To think that the Guardian's standards have really dropped lately

[paintandbrush]

like within the last 5 years or so. Once you look past the unbearably condescending tone and amount of PC bollocks, the quality of the writing is so poor! ie. mix-ups between to/too, stuff you would expect an intelligent 12 year old to be capable of.

I appreciate it's hard for papers to survive these days but seriously, it might help if they employed someone literate. Hate to admit it, but I've really enjoyed the Spectator's free trial thingy lately despite not being that much of a Tory. It's nice reading the scribblings of witty, educated journalists who've actually been paid.

It used to be Guardian vs. Times, now it's just sunk into Guardian vs. Daily Fail. Caitlin Moran had the right idea jumping ship.

I've read the Guardian for a decade now. I'll agree there is writing which has irritated me in recent times.
There was a piece which seemed to downplay Jimmy Saville's abuse - 'he's not a mass murderer.'
But I did think its coverage of Hillsborough has been excellent.

www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&rct=j&q=simon%20jenkins%20fear%20and%20failure%20flow%20thtough&ved=0ahUKEwjCkvDBoLPMAhWG8RQKHetIDSwQFggeMAA&url=http%3[A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Ffeb%2F26%2Fjimmy-savile-fear-bbc-janet-smith&usg=AFQjCNF50KPzfdqk9kHOSlCr24pUYcNNDw

Yes the Hillsborough piece was very, very good.

Paul Dacre thinks he is on the moral high ground because he thinks that his paper is genuinely reflective of what people think. And in some cases - depressingly - he's probably right. However a constant stream of 'side boob' and 'flaunting' and 'asylum seekers ate my baby' stories eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like eating at McDonalds every day - yes a big Mac is tasty but it's not healthy and you couldn't say that rotating through the menu there was reflective of a balanced diet.

I consider myself left wing.

The guardian just makes me annoyed these days. Their science reportage is dire (mind you, so is that of the rest of the press) but what really had alienated me is the way they publish appeasement articles/op eds which put not offending religious/cultural lobbies over women's rights and secular norms.

They are veering dangerously close to misogyny for my liking. It's a very immature 'sixth form politics' type of mindset. Wanting to be totally PC and right on. They don't seem to have grasped the fact that criticising an ideology, cultural belief of religious practice is essential when it conflicts with British law or human rights. And that criticism of an ideology is not the same thing as discrimination against someone who holds that ideology

Their proofing has always been poor. Their subs are probably overwhelmed with the online volumes these days.

Well said, bonnie and Zaurak.

The Guardian yesterday was coming over all schoolmarmish about Ken Livingstone and Naz Shah and anti-Semitism, but conveniently ignores that the paper itself has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for anti-Semitic apologists, time and time again. After the killings in the kosher supermarket at the time of the Charlie Hebdo killings, it ran article after article discussing how important it was not to offend Muslim sensibilities by publishing iffy cartoons and how vulnerable British Muslims were now feeling due to a purported anti-Muslim backlash. Not a peep about how shopping for your weekend shop could possibly be viewed as 'offensive' to anyone, or about how vulnerable British Jews might be feeling given some of their co-religionists had just been actually massacred, for no crime other than that of having happened to be born Jewish.

The Guardian has been throwing Jews, women, LGBT etc under a bus for years now, in order to continue to support their preferred minority. Of course it has the opposite effect intended - instead of bringing all threatened minorities together to protest threats from the powerful, it divides the powerless thus making them even less powerful. The fact that most of their writers these days are well-off white and public-school educated doesn't help. They really have no idea what they're talking about.

Aditya Chakrabortty is one of my favourite current Guardian journalists. Maybe because he's not white, but he does seem to 'get' power inequalities more than most of the current bunch.

Zaurak, Grinkle -agree with every word you have both written.

I've given up with it and I read it every day for 20 years. The fZct that saying 'I don't believe gender is innate' in the comments will get you deleted was the final straw for me.

All the bloody opinion articles written by 20 year olds who haven't seen anything give me the rage too. What does someone who's never left Islington or studied politics know about Syria?

Anyway I've gone to the economist now.

Why on earth would that get you deleted when it's what all their articles keep declaring?

lucydogz that'd be on account of the fact that sideboob pays, in terms of advertising revenue...

