Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

ftb means because

Why?

i don't know: it's old internet slang that popped out of my head and into the post without me catching and reworking it into grown-up english

it's short for "for the because"

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/024/027/blog_image_3822_4926_Webcomic_Name_April_Fools_Day_201703231756.jpg

Have to hand it to Liew - here he is basically correct about a big, dreadful development, which I can discern even as the same old TV and radio consumer I've always been.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/world-cup-technology-fans-qatar-2022

Ronay, his profile photo increasingly looking like Dorian Gray's portrait, produces an odd article.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/gianni-infantino-fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar

He and others have attacked FIFA for years. Now he says that the World Cup is producing controversies, and what is needed is strong action from ... FIFA.

Doesn't really add up. I agree that Infantino has been less visible, but find that a good thing. Like many, I have enjoyed the soccer.

Fifa has bowed to Qatar’s will on the armband-of-love, even as Qatari officials wear their Palestinian rights symbols in the seats.

Do they? I haven't seen that at all, but if they do, they've gone up in my estimation. Doesn't sound like Ronay's keen on it though.

Freeman celebrates her arrival at the Sunday Times. Her followers concur.

Hello, Sunday Times When did feminism become a dirty word?https://t.co/yJ4PHIbK4y https://t.co/11zgllgVwv

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) December 3, 2022

The journalist @HadleyFreeman has recently resigned from The Guardian. She joins @emmabarnett to talk about her claims of being “censored” from writing about gender identity, trans issues and antisemitism.

Listen here ⬇

— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) December 5, 2022

the censorship tour starts here

I wonder if Barnett challenges her on anything? I expect not. I will not listen to check.

I think Emma Barnett would be the last person in the world to challenge her on anything.

didn't it turn out that the 'censorship' she keeps complaining about was just that the guardian's editors wouldn't accept her pitches for all sorts of deranged transphobic stories because they were way outside her brief (celebrity profiles/banal columns) or just too repetitive

i just listened to it. Barnett not terrible actually. but i think most listeners would be baffled. HF keeps saying that everyone’s very mean to her, and that management is “afraid” of the reaction if they published (anti-trans) “gender-critical” pieces. Barnett points out that the Guardian website carries a number of pieces by and interviews with exactly the people that HF says were “censored”. but in general they’re studiously avoiding why people get angry with HF. why people call her a bigot. you’d think that after former friends and allies all over tarnation have called you a bigot and dropped you like a hot potato the issue might be you and not them?

HF dropped in questions about gender and Woody Allen in some of her interviews, which should've been cut. If anything she was given far too much freedom to do what she wanted.

I wonder whether she left or was pushed, and if it was the latter what did it.

think it's quite likely she was poached, given where she ended up

Did she jump or was she poached?

Peter Preston’s son is exec editor of the Sunday Times and is married to Janice TERFer. She got a golden parachute but I bet she’s not on Caitlin Moran money.

I AM BEING CENSORED, i yell on a popular national radio programme as i begin my new job as a columnist on one of the nation's top broadsheets

incredible that this shit still works

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2022/dec/09/fading-tories-stealing-ideas-labour-keir-starmer

"The fading Tories are stealing ideas from Labour – a transition has already begun. Andy Beckett"

It's fun to peer into Wonderland sometimes

"On probity in public life, private schools, poverty and wealth, whom the economy should prioritise, social values and the environment, Labour and the Tories remain miles apart."

I don't think this is true.

How can Labour make any claims about probity in public life given the corrupt, mendacious and factional way the party itself is run?

Surprising that someone as intelligent as Beckett could publish this.

Since 2015 the gap between Labour and the Tories – in style, ideology and policies – has often been larger than ever.

it was true 2015-19, but fuck knows what this stupid cunt is blathering on about now

I hope he isn't getting paid for writing that shite.

those 'miles apart' in full

https://ecdn.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/Map-Scale-Activity-4665446-1561987449/original-4665446-4.jpg

you can't measure the vibes that bullshit graun hacks feel about the PLP, in the absence of any evidence that proves they are anything other than a bunch of dishonest tory cunts

Important to remember a lot of them honestly believe this bullshit

The Guardian is running a headline about a 93 year old's 25 hour ambulance wait over the weekend right inside its ambulance strike coverage. Only the third paragraph mentions this happened before the strike started. pic.twitter.com/4bzq2VJGaI

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

Surely it's even more noteworthy if this was 'normal service'? And linked to why they're striking?

their IT network has been fucked by some ransomware. Couldn't happen to nicer people.

xp was going to say, besides the attack on the IT system, there’s been headlines all year about people having to wait hours for ambulances in dire circumstances

xp oh wait did you mean the guardian not the nhs

yeah the graun, the staff have been instructed to work from home and they are "confident" about getting tomorrow's copy ready on time.

I genuinely hope they all have a shit time of it!

xp lmao, Sonia Sodha crying and find replacing dates on one of her usual op-eds is it

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/01/wreckage-of-brexit-politicians-denial

Well my expectations were already low

Dark Side of the Moon LOL

do have to wonder how much he was paid to write that shit, didn't even have to drive up the M1 this time.

quiet desperation is what I feel when this dickhead is quoting DSOTM, not once but twice in one piece. It's all about brexit is it? Nothing to do with the austerity that enabled it and both main parties still being 100% committed to it. That's not a JH problem.

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of a musical masterpiece that continues to speak illuminating truths about the impossibility of the human condition, and how people from these islands tend to cope with it.

Dark Side of the Moon LOL

this year will mark the 7th anniversary of a referendum masterpiece that the losers have still learned nothing from

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/06/keir-starmer-tony-blair-reform-new-labour-90s

"Without the optimism that carried Labour to power in the mid-90s, the party now has no choice but to go big on reform"

Andy Beckett provides a somewhat convincing picture of the current mood. But he doesn't give any examples of the reforms and changes that Labour would actually make.

"Starmer’s policy proposals and rhetoric increasingly suggest that he would go further than New Labour in trying to change the country. He feels he has no choice."

No examples are given to substantiate this statement.

"A small but growing sense of anticipation about more competent and principled government under Starmer coexists with larger fears about the present and the immediate future."

Beckett is an intelligent, knowledgeable, I would say decent person. But he can write about a KS government being "principled". Has he looked at the things that KS has actually said and done over the last 3 years? He is not a principled person. He is a bad person.

iirc The Guardian has reported on this case but gal dem's focus on ethnicity gives it a wider scope.

https://gal-dem.com/why-black-people-in-the-uk-are-more-likely-to-be-lonely/

Hard to get through the interview, so much chaos:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/07/jack-monroe-interview

Which is also interlocked with what I see of the commentary of her actions on twitter (basically she is widely believed to be a fraud; some of the people making the accusations are pretty unhinged though). It doesn't help that she'll never log off..

My take on her is basically "not going to wade into this" but her most vocal detractors do universally look like they should really get a new hobby.

Should give her credit for being the only mainstream left twitter celeb to offer a full mea culpa to Corbyn too.

I don't trust anyone who opposed Corbyn early doors, even if they did change their mind when he was almost finished. Also I have a very low opinion of her dietary advice and without ever getting involved in the tedious pile-ons I tend to see her as a grifter and that "money-saving expert" can go fuck himself as well!