Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

What attracted you to the millionaire Rupert Murdoch

I never watched Mrs Merton much at the time, but wasn't there sort of an unfiltered bigot playing for laughs element to her character?

No cos she very explicitly insulted bigots, see eg the Bernard Manning interview. Her character was waspish and blunt but not bigoted

The truly strange thing about soccer writer Jonathan Liew is that his writing is a pastiche of Barney Ronay.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/26/blandest-of-displays-proves-england-are-still-far-from-top-of-the-food-chain

This could be Ronay, word for word. Liew must know this. Ronay must know this. And yet they work for the same newspaper.

If I imagine turning up for work and performing a specialised task in exactly the way that another colleague was well known for doing, in front of that colleague - the idea seems excruciatingly embarrassing.

And yet I get the impression that Ronay actually approves of the fact that he has a colleague who has copied his quite distinctive manner, down to the smallest rhythms and phrasings.

Separately: why does Liew state that ENG vs USA was 'fey'? If there is one thing it was not, that is ... 'fey'.

i don’t think he knows what that word means tbh.

he was quite good on cricket before he joined the guardian, and maybe after he joined too; i’m not an assiduous reader. i found out the other week that a close colleague lived with him for a while. “abrasive, but not in a bad way” was the summary.

Funnily enough he is really good on trans rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jun/28/nadine-dorries-offers-the-illusion-of-easy-choices-while-trans-athletes-pay-the-price

assume he'll be sacked soon then

That Amelia Gentleman article about transitioning teens, arrrrrrgh.

That Amelia Gentleman article about transitioning teens, arrrrrrgh.

fey (adj.): https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fey

"of excitement that presages death," from Old English fæge "doomed to die, fated, destined," also "timid, feeble;" and/or from Old Norse feigr, both from Proto-Germanic *faigjo- (source also of Old Saxon fegi, Old Frisian fai, Middle Dutch vege, Middle High German veige "doomed," also "timid," German feige "cowardly"), from the same source as foe. Preserved in Scottish. Sense of "displaying unearthly qualities" and "disordered in the mind (like one about to die)" led to modern ironic sense of "affected"

i didnt watch the match so i wouldnt know either way, but hats off to him if he was going for "of excitement that presages death (feeble, cowardly)"

relevant modern-ish books he *might* have picked up this past-tiems usage from lol:

https://cdn.ecommercedns.uk/files/4/211944/3/11569543/8819-7.jpg

wasn't that recently mentioned in the authors no-one thread? (yes it was)

yes but im very old

Credit to Mark S - that is a strong etymological statement which could possibly actually make sense of Liew's use of the word.

At best, then, Liew was perhaps saying the match was deathly dull?

Conceivable that he was. Otherwise he was just misusing a word for alliteration's sake.

i chased this up bcz i had a v dim memory of encountering an unexpected meaning at some long-ago point, a memory i couldn't quite pin down (probably bcz at the time i'd interpreted it from context, not from knowledge: knowledge being i guess the "modern ironic sense of affected", as it says above, with a strand too of "fairylike" viz "fay")

tolkien uses it of fëanor apparently but eddison uses it (more translateably) of king gorice xi, as being driven towards death by presentiments of death, and making aggressively dangerous political and military choices accordingly

had liew a similar memory? i have no idea (and i i guess i think error is more likely, though i'm interested in what the sub-editor processing the sentence was thinking)

I'm sticking with the misusing the word theory.

at the time i think i guess-translated it roughly as "fierce to the point of wild recklessness" -- which is a long way from timid or dull

England and Wales play out eldritch, fell bore draw -- Barney Ronay, Guardian, 28.11.2022

would watch

liew is probably my favourite sports journalist, although I am also partial to jonathon wilson parodying himself.

i think my comprehension of fey may be slightly out of date itself. my only understanding was a feeling of elation/fairylike deception as a prelude to disaster and death. certainly not 'affected'. 'you're not going fey on me are you George?' (from TTSS). it meaning 'affected' is tedious: affected how?

What's TTSS?

