Why the Guardian is going down the pan!

[killer b]

William isn't recovering.

 

[ymu]

Early stages mate, early stages. Ever known a recovering swappie?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

The first stage is to admit you have a problem - he hasn't done that yet.

 

[William of Walworth]

I have a big problem with staying away from this thread that's for sure.

Sihhi's latest is a tough post. Need more time to reply to that.
(By 'well resourced editiorially' on the DM though, I meant strong editorial budget with plenty of resources for journalism)

killerb : I wouldn't call anyone a liar who hasn't specifially accused me of uncritical Guardian worship ('Liberal' = highly debateable ; 'worship' = simply not true)
My issue was much with the overall dishonest approach taken by this thread more generally, as in : by only selecting the shite examples, whatever the thread title, pushes the line that the paper's completely full of shit and never has anything worthwhile in it at all. So yes I do think that's pretty shoddy and dishonest.

Bollocks, I'm supposed to be in a rush today. No more time.

 

[cesare]

That's a bit like a LibDem moaning like hell and calling people dishonest for posting reasons why the LibDems are shit on the Why The LibDems Are Shit thread.

 

[ymu]

BUt they blocked boundary reform! probably

 

[frogwoman]

just because a paper sometimes has worthwhile stuff in it doesn't mean it is not shit, the daily mail often has good articles in it and even something like the bnp website is sometimes interesting to read to see the analysis and what they are thinking

 

[killer b]

My issue was much with the overall dishonest approach taken by this thread more generally, as in : by only selecting the shite examples, whatever the thread title, pushes the line that the paper's completely full of shit and never has anything worthwhile in it at all. So yes I do think that's pretty shoddy and dishonest.

this is total nonsense. you're out of your depth william.

however, if you insist on standing by your accusation of dishonesty, i'll stand by my view of you being a cunt.

 

[xenon]

Exactly. People link to the Guardian all the time when an article is relevant. Ditto the BBC. The existence too of Why the BBC is Shit thread, doesn't mean you can't enjoy and be informed by a lot of their output. It means when it comes to politics and the jounalistic line most often taken, they're weak or rotten.

 

[Pickman's model]

Exactly. People link to the Guardian all the time when an article is relevant. Ditto the BBC. The existence too of Why the BBC is Shit thread, doesn't mean you can't enjoy and be informed by a lot of their output. It means when it comes to politics and the jounalistic line most often taken, they're week or rotten.

weak.

 

[sihhi]

I have a big problem with staying away from this thread that's for sure.

Sihhi's latest is a tough post. Need more time to reply to that.
(By 'well resourced editiorially' on the DM though, I meant strong editorial budget with plenty of resources for journalism)

Plenty of resources being deployed for journalism is increasingly untrue for the Daily Mail.

Note please that I cited without editing all the latest Comment is Free publications down the side of the page - no cherrypicking. You are going to have to make a case for their enlightening and expanding substance meaning that we should continue to see the Guardian at the level of a decent paper on the side of the people, albeit one that incites hatred against trade unions when they struggle.

 

[William of Walworth]

<edited away . Read following posts for why>

 

[William of Walworth]

<edited. See following posts, especially ymu's, for why. I don't need that level of contempt. See you in other threads!>

 

[ymu]

Somebody please make it stop.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Somebody please make it stop.

 

[killer b]

william: i'm calling you a cunt 'cause you're calling us liars, that's all. I think that's reasonable, in the absence of any evidence presented by you?

your spirited defence of the guardian merely marks you out as a fool.

 

[mk12]

Build your own snowman – interactive

Are you stuck indoors? Or has the snow near you melted? Get in the snowy spirit anyway by putting together your own snowman. Just click on your favourite snowman accessories and our interactive will do the rest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jan/21/build-snowman-interactive

 

[sihhi]

For the benefit of William of Walworth:

Obama inaugurates renewed energy on climate change
21 Jan 2013: Sarah van Gelder: That the president put climate change so high on his second-term agenda surprised many. But action must follow words

An action-packed thriller is about to unfold in Davos, Switzerland
21 Jan 2013: Aditya Chakraborrtty: In secret meetings in tiny rooms, the rich plot to get even richer

Steve Bell on David Cameron talking of terror 'franchises' springing up worldwide – cartoon
21 Jan 2013: Cartoon PM says threat will require a global response 'that is about years, even decades, rather than months'

Lance Armstrong's Oprah PR disaster: polls show confessing is for losers
21 Jan 2013: Harry J Enten: If Armstrong had studied the popularity of steroid-using baseball stars, he would have known: better to keep lying than come clean

Barack Obama's Stonewall moment: an inaugural landmark for gay equality
21 Jan 2013: Jason Farago: After his first-term ambivalence on gay rights, this was stunning: the president put us squarely in America's struggle for civil rights

Fifty years on, has America realised Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality?
21 Jan 2013: Poll Half a century years after Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous 'I have a dream' speech, doubts remain about how far we've come. Has the US achieved the racial equality MLK fought for?

