In The Guardian's This Much I Know, celebrities share the lessons they have learned in life. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 21, 2009 - 52 comments

Allan Milburn MP has just published a report [pdf] on social exclusion from the professions in the UK. Polly Toynbee of The Guardian newspaper opines. The Guardian has a few problems on that score of its own however.
posted by pharm on Jul 21, 2009 - 56 comments

"The editor's guidelines are as follows: First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend. Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes. Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a cop-out." - Swearing in The Guardian: A chart
posted by Artw on Apr 3, 2009 - 31 comments

Tom Gauld draws cartoons for the Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Rinku on Mar 3, 2009 - 7 comments

It is one of the abiding images of the 1984 coal strike - Guardian photographer Don McPhee's picture of a picketing miner facing up to an officer. But what happened to the two protagonists?
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Feb 24, 2009 - 14 comments

Love Thy Neighbor: Why Have We Become So Suspicious Of Kindness? Most people, as they grow up now, secretly believe that kindness is a virtue of losers. But agreeing to talk about winners and losers is part and parcel of the phobic avoidance, the contemporary terror, of kindness. Because one of the things the enemies of kindness never ask themselves - and this is now an enemy within all of us - is why we feel it at all. Why are we ever, in any way, moved to be kind to other people, not to mention to ourselves? Why does kindness matter to us?
posted by jason's_planet on Jan 3, 2009 - 71 comments

100 years of Guardian photography. Including Don McPhee and Denis Thorpe.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Oct 23, 2008 - 5 comments

"As he walks past I am struck by the way, from his default gloomy expression, he constantly flashes his rictus grin at people, like a doomed and slightly out of control belisha beacon" - The Guardian's cartoonist Steve Bell on drawing Gordon 'Gordy' Brown (video). He's in the process of producing a number of sketchbooks covering the conference season - Liberal Democrat, Labour 1, Labour 2. And he covered this year's Democrat and Republican conventions and also visited 'Manifest Hope' (video), an art exhibition based around images of Barack Obama. Previously.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Sep 25, 2008 - 9 comments

Guardian travel writer's teenage son given travel blog, gets savaged. Highlights here.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Feb 15, 2008 - 104 comments

Morrissey makes some controversial remarks to the NME. Defensive explanations by the interviewer, attempts at defusing the situation and threats of legal action ensue, as does satire.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 1, 2007 - 53 comments

The Guardian discusses homeopathy: Jeannette Winterson supports it, Ben Goldacre opposes it.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Nov 19, 2007 - 208 comments

Wi-fi Routers: Silent blinking death. Via badscience.net, where it was posted in response to what sounds like a truly awful show. Electrosensitivity previously discussed here.
posted by Artw on May 25, 2007 - 52 comments

Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps: a good read from The Guardian.
posted by byronimation on Apr 24, 2007 - 133 comments

"For half a nanosecond I was tempted to join in the discussion. And then I remembered that all internet debates, without exception, are entirely futile. So I didn't." - Charlie Brooker on Internet discussions.
posted by Artw on Jun 2, 2006 - 67 comments

Baron Winston of Hammersmith in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham: Why do we believe in God?
posted by thirteenkiller on Oct 16, 2005 - 26 comments

My fab fave UK public intellectual was somehow overlooked in the popularity contest discussed yesterday, and I was surprised that nobody had ever FPPd him here (at least, as far as the search function can determine...)
posted by Sidhedevil on Jul 2, 2004 - 4 comments

Why I made that film. The Guardian gets the first interview with the unknown, female, 21-year-old American star of "the most explicit mainstream movie ever" (copyright all newspapers, everywhere).
posted by ascullion on May 20, 2004 - 44 comments

The Guardian has a nice interview with Ursula K. Le Guin about utopian science fiction, anthropology, ethnicity in Earthsea and the differences between her two Earthsea trilogies. She also comments on the upcoming miniseries.

The Lathe of Heaven is a taoist novel, not a utopian or dystopian one.... There is an old American saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The novel extends that a bit - "Even if it's broke, if you don't know how to fix it, don't."

posted by KirkJobSluder on Mar 11, 2004 - 20 comments

Is David Lynch Really The Best Director In The World? The Guardian, along with many other Europeans, seems to think so, in an impressive but very subjective (not to say that dreaded word quirky) list of the best 40 film directors. (More inside.)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Nov 14, 2003 - 95 comments

Journalists say off the record "it was Karl Rove that I spoke to..." (RealPlayer)
Julian Borger of the Guardian reveals that several journalists have revealed "off the record" that Karl Rove revealed the identity of the CIA operative, but that the reporters aren't publicly admitting it, in order to protect their source. But aren't they also material witnesses to a federal crime? Does not revealing their source make them accessories to that crime?
posted by insomnia_lj on Sep 30, 2003 - 51 comments

Met by "howls of outrage" and questions about his sanity, Michael Meacher, the ex-Environment Minister for the UK, known mostly for his opposition to GMOs, and revelations about the less than honest and upright behaviour surrounding the issue, has spent some time thinking, free from the constraints of Ministerial duties. "the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement."
- Commentary - Commentary - Commentary
posted by Blue Stone on Sep 6, 2003 - 24 comments

Fifteen ways to leave your lover. In seventh grade, my then girlfriend had her best friend dump me. On the bus. I thought that was hell. I was wrong. The Guardian, in tribute to a Malaysian man that divorced his wife via text message, lists the fifteen harshest break-ups in history.
posted by Ufez Jones on Jul 29, 2003 - 87 comments

Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger is finally tracked down.
posted by MintSauce on May 30, 2003 - 20 comments

