Being enraged by Guardian bullshit thread -- Fresh, for 2007, you suckas

It is called Comment Is Free.

Do they get paid?

Yes.

I think its very easy to pick on Girls Aloud as representative of this kind of musical pap, but the truth is that bland inoffensive music has been around at least as long as The Beatles (I want to hold your hand, anybody?).

lol acronym having ilx resonance

.. and i like it!"

He totally wrote that on a dare. He must have. I refuse to believe that was a sincere piece of writing.

NO ONE SAYS SHIT LIKE THIS SERIOUSLY.

Overall, it's a flawed argument - most younger people couldn't give a toss about the *party* politics that make up the meat and two veg of UK politics (and political coverage; there's a lot of whinypaws about why people don't pay attention to the labours of self-important journalists) because the "adults" operate in a climate of dishonesty and quangoes while pushing fear and removing our rights, they know voting for an MP once every five years won't solve it, and they've seen that their opinion counting for something is not remotely proven.

AN Other Guardian columnist of my acquaintance (female, many of you boys haaaate her) reckons most of our more famous leftish pop stars are just plain crap at being left-wing.

Julio.

That's something of a truism really, isn't it?

as it stands, that's utter drivel and i really can't believe a) the dude is happy for it to be printed with his grinning mugshot at the top, and b) nobody said, at any point during the editing process, "hang on, this is absolute guffology of the most nonsensical sort".

i mean, i spent 30m this afternoon desperately trying to find some way of filling a fucking great hole on the arts page. BUT THIS IS THE FUCKING WEB AND YOU DON'T HAVE THAT PROBLEM, DUDES.

anyway. as someone said upthread: life's too short, innit?

i tell you: the sooner everybody, and that includes my own employers, realises that the way to win back readers and carve out a glorious new future in the Digital Age (tm) is BY CONSITENTLY CARRYING WELL-WRITTEN, INFORMED, INTELLIGENT, ENTERTAINING WRITING and not BY SETTING UP STUPID FUCKING "BLOG" SITES DREAMED UP BY PEOPLE WHO WOULDN'T KNOW A PROPER "BLOG" IF IT BIT THEM ON THE ARSE, WRITTEN BY SUBLITERATE ARSEHOLES WHO OTHERWISE COULDN'T GET A JOB WRITING A FUCKING RAFFLE TICKET, the better we'll all be.

i thank you.

There might be a better pop'n'politics piece in the new Edgy Style Mag - not by me - in about a week, if y'all can be bothered...

BY CONSITENTLY CARRYING

er, and learning to type. and proof-read. [blushes. but only slightly. it's cold in this office and my fingers aren't working well.]

Simon, if I do this successfully there might well be a bit of room for me on CiF (easy money if you can actually write and turn in a flawless first draft, yes to both here) and I'll make sure to bump the idiots off (I've written feminist/sociopolitical stuff for ESM for years) since this piece I'm working on is a great break for me.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein2jan02,0,3287162.column?coll=la-opinion-columnists

!!!

What does that landowning folkie tosspot know about pop music?

I can't believe Abba outsold The Shadows in 77.

Is it time for a Rock Follies revival?

UH

i love zoe williams & think she is doing god's work at the moment, idk if people still disagree or

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/07/cutting-disabled-ill-people-benefits

that article is amazing - such a jarring contrast to the tim montgomerie bullshit next to it. and yeah zoe williams has been on fire for a while now.

i always find it odd how the ilxors who are usually all over the guardian thread like white on rice getting enraged about the light-hearted flippant articles are conspicuously absent whenever there's a powerful, brilliantly written one like this.

Vote Liberal Democrat.

I think the main news section of the Guardian is having an amazing, banner year, maybe it's just better when there's a Tory government in and it can really rail against something?

I agree with the broad thrust of Zoe Williams' argument there but the conclusion that it will lead to couples separating strikes me as spurious as best, kind of the miror image of when right-wing columnists talked about benefits for single mothers "incentivising" teenagers to have babies.

