Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

A friend of mine forwarded me this just a few days ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2yn6

There is an anthropologist who explains how breathing has changed for human beings.

Though some of the interviewees needed to learn breathing techniques to bring down stress levels because of their awful jobs so I'm thinking it's all capitalism's fault. Again.

Laura Barton posts a life update vmic:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/28/moved-coast-better-life-london-capital

"graticule precision"
"sourdough rivalries"
"grocery shops stocked with everything from za’atar to rambutan"
etc

Everywhere hung the air of self-congratulation.

What better place to escape that than the offices of the Guardian newspaper?

The Guardian has obsessively published long articles reporting on the careers of Andrew Marr and Laura Kuenssberg.

Each one is depressing because they end with largely the same bad people circulating and taking each other's jobs.

I don't think it was noted here that yesterday the Guardian published a long interview with Rachel Reeves in which she mainly attacked JC and said that Labour need to be more like the Conservative Party.

Almost goes without saying

I received countless messages in those months from colleagues gleefully announcing they were emailing from their new farmhouse kitchen or in their cottage by the sea

a dose of (one's) own medicine!

Reeves was saying we can prevent big water from pumping raw sewage into waterways and the sea through better regulation not through nationalising them ... inspiring.

obviously Graun are correct about that awful netflix movie, but perhaps 2/5 was being slightly generous.

tbh I've seen a clip of Rylance
and I just wanna watch him

Zoe Williams for some years has been presented as a commentator on the political Left.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/06/starmer-lawyer-johnson-labour-leader-conservatives-prime-minister

Her judgment on KS's vacuous speech:

if you connect those two thoughts – we have workplace rights, and we all have value – it represents a significant break with the last 12 years of economic reality and political discourse.

The transfer of power from the worker to the employer that, with zero-hours contracts and poverty wages, has seemed inexorable, would not survive this meaningful reassertion of workplace rights.

Further:

Starmer’s speech, perhaps for the first time since he became leader, performed a jujitsu move: yes he is a lawyer, and Johnson could have at it. He conveyed this explicitly, his patriotism mediated through his hinterland as the “country’s leading prosecutor”. He also did so implicitly, framing his relationship with voters as a “contract” – about as lawyerly as it comes. And he laid a very simple, yet nevertheless lawyerly trap for Johnson: the prime minister himself is unfit for office, yet the problem is with the entire party, not just one man.

This is like the liberals in, what, April 2020 saying Opposition is coming and KS can chair a meeting.

But it's ZW and it's January 2022 !!

Later the same day, Johnson gave a press conference of his own, in a move that cynics, which is now all of us, read as attempting to draw attention away from Starmer’s speech

this is so preposterous and wouldn't make tactical sense because if there has been one constant with Starmer it is the more people see of him the less they like him. Probably the best strategy would be him repeatedly going into self-isolation and not doing any more tedious policy-free flag-shagging re-launch speeches.

Barney Ronay, perhaps the Marina Hyde of the sportpages, writes with mature weariness that both sides in the Djokovic case are too extreme and we should be less 'polarised'.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/14/novak-djokovic-v-australia-is-a-grudge-match-for-our-polarised-age

the pretence of being above culture war talking points from a lousy graun hack, yeah sure!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/the-hounding-of-kate-clanchy-has-been-a-witch-hunt-without-mercy

This kicked up quite the little shitstorm, especially when Monbiot decided he should race into the fray and then rapidly backpedaled out. At least he was good enough to admit his fault.

maybe at first he just couldn't believe there would be the racially stereotyping of school-children and the author judging them on how attractive she considered them in an Orwell prize winning book. Anyway Sonia Sodha is definitely not a hill to die on!

Well what was left out of the article was the author denying quotes from her book were legitimate when they were presented to her.

"It is true that Clanchy reacted badly to the criticism, denying the phrases in question were in her book."

Is it bad stereotyping and shallow to take one look at Clanchy's photo in that article and think 'she looks like the biggest terf ever'

Cheers Andrew, I should have read it more closely. There was more in the Twitter thread roping in Rusbridger etc but maybe that’s enough from me for now.

didn't the whole thing in fact start with clanchy complaining on twitter about negative goodreads reviews with "made up" quotes and asking people to flag them lol, that's still leaving out a crucial part of that context

tbf on her she's a class act 👏👏👏

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/26/why-are-some-people-so-comfortable-being-casually-racist-in-front-of-me-is-it-just-because-im-white

A writer so bad, anonymous, dreary, stupid and malicious that she can almost make other Guardian pundits look good - but she excels herself here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/28/essex-rebrand-vajazzle-money

in saying that only class-obsessed snobs are interested in the Peasants' Revolt.

