Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

i don’t not trust it! it’s a data point. i’d want to see more info. but i feel v resistant to the “lies all lies” view that you’re implying. that way madness lies.

i have no cape to wear for the observer (l i think it’s trash tbh, and the anti trans platforming is abhorrent) but an increase in labour membership seems on its face reasonable and here are some numbers from what is an undoubtedly muddy data set.

on membership numbers it’s surely total and utter chaos and who fuckin knows (for example pf’s regular contact)

― Fizzles, Sunday, 23 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink

The thing is it should be a fairly easy thing to compile. You could break it down by people who haven't paid subs in a month and over a month etc.

googling around, the data breach took place early last year (2021), it was some kind of ransomeware attack, and it rendered large amounts of information "inaccessible" -- tho i don't think we've ever been told what kind of information, except thst it was in some way "about members"

too vague to know if it's for certain relevant to this issue but nevertheless kind of relevant when numbers are being thrown around? xyz says "it should be fairly easy" etc but the impression i've had is that despite being (you'd think) u&k it's not a part of the task which is well in hand (and that this is part of the reason for the obfuscation: ppl not really doing their jobs well throwing up somescrens to disguise this) (and not necessarily even for sinister reasons)

I can see it as a fuck up of people who were in charge of membership leaving and not being properly replaced. And things like data quality can easily degrade overtime.

I think leaving it to degrade is probably a political decision. Tasks not being done. Or someone saying it's not a priority.

maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for hopefully the rest of my life, the Conservatives will be out of power. I can’t help it. I’m making a mental inventory of things I am looking forward to seeing the back of and then counter-qualities I can’t wait to welcome back into public life.

Won’t it be great when you can assume that someone is telling the truth? When, whatever the promise is, you at least believe they mean it while they’re saying it?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/24/the-tories-will-soon-be-out-of-power-and-i-am-making-a-list-of-all-the-things-i-cant-wait-to-see-the-back-of

Zoe Williams, a journalist, has not noticed that no-one in power in the Labour Party ever tells the truth about anything, or means what they say except when they say that they believe in something that is very bad.

everything that isn't inane bollocks or just wrong is basic shit people were saying 10+ years ago, presented as we only just figured this stuff out

something bothers me so much about the centrality of brexit to these people's worldview, like it's the first time the system didn't work out for them - they talk about it as some kind of ontological error that suddenly made everything false - and they don't even fucking care about the worst parts of it! it's just a symbol of their own irrelevance or something. obviously the whole post-truth thing is a joke coming from people who think politics peaked with tony blair. but what do you expect

David Coleman's best 'Colemanballs' - and those of his inadvertent imitators

"If that had gone in, it would have been a goal."

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/21/david-coleman-s-best-colemanballs

It HAS gotten worse

even i, who don't follow football, understand that the ball can go in and not be a goal (offside, hand ball for two reasons)

There is a 3-part thing about the YBAs on i-player at the moment. Hirst doesn't come out of it terribly well by the final episode (bcs money, bcs Alex from Blur); someone who does - perhaps slightly incongruously - is Anthony Gormley.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/28/m-and-s-high-street-retailer-flagship-store-small-shops

Think I agree.

this guy thinks it's worse

The Guardian used to have balance (moderately left) and integrity, but now it is a far left wing propaganda machine. I hope they get back to where they were one day.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

always the sign of a thoughtful, serious person when you accuse milquetoast liberals of being the far left

I think part of the confusion is that the Guardian does have an interest in what is sometimes called, rightly or wrongly, identity politics. It had that interest before but seems to have it at least as much as ever now.

Some people would say the Guardian's particular angles on these issues are wrong, which is fair enough. But I think this interest may be what leads someone like Musk to think this.

But what Musk cannot see is that the G has zero interest in what is probably more properly called far left, ie: socialism. It is quite staunchly opposed to socialism and has attacked it when it has arisen as a movement.

You could also more simply say that Musk is an idiot. Though I suppose he's the one laughing all the way to the bitcoin bank.

totally agree with the first two lines.

but I don't think musk is an idiot by any means, unfortunately. he's very successful on a metric he cares about. he just doesn't give a single fuck about the guardian or being in any way nuanced or accurate about it. and why would he. it's a form of UK exceptionalism to think that anyone would really give a fuck about the guardian.

but big-brain tweet about it

oh sure, he loves that. zero effort, maximum pissing people off. that's not giving a fuck about anything other than pissing people off.

