Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

That CIF piece was a follow up to this article:

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/02/campaigners-fight-save-carlisle-turkish-baths

I hated what Better did to Ironmonger Row - they should’ve leaned into the Spartan aesthetic of the place and kept the lovely older women who’d make you a cuppa and a cheese and pickle sandwich for £1.50 while you reclined on a lounger in the recovery room. Does anyone truly feel relaxed by faux flower arrangements and those clichéd pan pipe instrumental CDs that are meant to telegraph SPA to morons?

gnnnnnGGGggHHhAAAaaaAaAAAAAAARGGGHHHHH

Feel genuinely sad at the terribleness of take pic.twitter.com/yJL6tobk7s

— Hannah Rose Woods (@hannahrosewoods) October 17, 2022

columns vmic

Seeing that headline I thought it would be merely a joke, but now I see the text I see that it is genuinely extremely bad.

It is a "joke" in that if pushed Mitchell would say he doesn't actually favour an absolutist monarchy.

It is also serious in that he sincerely believes Charles to be a decent human being and inspirational figure.

The second part is alas way funnier than the first.

'extreme socialist' go fuck yourself you smug twat

Yes that was the extremely bad part.

I thought the whole thing was the extremely bad part.

The Guardian sits on its hands while the Mirror and Independent petition for a GE.

In that respect at least, it is worse than the other two papers.

i don't see much to gain from a GE that the Tories are in no way obliged to call tbh?

Only in that it'll make Labour swill in the shitpit they've created while they can carp from the sidelines. All a bit 5D chess though. Guardian have been vaguely mumbling about a GE but don't seem like they want to commit, wouldn't want to scare anyone now.

i must admit i do have an urge to move to the Sevco Labour showing what they are phase of the timeline but the melts squeaking about "GTTO and then we can pressure Labour to be good" will never, ever admit that they're wrong and they'll blindly support whatever scraps from the table get thrown to the poor people they patronise

no party on earth would go for a GE with this kind of polling. and everyone knows it.

it just makes Labour's calls for it look performative and self-serving imo. talk about the issues

People need this fixed now tho. We can't wait until January 2025. If the petition is ignored then we riot like we did for the Poll Tax.

“We”

i agree we can't wait but maybe we should have thought of that in 2019 when we elected the tories to an 80-seat majority.

last time people rioted in London they got years in jail for stealing crisps and bottles of water, who was the DPP then?

the melts squeaking about "GTTO and then we can pressure Labour to be good" will never, ever admit that they're wrong

the people who oppose the "squeaking" - a highly patronising term - are extremely bad (like, ludicrously so) at articulating at why they think this view is incorrect.

maybe we should have thought of that in 2019 when we elected the tories to an 80-seat majority.

maybe the political parties who weren't the Tories should have thought of that when they refused to stop splitting the vote by standing aside in the seats they had no hope of winning? People's refusal to leverage FPTP to the country's advantage is almost as frustrating as the inequities of the system itself.

Lol @ British ppl rioting for a fucking election.

what do you suggest?

"People's refusal to leverage FPTP to the country's advantage"

What advantages?

I suggest you keep posting GG.

Yeah, I can't imagine riots coming from this. A nice day out for people carrying signs going "YOU ARE A BAD MAN MISTER BORIS" and some video art from Led By Donkeys, sure.

The spycops bill was a considerably more legit reason to riot and we had nothing.

i reckon there will be marches over the cuts, when the cuts come down, as it seems certain they will

Just a nice stroll to Trafalgar on a Sat afternoon..xp

Did the melts riot when the tories essentially outlawed protests, were they expecting to outsource it to other people again? Someone remind me

_maybe we should have thought of that in 2019 when we elected the tories to an 80-seat majority._

maybe the political parties who weren't the Tories should have thought of that when they refused to stop splitting the vote by standing aside in the seats they had no hope of winning? People's refusal to leverage FPTP to the country's advantage is almost as frustrating as the inequities of the system itself.

i absolutely think that marches and also riots are not far off, but they're not going to be about the procedural minutiae of the system we're watching fail in real-time lol

insofar as there's currently a mainstream political mainstream *against* the tories it is very committed to shutting most people out of politics: and that's where the fracture will happen

"If you don't wan't to call for a General Election what do you want then? A massive strike wave in nearly major industry, mass bill non-payment campaign, wildcats in Amazon warehouses and people shutting down Dartford crossing? Can't you be realistic for once?"