... which is of course what the Guardian urged us all to do in the last election! (xp)

don't think anyone ever particularly criticised the news in the guardian.

tbh I think that article's kinda par for the course for ZW; stuff like her Nadine Dorries interview was v well written, incredibly level & persuasively, damningly reinforced with the concrete of research and wonkish policy knowledge - she's v clear & v readable.

I can see what you mean, Matt, re: separation, but I sorta feel like illustrating that it would be the only way to maintain a current standard of living is enough, w/the idea that were people not to move out, which they mightn't, then they'll instead be dealing w/a huge decrease in quality of living. & the guy talking to dignitas is illuminating re: what the prospect of these changes means like 'on the ground' right now, etc. but yeah fair point.

tbh, & as a remorseful 'tactical' lib-dem voter at the last election myself (sorry guys, i punch myself in the crotch every morning in search of absolution), I think the guardian is somewhat insulated from having endorsed the lib dems - iirc the thrust of the editorial was that, had they faith in the power of voting w/one's conscience, they would encourage ppl to vote LD on account of the kinda 'game changing' nature of their display, but they encouraged anti-tory tactical voting, so usually labour, above all else, instead, pragmatically.

Hard to blame anyone for not wanting to vote Labour in the last election tbh

ty, that's kind

this isn't the main news section, it's the comment section which people love to hate so much

and yeah i can't think of many people who were enthusiastic about voting labour in 2009 (or indeed would be now) - i voted labour then but had voted LD in the past so i'm not gonna condemn anyone

but i should be (literally) condemned

I don't think people can really be blamed for having voted LD when it wasn't explicit what they were going to do next! I mean I know people will say "well what did you expect from a Liberal!?" but they didn't exactly tell everyone they were going to get in bed with the Tories

feel like an effective learning process, one which would remind the electorate not to vote LD in future, would be a two-pronged strategy of paying close attention to their dismal governmental activity, & also executing a bunch of their voters at random, myself included if my number comes out of the hat

but yeah i really did not expect this. i remember, I think i have said this on ilx before, reading an off-hand mention in a david remnick book to a stereotype of the british being 'the only people capable of harbouring schadenfraude toward themselves', & it totally sums up how i feel about the LDs; the satisfaction I have in sight is in their crashing & burning as a result of things getting much worse

Surprisingly few self-identified LDs* seem to be doing that though! But I can't believe they were all on board for this, it feels more like some form of cognitive-dissonance

*As opposed to people who just voted for them because they thought they were the best option at the time - they seem a lot more apologetic about it

do you think? I thought their support had really plummeted - I mean I'm obviously surprised that there are ~any~ LDs who haven't jumped ship but I thought it was pretty drastic nonetheless. def hard to believe.

i don't really feel like the LDs had many options - it wasn't even a gamble going into coalition, it was being caught b/w a rock and a hard place. coalition w/labour wasn't gonna happen. rejecting a role in govt goes against the whole point of being in politics (and you couldn't have guaranteed that the chance would arise again - coalition is entirely down to a mathematical fluke, a few seats either way and everything changes). but of course everything that's happened to them since going into coalition has been entirely predictable, including losing the AV vote which was really their #1 goal of being in govt.

Their support has definitely plummeted yes but I mean more the people who are quite aligned with their party rather than "oh I voted xyz" - may be really wrong about this as basing it a bit on personal experience and people I work with also

support has plummeted but there are still loyal LDs - i talked to a party activist at their conference, very much to the left of the party, who was instinctively repelled by what the coalition is doing to the NHS, but - because she's a lib dem and this is how they think! - was still all "well...maybe...we should give it a chance! maybe...it won't be so bad"

I think that now they've got that little bit of power coursing through their veins, the Lib Dems would probably agree to the reintroduction of the slavery just so they could enjoy the feeling of power for a little longer - and that goes for the Simon Hughes's too not just the Danny Alexanders. I imagine they will be shortly twisting themselves into all sorts of shapes over Europe... Labour is now being talked about as the The Pro-Europe Party!

but - because she's a lib dem and this is how they think! - was still all "well...maybe...we should give it a chance! maybe...it won't be so bad"

― degas-dirty monet (lex pretend),

Cognitive-Dissonance! and the dangers of identifying too strongly with any label.

