loathed the driving, the bland strawberries, my daughter’s all-white kindergarten, speaking my own language.

People on phone lines helped, waiters were kind, our nostril hairs grew back.

I mean, you could cut back on the coke in Paris too.

To the greater world, Australia has an unwavering magical quality; people’s eyes dance, they see koalas cuddling people riding kangaroos in the twinkling outback sea. They’ll never come – it’s what, an eight-hour flight? So the dream grows and mutates, the land of endless summers and calm and beauty, where everyone has a backyard (even in the city!) and everyone is happy.

What? This woman is delusional. When I think of Australia I think of snakes, spiders, chundering drunks, and prematurely wrinkled squinting racists and homophobes.

i can't read that piece, i'm trying to get my christmas goodwill head on

I would advise against it. Not that I managed the whole thing.

I like how she says her daughter’s kindergarten was all white. As though that wasn’t a reflection of the area she chose to live in! Guarantee she only socialised with white people in Paris.

^^ "We moved back to North Melbourne and found some of our pathetic friends from 12 years before had moved to the suburbs to be close to their parents. The sad losers! So we moved to a seaside town of Victorian infrastructure (the era not the state) seven hours away to be near my parents, and somehow lots of ppl in town there were white and you needed a car to get around? This is definitely the fault of the country, not us."

Water you could drink from the tap.

motherfucker we have great water here

Yeah I was thinking, what the fuck was that about?!

When I went on a school trip to France in the 80's we were told not to drink the tapwater!

http://www.comicbrits.co.uk/TV/Dont_Drink_The_Water/Dont_Drink_The_Water_DVD.jpg

how does she manage to pass as a liberal darling again?

1. Get Blue Tick
2. Withering Criticism of person on the right for lack of manners / class / not doing it right

The water is hard in Paris and you get lots of calcium build up in your taps and appliances, whereas in Australia you don't, I'm assuming that's what she means. Not sure that means anything in terms of drinkability though.

The French do get all dreamy about Australia in my experience, they don't have the tropes the British have about Australians all being redneck racists.

She is Australian herself though? The husband is French.

The French do get all dreamy about Australia in my experience, they don't have the tropes the British have about Australians all being redneck racists.

racism part of the attraction for the French surely

I mean...I bet the husband wasn’t handwringing about the all-white school.

Still not sure what exactly is dreamy about Australia tbh, even if you ignore the drawbacks mentioned earlier.

best bit may be that this couple's choice of continent to live on is supposedly dictated by the whim of their 4-year-old. nice try pinning it all on her jfc.

... and I didn't even mention hotter than hell and thousands of miles away from anywhere else.

For the French, Australia is exotic in a way it just isn't for the British, the British seem to see Australia as a sort of Essex writ large.

As for racism, having lived for long periods in London, Paris and Sydney, I'd say the levels of racism are about the same in all three cities. The British hide it a bit better, perhaps

speaking of gulags

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/23/the-expats-dilemma-i-want-my-child-to-grow-up-in-australia-but-i-didnt-want-to-come-home

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 23 December 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Like how you've been radicalised Tracer.

For the French, Australia is exotic in a way it just isn't for the British, the British seem to see Australia as a sort of Essex writ large.

Possibly not a good idea for this woman to claim that 'to the greater world, Australia has an unwavering magical quality' in a British newspaper then?

racism part of the attraction for the French surely

This is not the first trait that springs to mind when French people think about Australia. Like Zelda said, they know far less about it than the British (for obvious reasons), and mostly fantasize about the landscape.

The British hide it a bit better, perhaps

Not doing a very good job at the moment tbf.

Was gonna say!

hiding it is good. France should hide it more!

Yes, that is exactly what I was trying to say.

Would just like to point out that as horribly racist as Australia can be, a lot of those doing it in public life here are bloody transplanted english people who come over here and then go on endlessly about migrants.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/bleak-times-thrive-last-column-guardian?CMP

The Guardian is legit worse without Gary Younge.

absolutely. moving and and incisive piece.

Seriously he has been consistently their best columnist for at least a decade which is a long time to keep up a run of general OTMness.

I can't understand why such a humble and lovely guy would want to leave that tawdry clickbait factory full of knaves and shitehawks!