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Why the Guardian is going down the pan!

cesare said:
I'm not mixing them up - it was a related but separate comment in the context of what Paolo also had said.

Even on-line form will result in loss of jobs, and I do feel strongly about that.

I'm also probably feeling a bit emotional about it at the moment because an old friend of mine from the (original days) of the print at Wapping died just before Christmas. I'm not looking for an argument, I was just observing.
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OK, no argument, I'm sorry for your friend passing away, I don't think there is anyone on this thread that doesn't feel strongly about any loss of jobs.

The Guardian - the Guardian Media Group - are the ones bringing forward the job losses. It has cut jobs in the past keeping within the same format. Over a period of time, its regional wing ate up dozens of local papers, erasing countless positions slowly making people redundant, before it sold it on at a more manageable (profitable) condition elsewhere. By attacking those local papers, it subsidised its main Guardian and Observer output.
 
The Guardian's current strategy - apart from all manner of dodgy tax arrangements in tax havens (see above) - is to call for an extra £2 from internet consumers not firms.


David Leigh 23 September 2012 Guardian investigative journalism executive editor said:
A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber's bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online.

There are almost 20m UK households that are paying upwards of £15 a month for a good broadband connection, plus another 5m mobile internet subscriptions. People willingly pay this money to a handful of telecommunications companies, but pay nothing for the news content they receive as a result, whose continued survival is generally agreed to be a fundamental plank of democracy. A £2 levy on top – collected easily from the small number of UK service providers (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc) who would add it on to consumers' bills – would raise more than £500m annually. It could be collected by a freestanding agency, on the lines of the BBC licence fee, and redistributed automatically to "news providers" according to their share of UK online readership.
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On its own terms, it is better than a Murdoch style pay-wall system, yes. But why extract this £2 from the public and not from corporations/rich people? To anyone who has the internet, it is an extra slap.
They are saying to internet consumers: 'Pay another £24 a year for news or our workers will be first out of the door.' Same with the BBC 'Pay a higher licence fee or the workforce gets it'. The tactics of mean bullies.
I think both the Guardian and BBC - controlling mass communication and acceptable facts - via editorial pressure from above are framing the debate in these ludicrous terms.
 
Sod that, especially as the Guardian are doing quite well online with getting eyeballs in other countries like the USA as far as I know.

In principal I would not be opposed to small broadband licence fees being collected if that money went to some kind of service that was owned and controlled by the public, but these concepts would have to have real meaning, not like the current gulf between the public an the BBC where we are just supposed to hoover up the propaganda rather than have an opportunity to create it.
 
paolo said:
Blimey this thread continues.

In the near time frame - five to ten years - the Graun will cease to exist, on paper. Nobody wanting a range of material buys the morning star or the swappy thing or anything else. Hair shirt for breakfast? It's not appetising is it?

The last profitable papers are the Telegraph and the Mail.

Halle-fucking-luja.

Cheer on the death of the Guardian!
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the stars not a hair shirt its more tabloidy than the SW or the Socialist both of which are very dry.

But at one pound sixt for a paper the size of the 30p sun, well, its not hard to see why they have the begging bowl out 24/7
 
teqniq said:
Vacuous drivel alert:

It's time for a better capitalism, one that creates jobs and provides security
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More or less vacuous than in house working-class perspective person Lynsey Hanley?


I've plodded streets and pounded pavements without a day's rest, and in so doing have come to believe not only that it's what we are born to do, but that there is a vested interest at work in capitalism that ensures we do as little of it as possible. Walking is more dangerous to the established order of things than it is to the pedestrian trying to avoid being run over at a faded zebra crossing. It's one of a number of antidotes to ignorance, binding us to our environment through the accumulation of local knowledge.
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sihhi said:
The Guardian's current strategy - apart from all manner of dodgy tax arrangements in tax havens (see above) - is to call for an extra £2 from internet consumers not firms.




