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

.. 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

ONLY ASBO KIDS USE TXTSPK

Other key interests include gay culture, reality TV, slick politicians, pop music, the new working classes, soap opera, Manchester and street fashion. Last year he wrote the Big Brother book for Transworld and is currently writing a book about how Hoxton happened. He lives in the east end of London with his partner, also Paul, who runs the trends consultancy agency Vandal Insights."

i think suzie knows him

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

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