And I always thought the Peasants' Revolt had something do with lower-class people. Must have been misled by the name.

I think her point is we should be celebrating revolting peasants not peasant revolts

as someone who regularly enjoys holidays to various parts of Essex, I'm with the pinefox here - that article is anti-intellectual, pandering shite

also, visit Colchester

Where does she get the idea that Essex doesn't attract tourists? It's beside the sea, it has resorts?

>>> also, visit Colchester

why, Imago?

Genuine question.

a Blur pilgrimage? :p

my eldest has lived in Essex for a few years now and tells me TOWIE is downplayed and subtle

Colchester: Roman stuff.

a Blur pilgrimage? :p

― calzino, Friday, 28 January 2022 bookmarkflaglink

lol

ffs haha

Aren't you going to answer, Imago? I was interested.

I have been to Colchester a few times. I'm very fond of it, though maybe its centre is a bit limited if you had to spend every day there. But it has quite a number of nice attractions. I don't think I saw anything Roman except maybe a wall.

is it rory mcgrath related? that's what i'm going with

the moral arc of an ilx thread can be long, but it bends toward rory mcgrath

― mark s, Thursday, January 11, 2018 11:49 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― mark s, Tuesday, 7 May 2019 20:20 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

― mark s, Saturday, 29 May 2021 19:30 (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh I am! Was just polishing off some work.

It has, once you get onto North Hill walking down from the station (unless you change there and get the shuttle to the Town station, which is even better placed and next to an abandoned priory), some exceedingly lovely shopfronts, a number of excellent restaurants and cafes (with a slightly lower-than-usual proportion of big chains), generally impressive and homely architecture (the quieter parts of the town are especially pleasant to walk around, especially near the river), a genuinely superb castle/museum centrepiece (one of the best I've visited) in a pretty parkland setting, the entrance to which is also next to the Hollytrees local museum and the Natural History museum in a converted church, both of which are excellent free-entry affairs (the Hollytrees has a brilliant grandfather clock collection as well as a permanent toys-through-the-ages exhibit), and a smattering of excellent micropubs. The only shame is that some of its better antique vendors have shut down permanently. It's a short, cheapish train from London, and unlike dire Cirencester it doesn't trade entirely on its Roman history and essentially gear its entire being towards the peddling of tat.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er9Vf-YXYAIG6b8?format=jpg&name=900x900

there it is

Thanks Imago - that's an excellent answer.

St Botolphs Priory is a marvel - and is just next to what's now called the FirstSite visual arts facility, isn't it? Spectacular building though I'm not sure about what they put inside it.

On the high street there's a good independent bookshop (Red Lion?), and the town hall is one of the most spectacular places in town - worth looking inside at the historical displays. All near the castle which is so unusual - unlike any other English castle I've seen.

You didn't even mention the Minories, the arts centre, the Jumbo tower or the Mercury Theatre.

I don't know the micropubs, though. Which are they?

St Botolph is regarded as the patron saint of boundaries, and by extension, of trade and travel

never heard of that saint before, perhaps the original FBPE? There are some really crap minor English saints!

"… the country being overrun by a Wave of Saints. Among these were St Ive, St Pancra, the great St Bernard (originator of the clerical collar), St Bee, St Ebb, St Neot (who invented whisky), St Kit and St Kin, and the Venomous Bead… "

the Venomous Bead sounds like a badass!

St Neot is my chosen one

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKQNggAX0AIHBae?format=png&name=small

And to date, there have been 20 articles written supporting Kate's narrative of being the cancelled kind teacher lady who has been on the receiving end of a witch-hunt. TWENTY.

xps to the pinefox we should do next ilb fap in a micropub tbf

Somewhere where the conditions are less Arctic, for sure.

Definitely, hopefully xyzzzzzzzz can do a better job organising than last time

I like the plan, poster gyac, though micropubs must be the worst possible environment for any kind of distancing and safety, if anyone still believes in that stuff (which apparently they don't) ?