Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

The 4th Estate editor in place at the time had the thesis of the Britpop/New Lab book all ready to go from around 1996. I’m sure they spoke to loads of writers but I was the first to go in for a meeting about writing it, and then sent to meet the guy who was a popstar fixer for New Labour before the ‘97 election.

Much as I would’ve liked to do it, I had to pass because none of the groups were at a point where they could discuss themselves - they were all too busy getting hooked on or getting clean from various drugs, and I felt it was way too invasive to interrogate anyone about at that time. Nearly two years later, most of them were ready to talk to JH.

bcz he was a communist who also liked the queen

― mark s, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

This is an underrated post btw

Richard Williams was, as I recall, an excellent presence at Mark S's music conference. He said something funny about meeting Lou Reed. (I hope I am not imagining this.)

Every time I hear about Williams the message is positive: that he is humane and generous.

I liked his sports writing also.

was John the Baptist for Whispering Bob Harris

I think the closest I've seen him to losing his rag on twitter was in response to someone posting a schoolboy comment when he announced he had nearly finished writing his Dick Seaman book.

LOL hopefully he will follow it up with a book on Dick Hyman.

I've exchanged a few emails with Williams; I interviewed him for this piece because he was present at the gig documented on an archival live album. Nice guy. Knows a lot about jazz.

yes, indeed he does. It would be fair to say his taste in music is 100% less conservative than JH who is 21 years his junior.

The Blue Moment is a great book that opened up a lot of new music for me.

years ago when i was an arrogant young pup at the wire i gave his book on miles davis a snarky review -- i'd have to look up why now tbh, probably he didn't like DARK MAGUS enough or some bullshit -- and he dropped me a funny and gracious postcard in response

(i made sure to bring this up when we chatted at the conference pinefox mentions bcz honestly it made such a good impression, he had every right to be a dick back at me lol)

This all reminded me of Mark S's conference. It was a good day (the first day that is, I couldn't be at the second) partly because of a marvellous assortment of different people: academics, fans, people with some kind of scholarly interest in rock writing perhaps, but also ... a load of veterans from ILM / ILX. There was something delightful about the London ILX FAP presence in the academic space.

And ultimately Mark S made a very substantial book from it.

Simon Jenkins: a qualified, distinguished journo.

"Despite spending billions on digitisation, the NHS is in the dark ages of the internet – as we witnessed during Covid. Patients have become far better informed at self-diagnosis. There will be exceptions, but the internet can often guide people to tests, pharmacies and treatment centres without the need for laborious referrals."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/wes-streeting-nhs-money-health-gps-patients-?

OOC quote could be an accurate and nonjudgmental description of the explosion of DIY transition in the wake of the collapse of the pretense of trans healthcare

but no it's just rank apologism for privatisation and the red tories - are guardian columnists the only people who still like this party? or are they just paid to pretend they believe all this shit?

Patients have become far better informed at self-diagnosis.

Is there one shred of evidence to support this? I say this as someone who was dismissed by a GP for a health concern which an online forum helped me successfully diagnose.

what Wes really wants is Specsavers but for life-threatening illness

Medicine is an extremely complex and difficult process. It seems to me that some patients might be able to self-diagnose on more minor matters, but on anything serious, surely trained professionals are needed. Even if you can successfully diagnose a serious illness in yourself, you won't be able to do anything about it without doctors.

assuming doctors take you seriously which isn't necessarily a given

one current area of the NHS where patients can to some extent refer themselves directly to a specialist is mental health services. it's not exactly the shiny beacon of efficiency that Streeting's talking up

it's also, of course, largely outsourced at the practitioner level

it's shite but he knows this

there's definitely an ideological social/personal disciplinary element to this (i.e. its not just incompetence or ignorance or irrationality) as with so much new labour and tory policy but other people can theorise this much better than I can

this is basically just cameron's big society though isn't it

Labour are genuinely dangerous. All that shit about "encouraging" sick and disabled people back into the workplace from last week - all I read was quotes from the slimeball shadow-health creep, but it sounds absolutely sinister.

i'm sure there's a bunch of Streeting-adjacent Labour grownups who would love to bring in the NHS equivalent of tuition fees and they're just waiting for their moment

sorry I'm getting Ashworth/Streeting mixed up here. Two of the creepiest bastards in UK politics.