TBH I reckon Europe's the only issue left that could conceivably break the coalition, although Cameron would need to be put under an enormous amount of pressure from the diehard Eurosceptics for that to happen.

Tories would break it, yes. Not the Lib Dems, they'll go along with anything.

Doubt that - Clegg has surely got one eye on future career, now that electoral reform is dead in the water Europe is probably the one issue he truly cares about. But he'd need to be stretched to breaking point and Cameron isn't showing any intention of doing that right now.

Future career in a new party perhaps?

Going back to Zoe Williams, I'd say this is pretty much spot-on:

They present something jaw-dropping, encounter a wave of disgust, then row back from the brink of awfulness by 30% (George Osborne probably has a little rowing-backwards calculator, which multiplies the strength of the public backlash by the amount he doesn't care). We all throw back our heads in relief, yelling a lusty "Thank goodness! You only have to work two days a week when you have terminal cancer, and not five!", and "Children in poverty won't have to pay commission on their parental support!". The mood has been assuaged; the saving made. It's genius, really, because even as I'm describing it, that doesn't dent my susceptibility.

It's an old Blair trick actually, except then at the point of rowing back Brown would present himself as the dude with the oars.

it's an old, old trick. Thatcher's government in the 80s were certainly adept, Heseltine's "we're gonna shut all the mines...hooray! we saved 5 percent of the mines!" was masterly for example

Nostalgia has reached critical mass and will shortly implode.

The "bring back the Routemaster" crowd has been supplanted by the "bring back exploding Bendy Busses" crowd. My head hurts and I need to have a lie-down.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/11/bendy-buses-london-boris-johnson

i never thought there was anything wrong with bendy buses!

Well, apart from their tendency to explode and their tendancy to become entangled when two of them attempt to go through the same narrow Stoke Newington intersection at the same time... once people discovered they were essentially free, people fell in love with them and TFL fell out of love with them.

the only times i've witnessed buses getting tangled up in each other to the point of actual accident, all involved were double deckers! my actual experiences with bendy buses were all unproblematic; i felt there was a slight tendency to ascribe bendy bus accidents to inherent faults in the design whereas double decker/routemaster accidents were one-offs. obv i don't know what it was like for cyclists, but preston's point about bendy buses being better for the infirm rings true.

They're better for the infirm if they can actually get a seat... which normally one can't because you'd have to batter your way through all the ppl crowded by the doors.

ah, but which is the funnest to pronounce?

I say root-master, you say rowt-master, let's call the whole thing off.

more: bendybus vs double-decker bus

http://i.imgur.com/XJekz.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/XJekz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XJekz.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/XJekz.jpg

yes, no, yes, no, maybe, yes, christ no, yes, no, no

Starting bottom left going clockwise?

yes, no

G2 will remain, but Friday's Film & Music supplement will be merged with its features section

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/16/guardian-redesign?newsfeed=true

Oh well I guess I won't be buying the Guardian on Friday either. I know there already is huge discrepancies between the internet coverage and the paper version - the year end albums list was not on Friday's paper - but I and others do actually spend the weekend reading the paper version :(

I stopped buying the Thurday edition when the dropped the science and technology section, think Friday's will be going too.

i don't read g2 or any of the weekday supplements. they are by far the worst thing about the paper.

they should replace them with that column in money on saturday where they get insurance companies to send complaining readers £150 and some flowers. i love that.

who is the sufjan guy (pictured)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paullewis

ty, writing fanmail

Music
Morrissey and me
How an ordinary Asian fell in love with the Smiths

tbf the really racist stuff happens in his solo career

He needed a new schtick

found some chicken in a Lentil Dopiaza in 1986 and went fully mental