The Guardian - classic or dud?

I buy it every day - solid tube reading and I feel like I've got to know most of their op-ed, arts, sports writers by now so I know how to interpret their wack(i)er opinions.

read the grauniad a couple of times a week, for JOBS and education gossip on tuesday and to be rude about the snide and weak-end on saturday...

Tabloid sectiojn is glib, the Snide - their great innovation - is now a carping critic on all of culture rather than admitting liking anything. I prefer Th'Indie.

droll

pedant

Nonsense... it's pretty much impossible to pick up a Grauniad without finding at least five or six Blair-bashing pieces. I agree with you on its essential smugness though, and it's godawful WHINGEING at every opportunity (second only to the Daily Mail, actually, although coming from the opposite-ish direction).

The problem with the Guardian is I don't trust it as far as I could throw it, it has so many loaded news articles and I think there are far too many people on the impressionable student-and-beyond left who take it as gospel. Nevertheless, I still read it regularly and what annoys me the most about it is I get the feeling it EXPECTS me and people like me to agree with it.

G2 is k-rub, as is the observer, but it does have some good serious columnists and well as a boatload of awful ones, exacerbated by high levels of David Aaronovich.

I also prefer the Indie, and strangely enough The Observer.

(I'd always thought the Independent took a generally more left-leaning approach than the Guardian, despite the presence of token Tory columnists)

I also read it for the global news coverage which we don't get to the same extent in our papers. That said I agree with Matt that it is something of a bible for "student-and-beyond-left".

I get very sick of the endless articles about precocious middle class teenagers/children, I mentioned this before and I wish they'd stop. Maybe they remind me of myself.

i don't want the guardian to be anything - i hate it and wish it would close down. in fact, i hate newspapers pretty much even-handedly as i spend a lot of my time working at one and have worked at pretty much all of them in the course of my career.

(x-post - I mean your second-to-last comment)

I believe the Guardian is total self parody. How else could you explain it?

I do get totally narked off with typical guardian readers - ie, those who create a subculture if you will of people who are the same by virtue of their reading of the paper; such people are generally smug and insufferable. The difference between being a Guardian reader and a reader of the Guardian - I'm the latter.

Dave B's post is sensible.

the terrorists truly have won if it is considered acceptable for moderators to delete threads about the Guardian.

Israel, however...not sure about that. They give a lot of exposure to people who don't get any in the NY Times etc.

What does bug me about the Guardian is their utterly depressing treatment of freelancers and in many cases, their own staff. Friend was deputy diarist there, invented New Media section essentially and did she get a salaried job? Did she fuck. And this despite being smart as a whip, great at job, judge's daughter, boarding school, brother in royal year at Eton and pretty much having all the incedental 'class' stuff Dave was whining about upthread.

I was buying a paper this morning when my eye lingered on the cover of the Daily Star (or somesuch, possibly The People). The picture was of some generic man-faced overstylised lads mag totty in hotpants and the caption read "TV JAKKI HOTTEST TOPLESS PICS YET" - I thought blimey, rudey pics of transvestites in the Daily Star. Then I realised that they were talking about the other kind of TV.

I still have no idea who this "TV JAKKI" is though. Brambles? Clune? Corkhill?

That was Richard Ingrams, in the Observer.

See, I was going to be too polite to mention that.

Miaow! The bitches are BACK IN TOWN!

Always Blame Hadley

Haha, Tracer, my fashion column would be dull as ditchwater (speaking of which, I'm dressed from head to toe in brown today, including accessories).

HF's name always reminds me of 80s cheapo shoe shop Freeman Hardy & Willis.

I always thought they'd be expensive because they sounded like a law firm.

Nah, it was all very Primark/New Look. Little leather and plenty 'other materials'.

I was always more of a Curtess man.

(NB. I wasn't really.)

For some reason, in the 80s, every other business in Peckham's Rye Lane was a shoe shop. Not interesting ones - just all the chain store tat. There seemed to be far more shoe chains in the 80s. FHW, Curtess, Dolcis ... we had them all.

Last time I visited, they all seemed to have turned into manicurists.

HF's name always reminds me of 80s cheapo shoe shop Freeman Hardy & Willis.

-- Madchen, Thursday, July 19, 2007 1:32 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I always thought they'd be expensive because they sounded like a law firm.

-- onimo, Thursday, July 19, 2007 1:34 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

haha, me too but... conversely. my godmother worked for some tony outfit (finance? PR? headhunting? something like that) called freemans, but i grew up thinking she worked in a shop.

