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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To dislike The Guardian almost as much as the Mail at the moment

171 replies

fiveacres · 19/05/2015 16:36

Perhaps I am BU as I rarely read it these days so feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

The Independent was always the newspaper of choice in our house growing up, but when I started buying newspapers myself I read the Guardian and also many books by some of its prominent writers.

I honestly can't work out if it's that I've changed and grown older and shifting into my mid thirties cynicism after the ideals of my youth, but it just seems so incredibly sullen, complaining and despairing yet without presenting any salient solutions. It also appears very patronising against those it seeks to defend.

As a result, I've started reading The Independent.

Has anyone else stopped reading it of late? I'm genuinely interested as to whether this is my state of mind or not - in other words, has it got worse or have I become more jaded? And AIBU to place it in the same category as The Mail?!

OP posts:
Cherriesandapples · 19/05/2015 20:46

Yes, the book that Polly Toynbee wrote after her hard days work as a cleaner when she went back to her own home, cleaned by her cleaner! No I meant actually get a real job in the public sector (housing) and stay in it and listen to all the people who have no home because people with second homes, property investors and immigration!

Jellytussle · 19/05/2015 20:51

It irritates the hell out of me. It's so smug.

IsabellaofFrance · 19/05/2015 20:54

The Guardian tries to straddle readership of middle and working class while spectacularly failing to appeal to both.

Saltedpeanuts · 19/05/2015 20:59

I read the Saturday Guardian every week and I love it. I think they have very good writers, and the variety is great (really good magazine, family section, book review section etc as well as plenty of news). I'm very much not a rich cosmopolitan, far from it, but I don't find that it grates on me as written by rich Londoners. They even have a single mum doing a piece about her life every week, which, as a single mum, I appreciate. Last week they had a section with the stories of Africans trafficked to Europe, in their own words. They were the one UK newspaper that published the Snowdon documents, standing up to the powers that be. They are not ruled by a power hungry owner such as Murdoch. And I find that they are less obviously agenda driven than the Independent (which doesn't feel like a real newspaper to me). I would feel bereft if they went under.

Justanotherlurker · 19/05/2015 21:05

You can only dine on the snowden leaks for so long, your forgetting it was the torygraph which ran the whole expenses scandal, as for being less agenda driven, IMO is just classic confirmation bias.

Freestripe · 19/05/2015 21:05

I could'nt agree more with these comments.

Take this article for example: www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/feb/01/10-best-budget-hotels-tokyo

Budget hotels in Tokyo... Except they're not budget at all. £141 for one night? They really have no idea what the word 'budget' means!

Mintyy · 19/05/2015 21:07

Freestripe

£141 per night IS budget in Tokyo.

sunnydayinmay · 19/05/2015 21:12

I have also read the Saturday Guardian every weeks for many years, but lately I have also bought the Telegraph. I have concluded that, although I don't agree with the politics, it is actually a better paper.

Agree with the above - used to love the Family section, but that chap does go on and on about his baby.

silveracorn · 19/05/2015 21:18

DH buys it every day but I'm not keen. Loathe the sullenness, the over priced ugly fashion and restaurant reviews, and as another poster said, the breathy 'shock! breaking news!' typing that masquerades as writing about 'OMG having a baby makes you tired, peeps!', and 'dating in middle age is fraught!'
But Gary Younge is good.

OrangeVase · 19/05/2015 21:19

Agree with almost all that pps have said. Iused to read it in the 80's - it was the best for jobs and I thought well-written.

Gave up for all the above reasons: lazy journalism, patronising articles about the poor, left wing politics in theory but for a people who didn't see what it was really like to live poor and suffer the consequences of some of thse policies.

It is a shame - because it was good once - but is pernicious and horrible now.

Aermingers · 19/05/2015 21:21

Publishing the Snowden documents was not necessarily a good thing.

The Guardian have double standards. If you're a celebrity who likes treating women like shit, impregnating them and dumping them; then they think you deserve to do this in complete peace whilst nobody knows so that you can still expect housewives to come out and see you in the latest chick flick and line your pockets.

If you're a government who would kind of like their citizens not to get killed you have no right to confidentiality. If you're a royal who has offered a few letters of gentle suggestion they will pursue you through the courts for years to demand you deserve no privacy in private correspondence.

