Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

I have watched little football over the last few years partly bcz it got less important for me (though the thing being eaten alive by money didn't help) but I still devoured the last World Cup like I was 13 again because in the end there is still magic in people kicking a ball about.

Yeah that wasn't a good moment and it was a huge relief to be shot of him after a mercifully brief period. Maybe I was a massive hypocrite to continue supporting the team while not endorsing an individual player? I'd have to accept that criticism. Tbh I didn't really take time to learn about Ronaldo's history, I don't really know the particulars of that case. I know more about Greenwood and if he ever ayed for them again, that would be unforgivable. xps

Things have gone down a hole at most big clubs and leagues.

Indeed.

I guess I react because the point of descent has been reached long ago and yet a lot of journalists are reacting now without any kind of acknowledgement because it's yesterday's news xp

This is v true and i do feel complicit in partially ignoring it

I ignored it for a long time as well. Always going to be a level of complicity, which I don't see it written about (well or otherwise).

Yeah Nick not having a pop - had this own argument with close ones many times. Speaking in general terms, away from that particular situation, it’s fucking hard to always be that person pointing this stuff out. I was actually kind of taken aback that you described it as complicity because that kind of awareness seems so rare nowadays - and also as everyone has said so well, the whole structure seems absolutely filthy, what’s a little more. Difficult to know what to do. But I draw a strong line between people who are at least feeling conflicted and those who are actively revelling in it.

The Observer.

It’s not “anti-democracy” to prevent Labour members from imposing a man who presided over institutional antisemitism on voters.

Why Starmer was absolutely right to make clear there’s no space for Corbyn as a Labour MP.https://t.co/BCm508lUNq

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) February 19, 2023

One of the vilest people in UK media, and that's saying something.

an institutional problem that you can solve by swapping the guy on top and then it's over

these people either don't understand their own words or they don't believe them, presumably the latter, for whatever reasons (branding? self-image?) they need their conservatism to look like something else, it's pretty fucking obvious the reasons they care about this have never been the reasons they give for caring about it

Imposing someone on voters? She doesn't appear to understand how voting works.

We have Ed Miliband to thank for her prominence. If he hadn’t employed her, we wouldn’t be reading her shitty opinions. Related: Ayesha Hazarika having the audacity to criticise anyone on the left side of Labour when her intervention - the Ed Stone - probably cost Miliband the 2015 election.

at least she got a nice job on a right-wing talk radio station as a reward for turning Ed into a laughing stock, well she is allegedly a comedian after all.

Suzy is right. Both are dire.

Tom D is right. The argument is clearly utterly anti-democratic, as well as being based on corruption and falsehood.

It's a hilariously petulant argument: British democracy works through choosing one of these two parties and so it is the responsibility of party members to vote in people Sonia's gang of bigots find acceptable, otherwise they're Spoiling It For Everyone.

And hooray, my birthday is forever clouded by being CHUK day, the farcical reiteration of the tragedy of the SDP.

The clue’s in the six-figure sinecures doled out to each and every CHUK and right-wing Labour splitter.

if Corbyn stands as an independent presumably that is also the Wrong Kind of Democracy

you can't have democracy that is populist (a word these people spit out as a slur) it's got be so self-perpetuating + depressing that large blocks of people stop participating, it's got to be in support of corrupt bigots and the options on the ballot have to be all the fucking same shit!

so depressing*

CHUK day kinda legendary tbf

I think that was yesterday, Suzy?

I'm really sorry that I misspoke earlier on Politics Live - here's my statement. pic.twitter.com/7csM95TFLo

— Angela Smith (@angelasmithmp) February 18, 2019

It's a hilariously petulant argument: British democracy works through choosing one of these two parties and so it is the responsibility of party members to vote in people Sonia's gang of bigots find acceptable, otherwise they're Spoiling It For Everyone.

There's a subtext about how the proles who live in Islington North are obviously going to vote Labour anyway, so thick and unimaginative are they, so Sonia and her friends need to get one of their crew in to hoover up these mugs' votes.

none of the *big names* of Labour will want to try and take on such a Sisyphean task of certain failure, because however overconfidently they might speak to the media about it (like Yvette Cooper did t'other day) - they know Corbyn is untouchable on his own patch.

I'm wondering when the Graun will stop running these "why do people hate me" self-owning pieces by the columnists
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/21/i-gatecrashed-a-party-for-young-people-and-have-never-been-less-welcome

"i spout shitty opinions in a public forum on the reg, why doesn't everybody love me?"

in before anybody says "new board description"

it's real Phil Space stuff while also inadvertently being revealing about their empty lives

knew it would be Williams from the URL

she's just no Chilesy

crashing a party, uninvited and then moaning that the hosts and other guests were less than thrilled with your presence just seems like arrogance to me.

Oddly I once saw ZW at a party.

lol I clicked and that article is so SHORT on top of everything else, despite being padded! there's barely enough there for a blog post circa 2001.

she's just no Chilesy

I know her a little, but that doesn’t change the pantsness of the column today.

Just saw that, as per comments earlier about the Guardian always running "drink less" columns, Adrian Chiles has written a whole book about same.
https://storage.googleapis.com/circlesoft/document/photos/003/787/355/original_9781788163590.jpg?1663134367

Predictable but still astounding reponses
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/21/do-not-forget-jeremy-corbyn-failure-on-antisemitism

People online rightly hating the headline.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/07/conservatives-channel-crossings-small-boats-tories-rwanda-deportation

"Unworkable" being the harshest criticism the Labour Party can muster.

There are ppl in Lab HQ looking at that and saying "we'll do better".

lost count of the amount of times I hear how the tories need to "get a grip" from the shadow cabinet's "big guns". So yeah, mainly all of their most destructive and evil policies are fine in principle, but they just aren't getting a grip on them.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/russell-brand-politics-public-figures-responsibility

How naive do you have to be to have not realised Brand was always an egocentric twat? His current trajectory is vmic so give it a rest with all the hand-wringing.

He has, in this respect, become the opposite of what he was.

Not really!

Stopped reading after "I once admired Russell Brand".

does "energising young people who had been alienated from politics" include that toe-curling interview in Ed's kitchen? Blimey George, if only you were as easily impressed during the Corbyn era.

Corbyn completely ended this cunt's grift on the left, a worthy achievement in itself

He's been telling on himself for years and the thing with him refusing to continue a film shoot until a wardrobe assistant took her top off for him was reported in like 2012 ffs

Jeez some of you need to exit the vampire castle

I like Bananaman's point. Until 2015 Brand (whom I have always hated in general) could actually appear as a radical outside voice from the Left. Even Miliband (whom I have always mostly liked) was 'the Left' in a way. JC changed that.

From “good enough” to “good”.

piece from mark sweney suggesting that lineker's refusal to apologise and back down is brand positioning. god knows lineker's a melt at times, but the idea someone might have convictions is an alien concept to these people

They really, really suck.

Guardian columnists inserting "to be sure" grafs about how this was sort of Lineker's fault captures so much pic.twitter.com/RNCGMjsw9Z

— Michael Caley (@MC_of_A) March 11, 2023