On its own terms, it is better than a Murdoch style pay-wall system, yes. But why extract this £2 from the public and not from corporations/rich people? To anyone who has the internet, it is an extra slap.
They are saying to internet consumers: 'Pay another £24 a year for news or our workers will be first out of the door.' Same with the BBC 'Pay a higher licence fee or the workforce gets it'. The tactics of mean bullies.
I think both the Guardian and BBC - controlling mass communication and acceptable facts - via editorial pressure from above are framing the debate in these ludicrous terms.
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Leigh's first sentence is entirely contradictory. You're not levying the provider if the subscriber is paying the cost. In fact the provider benefits because they have your extra £2 per month to play with (multiplied by however many subscribers they have) to play with before they pass it along to whoever would disburse it to the media outlets.

Just another fucking scam.
 
teqniq said:
lol true, you decide :D
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In fairness annoying crap impression of a liberation theologian Giles Fraser has also done well in today's tripe stakes:


What do I mean by magic? Forget Merlin. Forget Potter. I mean the belief that there is ever a short cut out of the constituent limitations of our humanity. That there is a way, instantly, with the flick of a wand or a credit card, of changing ourselves from one thing to something else entirely. Abracadabra. Magic is the escape fantasy of those who cannot cope with the fact that we are limited creatures, that we will grow old and die, that we can never have everything, that we will always be dependent on food and oxygen and the love of others, and that, because of this, we will often feel pain and loss. Magic is the belief that there is some other way of dealing with all of this other than simply by dealing with it. Which is why I think the really dangerous magic – and I believe all magic is dangerous – is out there in the post-Christmas sales. The most insidious magic is disguised as something so ordinary we don't even notice it. In terms of magic, both Christianity and contemporary market capitalism appear under the form of their opposites.
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Sales=Really Dangerous Magic.

So clever-he's-outsmarted-himself literary giant Ian Jack gives us what I did on my Christmas hols fancy cinema style:

This was our Christmas treat at the BFI on London's South Bank, though we knew, of course, that the second film's ending wouldn't exactly send us trilling across Waterloo Bridge to our post-screening hamburgers in Covent Garden, which is another seasonal custom.... "Too much animal cruelty" was one verdict as we conducted our postmortem over our hamburgers, though the main complaint was directed not at too much realism regarding animals, but too little when it came to humans. Could Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans really have behaved so stoically and politely, gallant gentlemen until the very end? The two women at the table found it unbelievable that so little emotion could be shown when, for example, the expedition's last support party left the five men to carry on alone, with no hugged farewells and only a shout of "Good luck!"
I wasn't sure; perhaps it had really been like that. For example, I doubt that my grandfathers, born at roughly the same time as Bowers and Oates, ever hugged another person in public, or did very much in the way of touching at all, other than a handshake at New Year. As for stoicism, who can tell?
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Martin Kettle, an international affairs expert for 30 odd years rambles something about England bad Holland good or perhaps Britain really is great or something:


Perhaps the explanation is only that Dutch prowess began to dwindle so long ago compared with Britain's more recent decline. Certainly, modern-day Netherlands is extremely conscious that it is now a small country, dependent on European alliances in a way that is manifestly not mirrored in increasingly Eurosceptic Britain. Perhaps a small country feels permitted to dwell on a distant golden age in a way that a bigger one does not. Or perhaps the explanation is simply that the British have not yet learned how to agree an account of the age of British global power and wealth. It would be fascinating to see a credible attempt to contain such a subject within an exhibition similar to the one the Dutch have just mounted in Amsterdam. It would be great to try.
The subject may seem too big, too raw and perhaps still too politicised – until one visits the German Historical Museum in Berlin and realises that tougher assignments have been successfully carried out. A satisfactory alternative modern narrative of British power remains to be written. Perhaps this absence of a settled history helps explain why Britain has such difficulties with its relationship with the EU. Or perhaps – a nice thought with which to end the year – our golden age does not lie behind us. Perhaps, echoing Milton, our own golden poet, the world is all before us.
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Do others agree that the quality control in the Comment & Analysis section is lower than before?
 
sihhi said:
Do others agree that the quality control in the Comment & Analysis section is lower than before?
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Well sadly, yes. I mainly use the site to get an overview of the main news. The comments stuff seems to have deteriorated into mostly shite.
 
elbows said:
Or, according to wikipedia, humans. I think we've got one or two believers in this stuff on some of the u75 energy threads, although they'd usually rather shout doom than get into the gory details. I doubt Monbiot belongs to this category, as he started promoting Nuclear power after Fukushima made him dream that the coal goblins were at the end of the bed, nibbling at his toes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding_(anarchism)

Insert sheep shagging joke here ;)
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On the subject of rewilding, the Daily Mail has run the following article about a woman living such a lifestyle in Wales. Originally part of a larger community with her then-husband, after the divorce the larger community was split into smaller neighbouring communities. Monbiot would do worse than to start by talking to her and her community members.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...bbit-style-existence-mud-hut-Welsh-hills.html

If you ignore the mocking tone of the article, it's quite interesting.