In praise of … wood-burning stoves
21 Jan 2013: Editorial: Is the warming glow of a real hearth the new sign of a Guardian-reader?

I agree with Churchill: let's get stuck into the real shirkers
21 Jan 2013: George Monbiot: They parasitise us from above. But landowners and the Tory party's idle rich are spared the fairest and simplest of taxes

Obama shifts to the high ground in call for collective action
21 Jan 2013: Gary Younge: The president's second address was a better speech than his first – and it showed him at his most combative and idealistic

Assuming the worst: public attitudes to poverty
21 Jan 2013: Editorial: Has middle Britain really became more Scrooge-like over the recent past?
85 comments
Prince Harry 3hr 46min ago
Prince Harry, the new Killer Captain

21 Jan 2013: Hadley Freeman: While it is very noble of Harry to want to fight for his country, he is a prince, and princes come with baggage

Algeria hostage crisis aftermath: only folly lasts for decades
21 Jan 2013: Editorial: After such a history of sustained and repeated failure one would have thought David Cameron would choose his words with care in the aftermath of the attack on the Algerian gas plant

Obama inauguration 4hr 16min ago
Obama's second inaugural address: panel verdict

21 Jan 2013: Michael Cohen, Ana Marie Cox, Jill Filipovic, Jonathan Freedland, Martin Kettle, Heidi Moore, Naomi Wolf, and Michael Wolff: As President Obama embarks on a second term, did his speech still soar, his message inspire? Guardian columnists decide


Cameron's Europe speech is another step in the right direction
21 Jan 2013: Tim Montgomerie for ConservativeHome: He's still not perfect, but David Cameron is slowly moving towards the Conservative mainstream, and not just on Europe

Have a Neanderthal baby and save humanity
21 Jan 2013: Naomi McAuliffe: This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – simply rent your womb out to Prof George Church, Harvard, and a Nobel prize is yours

Algeria's response to the hostage crisis raises serious questions
21 Jan 2013: John Sweeney: The Algerian security forces' priority appears to have been to kill the jihadists, with securing the hostages coming a poor second – and gathering intelligence nowhere

George Orwell 7hr 30min ago
Was George Orwell right about the future?
21 Jan 2013: Poll George Orwell's fiction and non-fiction warned of the dangers of totalitarianism, surveillance and the distortion of language. Was he right, broadly speaking, about the dystopian way society was heading?

Presidential inaugurations: American democracy in its glory and shabbiness
21 Jan 2013: Michael Wolff: I have only attended one inauguration: Clinton's in 1993. It was a fascinating education in the transactional character of US politics

No spin - straight list.
Weak weak weak... Monbiot bigging up Churchill the Liberal with a call for Georgism now, stupid pointless polls - the polls on this forum are more interesting and worthy, Michael 'I lub-social democracy' Wolff, John Sweeney - bad Algerians, bad Algerians - whose been sustaining their armed forces not asked not answered, puff piece for Cameron from a hard-right Tory, it's not noble of Harry to fight for his country it's garbage if he does or doesn't, more Obama-can-make-a-change now in 2013 I mean at this point there's sawing off your own gonads or reading them in full.

 

[William of Walworth]

Thanks for that sihhi. I wanted to reply to your posts, which I respect, but I'm off this thread for the time being. I was wasting my time and other peoples'. In the end I'm not so enamoured of the Guardian (to say the least!) that I can be arsed any more.

Maybe another time, but just now I need a break from this particular thread.

 

[killer b]

Slander us, then run away when called on it? Ok. Got your measure.

 

[Firky]

Grow some balls on your opinions, William.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

If the Guardian's going down the pan, it implies it was Ok once. Not sure about his tbh...at least editorially. That said, 3 or 4 years ago, you got some decent comments below the line On CIF. Then they started banning anyone who suggested it was anything but a progressive and meritocratic utopia. I mention this as I've a distinct memory of Laurie Penny turning up and getting ripped to bits for all the right reasons...and some guy from Oxbridge who was working for some LibDem MP got his arse handed back on a silver platter for basically suggesting a refusal to endorse identity politics was a form of psychopathy.

