Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Why the Guardian is going down the pan!

The Pale King said:
Yep. Some nice stuff here:

"In 2010, at the first Conservative conference after the coalition’s election “victory”, I was on a panel with Alison Garnham, head of the Child Poverty Action Group, Anand Shukla, then head of the Daycare trust, and Charlotte Vere, once a Conservative candidate, then about to become the head of the Girls’ Schools Association. It stuck in my mind because nobody turned up; the title was something about child poverty, and it clashed with something about Europe, and genuinely, as God and three well-respected charity heads are my witness, not one single Conservative showed (there were a couple of people there from other charities)."

Shows you where she's coming from at least.

"And yet I’m coming to realise the sad undertow of this story, which is that things have become so bad I wouldn’t make a defence for any universal benefit at the moment. The solidarity argument of universalism used to be heartwarming. But now all it does is emphasise the erosion of security at the bottom, the erosion of the social promise that nobody has to starve and everybody deserves a roof over their head – and how fast and brutal it has been."

This is how liberals will destroy the welfare state - not in anger but in sorrow.
Click to expand...

And all because she can't be arsed to philosophically separate the idea of universal school meals from universal benefits in general. What galls is that if you're financially-comfortable, you don't tend to see the principle of universality in quite the same way those of us who aren't financially-comfortable do. As for means-testing, I doubt she's ever been through the humiliation of having to open up her private life to scrutiny merely to qualify for an insufficient amount of "dole", let alone been through it multiple times.
 
Our Owen asks facebook to give him good reviews..

Ok everyone - this is an embarrassing plea for your help. When left-wing journalist Laurie Penny's book came out, right-wing trolls bombarded her Amazon review page with one star reviews. I knew they were going to do the same with me, and so they have (see the attached pic). I can't emphasise how much this crew are obsessed with me, and it's flattering that they're rattled. As I've said to people over and over, please do not buy the book from Amazon if you can. But the websit...e is a key reference point - before people buy books they check the review on the website. As you can see, no-one in these reviews has read the book - it's just an attempt by my obsessive hard right wing trolls to trash it. So as I say - as much as I hate to do it - this is a plea for readers' help! And for those who haven't got it - buy it from a local tax-paying bookshop!
Click to expand...
 
Guardian gives a guide on how to complain in restaurants, the article is much better than I thought it would be but it's still pretty awful

Ask to speak to the manager

Not because you are a pompous berk who always demands to speak to "whoever is in charge", but because 73.4% of all problems in restaurants originate in poor organisation, training or recruitment. The waiting staff are often innocent victims in the crossfire.
Click to expand...

So whine to the worker on £7 an hour instead of £6.50 (assuming that they aren't on apprentice wages in the first place)

Put yourself in their shoes

With waiting staff, learn to differentiate between genuine rudeness or laziness, and their being, as it is colloquially known in the trade, "in the shit". Booking systems crash; restaurants get a sudden rush of walk-ins; staff walk out mid-shift. Look around you. Are you waiting for your drinks because the staff are chatting by the till or are they dashing around because they are evidently understaffed? Picking on people who are clearly having a hard time of it is tantamount to bullying. See also accidentally spilled drinks etc, even if you end up spattered. If the staff apologise, why rant? Haven't you ever dropped anything?
Click to expand...

If the staff in a restaurant are chatting what fucking business is it of yours anyway? I bet whoever wrote the article gets to chat to colleagues at work all the time.
 
J Ed said:
I think that in a lot of restaurants people with the title 'manager' who deal with customer complaints earn £7 an hour, yes.
Click to expand...
they are very clearly not the restaurants referred to in that article tho. It's even in the bit you quote
 
fractionMan said:
I earned a similar tiny amount more than the regular staff managing a french bistro. My 'perk' was that I could rely on a certain amount of hours a week. Really.

My other 'perk' was eating his cupboards clean and drinking his cellar dry whenever he was out of the building.
Click to expand...
fair do's, but if you are the person responsible for 'organisation, training or recruitment' then you are the person to complain to. Which was the (fairly obvious) point in the Guardian article.
 
NoXion said:
Call me weird, but that kind of stuff seems rather petty when compared to articles which, say, uncritically extol the supposed virtues of neoliberalism. Or that fucking ridiculous anti-Hamas advert with Elie Wiesel.
Click to expand...
Wasn't just "anti-HAMAS" either, really. It shaded (imho) into outright anti-Islam.
 
belboid said:
ffs. For the third time....if you dont know that those places are hardly likely to be the ones the Guardian is referring to, then you're fucking deluded.
Click to expand...
It's just a general article about complaining in restaurants isn't it? (and tbh, even in relatively expensive places the staff - and the supervisors - are on peanuts IME)
 
It raises a fair point. Can the Scottish people, in good conscience, vote to limit the size of the state that this little darling might one day inherit? Think of his/her sad face when Wills breaks the news :(
 
Poutine: the posh chips and gravy taking over the world
The thick pile of chips, gravy and cheese curd from Canada is proving a big hit in London as the perfect hangover cure – so is it time to bid farewell to the doner kebab?

...In the States, poutine is being made over, with fancy adornments and increasingly inventive twists on the curd and gravy topping. Littlefork in Hollywood, LA has “duck confit, gravy, cheddar mornay and fried rosemary” poutine, while The Gorbals in Williamsburg, NYC, is offering “banh mi poutine” with “thrice-cooked fries, hoisin gravy”.

...Glasgow’s Bread Meets Bread features a sweet poutine and a “Glaspoutine: with extra Scottish cheddar cheese. Hawksmoor in Spitalfields has had a posh (and not very tasty) pig’s head poutine on its bar menu for a while now, Gordon Ramsay flirted with one at Foxtrot Oscar a while back. But two serious contenders have appeared in London in the last 12 months. The Poutinerie stall, which lives on Brick Lane, has been open for almost a year, while poutine-centric pop-up Stacks took up residency in the Dalston bar Birthdays in July, on Canada Day...​

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...he-posh-chips-and-gravy-taking-over-the-world
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

danny la rouge
Time is Up for The Times, which is going down the pan, and doesn’t rhyme with pie.
Replies
1
Views
237
SpookyFrank
SpookyFrank
hash tag
Sainsbury's are going down the pan
2 3
Replies
88
Views
4K
Dogsauce
Dogsauce
Cloo
What is the best way to combat a populist right victory in next GE?
2 3 4
Replies
98
Views
3K
LDC
LDC
tim
Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby's time is up.
2 3 4
Replies
115
Views
4K
weltweit
weltweit
Fozzie Bear
The UK government and artificial intelligence
Replies
7
Views
419
tommers
tommers
Back
Top Bottom