Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I did once go to a pizza restaurant in Lausanne where they'd done that thing where every pizza was the 'David Guetta' or the 'Lionel Messi' or whatever. This was about 2011 and the 'Gordon Brown' had been crossed out on every menu and replaced with the 'David Cameron' and I just thought wow, brutal.

Not as brutal as the 'Wayne Rooney' pizza that was like 80% pork products though.

Surely it's the David Cameron pizza that should be pork-based?

Aren’t you thinking of pigs in blankets?

I’m Danny Dyer, and I’m about to meet Britain’s most working class FTSE 100 CEO.

— P.G. Chodehouse (@mynnoj) July 9, 2020

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBobI3TmVU

(I think I used to know Helen Pidd’s father, nice fellow.)

Sorry for the lack of embed, that's a link to "Twenty Man Dead" by the excellent Cutty Ranks, which has obviously been running through my head since yesterday.

Jesus, I’m in pieces after reading this.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2020/jul/14/david-squires-on-the-life-and-times-of-jack-charlton

Missed out his brave consolation goal at Wembley in 1967 when the World Champions were murdered 3-2 by Scotland.

small nation mentality 😅

I respect what he did for the RoI but for his long association with the dirty dirty dirty white shite I can't get sentimental and care as much as if he was one of the many slimy brown trouts he battered to death with his whacker!

the dirty dirty dirty white shite

credit to calz, he could be talking about two different things here lol

Not got a clue what you mean there!

The England football team?

yes haha

First thing I noticed when I saw that cartoon was he seemed to have transmogrified into Billy McNeill when he was managing Middlesbrough.

Lol I thought imago was inferring I hate white ppl!

I can imagine big Jack huffing some carcinogenic smog in Middlesborough before training, just to show what a working class legend he is!

Which reminds me, Jack Charlton, Billy McNeill - yet moe footballers, specifically central defenders who ended up suffering from dementia.

Jack 'Bloodsports' Charlton:

https://www.fieldsportschannel.tv/jack-charlton-death-good-says-anti/

Xp
Could be freshwater fishing related?

He was getting eulogised on twitter as a socialist ledge, the fucker was probably pro-capital punishment!

One of my fave Jackie memories is that TV show he did on ITV? in the 80s? where he shouted at kids training for not kicking each other hard enough

Anyway he was a legit legend and I mourn him, despite dirty Leeds

I assume all old school footballers are Tories unless it can be proven otherwise.

I think the tweet calz is referring to named a lot of managers as socialists? Ferguson, Shankly, that kind of thing

More like the older managers. Mou is fash obv.

I think I saw what I what you are referring to, but I also other posts calling him a socialist. Personally he reminds me of a composite of every fucked up bully PE teacher of the 70s/80s with a bit of beetroot faced geography teacher dna thrown into the mix. Well I had violent bald geog teacher who used to crush kids hands and hit people on the head with thick hardback editions!

Yeah I don't know why Charlton is a socialist. Ferguson and Klopp do talk politics from time to time. Seen enough quotes by Shankly over the years.

He marched with striking miners once I think.

People were saying he stood with striking miners and donated to their funds.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ec3wcwsWAAALeag?format=jpg&name=large

I thought I recalled him having a soft spot for minors

Never forget that Jackie took the Ireland squad to Harry Ramsdens for a massive fish-eating contest the night before a crucial Euro 96 qualifier. He was a Harry Ramsdens shareholder.

From Niall Quinn's autobiography:

"We all shuffled into Harry Ramsden’s. Jack is a shareholder. Packie or Paul or somebody cut a ribbon and officially opened the place. So the night before the game, after a week of drink, I settled down to fish and chips. Garry Kelly took the Harry Ramsden’s Challenge and ate a fish about a yard long and a mountain of chips and anything else they challenged him with. He thought there’s be a certificate but he got a free desert instead, which he duly ate. Jack herded us out pronto. Twenty minutes later, it’s dusk at Lansdowne Road and we’re all waddling about the pitch, groaning, full of fish and chips and trying to do a training session the night before this must-win game. We’re burping and farting and creased over with laughter. Our main thought was it’s been a happy era and it’s ending soon…Sometimes you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. It was all over for Jack."

"Both of them would have taken an empty symbolic gesture today without thinking" sheesh

Garry Kelly took the Harry Ramsden’s Challenge and ate a fish about a yard long and a mountain of chips and anything else they challenged him with. He thought there’s be a certificate but he got a free desert instead

not lolled so hard in weeks!

One of the worst Guardian arts articles in a long time.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/14/writer-lockdown-diary-amy-sackville-creative-writing

I'm sure I've read worse, my eyes just sort of glazed over really, I feel like I've read fifty variants on that since lockdown started.

There should be a nationwide ban on the phrase 'sourdough starter' by now, as well as columnists telling people they aren't reading Proust. The overwhelming majority of humanity isn't reading Proust right now.

It's harmless, not actively bad or evil, but we've seen way too many of these flimsy diary-type stories, that's for sure.

pretty sure the broadsheets live for flimsy diary-type stories even when there isn't a pandemic

The 'article' summarized: "I can't write because I'm not reading, but this isn't about writers block, because I'm not even trying to write. But - and here's the kicker you DID NOT see coming - I wrote this, natch!"

oh so 'sourdough starter' isn't a euphemism for going for a dump, well you live and you learn.

gyac - thanks for that bit of info.

I wonder what a diary of someone who doesn't know whether they'll have a job or be able to make rent looks like.

Don't be daft, who'd want to to read that?

I'm going to do a fictional diary of the internal life I imagine my cleaner lives in, if they were a sentient human being. And include how grateful for my money they are and how much colour I bring into their monochrome joyless life.

At 10:35 on an early summer's morning, John Lanchester sat down at his study desk, switched on his new Dell computer, opened up the word processing programme that the computer had come with and began

The illustration for that article certainly seems a little...gratuitous?

The Guardian announces it’ll be laying off 180 people - 70 from editorial - after coronavirus smacks £25m from bottom line. We’re all starting to move on from the furlough, sandbag-period of the crisis. https://t.co/4ooydn7z6Z

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) July 15, 2020

Just sack Chiles

Saddly it won't be him or the Suzanne Moore types that are going to fuck off.

Fetter: precisely. Ludicrous illustration really.