"a feeling of elation/fairylike deception as a prelude to disaster and death"

That still doesn't seem to describe ENG 0-0 USA very well. Not much elation, at least for ENG.

no i agree. i’m with tom d. just think he misused. and apologies pf - tinker tailor soldier spy. it’s uttered by pompous civil servant Oliver Lacon, when George Smiley first starts putting his paranoic seeming theories forward.

etymonline does its best to insist that fey and fay are distinct words w/difft roots (the first germanic the second romance) and that the "fairylike" element derives from and appends only to the latter -- but evidently they've p much fused in sense these days, ftb now sounding identical

(were they pronounced differently in like the 14th century? i do not know)

my new theory is that lacon is also misusing the word, entirely bcz i dislike the character

i mix up fey and fay, and the combined word in my head has always had fairyland connotations in that sense of fairies as dangerous and not to be trusted and beguiling unto death

Lud-in-the-Mist to thread.

what does ftb mean?

I didn't really know that these were in fact two different words.

'Morgan Le Fay' (a masculine looking name for a woman character if I have remembered it correctly?) is perhaps many people's encounter with it - and suggests fairies and danger I think.

Interesting that John le Carré had the word in mind and thought he knew what he meant by it. le Carré was quite precise with words, I would say.

ftb means because

Why?

i don't know: it's old internet slang that popped out of my head and into the post without me catching and reworking it into grown-up english

it's short for "for the because"

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/024/027/blog_image_3822_4926_Webcomic_Name_April_Fools_Day_201703231756.jpg

Have to hand it to Liew - here he is basically correct about a big, dreadful development, which I can discern even as the same old TV and radio consumer I've always been.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/world-cup-technology-fans-qatar-2022

Ronay, his profile photo increasingly looking like Dorian Gray's portrait, produces an odd article.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/gianni-infantino-fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar

He and others have attacked FIFA for years. Now he says that the World Cup is producing controversies, and what is needed is strong action from ... FIFA.

Doesn't really add up. I agree that Infantino has been less visible, but find that a good thing. Like many, I have enjoyed the soccer.

Fifa has bowed to Qatar’s will on the armband-of-love, even as Qatari officials wear their Palestinian rights symbols in the seats.

Do they? I haven't seen that at all, but if they do, they've gone up in my estimation. Doesn't sound like Ronay's keen on it though.

Freeman celebrates her arrival at the Sunday Times. Her followers concur.

Hello, Sunday Times When did feminism become a dirty word?https://t.co/yJ4PHIbK4y https://t.co/11zgllgVwv

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) December 3, 2022

The journalist @HadleyFreeman has recently resigned from The Guardian. She joins @emmabarnett to talk about her claims of being “censored” from writing about gender identity, trans issues and antisemitism.

Listen here ⬇

— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) December 5, 2022

the censorship tour starts here

I wonder if Barnett challenges her on anything? I expect not. I will not listen to check.

I think Emma Barnett would be the last person in the world to challenge her on anything.

didn't it turn out that the 'censorship' she keeps complaining about was just that the guardian's editors wouldn't accept her pitches for all sorts of deranged transphobic stories because they were way outside her brief (celebrity profiles/banal columns) or just too repetitive

i just listened to it. Barnett not terrible actually. but i think most listeners would be baffled. HF keeps saying that everyone’s very mean to her, and that management is “afraid” of the reaction if they published (anti-trans) “gender-critical” pieces. Barnett points out that the Guardian website carries a number of pieces by and interviews with exactly the people that HF says were “censored”. but in general they’re studiously avoiding why people get angry with HF. why people call her a bigot. you’d think that after former friends and allies all over tarnation have called you a bigot and dropped you like a hot potato the issue might be you and not them?

HF dropped in questions about gender and Woody Allen in some of her interviews, which should've been cut. If anything she was given far too much freedom to do what she wanted.

I wonder whether she left or was pushed, and if it was the latter what did it.

think it's quite likely she was poached, given where she ended up

Did she jump or was she poached?

Peter Preston’s son is exec editor of the Sunday Times and is married to Janice TERFer. She got a golden parachute but I bet she’s not on Caitlin Moran money.

I AM BEING CENSORED, i yell on a popular national radio programme as i begin my new job as a columnist on one of the nation's top broadsheets

incredible that this shit still works

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2022/dec/09/fading-tories-stealing-ideas-labour-keir-starmer

"The fading Tories are stealing ideas from Labour – a transition has already begun. Andy Beckett"

It's fun to peer into Wonderland sometimes

"On probity in public life, private schools, poverty and wealth, whom the economy should prioritise, social values and the environment, Labour and the Tories remain miles apart."

I don't think this is true.