i like how the "encouraging" message clearly signals that these people are bone idle parasites, which is why Labour will "encourage" them rather than, say, addressing the existing barriers that prevent disabled people who do want paid work from ever having the opportunity

meanwhile the DWP continues to keep tens of thousands of people with conditions that make it impossible for them to have any reasonable chance of working on the Intensive Work Search regime

there is a need for some reform to make it less treacherous for disabled people to access work, but these people are not the ones to trust with it. All I can envisage is more cuts and more deaths behind the bullshit soundbites.

yeah that's precisely my point, disabled people are doubly disadvantaged - those that want to work are routinely discriminated against by employers and the job market as a whole, those who don't feel able to work are routinely discriminated against by the government and its agencies

in the same way that there was a kernel of enlightened progressive thinking behind "inclusion" until successive governments realised it was a great smokescreen for closing important specialist schools and colleges

Patients have become far better informed at self-diagnosis.

Is there one shred of evidence to support this? I say this as someone who was dismissed by a GP for a health concern which an online forum helped me successfully diagnose.

― kinder, Friday, 13 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

If there is evidence Jenkins doesn't let us know. If you are going to change how healthcare is delivered 'google/AI will replace a doctor' needs work.

But ofc it's not about that.

among this bunch of fantastic and rich western democracies in the G7, I've seen multiple graphs illustrating that the UK has measliest and most punitive benefits system. And probably is the worst so called wealthy country for disabled people to live in amongst them. This is something (no it wasn't really that much better before 2010) that has been a cross party project for decades, and now the opposition party are basically saying that level of Cameron austerity is the best we can realistically expect. No wonder some people just give up altogether.

I managed to survive the last few rounds of culling-the-surplus-population (if you call this living) but it feels like I'm on borrowed time

i feel like the social presence of the self-informed has an increasingly massive weight in the whole of present-day politics, given the fact of a colossal and ever-expanding archive of information (which is often intensely contested of course)

it is for example at the root of the distaste for "populism" and the worry at the swelling (often-partisan) distrust of technocratic expertise -- the culture-wars assault on facts and logic blah blah

what's the politics of this as a general effect? "too early to tell" — zhou enlai

my partner probably hasn't got that long left to live, is wracked with MS and is developing dementia. A DWP letter dropped the other day to inform her that they are only just starting a PIP renewal review, 2 years after the form was sent in. I'm not taking it for granted that the renewal will be successful. That's how shite the system is.

without going into too much personal work-life detail let me just say that the DWP is in full "hassling people to get jobs by referring them - often against their will - to job support schemes that are frequently inappropriate" mode

That shit makes my blood boil calz, sorry you’re all going through it

Left too and anyone else on the sharp end of these cunts’ miseries

Fucking hell calz, my heart goes out to you. This is appalling.

And yes, sorry Left, I hadn’t scrolled up

Really sorry, Calzino. Really hope your partner gets the support needed.

Left too..

So sorry Calz. Have had my eyes opened in the last few years as to how people with disabilities are basically bottom of the pile. Obviously I have also seen some great support but it's stretched so thin it's transparent.

Calz, I am so sorry you’re going through this xx

thanks all, the upside to this is I've become quite calm and stolid in the face of crisis - a crisis expert almost, which you need to be these days!

glad you're holding up, it's a fucking war

Best wishes for you and your partner, Calzino, for whatever that's worth.

echoing the support from others, calz and Left <3

Just been reading the current LRB and I am increasingly convinced Iain Sinclair and Simon Jenkins are the same person

— Alex Harrowell (@yorksranter) January 21, 2023

Nothing says "change of senior editor" at The Guardian like a piece presenting wild swimming as anything other than a panacea for all the worlds ills being published.

RIP wild swimming. Nature’s ‘cure all’ has thrown in the towel | @EvaWiseman https://t.co/bfzWzDmmFn

— Observer Magazine (@ObsMagazine) January 22, 2023

breaking news: swimming in raw sewage is not as beneficial for your health as previously stated every week in the graun

my dad liked roger deakin's books (bcz he liked to read abt trees) so i read waterlog when it came out, as it was sitting there by dad's bed: its concept of wild swimming was more like hiking across the wild countryside and being sure to take a dip if/when you found open water like a sparkling stream or a cool calm lake miles from anywhere -- which i can't imagine myself doing tho i can see dad doing this when he was much younger (and not bed-ridden)

i.e anyway NOT swimming at the normal ordinary seaside! (dad liked beaches but i bet deakins despises them!) (lol even more now that they're mostly knee-deep in human waste lol)