And anyway, nobody is going to die because The Sun catches them shagging about and behaving like rotters. It's very likely deaths will result from Snowden's actions, and that ISIS's ability to operate and carry out atrocities has been facilitated by the Guardian and by Snowden.

MajesticWhine · 19/05/2015 21:22

DH has the Guardian online and complains about it almost every day. I wish he would just cancel the subscription and give me some peace.

Saltedpeanuts · 19/05/2015 21:24

I occasionally try a different paper, as the Saturday Guardian tends to sell out. The Times and Telegraph are IMO far less well written, and very geared towards rich people, beautiful second homes, etc. They are much less fun to read. The Observer is less substantial as well as less fun. The Independent is very agenda driven. I agree with their agenda, but it still grates on me, as it doesn't feel like a genuine attempt to relay the news.
Of course there are some individual writers who grate. I agree that the man with the baby is a moaning prat, and I'm no great fan of the one who gives employment advice. But on the whole I welcome it as a friend every week.

MitzyLeFrouf · 19/05/2015 21:25

YABVU to place it in the same category as the immigrant hating, woman hating Mail.

I love the Saturday Guardian. The only paper I buy, read the rest online.

MitzyLeFrouf · 19/05/2015 21:28

Budget hotels in Tokyo... Except they're not budget at all. £141 for one night? They really have no idea what the word 'budget' means!

Key word there is 'Tokyo'. Budget price in Tokyo is very different to budget price in Cardiff.

TheHumourlessHarpy · 19/05/2015 21:29

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Original poster
fiveacres · 19/05/2015 21:37

I have an irrational dislike for Jack Monroe. I really can't take to her at all.

OP posts:
OrangeVase · 19/05/2015 21:38

Aermingers -another good post.

Budget hotels in Tokyo because poor people can afford to go there all the time of course. That was the irony that was being pointed out I think.

It is a small point though - for me it is more about the way that it spreads fear and a superior kind of outrage about things that don't affect them.

They, safe in the knowledge that no immigrant is going to get priority over their child in his/her private/selective school, that no immigrant is going to replace them in their job as columnist, that no immigrant is likely to push them further down a housing list, they can then endlessly bully and ridicule and shame as "racists" those people who are suffering the effects of overcrowding and blaming immigration.

weasle · 19/05/2015 21:42

I recommend The Week. Good weekly news magazine that seems to be fairly unbiased

2rebecca · 19/05/2015 21:50

I used to love the Guardian but find some of its obsessions tedious recently. The Snowdon stuff didn't engage me at all, I didn't get the obsession with the Prince Charles letters, anyone with half an emagination could guess at the content it seemed a huge waste of public money legally fighting over them and the Saturday Guardian which is the main one I get as I'm too busy to read a paper during the week has way too much cookery (it's only your dinner ffs) fashion and expensive holidays. Plus the Scottish version of the Guide still has BBC England TV in it. The fashion has got less expensive but the models are still too thin, stiff and miserable.
It's still better than the others, I used to like the Sunday Herald then they changed it all.

MitzyLeFrouf · 19/05/2015 21:50

I don't agree with the Tokyo criticism. Should they only offer travel tips to the poor? What about the middle earners (like me) who have to save up for such a holiday, might they not benefit from such advice?

2rebecca · 19/05/2015 21:51

I used to love the Guardian but find some of its obsessions tedious recently. The Snowdon stuff didn't engage me at all, I didn't get the obsession with the Prince Charles letters, anyone with half an imagination could guess at the content it seemed a huge waste of public money legally fighting over them and the Saturday Guardian which is the main one I get as I'm too busy to read a paper during the week has way too much cookery (it's only your dinner ffs) fashion and expensive holidays. Plus the Scottish version of the Guide still has BBC England TV in it. The fashion has got less expensive but the models are still too thin, stiff and miserable.
It's still better than the others, I used to like the Sunday Herald then they changed it all.

MitzyLeFrouf · 19/05/2015 21:51

I don't agree with the Tokyo criticism. Should they only offer travel tips to the poor? What about the middle earners (like me) who have to save up for such a holiday, might they not benefit from such advice?

No newspaper covers all bases, read around, get your news from various sources. I still think it's unfair to lump the Guardian in with the Mail.

Happybodybunny12 · 19/05/2015 21:51

I had to google jack Monroe.

Yawn yawn yawn. What an idiot.

2rebecca · 19/05/2015 21:52

oops