Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

jay rayner increasingly enraged as every dish arrives covered in polos

"A £38 bowl of rigatoni bolognese has a grimly sweet and cloying sauce that tastes mostly of tomato ketchup and profit."

Paying £38 for a bowl of bolognese is about boasting about the price you paid for it and nothing else. It's very clickbaity to write about it in the first place.

Probably a liveblogging artifact but this paragraph is something:

Besides the US, the 227 nations in the EU and the UK, the statement was co-signed by Albania, Argentina and Australia, as well as Brazil, Canada and Chile. Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador were also signatories, as were El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Added to them were North Macedonia, New Zealand and Norway, as well as Paraguay, Senegal and Switzerland.

love to liveblog on amphetamines

lol

This is pathetic even by Guardian middle-class whinge standards

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/aug/14/there-is-holiday-hell-and-then-there-is-self-catering

Holiday Hell = having to provide your own condiments and travelling 20 mins to the nearest Tesco. Jesus

"Needless to say, the nearest Tesco is 20 minutes’ drive"

sympathy rating zero

shit it used to be a half hour walk to the nearest Tescos in Newquay, but it was a fun walk - because you are on holiday!

and bringing lots of wine, beer and horrible readymeals back to the caravan feels good.

the worst thing for me about this for me is (and I suspect many others) that I haven't had a holiday since 2010 and really don't want to see performative whinging by smug m-c pricks.

"20 minutes’ drive"

They have a car! Incredible.

if it's all about convenience then just stay at home, or get an air B n B that is in a flat above a Onestop.

and bringing lots of wine, beer and horrible readymeals back to the caravan feels good.

the guardian published some really shitty sentences about afghanistan over the last couple of weeks, though i suppose everyone else did, too

Suzy on the politics thread pointed out a Guardian interview with Apsana Begum MP. I've now seen it.

I don't have a general view on the case, but Suzy was entirely correct to note how the interviewer spends a lot of time harassing ms Begum for living in a council house.

This is very bad as:
a) it fails to understand principles and benefits of universal provision (one of which is that policymakers should live in council housing and then might care about it more)
b) the interview is about how ms Begum was harassed about her home, and proceeds to ... harass her about how she should leave her home!

It's outrageous.

Leftwing outsider Sharon Graham elected as Unite union leader
Keir Starmer likely to be pleased with union’s choice of successor to Len McCluskey

Sure, Graun

hah hah trying in vain to distance Kieth from the stench of defeat

It's Orwellian, somebody should write a book

The Road to Cope Pier

"it fails to understand principles and benefits of universal provision"

the only universalism they really approve of is universal poverty so they can write insincere hand-wringing bollocks about it to make themselves look progressive

Isn't ms Graham the leader most likely to withdraw Unite funding from Labour?

KS likes trashing his own party's finances.

she has said there must be a review into Labour funding, but I don't know how that will end. Also she said ‘Keir Starmer is failing working people’ so he is trying to put a brave face on his man being the wooden spoon, despite apparently having the biggest campaign war-chest from some undisclosed donors.

and Coyne had Jess Phillips campaigning for him!

with her unerring instinct for understanding the political opinions of the man on the Clapham omnibus

speaking strewth! + cor blimey! to power

Luke Akehurst was congratulating the dark-money funded, Murdoch backed candidate for his courage in "in taking on the machine".

Whatever the rights and (many) wrongs of Ofcom’s decision, this BBC report is a disgrace. Misgendering trans people, describing the tiny LGB Alliance as a “rival” to Stonewall, falsely describing it as campaigning “for” gay people (it does no such thing). https://t.co/70ZnCobShR

— Matt Wells (@MatthewWells) August 25, 2021

is the bbc worse than it used to be, article 3456785768239

it seems the writer John McAnus has a strong bias against Stonewall and is a dedicated transphobe. Quite in the mainstream of Beeb and Graun reporters then.

Either Tom Cruise has had a different car stolen in Birmingham every day for the last three days or it's a slow news week.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-GGcuJX0AM78Ow?format=jpg&name=900x900

genuinely sick-making

although I did lol at Rosen's "Long Govid" quip

Yes, you'd have to be a useless fool to write this.

Is this a long-running series from ZW on 'I used to think X ... then I realised Y' ?

google searching "zoe williams I used to.." does bear this out

well the top 2 are I used to tut at people who wear glasses and I used to believe hay fever didn't exist.

The four words any young journalist dreads seeing anywhere near their article. pic.twitter.com/JUv4QsK3O7

— Europe's Leading Soccer Futurologist (@TreborRhurbarb) September 2, 2021

Utterly bizarre feature

Multi-author glossy weekend feature vs tucked in the back pages somewhere. pic.twitter.com/XpeBeeTWU9

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) September 5, 2021

this is the highlighted "culture" article today, was thinking of submitting it for the worst music writing thread

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/05/jailhouse-rock-how-historys-crimes-live-on-in-music

"the punk bank with whom he recorded the song No One Is Innocent"

typo otm

lol duncan campbell is a fairly legendary and deservedly respected crime reporter, fairly evidently a long way out to sea when tasked with mapping pop

(the book he's talking abt looks p interesting tho, i already had my eye on it)

you'd think a seasoned crime writer touching on the subject of crime and murder intersecting with music might have heard of Burzum though

tbh no i would not

(a) he's 77 and (b) he's married to julie christie :0

= he has better things to think abt

and he's a billy bragg fan!

when he was chatting up Julie she thought he was the UB40 singer

has he had relayshuns with girls of many nayshuns i ask myself

it's a shame that none of that "rap" music the young people listen to has ever covered criminal activities

can't lie i had a real soft spot for Billy before he became a Lib Dem

also before he promised not to turn me away even if i was gay

you'd think a seasoned crime writer touching on the subject of crime and murder intersecting with music might have heard of Burzum Pimp C though