Note to DM reporters: if you generate your own power, you DO have electricity, you're just not connected to the National Grid. Learn the basics, muppets.
 
I've decided, today, that the Guardian is completely shit with nothing worthwhile ever published in it,

Not ever.

It would be far better for the meeja in general if it completely ceased to exist whether online or in print or in any other format.

It would suit my laziness-preference, on here and IRL, if I really was to came to that conclusion anyway ;)

Saying anything even slightly unhatefilled about the Guardian is far too much like fucking hard work.

Even if you chuck in plenty of (well informed ;) ) criticism as well, you're still an uncritical G-worshipper :mad: :eek: on the two-year hate that's been that thread.

From the viewpoint of hardcore antiGuardianistas, you either hate or worship.

Nothing 'liberally'' inbetween permitted!

I could sue some on here for defamation of character, had I any legal grounds whatsover for doing so ... :p
 
And yes, I know perfectly well that it's not just 'all about me' :rolleyes:

But I'm almost the only fucker on this thread, very few exceptions, who ever has anything other than Guardian hate to post, so whatever!

PITFA frankly.
 
Cos I'm totally fucked of with worse bias than in the pages of the Dailies Mail and Telegraph. Urban's better than that or should be.

And having my own politics and perspective lied about when I post anything even vaguely objective and better informed is also a complete PITFA.

Yes I do take that personally -- I'm almost the only person here who ever reads the damned thing properly and in the round -- and I'm a fucking leftie.

No-one else here, including some less left wing than I am I suspect, seems to do the same.

They (you included? not sure) just selectively and vindictively hunt around online for only the very worst to post about.

Yes of course the bloody thing includes its share of complete shit, but that's an intellectually, politically and historically shit approach itself.
 
Then why don't you start a pro-Guardian thread?

No, I don't particularly post much about the Guardian because I don't really read it (were you asking me? I'll answer anyway). I'll sometimes have a view about an article or piece that someone has linked to and if I don't think it's particularly good, or if it's dire, I might be arsed to say so.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/30/highlights-year-2012-personal-best

Eva Wiseman? Eva Morevacuous.

Gadget of the year My poor iPhone. It started the year being stolen, but made its way back to me by means of magic and some mercy. Inside, a grid of photos showed my friends in all weathers, gamboling and lying still and grinning next to rude signs, and a carefully curated selection of apps waited to entertain me. But like a cat that curls up beside a radiator and slowly stops eating, it wasn't long after its return before my phone stopped charging fully. You could tell it was trying its hardest, but plugged in all night it would only last a morning. At the Apple store they shook their heads with studied sadness. Simless now, it's been dark since September, and I'm still too sentimental to transfer over my wallpaper.
 
Here we go though :

John Harris : Welfare : Get ready for a war over benefits

(clearly entirely valueless -- he's associated with Compass after all)

Zoe Williams : Domestic abuse, changing the conversation

(not worth bothering with - she's Richard Williams' daughter, so her take on feminism is all about nepotism and nothing else)

Barney Ronay : The Ashes will be a show of Anglo Aussie resistance to the global pull of Twenty20

(talks too much, thus has nothing at all of worth to say about sport)
 
Fantastic piece calling to open up the professions.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9767602/Learning-on-the-job.html

Defending scientific education and knowledge

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...nowing-about-science-is-not-a-trivial-pursuit

Massively important call on environmental degradation

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/co...ng-are-we-any-closer-to-saving-the-world.html

Fantastic reporting on the ongoing struggle in Thailand, the blood of 1976 and the ethnic divisions run deep

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...8982/Forgotten-war-in-the-Land-of-Smiles.html
 
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