[Boiler]

Hyde on Wootton:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... elebrities

Behold Wootton, a sideboard made of ham, with efit eyes, dropping quotable quotes so fast there was no way you could possibly digest the last one before the next one was being gnashed out through his veneers. I want to say it was like watching a washing machine play King Lear, but I think it’s somehow even more ludicrous to say it was like watching Dan Wootton play sincere.

[Youngian]

It’s hard enough Bozo thinking up stuff for his column without Adrian Chiles getting in there first.

Want a glimpse of dystopia? Visit the self-service checkouts
Automated tills now take up much more space than those staffed by humans. We must resist!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/co ... 1691042579

[Abernathy]

I was thinking more or less the same thing when I read that. It's fairly obvious that the sole reason Chiles has been given a column in The Grauniad is that his partner edits the paper, but by the cringe, he really turns out some atrocious shite.

[Youngian]

Is Mr Cox taking his lead from Steve Coogan’s character Paul Calf? You have to be a radical feminist these days of you want to get a shag. Particularly on the Guardian.

Barbie’s muddled feminist fantasy still bows to the patriarchy
David Cox
Gosling’s charm and Gerwig’s mixed messages mean the real winner is Mattel’s male CEO, and dude-dominated capitalism in general https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/a ... patriarchy

[Bones McCoy]

I find the Guardian a bizarre newspaper.

Conservative forums and blogs talk about it as through it's Socialist Worker.
It does a decent job with its news reporting, and often prints stories that the Telegraph-Express axis find inconvenient.

A couple of their columnists are regularly entertaining and on-topic.

In general I think they have more of the Liz Jones tendency than almost any other newspaper.

[Watchman]

I find it’s the “Lifestyle” type articles that let it down, they can slip into, gap year/let’s review the latest Aga, mode

[Boiler]

Climbing out of their electric SUV and stepping over the homeless to get to the ethnic fair-trade supermarket.

[kreuzberger]

A timely reminder that having two ha'pennies to rub together is nearly as bad as scurrying down to Sainsbury's for a mail of a Saturday morning.

Could be worse, I suppose for the, I dunno, ideologically pure, purist, puerile? Could be a Guardian reader or even someone working on it...

Pathetic. It's like bawling to a PETA activist that they have a leather belt.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'll never understand how 80 year old Simon Jenkins is still getting a regular column.

Here he goes against the grain by talking up Sunak's energy policy because "carbon capture", which may or may not improve significantly, but looks to me like the classic "fuck it, technology, mannnn!"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... crisis-co2

I get why the Guardian employs a conservative (and it's not as obnoxious about it as the New York Times) but I think it's a hard thing to pitch at your audience. David Gauke does it very well, but Jenkins doesn't.

[kreuzberger]

The great thing about Digital First is that it doesn't cost you a penny to not read it, unless you cough up a few quid to support an outlet without links to Monégasque Banks or the KGB, and feel that you should be in conference at 8am each day.

[Boiler]

The Berkeley Hunt that is Hancock given the Marina Hyde treatment.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... lies-covid

For now, the question of where precisely Hancock thinks he’s headed is a tantalising one. He bestrides the world of multihyphenates like a colossus. Some days he’s a crypto shill; others a reality TV dependable. Following the I’m A Celeb appearance, Matt’s next run-out will be on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, due to be screened later this year. The show’s chief instructor has offered something of a teaser of what to expect from Hancock’s stint. “We treat everybody the same and we really went at him,” as Billy Billingham recently remarked. “You might think that he’d be a cunt but for most of the time he wasn’t. But if anyone shows any attitude, they get it and when he tried it, he got fucking smashed. In the interrogation bit, he gets destroyed, absolutely destroyed. At the time I thought, ‘Oh, hang on, maybe this is a bit much?’ But no, he deserved it.”

[Youngian]

John Crace manages to raise a smile from this depressing carnival of ghouls.

Suella’s symposium of stupidity delivers blue-sky thinking on asylum seekers
It was time to do things differently. The finest minds in the country had tried and failed to come up with a solution to the small boats. An alternative approach was called for. The moment to put the feeblest minds in the country to work. A brains trust without the brains. A symposium of some of the stupidest people around. Two of whom just happened to be already in the building. Her ministerial colleagues Robert Jenrick and Sarah Dines.

Things were looking up. Lee Anderson and the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, had also made themselves available. If anything, lowering the stupidity bar still further. Surely together they could crack the refugee problem. Braverman began the meeting by thanking everyone for coming. It wasn’t every day you could assemble such an awesome lack of talent at such short notice. A convention of flatliners. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... e_btn_link

[Boiler]

Speaking of Anderson and Chalk:

[Abernathy]

Marina is on the case of The Crooked House crooks .

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisf ... 4w8D0oejK4

But still no public sign of the Taylors. Normally in a case such as this, you would expect to see the owners weeping on the local TV news about their loss and the cruelty of it. Yet even as the story goes international with a big write-up in the New York Times, Adam and Carly are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they are simply too devastated to come before the TV cameras.

[Bones McCoy]

Speaking of Anderson and Chalk:

I know which King that is.

[Boiler]

The one with an easy anagram?

[Boiler]

Marina is on the case of The Crooked House crooks .

Joni Mitchell applies here - but a similar thing happened to a pub adjacent to my parents' house (built by the son of the publican upon whose land it stood c. 1897). Second oldest building in the village (17th century IIRC) , the pub was sold by the-then owners... and one August Bank Holiday whilst it was empty the bulldozers moved in.

[MisterMuncher]

North Street Arcade in Belfast is possibly the classic "oops, there's been a fire in our listed property, oh woe! Alas! Alack!" story. Developers bought the arcade, and then found it was listed, and all the existent tenants had very long, very cheap and extremely lenient leases that were legally airtight. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it then caught fire, but by then it was 2008, and there was no money to knock it down and plant shitty overpriced apartments* and a couple of failing restaurants. It's still lying empty and overgrown to this day.


*Not flats, oh heavens no. Apartments.

[Bones McCoy]

Back in my childhood home of Ilford, fire seems to be the default fate of beloved, but unprofitable pubs.

Many from the "standalone brick build" era.




Also several '60s flat roof ones that probably won't be as missed, except that they leave entire neighbourhoods "dry".

[Boiler]

Be interesting to see what fate befalls this one, almost opposite PUFC London Road stadium but also a busy junction.