I implied that he wasn't exactly an idiot by noting that he was the one who is very rich and we are not.

he inherited wealth tho

british reactionaries love calling the guardian far left too - and tbf it does represent the far left of acceptable common sense in british media - no one left of owen jones will be allowed on TV (and he's basically treated as a pariah anyway)

right wingers always think or pretend to think that this sort of bland corporate/bureaucratic cultural liberalism that makes vague rhetorical gestures towards diversity and inclusion is actually marxism and white genocide in action or whatever their thing is (elon's is more or less that I think, whatever other words he uses)

the guardian has generally been very hostile to most identity politics but that's a whole other thing

white african inherited wealth at that

I'd love to hear his thoughts on rhodesia

Bizarre to me to think Musk "doesn't care" about the Guardian. He cares a lot! He cares that his daughter won't call him because of the far left communist indoctrination of the US school system. He cares that people think he's cringe. He cares about every last person making fun of him online. He is a deeply insecure and unhappy man, and we should all take some solace from that.

none of you are nec wrong, but I think you're overlooking the fact the Guardian has recently published a couple of op-eds pointing out that Musk is a dickhead—I doubt his analysis goes farther than that

(xpost)

I'll stick with "he's an idiot" thank you very much.

i think it's bad politics to confuse intelligence with wealth, they're basically unrelated metrics in every direction

he can inherit a huge apartheid era gold/blood diamond money legacy but still everyone has seen the photos of him rapidly going bald in his early 20's! I was once talking to a posh couple in a pub who were saying he was a genius - you should have seen his ted talk, it was inspirational etc.. they thought I was lying when I mentioned he'd called the divers who rescued the school party "pedo guys".

I kept hearing this advert for the Musk bbc series with some fawning eejit with no self-respect is saying "he's cleverer than Einstein you know" or some shit like that

lol I won't bring up the time an ilx poster was trying to argue that Musk is left-wing

i don't think he's especially intelligent , he seems in many respects like a moron - but he knows how to game the current system, right?

loool he is not left wing

lol I won't bring up the time an ilx poster was trying to argue that Musk is left-wing

Imagine being that rich and caring so much about what people thought of you, though.

i stick with my analysis from another thread, gleeful scofflaw fraudsters often look annoyingly like permanent winners till the edifice topples, i am happy to see EM's set-up as a perpetual motion machine of bullshit, every element propping up the one next to it but more and more frantic stunts being unleashed to shore up and distract from the fact that no part is actually really working at all

i guess my view on that is that the fraud is all in full view. tesla has looked and looks and is extremely dodgy in all sorts of respects, and the bottom is falling out of the EV market. but i don't think that makes him a fraudster in the dan davies sense. i think he's just a dodgy businessman. a huckster basically. it's not hidden fraud. it's in full view. same with twitter, which he seems to have bought inadvertently, and not really have any idea what he wants to do with other than troll people. he's wealthy enought to troll people by buying a platform without it being fraud. it's just silly and unpleasant ofc.

silicon valley trump?

Ok but who said he was left wing, was it Fizzles

xxp
yes calz I heard the same trailer on radio 4 and that line made me exclaim "oh fuck off!!" as I was driving

gyac you're a f'ing chancer you are

the elon musk of ilx

Look you know you are a top 200 ilxor of mine but you are nothing if not meltish

xp wow

Can we move this thread towards intro-ukpol bullying and away from tw***er before caek comes in and starts talking about how he used to work there, you know!

xxxp
fucking state of the bbc, man!

come on Fizzles shame the devil and fess up!

lol i have no idea who said he was left wing. i strongly refute gyac's melt accusation and will have it in 'the town square of ilx' if necessary.

I'm joking lol!

xp thank you for confirming it was fizzles, there’s a bin with his name (and a decrepit looking Chinese) on it

ofc! i took it in kind! (sitting here drinking melt wine listening to melt jazz)

lol i have no idea who said he was left wing. i strongly refute gyac's melt accusation and will have it in 'the town square of ilx' if necessary.

I've had to stop going to that chinese

no it was a US poster - I'm finished with retrospective shit stirring for the night now