Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I briefly channel surfed past Times Radio yesterday for about 30 seconds. It was brillo pad sucking up to Hodge followed by Chris fucking Williamson!

I haven't got to the end of the EHRC report but I'm pretty sure it doesn't conclude by saying "there were problems with antisemitism but it's all gone now, great job lads, bye!"

to be fair to the labour party, they've done an incredible job of rooting out antisemitism and there will never be another example of it from mps, staffers or members xxp

otherwise, in the unlikely event that there was an outbreak of perceived anti-jewish sentiment, sir kieth would surely need to resign amid widespread and justified criticism

Keith has already shown how he will be going forwards on anti-Semitism. Like if of one of his fave right-wing cabinet ministers praises a statue of a pro-Hitler MP who was an embarrassment to the Tory party of the 40's, then to quote him "I'm not going to talk about that".

meanwhile Rosie Duffield still is a thing

lol quiddities and agonies

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/oct/31/we-left-the-uk-for-portland-expecting-a-liberal-dream-that-wasnt-the-reality

america is pish, who knew

can't believe I got lied to about the US healthcare system by Kate Andrews!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/30/1953-britain-guyana

this is really good actually, about the rarely mentioned British imperial coup d’etat in Guyana in the 50's and its legacy

Without reading that I'm guessing the legacy is awesome

I was reading a book about the Raj recently that concluded the Indian indentured labourers shipped over to British Guiana might not have been technically been slaves, but... They were allowed to return home after 5 years of hard labour, but of course there was a very unhelpful bureaucracy there to insure that barely 0.0000% actually ever did return to India.

that scene where Brenda signed off on an armed invasion to destroy a democratically elected govt and imprison all it's cabinet, as depicted in The Crown is one of the highlights of Season 1!

Of course.

Not an unbiased point, but I don’t understand the ban on outdoor swimming. Minimal risk of transmission - significant benefits to physical and mental health. The same goes for botanical gardens. pic.twitter.com/Lyo9BDXPfe

— Paul Lewis (@PaulLewis) November 1, 2020

lol Full Graun

If any of these lads want to go for a swim at Bolton Strid I won't grass them up

the shopping trolleys in Barmston Drain make for a good slalom course

Needed two people for this one but it's still another piss poor hatchet job

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/nov/01/jewish-labour-supporters-this-antisemitism-thing-just-doesnt-seem-to-be-going-away

Risible. It would almost be worth him being thrown out of the party to see how thoroughly he would annihilate any official Labour candidate in Islington North.

I follow politics pretty closely and was familiar with his schtick: I was never a fan, but as long as he was an unimportant backbencher I didn’t waste energy on him and voted on national lines.

About 10 years ago I noticed that his faction was becoming more toxic and by the time he was leading the leadership race in 2015, I was warning my friends to take care.

The five years since he won have been painful. I wanted an effective opposition to the government, who could win power, and knew that he wouldn’t provide that.

these all seem to be complaints about socialism rather than antisemitism but idk

and in fact there's not one word in that whole piece offering examples of Corbyn's antisemitism

This is what happens when you seek out and interview bitter Islington Liberal Democrats still smarting that they've never recovered from being in coalition with Tories and never will.

If only they cared so much about effective opposition that they voted against The Welfare Bill rather than pouring their energy into factional ratfuckery. I'll be so glad the next time this party get's an absolute pasting in an election. I'll be just as cock-a-hoop as Jess was that night in December.

There’s a pretty consistent implication in a lot of the pieces like this that his local supporters are too poor and ignorant to pay attention to ‘real politics’ and are just taken in by his visibility and helpfulness with constituency matters, with all the racial and class implications that come with that.

"an effective opposition to the government, who can win power" is the number 1 indicator of being a soft Tory fuckwit

I don't think I'm ready to comment on this more fully because I'm seeing arguments from all directions that are making me angry but I think a lot of people are conflating the issue of whether this is being weaponised with whether it's being exaggerated, and it's important to separate the two.

There is also the flipside to the weaponisation argument which is whether a blind eye is being turned to similarly awful situations involving other minority groups but the ongoing shitshow that is British politics and British political parties is in no state to address that in the way that actually matters (ie for the victims).