Grinkle, agreed. The disgraceful post Charlie Hebdo articles which basically said they asked for it while ignoring the poor people in the kosher supermarket because they didn't fit the narrative. Or the endless "Islamophobia" articles when in fact it is European Jews who have been persecuted in places they've called home for centuries (like in Malmo) murdered in their shops, schools and places of worship, and who are leaving in droves. It's bizarre. I'm not a supporter of Israel's bullying expansionism or its treatment of the Palestinians btw but I fail to understand how anyone could use that as an excuse to attack European Jews. Or their disgraceful apologists in the Guardian.

This article: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Beyond words. How dare they? It is the ultimate in victim blaming!

Agree with Zaurak and Grinkle too.

Totally agree with KateMiddleton I've always thought the Guardian has more in common with the DM than any of the broadsheets, in tone, blatant bias, sensationalism and smug piousness. They just come at from a different political viewpoint.

I'm a lifelong Guardian reader too. What I've noticed lately is the difference between the actual physical paper and the crap on its website. I get a copy a few times a week, and now ignore its website.

I think they still have some excellent writers (Zoe Williams, Gary Younge). I have also been enjoying the longer Journal articles in the week, which have been really enlightening, on topics I haven't known much about - eg the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, how the buy out of Boots has impacted on pharmacists.

I agree, it seems like these days that it has been edited by Rick from the Young Ones.

The Guardian have really let me down recently. I thought it was my default paper but then it published crap like this just to appeal to younger people who think it's so cool to be "gender fluid" that they one day wear a skirt and one day wear trousers... Yawn. Plus they over-manage comments on these issues. On the article about the transwoman standing for nus women's officer, they deleted comments in minutes that just simply stated that the persons experience of growing up as a man would not help them be a women's officer. It was astounding how much they were shutting down any negative comments and the mass deletions must have made many people think "oh no people must have posted such vile bigoted opinions". I'm preferring the independent nowadays.

I know what you mean.

Read a piece yesterday about Labour, saying literally and with no irony "we are the goodies"

i

I agree that the need to generate traffic for the on-line version can lead to the publication of some rather poor quality journalism. But it's free, and you don't have to read it.

I'm not sure where else you go for decent quality, not right-wing, daily UK news though? I boycotted the Guardian for while over its terrible coverage of a number of issues, and read the Independent instead - but the Indi is very random, the writing can be far worse than the Guardian, and they are much more willing to plumb the depths in pursuit of traffic.

The comments section is a write off on many issues now- there is no other "broadsheet" where you can comment freely so it's been overrun by Brexit shills and Putinbots. I've stopped reading it. They need to charge a membership fee.

YABU.

Its the best paper out there - warts and all.

Whats the alternative? The Torygraph? Murdoch's times?

Or should we be reading those pillars of intellectualism - the tabloids?

Pfft... you tell me. I've given up.

And Larry that Cologne coverage was an absolute joke, wasn't it?

The "right to party", indeed. Flippantly passing over the fact that what those women really wanted was the right to leave the house without being robbed and/or sexually assaulted. 'But those young men felt so alienated, they had to go and rape someone to feel better'- oh, the poor little lambs.

It's not a million miles away from the apologists of both fundamentalist Christianity and radical Islam. And to call themselves left wing!

The Gaby Hinsliff piece especially enraged me as I have a good friend whose daughters were out in NYE in Hamburg where many assaults happened. They weren't assaulted themselves but there was a very frightening atmosphere in the city that night and they and their friends were rushing to get a taxi home early because word was going round about what was happening. My friend is Turkish and came to live in Germany 25 years ago. One of the things she values about Germany is the level of safety and equality and respect for women that she did not have growing up in Turkey, and she is so angry to see this happening. When I read ignorant privileged articles by women like Gaby Hinsliff I want to shake them. All they have to do is talk to a few women who've grown up in repressive patriarchal cultures where women can't walk down the bloody street but they just trot out this ridiculous cultural and moral relativism where excuses are made time and time again for men's disgusting behaviour, just because they come from a different culture.

Sorry paint, but you can't criticise the literacy - that's been a feature for decades. In fact I sometimes wonder if they deliberately override the spellcheck. Given the massive problems that journalism faces (rise of Internet, falling sales, rising costs etc), I think the Guardian is hanging in there. I only buy the Saturday edition and I do get irritated by the amount of "off the shelf" fillers from the US etc but I still find good things in it every week. I tend to gloss over the far left wing hectoring though.

One thing last Saturday made me really quite cross though - an item in the Family section about making alcoholic Snowballs for children.

My dad always made us Snowballs at Christmas and we used to take the Daily Mirror.