to be glad that the Guardian is making enormous losses

[longfingernails]

www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-losses-reported-to-have-escalated-by-a-further-10m-to-68-7m-for-the-last-financial-year/

Great stuff. Their chatterati condescension, Islington moral vacuum and politically correct echo chamber has been a malignant blot upon our society for decades.

Let it wither upon the Viner.

Small the guardian got torn to shreds BTL in its Rotherham comment pieces because they were reluctant to admit until the Jay Report came out that the perpetrators were of a Pakistani background, instead opting to describe them as 'Asian' gangs, or in some pieces as 'powerful men'. i.e. ignoring the elephant in the room that maybe certain cultural attitudes and practices towards young white women within a certain migrant community were less then savoury.

Even when the Jay report did came out there seemed to be a dragging of the feet in accepting this fact, instead blaming the police, councils, girls, their parents, social workers, white men, or any of the other people except the perpetrators. The paper lost a lot of respect for that as demonstrated by the anger displayed BTL and the subsequent heavy modding of said comments for pointing out how disingenuous the mods were being

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/commentisfree+uk/rotherham

Go take a look at this page and tell me that it was "Biased" in its coverage.

I will dispute the fact that the Guardian ever blamed the girls or their parents themselves, however it was critical of the Police and Social workers who ignored it. Why should it not be ? This in the end was the reason it was allowed to go on for so long!

You own point: "maybe certain cultural attitudes and practices towards young white women within a certain migrant community were less then savoury. "

Shows that like many others, you have chosen to make this a racial matter, when it is clear that vulnerable young women, and young people all over the country have been abused by different groups. In fact this is something that the Guardian kept repeating, in fact Suzanne Moore pointed out that it shows far more about the attitudes to poor children than it does to being overly "PC".

Your attempt to keep bringing it back to race belittles you tbh.

Is it then that the Guardian's problem was that it sought to further the discussion, rather than coming to the simple explanation of Evil Pakistani men and their attitudes to white girls repeated on and on here?

There is an issue, but should it not be more addressed to predatory men, who are able to exploit their advantages? Rather than making the issue about race.

I certainly think the articles that I have read from the Guardian on the matter look deeper and further into these issues than many others seeking a simple yet gratifying answer that panders to the prejudices of their readership.

The Guardian does cover issues for sick and disabled people from care in the community to benefit stripping. Of course, with Mumsnet being very anti-disabled, this goes unnoticed. Frances Ryan for instance, has a column detailing life for disabled people and the fear when the brown envelope comes through the door, having care packages removed. This week, she's having a go at Corbyn as so many sick and disabled are flocking under his banner so is toeing the paper's line.

9 times out of 10, BTL comments will be anti-disabled usually calling them scroungers, telling them to get a job, how dare they need a car to go out with, be fat whilst using a wheelchair/scooter. And there will always be an anecdote about a rude disabled person and an anecdote about a next door neighbour with a new car and on DLA who does gardening and is very obviously rubbing the tax payers nose in it. Just like here really.

But fair play to the Graun for publishing/posting such a column in the first place.

smallfox i agree. I believe the ignoring and minimising had a lot to do with the social class of the girls.

Classism is a bigger problem than most would like to admit.

Oh and the points made about BTL comments? Even the Guardian has exposed the issues with that, its almost a given in the CIF community that there are many people on there that will sit and make comments that are the exact oposite of the sentiments expressed in the article, its almost like they delight in opposing everything the Guardian stands for.

Go take a look at this page and tell me that it was "Biased" in its coverage.

Since that page contains not a single story on abuse in Rotherham dating from before the publication of the Jay report in August 2014, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make (the pre-2014 stories are about a 2011 by-election and a couple of local colour stories about Jamie Oliver's school meals). Are you saying that once the Jay Report was published, only a fool or a knave would deny the story? Yes, that's true. Now, what did CiF look like before August 26th 2014? Let's go back three years:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/grooming-racialising-crime-tradition

Which starts "Dubious claims about Muslim men grooming white girls hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse"

So, it's dubious that Muslim men were grooming white girls? Does the jay report support that, would you say? Let's look at the executive summary:

By far the majority of perpetrators were described as 'Asian' by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.

and then flick to paragraph 5.5 where we find:

5.5 In this part of the report, we have not specified the ethnicity of the victims or the perpetrators. In a large number of the historic cases in particular, most of the victims in the cases we sampled were white British children, and the majority of the perpetrators were from minority ethnic communities. They were described generically in the files as ‘Asian males’ without precise reference being made to their ethnicity.

So, isn't it odd that the Guardian is a little bashful about "Dubious claims about Muslim men grooming white girls". How dubious were they? Not dubious at all, it would appear.

"But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested."

From the piece you connected to.

Again it draws attention to the fact that although while this case was mainly Muslim men, and highlights the failure of the system regarding the grooming problems that occur across the country. It also correctly draws attention to the fact that historically cases that involve ethnic minorities attract larger coverage in the press.

There were systematic failures in Rotherham, from the Police, Social services and yes the majority of the men were from one ethnicitiy.