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/06/child-labour-doesnt-have-to-be-exploitation-it-gave-me-life-skills

This is doing the rounds this morning.

The author works for an organisation promoting crop diversification (ie. growing tobacco) in Malawi - one that receives funding from front organisations for the tobacco industry. British American Tobacco is currently being sued over the use of child labour in Malawi in a case that could potentially set a precedent for the whole industry if successful. Probably just a coincidence though.

I get the feeling most of the "positive impact solutions" stanned for by Palladium will greatly benefit child-labourers in 3rd world countries and if it works out good for evil global corporations as well then that is just an incidental benefit!

Is international concern on child rights relevant to Africa?

bit on the nose this

this kind of openly bought advertorial (which is what it is) has never been as uncommon in broadsheetland-at-large as it should be

(esp the sundays inc. the observer back to the 70s at least ffs, and ditto US versions of same)

but i don't recall it in the guardian all that often (if at all) (hence the sudden appalled fuss abt it today)?

bear in mind i don't read the guardian hardly at all -- cf my correct but embarassingly written post at the top of this thread 19 years ago! -- so i may simply have missed many earlier examples (and as i say the observer used to be infested with it and i haven't read that since the 80s when they totally fvcked me over re a regular position as music-writer lol)

All of their global development stuff is sponsored by Bill Gates’ foundation iirc.

lol i now have in my head the ghost of some super-ancient observer beef pro or con RIO TINTO ZINC which i can't access the detail of online (or indeed in my head)

shorter beef: RIO TINTO ZINC is always bad not good

You'll be blaming Tiny Rowland next for you not getting that job.

At the Eden Project there's an exhibit about how mining is good not bad for the environment, helpfully installed through support from Rio Tinto

tiny knew a lethal threat when he saw one (me writing 400 wds abt the bhundu boys)

Not Guardian but media story:

https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-to-remove-controversial-host-from-watch-dogs-le-1845596398?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=kotaku_twitter

Helen Lewis axed from ... a voiceover on a podcast about a video game?

The melts and terfs are so annoyed! Cue a lot of trans allies and left people all coming with receipts to tell about her bullying them, including one guy who said she got him shitcanned from a regular gig at a think tank because she refused to participate in an event they were working on unless he was fired.

got to admit I never had a clue she was involved with gaming podcasts. Ash Sakar also said she tried to threaten to get one of her pieces pulled from the NS. She's not only a grotesque bigot but also a bullying living embodiment of Viz's Spoilt Bastard!

The people I was thinking of include Ash.

Ubisoft used her (and dunty lol) as some of the in-game political podcasters in their Dystopian London game, then panicked when people pointed out what a dumb bigot she is - I don't think she was ever an dedicated gaming podcaster though she possibly did a podcast about how poor people don't know what coffee is at some point?

Also, when reviewing Labour’s arts policy she wrote ‘don’t encourage them, Jeremy...’

xp she tried to own actual professional gamer SonicFox and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5QJA1jUUAEDbup?format=jpg&name=large

SonicFox for president btw

”if only we had our own AOC in the UK”

Nice headline here from the guardian reporting on AOC basically begging the dems to all work together instead of being factional. She’d be absolutely torn to shreds if she was an MP.

I'm puzzled by Lewis's entry into the world of computer games. It's not something about which I would have expected her - or indeed Dunt - to have very deep knowledge.

politics and media are dominated by people talking vaguely authoritatively about things they have barely thought about and have little more than a passing interest in

she clearly doesn't

i'm guessing they were sourced as "representative" UK podcasters to form part of the game's ambient soundworld. as i understand it the game is set in a dystopian hellscape so this feels like good casting

if i were post-fash antifa battling the cyberforces of future evil i would simply turn off the imitation remainiacs podcast

I am going to get accused of "liking Helen Lewis" again, but 10 seconds googling suggests that she writes about them quite a bit

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/11/why-are-we-still-so-bad-talking-about-video-games

(and also, we're of the age when an appreciable percentage of 'normal' people will be video game fans)

but as she admits, she is bad at talking about them