That wouldn't happen these days. I recall they also regarded any mention of nepotism was a de facto act of Hari Kari. Then they staffed the place with a bunch of creeping-Jesus, CBBC presenter types who only take their sandals off to cycle to work on bikes made from driftwood. Now it's so fuckin lame and formulaic that you don't need much more than the strap line to write the thing yourself, along with the comments. Some cunt like Hundal comes on these days and comes across as an outspoken Bolshie maverick. About once every couple of months I follow a link there and get so wound up I post something. I get an instant ban and a polite notice explaining about standards etc...it's the last bit which does the damage. It's a fuckin good job I never have access to the price of an assault rifle and the petrol money to get down there. If I ever win lottery, I'm getting life.

 

[ymu]

Those people (the ones that got banned/censored) are behind all the Peterloo Massacre badges on CiF. Some Rusbridger correspondence re: cheerleading the Lib Dems on there.

Edit: they moved to a blog at one point http://otmpeterloo.wordpress.com/

 

[butchersapron]

Great chat.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Great chat.

#Marxism in America needs to be more than an intellectual tool for mainstream commentators befuddled by our changing world. It needs to be a political tool to change that world. Spoken, not just written, for mass consumption, peddling a vision of leisure, abundance, and democracy even more real than what the capitalism's prophets offered in 1939. A socialist Disneyland: inspiration after the "end of history".#

So basically, Marxism takes the place it's always held in the states: a reference point for smug bourgeois academics and 'intellectuals', only this time...people should listen to them...lots of people, in fact. Fuckin brilliant. How very Guardian.

 

[butchersapron]

I was talking more about the comments to be honest, slightly knowing Bhaskar i know that's the exact opposite of what he's aiming for with Jacobin, he's got very little interest in academics or intellectuals. That said, i think his project is going to have work very hard not to allow itself to get enveloped in all that shit. I think they've made a good start but can sense the political-hipsters sniffing around.

 

[sihhi]

This is the Guardian in its good days when it was anti-Thatcher.
1. It does not matter who wins strikes.
2. The final para conclusion firms must maximise their potential strengths (ie profit motive) whatever one side or the other says.

 

[sihhi]

I was talking more about the comments to be honest, slightly knowing Bhaskar i know that's the exact opposite of what he's aiming for with Jacobin, he's got very little interest in academics or intellectuals. That said, i think his project is going to have work very hard not to allow itself to get enveloped in all that shit. I think they've made a good start but can sense the political-hipsters sniffing around.

Maybe, but that article is the worst Guardian article for some time - well done

 

[butchersapron]

Not read the article i have to admit

 

[sihhi]

Not read the article i have to admit

So... You took a guess it would be a dire article - and it was .


Something about his style rubs me up the wrong way.
I dislike overuse of the phrase 'my generation'.

For many in my generation, the ideological underpinnings of capitalism have been undermined.

Who thinks Paul Krugman is profound and important?
Or that Foreign Policy is getting a shot in the arm from Leo Panitch?

It's Paul Mason-ism, all super-smart, but helping your enemy adapt rather than strengthening your side.

From Marx and Smith, Mason moved onto the current generation’s most obvious antecedents – the thinkers that inspired the 1968 student revolts, most notably the doyen of Situationism, Guy Debord, who argued that capitalism has replaced genuine social life with an inauthentic ‘spectacle’. ‘I wish mainstream politicians today had a little more exposure to those sorts of ideas, it might allow them to think a little bit more freely through the problems that they are confronting right now,’ Mason says.With one ear to the street and another to the boardroom, Mason knows better than most the sheer scale of the challenge facing politicians today.

http://www.petergeoghegan.com/?p=537

http://www.vice.com/read/jeremy-lin-was-not-greedy-youre-just-stupid-knicks-rockets


I agree with his main idea but his approach is just alienating. One superstar player is not a trade union - individual contracts are dangerous - multi-million salaries produce the backlash which can be directed against managers and shareholders - but not if you defend 40mil$ contracts as a principle.

JEREMY LIN IS NOT GREEDY, YOU'RE JUST STUPID
It’s not hard to convince a liberal that migrant workers deserve a living wage. It’s tougher to argue that Lin deserves an extra five million, but the same logic applies.

It’s a struggle between management and labor and management has made plenty of money milking a player like Lin for all he was worth—international media interest, jersey and ticket sales, the Cablevision deal, not to mention that without him the Knicks might not have even made the playoffs.

Big salary haters get it wrong when they factor the fans into the equation. Talking about Jeremy Lin’s “greed,” acting like he’s taking something from someone else when he’s got a motherfucking family to feed, may be a good way to sound like a populist. But it actually puts you in the operative position of siding with an owner who is way richer than Lin will ever be. That’s the kind of populism that put Bush in office.