The Narrow Way in Hackney is approx. 50% shoe shops, but I think they're independent.

Yeah, that's like a proper old "shoe quarter".

... whereas the shoe shops in 80s Peckam seemed like a bloom of commercial algae, like the manicurists and international telephone bureaux of more recent years. Maybe there was a shoe craze in the early 80s.

they were crazy times

"hadley" is actually the assumed identity of a bay-area former junkie/vagrant/hustler

You never know who's in on a joke (well *you* don't, anyway) but I'll happily admit to liking the book and not doubting its veracity when it came out. There was no reason to. I got BORED when Courtney Love and Asia Argento became interested - as any sensible woman should - and even more bored when my editor at ESM made JT a contributor, which presumably involved faked conversations. Nobody liked this editor by the time she left and the JT fakeage contributed to her leaving. I feel sorry for the female hoaxer, because publishers do find it 'sexier' to be a cross-dressing rent boy than some Bay Area fringe scenester or a Cantab underachiever, and allocate deals accordingly.

Matt, I didn't mean you when I was talking about messageboard aspirants to Grub Street with vinegar on their shoulder-chips; this one was specifically about the grumbling Grubs. Howevs I could do 180 covers of American diner food on any given night, EASY, so NER. ;-)

I don't doubt it for a moment ;-)

wait - the author of civilwarland in bad decline is a guardian contributor? where?

since a search for freeman hardy willis reveals nowt, i'm offloading this nugget here:

when i was little, my mum and i used to call it "free hard willy".

i know, i know.

hardly free willy

comment is free willy

This makes me want to cry

(also, SAXONE!)

Haha both George Saunders (novelist! d'oh people don't read)

Not everyone can work their way through Saunders' many novels.

It is generally a matter of course that Guardian writers believe that 20/30-something message board types who whinge about the columnists are some combo of jealous and delusional. No, you couldn't do their jobs and you'll never be asked.

i've never for one second regretted my decision not to take a job at the guardian (ts: moving to london or staying in glasgow proved easier than i ever expected). UNTIL NOW. just think of the power i would have had over some of these people. ah well :)

Not everyone can work their way through Saunders' many novels.
hahahhahahaaha

and to the person who asked where you can read his stuff in the guardian - if you like george saunders, dont read his guardian stuff.

i'd echo that. i don't know who the hell would call saunders a "novelist". most likely someone who hadn't read his books, wouldn't he have to have written a novel to be called that? he's written a couple of things you could, at a push, call a novella. fwiw, i love his books but his column was embarrassing the first few times i looked at it and i haven't had the heart to look at it since.

actually his longer story "... world of phil" kind of displayed all the faults that his column does and was pretty bad also.

> Maybe there was a shoe craze in the early 80s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_Event_Horizon

Whither the British Shoe Corporation?

classic: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/greatbuildings

wish I'd got the pompidou one are they any good?

I have the Guggenheim one if you want it, RJG. I enjoyed folding it out and reading it in the doctor's waiting room. Bring back the broadsheet Guardian.

two sheets, decent quality (if thin), roughly A1 in size, one with big picture of building on it, the other with blueprints on it, back of both covered in history / biography (think all the text is on the web, but not the huge pictures)

fallingwater tomorrow.

better than wallcharts of cheeses.

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/3839/picture1om6.png

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/comment/story/0,,2272378,00.html

gonna plug my coursemate's CIF debut 'coz she's well nice: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/02/love-sex-zoom-lens

and now i'm about to read it!

That imogenblack sure likes to comment.

It's a pretty good article! She's a really sweet lass, always smiling, always busy, and I'm delighted for her. Would comment. Actually, just did.

tl;dr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-domestic-extremists-database

AAAAAAAGH.

My children now expect me to buy loads of masks and outfits for Halloween and traipse around the neighbourhood with them. Their schools also seem to encourage it. And I've got to stock up on "trick or treat" sweets. I regard the whole thing as a ghastly tradition imported from America. Do I just say no? Or am I being a killjoy?

I'd call the social services on them but, y'know,

Think about trick or treat - would you let your children eat things given by strangers that you don't know what is or could be in them?

Thought not if you are sane.

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1396/44028446.jpg

Awesome.

that is awesome.

as, in fact, Mr Mouthy just said. note to self: improve vocabulary.

awesome

Haha, that's awesome. The Henry headline is terrible, though.

At least the first pars are very different.

Prob both agree on the "at least it's not Blair".

marina hyde has been on fire this election campaign. almost don't want it to end, am getting too used to a daily dose of her :/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marinahyde - just...all of them, really.