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) October 21, 2022

Marches never left! It is notable though how little media coverage they get here when compared to equal numbers marching in France or Portugal tho.

meaning how much media coverage they get in those countries, not that the UK media prioritizes foreign protests lol

agreed

xpost

Gyac, this is precisely the kind of thing I am talking about.

It is incumbent on all of them. E.g., If Molly Scott Cato (Green) had stood aside in Stroud, David Drew (Lab) would've had a 1,114 majority over Siobhan Baillie (Con), rather than losing by 31,582 to Baillie as he actually did.

Can we not have *both*, libcom.org Twitter poster?

If we had a preferential voting system instead of FPTP, we wouldn't have to worry about splitting the vote or all the tactical voting bullshit. And we could actually have a party of the Left that could have real influence.

xpost

Gyac, this is precisely the kind of thing I am talking about.

It is incumbent on all of them. E.g., If Molly Scott Cato (Green) had stood aside in Stroud, David Drew (Lab) would've had a 1,114 majority over Siobhan Baillie (Con), rather than losing by 31,582 to Baillie as he actually did.

Can we not have *both*, libcom.org Twitter poster?

Oh wait, you were xping a real tweet. Sorry that’s on me, the blood was up, going to see myself out with a slide whistle

Mind you GG, wtf are you going on about in Stroud, the majority is 3,840, do you know the difference between votes polled by the winning candidate and the actual margin of victory or?

General election 2019: Stroud[24][25]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Siobhan Baillie 31,582 47.9 +2.0
Labour Co-op David Drew 27,742 42.1 -4.9
Green Molly Scott Cato 4,954 7.5 +5.3
Brexit Party Desi Latimer 1,085 1.6 New
Libertarian Glenville Gogerly 567 0.9 New

Majority 3,840 5.8 N/A
Turnout. 65,930 78.0 +1.0
Registered electors 84,536 +2.0
Conservative gain from Labour Co-op Swing +3.5
General

stand down Glenville Gogerly for the good of the nation

George Galloway feeling his ears burning

Need to stop buying these hats from my dodgy mate, he thinks

the people who oppose the "squeaking" - a highly patronising term - are extremely bad (like, ludicrously so) at articulating at why they think this view is incorrect.

i think this view is incorrect because i lived thru the Labour governments under Blair who had an enormous majority to reverse the Thatcherite economic settlement. and the current PLP is if anything more neolib than they were

also because i'm an ideological purist i refuse to vote for a party that has been outed as being institutionally racist and harbours vicious terfs as MPs

Can we not have *both*, libcom.org Twitter poster?

― Grandpont Genie, Friday, 21 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink

A general election will not sort anything. There is no magic bullet answer to our problems. A Lab right government won't even begin xps

also because there is no mechanism for people who want Sevco Labour to offer policies that address inequality, poverty and authoritarianism to influence this so how will voting them into power change that situation?

not me grumbling that "sevco" is even more arcane and hard to parse than "underpants gnomes"

don't worry this is the second grandad!! point i've earned today, after not knowing why my pals in another place were talking abt graham "dua lipa" brady

i'll let myself out

Forget purism, let's play the 'pragmatic' card. Inflation at 10%, public finances in disarray, energy costs to be high for this winter and the next. Interests rates on the up meaning mortgage defaults. NHS and rail companies not working. Possible climate events.

Do we know what Labour are going to do about any of this? Even before throwing trans rights and migrants under the bus xps

i know it's a bit arcane i just got tired of writing Nu or using air quotes around Labour

Mind you GG, wtf are you going on about in Stroud, the majority is 3,840, do you know the difference between votes polled by the winning candidate and the actual margin of victory or?

You were the one that brought up Stroud, gyac, so I looked up the election result from 2019. Of course my calculation was crude and unscientific! We can't possibly *know* that the lack of a Green candidate on the ticket would bring about a Labour victory, as some of the Green voters may have got the huff and stayed home, or whatever. I was merely articulating that a coalition of non-Tory parties standing aside for each other to get the Tory out makes that outcome more likely.

I did actually know that Sevco was a reference to the former owners of Scottish football club Rangers, it's only when people start claiming obscure internet references are worthy of the name "memes" that my hackles are raised!