But in the wake of the Savile case and all of the others that have come from it, would we not identify that the Guardian's stance, that we must not only approach this from a racial POV but to look further at the abuse of vulnerable children, was correct.

Also the "dubious claims" refer to the fact that the claims were that there was a "tidal wave" of abuse perpetrate by muslim men across the country, when although it may have been in Rotherham:

"But it is worth noting that, when asked by the Times to collate its recent work according to ethnicity, Engage – based in Blackburn and one of the largest multi-agency organisations working on this issue – found that in the past year that 80% of offenders were white."

It also quotes the head of Barnardos saying that this is not a racial issue as it is all over the country.

So again, the Guardian makes a pertinent point, the "tidal wave" of abuse was dubious and did not, as you have inferred refer to the Rotherham abuse.

If you're going to claim an article backs your point, it might help to read the full thing.

Of course the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of sexual abuse are white men, that is consistent with the ethnic make-up of the UK. But you are still minimising the phenomenon of gangs of men of Pakistani Muslim origin abusing girls systematically over a period of decades and a deliberate blind eye being turned by police and social services - the Rotherham case was only one of many. And you keep making it about race: in fact those men abused not only white ethnically English girls but also Asian-origin girls who were Hindu and Sikh. They regarded non-Muslim girls as fair game and that is a serious and well-documented problem in some communities. The prosecutor, Nazir Afzal, highlighted both the fact that there was a problem with some parts of the Muslim community in challenging certain behaviours, and that there was a reluctance among the white professionals involved (police, social services) to tackle the problem for fear of appearing racist. What is so controversial about that? The Guardian had difficulty with it, as they did with the Cologne sex attacks, constantly trying to make it about generalised "male violence" without addressing the serious cultural issues involved, and trying to perpetuate the mentality that led to those poor girls being so horribly let down by the system.

Small, there are hundreds if not thousands of comments BTL on Guardian pieces and sure on a community that large you are going to get the usual crop of loons and trolls, however, you also get an awful lot of very good posters (from all political viewpoints) who patiently dismantle an article using facts and logic backed up with credible links. It is often more informative to read the BTL comments then the article itself, many of which are so poorly researched or fact free in their bid to dogmaticly follow an ideological viewpoint it is fairly easy for someone with a bit of time on their hands to completely demolish them. Dismissing all BTL commentators as just contrarians is lazy, I have been on CIF for over a decade and and there have been some excellent analysis and debates to be had. Even when I have not had my view changed I have walked away better informed or more sympathetic to the issue concerned. The Rotherham abuse and latterly the Cologne attacks was unusual insofar as uniting virtually all BTL commentators of all political stripes into criticising the Guardians supine coverage, only Jessica Valenti articles achieve that rare feat. What is more likely, a guardian op ed piece being found wanting or everyone else (thousands of people) being wrong. Of course the guardians response was to disable comments on future pieces claiming racism rather then the unpalpable truth that their editorial line was completely out of touch with many of its readership.

"Of course the guardians response was to disable comments on future pieces claiming racism rather then the unpalpable truth that their editorial line was completely out of touch with many of its readership."

You say "many of its readership", but what you actually mean is "people who comment below the line". There is no evidence that these people are "Guardian readers" in the sense that they buy the paper. It seems to me that the vast majority of BTL commenters on the Guardian site are just people who turn up spoiling for a fight. If they don't pay to read it, why on earth should the Guardian care what they think?

There is no other paper that stands up for the rights of working people in the way the Guardian does. Look at its undercover investigation into working conditions at Sports Direct, for example:

www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports-direct-effectively-pays-below-minimum-wage-pay

That's an investigation that led to a parliamentary committee publishing a damning report into Sports Direct's practices.

Who else is doing these kinds of investigations? Who else cares about the people at the bottom of the pile?

Additionally your willful blindness to the fact that a central tenant to the Rotherham abuse scandal was a fear by the powers to be to take action against crimes that were quite clearly being overwhelmingly carried out by Pakistani men out of concern of being labelled racist or 'upsetting the multicultural applecart' is a sight to behold. Have you read the Jay Report? It explicitly states that a fear of offending a certain ethnic group let the abuse to continue for years. So yes it is a race/cultural issue, something you and certain columnists at the guardian seem reluctant to accept. Suzanne Moore tried to turn it into a class issue by claiming that he girls were ignored because they were poor and came from dysfunctional families or care homes while completely ignoring the demographic make up of the abusers. Then came the whataboutery, pointing out stats that white men are responsible for way more sex crimes against children (unsurprising given the demographic make up of the U.K.) while again failing to acknowledge the disproportionate number of men from the Pakistani community who were responsible for the Rofheham abuse and further ignoring the ample evidence that these men consisted their victims as white trash, slags, fair game and almost disposable.

Your veiled attempts to smear me as racist speaks volumes more about you.

Hackmum, it's an odd stance to take to define those who do not physically buy or subscribe to the guardian as not being proper readers. The guardian cares very much how many online readers it gets given that it's business model is to move away from traditional print media to a completely online format. For that to work they need a lot of traffic through the site in order to get those ad revenues, which unfortunately has led to a rise in what can only be described as click bait being deployed. They should also care what its readership think give that people will vote with their feet and get their news elsewhere if the feel the papers editorial line is completely add odds with their own views. And no, I am not talking about 'Tory Trolls' BTL but traditional labour supporters. The current bun fight is the lack of support for Corbyn by the paper, many commentators believe this to be a betrayal by the Pollys of this world.

