Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

and you can go free swimming to catch shrimp!

Something very funny about this headline making him sound like a free speech basement dweller when the videos are actually thoroughly lovely and just half an hour of him waxing lyrical about the music he loves. pic.twitter.com/gyDTSPiHeJ

— Nick Reilly (@NickJWReilly) March 19, 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/mar/23/youve-never-eaten-a-banana-10-writers-face-their-fiercest-and-strangest-food-fears

Very long set of articles on food.

Taste's very strange!

Always hated articles where the journalist goes and does something purely in order to write about it, esp. if accompanied by a photo of said journo pulling a face.

You mean like John Harris interviewing working class people to see how much they hate Jeremy Corbyn?

Imagine this being your personality.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/df4b7b345c7dceca04aeb27192a8ae627f2f9acd/0_0_2560_1536/master/2560.jpg?width=965&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none

Tim fucking Dowling was always doing this and his shtick is already annoying enough

Except that time someone from a music magazine (Q? Mojo? Uncut?) spent three days sitting in a pub recording everything anyone played on the jukebox and went slowly mad from all the times people played 'Stairway to Heaven', which remains classic.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/04/carol-vorderman-60s-renaissance-political-hero

Uncool liberal beliefs.

But if she doesn’t have power, a woman like Vorderman undeniably does wield influence

This is undeniably utter tosh.

she wields influence in the "constantly trying to sucker people into taking on debt" community

this is one of those idiot "fantasy cabinet featuring Richard Osman, Gary Lineker etc" tweets except Gaby got paid for it

to get onto the Countdown crew requires MI5 vetting, no commies allowed!

Might be remembering this wrong but pretty certain she was pretty close to calling for a mass anti-paedo vigilante movement in the tabloids around the turn of the millennium.

— Samplo Corvodina (@TreborRhurbarb) April 4, 2023

maybe they don't allow comments on obituaries as a matter of course and made a mistake here, but I and three other people left comments about nigel lawson's climate denialism. they were all deleted and comments now disabled.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2023/apr/08/the-indian-premier-league-is-a-brilliant-thing-but-is-killing-test-cricket

"What we have here is managed decline, Test cricket treated like the block of flats the local council allows to decay until finally it has all the excuses it needs to cut its losses and pull the whole thing down."

This analogy is so melty and doesn't work. Really hate him.

IPL and Tests have coincided perfectly, even symbiotically. 50-over stuff is the victim, if there is one. The Hundred is far more pernicious an attempt to shift the game's emphases

I suppose you could make an argument that the perma-calendar of different nations' Premier Leagues is getting a bit much, but if anything they're diluting each others' brands, especially when they overlap. Test players are still playing Tests

Test cricket is going down if that schedule is anything to go by. The reason is that the shorter forms (beginning with 50) have been the more popular form of it in the sub-continent for a long time. People have not been turning up for tests over there in any kind of numbers. And there would've been more money going into Tests if that was the case.

It's hardly like Labour and Tories combining to destroy council stock.

had this convo the other day, i can see less Tests and fewer Test nations in the future but i don't see any sensible fix to reverse that

That illustration is pretty suspect, the GIANT INDIAN MAN IN HIS COLOURFUL CLOTHES is dwarfing the quiet pale English cricketer in his traditional whites

I guess a problem is length of Test series. You're lucky to get 3 in a series most of the time now, unless it's between the Big Three

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/09/sunday-with-kelly-jones-head-to-the-park-to-run-the-kids-out-then-pick-up-a-chicken

Rocker Kelly Jones describes a typical Sunday.

meat and potatoes, oh the irony

even Shakin' Stevens was never that dull

Shakey dull? Never!

Kelly Jones from the Superspreadeophonics?

My late cousin hung onto her maiden name because she didn’t want to be Kelly Jones.

I read this on Facebook and feel like it deserves reposting here: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/11/colin-from-accounts-review-at-last-a-female-character-thats-not-a-stereotype

I don’t think this author has seen a sitcom in the past 20 years based off of this review

it's so bad, just everything about it

I couldn't get past the first sentence tbh.

sounds like classic Mangan

Agree with Tom D.

Then?

We’ll head to the park to run the kids out, then I’ll pop in the butchers and pick up a chicken. Later, stick the veg on, Jakki does the roast potatoes, I’ll do the Yorkshire puddings.

If anyone says "stick the veg on" in my physical presence I am not responsible for my actions

That includes you, Jamie Oliver

there is a scene in the Altman Van Gogh movie where Gaugin is using a food analogy (cooking is like painting sort of thing) to intimate Van G's painting style lacked flair and imagination, like his shit cooking - or roughly something like that, obv his character was wrong in this case. But with this dullard, that would be a correct dis to make. You'd get more appetising food in a prison than in this boring cunt's house!

Calzino at his best.

Strikes me that 'inner life of Kelly Jones' would be a step down even from ILX's dull 'inner life of Noel Gallagher'.

"stick the veg on" makes me think "I am consuming the mandatory number of portions of vegetables until the day scientists come up with a pill to replace them"

confident I could've predicted Kelly Jones having a son named Marley

people sure love that dog

Calling your son Marley vs. calling your son Lennon. I suppose they should be grateful they weren't called Clapton.

It’s probably cos I’m into baseball now and am watching fellas called absurd things like Dansby, Kutter and Jeter (first name), but I’d take a nice honest Lennon or even a Clapton tbh

Calzino at his best.

Strikes me that 'inner life of Kelly Jones' would be a step down even from ILX's dull 'inner life of Noel Gallagher'.

My daughter has been to K Jones's house! Apparently, it is MASSIVE. School pals. I think she'll get a kick out of that article. She revels in the absurdity and boringness of All Dads.

"In lockdown, when everybody walked the Earth, it niggled me again."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/12/banished-to-boomer-island-tales-of-a-menopausal-gen-xer-for-hire

wow, if I was writing something with the goal of discrediting generational analysis I couldn't do better

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/17/astrology-stars-art-understanding-restrictive

I’ve been in the grip of astrology all my life, so why am I turning my back on the stars? - Daisy Jones

Smug detractors may roll their eyes, but this ancient art gave me a deep understanding of who I am – until it began to feel restrictive

Observer leader writer and columnist promotes a Times review attacking J. Maugham KC.

“It is all downhill from the book’s very first, unforgivable sentence: “The life I have is hard, but I got to choose it, and the road that brought me here I did not.” Is this a song lyric? What does it even mean? Does Penguin no longer employ editors?"https://t.co/ilrQwHZssc

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) April 22, 2023