Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Old Etonians STFU TYVM

if Crace went to Eton his expensive education hasn't prevented him being extremely thick

Thick Etonians, whoever heard of such a thing? Maybe all that heroin affected his brain.

It's certainly super odd how the most recent, notable and universally upheld examples of antisemitism are from Starmer's Labour and the right wing of the party, yet Crace and Behr etc reflexively cannot help but refer back to Corbyn's Labour, almost as if it's a deflecting tactic, or a salve of a wretched conscience, or pure political partiality.

having a smackhead adventure is a jolly good wheeze for an Etonian, another one to tick off the bucket list. Parents can send you to a Swiss clinic for a controlled withdrawal and then you can drone on about how you used to be an addict for the rest of your fking life!

"You are receiving this email because you are a subscriber to Swift Notes."

I'm bloody not! How the fuck did my barely-used spare email address end up on a Taylor Swift-themed Guardian mailing list?! Fuck off Laura Sn@pes

lol i just got this too

Dear reader,

Today you received a copy of Swift Notes, our new newsletter on Taylor Swift, from Laura Snapes. Due to an error in our email system, the newsletter was sent out to some people who are not subscribed to it.

It shouldn't have happened, and we're putting steps in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Just to reassure you, you have not been subscribed to the newsletter and you won't receive it again unless you do subscribe. We are sorry for the error.

Best,
Toby Moses
Head of newsletters

Phew!

pertinent to thread-title that should be "owing to an error in our email system"

sorry we accidentally blew the gaff on our massive data harvesting lol

why would I need a Taylor Swift newsletter when I have ILX

So it looks as if you now have to register to read the Guardian online and there's no way I'm doing that, so it's bye bye Guardian.

is that just on i-phones/smartphones? I was reading it earlier online and be damned if I'll register with these a-holes

I was trying to read it on my laptop. Maybe they've decided they just don't like me.

I think you can read the Express for free if that helps?

Still till working without registration for me, but no doubt they are gradually rolling it out. I use it for advanced students, so as long as we don't have to pay I'll still use it with 12 ft wall/archive.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/17/birmingham-britain-state-cuts-austerity-local-services

This is all true, but maybe there was something that could have been done 4 and a bit years ago that might have prevented some of the worst of it?

It's the perfect situation for The Guardian. Rant about how things are broken and limit your horizons on how the problems can be fixed.

this moral campaign to get rich establishment women into the exclusive members club for rich establishment men really is some peak grauniad

sounds very Helen Lewis

imagine getting worked up that ayesha hazarika doesn't get enough opportunities to chin wag with tory peers

Baroness Ayesha Hazarika, to be precise.

maybe John Harris's gloating has pushed her over the edge

(Not Guardian AFAIK but) TERFs defending the Garrick Club because they think it being in the news is cointelpro to undermine same-sex spaces is *chef's kiss*

It's extremely on brand

If Will Hutton wants to make these arguments about how water and other public utilities should be funded and managed, he should do it under his own name, and not anonymously as The Observer View. https://t.co/Ff8sHyfcpY pic.twitter.com/0b2WfBwILk

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) March 31, 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/30/she-still-carries-an-aura-of-spectacular-failure-why-hasnt-liz-truss-gone-away

As I listened to her banging on, her eyes oddly glassy as though looking for something just over the horizon, she strongly reminded me of someone but I couldn’t put my finger on who it was. Then it came to me. In her mix of utter conviction and utter obliviousness to how she might come across to anyone who doesn’t see the world the way she does, the politician she most resembles is Jeremy Corbyn. Like him, Truss is convinced the policies she advocates are popular with a majority of the public. For Corbyn it was nationalisation of the utilities, more money for the NHS and cheaper housing, all of which poll extremely well. For Truss it is secure borders, lower taxes and an end to burdensome environmental restrictions. In both cases, the explanation for why the things the public want never come to pass is the same: the system is stacked against the preferences of ordinary people.

The whole article is shit, I mean, commenting on members of the audience being overweight?

So weird how they even mention Corbyn's existence

the Corbyn leadership is the winter of discontent for the centrist establishment, they will never stop evoking its symbolic horror

Exactly.

Like him, Truss is convinced the policies she advocates are popular with a majority of the public. For Corbyn it was nationalisation of the utilities, more money for the NHS and cheaper housing, all of which poll extremely well.

In other words they are popular with the majority of the public. Duh.

"David Walter Runciman, 4th Viscount Runciman of Doxford, FBA, FRSL (born 1 March 1967), is an English academic and podcaster who teaches politics and history at Cambridge University, where he is Professor of Politics"

viscount, podcaster, polprof

(i forget if i talked abt this, i was researching something in the british library a few years ago, which required me to read several back issues of the modern review, and found in passing a piece by runciman on BLUR: it was eye-stretchingly bad)

i cannot *stand* runciman.

i now want to read that blur piece.

i wondered if he was related to Steven Runciman and of course he his, nepo-politics forever

nepo discourse comes from the aristocracy at last

Zoe sticking to the really important issues of the day.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/01/the-wags-are-back-but-i-miss-the-carefree-days-of-posh-and-coleen

Probably their oddest columnist. She writes a lot about health and fitness and about her personal life.

Alternating between something serious and this.

I read it as some acknowledgement that their politics is too awful to fling on to ppl every week.

this may have become distorted in the rear view mirror but as far as I remember ZW was further to the left than most guardian commentators for a long time and a fairly vocal supporter of trans rights. when she started doing what suddenly seemed like loads more lifestyle fluff in a Tim Dowling style, I wondered whose call that was.

Still wrote a ton of lifestyle fluff for the Evening Standard before she joined the Guardian.

i have a soft spot for zoe williams but dont feel compelled to read her

didn't Zoe Williams used to be their sort of voice-of-youth columnist back in the day? Anyway, the oldest Zoe Williams column available on the guardian website is a list of '101 things we don't miss' published April 2001 that includes Roland Rat and Deely-Boppers, so her writing fluff pieces for them is not a new development

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/apr/21/weekend.zoewilliams2

I know her a little because we have many mutuals and I like her; she has no time for bigots or terfs, especially those in the media. She is definitely on the left despite going to private school in West London. Not crazy about the Poly Filla stuff she is asked to write, though. I say this all the time but columnists get their gigs because an editor becomes fascinated with some aspect of their lives and then they’re in that job forever. One huge reason her output has increased recently is that she has been seconded to Parliamentary sketch person while John Crace recuperates from his heart attack.

should i be worried abt the heart-attack rate among senior guardian columnists? god keep chiles safe!

He doesn't have Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit living rent-free in his head.

fluff is good again

it just goes to show that centrism is even worse for health than heroin addiction

Certainly at a policy level