For the record, I have pointed out up thread some of the excellent work the guardian has carried out, I have also pointed out some of the shoddy coverage of Rotherham and Cologne (as have others) which in my opinion has compromised its image as a serious paper when they opted to pursue an ideological editorial line instead of maybe reflecting more fully some of the unfortunate truths that emerged from both those events

About the issue of "proper" readers or not. The Guardian's experiment with providing free web content has been a disastrous business decision. The amount of ad revenue they get is tiny - about 75% of all online ad revenue goes to Google or Facebook. All those online comments cost them money - they obviously have to have a huge IT infrastructure to cope with them, and employ a team of moderators 24/7.

It doesn't surprise me that the Guardian has closed comments on some articles, because allowing comments provides very few benefits for the paper. And if the Guardian were to produce content purely with the aim of making its online commenters happy (a large proportion of whom are right-wing, sexist and racist), then there wouldn't be any point in it existing.

It seems to me that the vast majority of BTL commenters on the Guardian site are just people who turn up spoiling for a fight.

I wouldn't say vast majority, but quite a few are indeed aggressive and spoiling for a fight. I totally agree that it is unclear that the comments are actually representative of the majority of the readership of the paper (print and online).

The Guardian gets and allows a lot more comments than other papers. Compare it with the New Statesman, for example, which doesn't allow comments.

The current bun fight is the lack of support for Corbyn by the paper, many commentators believe this to be a betrayal by the Pollys of this world.

But polls show that many centre left/soft left Labour voters are not supportive of Corbyn and that he is likely to do very badly in the next election. It is not obvious to me that a pro-Corbyn line would actually be more line with most of the online readership of the Guardian, as opposed to the old-Labour (Labour left party membership) readership.

An uncritical pro-Corbyn stance would actually be the final straw that would make me (and probably most of my colleagues who are anti-Corbyn Labour voters, some are party members) stop reading the Guardian.

(BTW when I say comments are unrepresentative - I mean of course excluding already the ones which are clearly trolls and rightwing.)

The trouble with subscribing is that they send you those tokens than my local supermarkets don't recognise. If they sent you a voucher accepted everywhere like they used to it would be different but I'm not going to a special shop just to get a paper.
I think they got Cologne wrong but that's just one story.

I found the Snowdon thing very yawny and didn't understand why exposing our allies security secrets was such a great thing. Different if it was Russia or North Korea or China but why do we want to piss off our friends? Some people just should never sign the official secrets act in the first place.

"Your veiled attempts to smear me as racist speaks volumes more about you."

What was veiled about it? I thought it was quite blatant!

Your continual attacks on the Guardian regarding its handling of one issue and repeated crticism of it being "PC" and thus conflating it with the excuses used by both the police and the council for their conduct.

Yes they are excuses too, because there is no problem in stoping and checking black or asian men for other types of offences, or the fact that if you are black or asian you get harsher sentences and are disproportionally represented in the prison population.

Lets be honest the council/police claims of being afraid to offend or to be accused of racism was an attempt to cover up their inadequacies in their dealing with these cases.

"So yes it is a race/cultural issue,"

Fuck me were Savile and Harris Pakistani too?

Your basic issue then is with the fact that the Guardian didn't say "All da Pakistani's iz evilzs" and instead kept saying that we need not to make this an issue about race. The Guardian ( and Suzanne Moore) suggesting that this was more to do with the fact that poor/vulnerable children get ignored (where did Savile commit many of his crimes remind me?) and that this is a wider issue, which it is, but you keep criticising it for not over simplifying it.

You keep making it an issue about race,which says a lot about you.

I don't think anyone is saying that the guardian should come out with such rubbish, I think a lot of the critism is that obviously there are other contributing factors, but because of playing identity politics for so long they refuse to acknowledge certain factors because of the fear nothing more than an ideological agenda, and let's be honest there are many similar cases around the UK that match Rotherham.

And let's not pretend that they champion the working class either, my previous comment about the Buy To Let article is way down in the list of there disgust of the 'we know what's best' when you started seeing labour heartlands gaining UKIP support and to top it of the labour heartlands that voted for brexit.

People can enjoy the paper, see it's turning to shit and can give reasons why they think it's failing without being some far right racist.

I just have an iPod. Reading anything on that is hard work. When it comes to reading a paper I prefer paper. Computers are for browsing

The Rotherham case is repeated across the UK, but race isn't the defining factor, what is the key point is it is very often vulnerable young people who are not believed.

The Guardian was never read by the Labour heartlands in the first place, that would be the Mirror.

The constant harping on about the Guardian losing credibility because it failed to identify the race issue, which as I have said was an excuse for the failures of those who should have been in charge, as the key factor is an issue in its self.

The guardian doesn't seem to realise non white people can be racist too. The Asian origin gangs in Rotherham were being racist. Racism isn't an exclusively white thing