Elliott could no longer bear the waste. He had six staff and a budget of £3.5m a year. He had a potential client group of 25,000 users ... but at the end of all his work and all that public money, the total number of detox beds he was able to provide was five. The Guardian reports from the front-line of the drugs war. (part two) You may have no interest in Drugs or the UK but read this superb piece for a profile of a bureaucracy in farcical, tragic, total collapse.
posted by grahamwell on May 23, 2003 - 5 comments

Love and Poison tells the story of BritPop's love triangle -- Blur's Damon Albarn, Suede's Brett Anderson, and Elastica's Justine Frischmann. These articles from The Guardian are an excerpt from John Harris' "The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock."
posted by Reggie452 on May 8, 2003 - 10 comments

Ok, I'm biased. I admit it. I never pass over the chance to gloat or take delight in some misfortune that befalls Rupert Murdoch or his media empire (this is, after all the man who disses the Dalai Lama.)
So it is with great and admittied delight that I announce that the Fox News Channel (which has fought for and won the right to lie to it's viewers) may be stopped from broadcasting in the UK because of it's bias (such a thing has happened before.)
~fingers crossed~
posted by Blue Stone on May 7, 2003 - 111 comments

Visceral beauty Long-standing Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell offers some thoughts on covering the war One of the real advantages of being able to draw in this awful context is that it affords the chance to manipulate a little of this flood of imagery and turn it back on itself; since I'm certain the vast bulk of these mega-pictures constitute a campaign of deliberate obfuscation.
posted by skellum on Apr 12, 2003 - 7 comments

Now that we can Create a Hit Single in less than 2 minutes thanks to Microsoft, more & more people start worrying about music and its destiny. In UK, the 23 years old (and Xtina fan, 'I can't wait till she's number one' he says) Wes Butters takes over the great Radio 1 institution 'the Chart show'. (the guardian article) Can this mean the end of quality music shows? (Nah... Just a beginning downfall.)
posted by Sijeka on Feb 8, 2003 - 17 comments

ill take some Xhoba with that shake "Hunters would cut a slice, munch it, and within minutes hunger and thirst would evaporate, leaving a feeling of strength and alertness. They could travel for days eating nothing else" guardian.co.uk i hope the kalahari do receive some compensation if this is effective as it sounds.
posted by specialk420 on Jan 4, 2003 - 16 comments

No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats. ...so quoth the NYT. Funniest correction I've seen in a while; even better than the ones in the Guardian.
posted by Vidiot on Dec 16, 2002 - 7 comments

The Guardian announces weblog competition winners! and commends 30 in all, so at the very least there are some new and interesting places to have a little surf. I hadn't heard of any of them before and the ones I have had a look at are worth a second glance, although , at the risk of appearing a mite cynical, there seem to be plenty of Guardian links in a couple of them.
posted by Fat Buddha on Sep 26, 2002 - 21 comments

A solution to the world's terrorism problems? Mo Mowlam (formerly responsible for the UK government's drugs policy) suggests that terrorist activity is funded by drug trafficking and the best way to combat this is to legalise all drugs. Everywhere. Go Mo!
posted by hnnrs on Sep 19, 2002 - 17 comments

Have the anti-Euro lobby shot themselves in the foot? A video promoting opposition to the UK joing the Euro has been critisized for including a spoof of Hitler praising the currency. It's attracted publicity for the campaign, all right, but has it unmasked the "No" campaign as anti-Europe "little Englanders"? (Guardian link)
posted by salmacis on Jul 3, 2002 - 23 comments

In a world of frustratingly cyclic bloodshed, peacemakers show the way according to an article by William Pfaff at the IHT. AC Grayling at The Guardian says that true heroes are those brave enough to make peace. With terrorism and counter terroism raising the temperature of rhetoric and war across the globe, will a new wisdom emerge where cooler heads prevail?
posted by will on Mar 19, 2002 - 9 comments

The Guardian's story on Blogger Pro covers everything you've heard about in the past week, but gets interesting at the end. "We have a tremendous amount of content flowing through our system, all in these little chunks that are separate from their sites. It should be easy to index and aggregate and present to people in all kinds of different ways." Blogger as the Associated Press of weblog syndication services?
posted by mathowie on Jan 31, 2002 - 9 comments

Interesting article from The Guardian discussing the fact that people seem willing to pay for annoying ringtones, but seem unwilling to pay for near-CD-quality music. Unfortunately it doesn't really address the question of "why?"
posted by jedro on Jan 11, 2002 - 15 comments

50 things we'll be glad to see the back of in 2002 Yes, its another whimsical list from 'The Guardian', this more vitriolic than most. Personally I'd like to see the back of 2001. What a crappy year.
posted by feelinglistless on Dec 30, 2001 - 23 comments

Beware the peace that kills A piece from the Guardian that does NOT have an anti-war sentiment.
posted by Oxydude on Nov 18, 2001 - 10 comments

Cuban terroists are living in Miami. Should we arrest them?
posted by the cuban on Oct 10, 2001 - 3 comments

F u cn rd ths, u rnt vry kreatv. The Guardian launches what may be the world's first text messaging poetry competition. Can you stir another's soul in 160 characters or less? Top prize is £1000. You don't have to be a UK citizen to enter. Why not post your entries here before your send them out?
posted by aaron on Mar 29, 2001 - 2 comments

It's easy to get complacent and not learn foreign languages when you speak native English. In the UK, knowledge of foreign languages verges on the comical.
posted by ecvgi on Feb 22, 2001 - 23 comments

"The rules of this game were set by the people, underwritten by the people, financed or not." Yet another opportunity for the British Observer to put the US newspapers to shame, with an closely-argued, even-handed reflection on the fun in Florida. "The system, full of inefficiencies and coagulations, may stink, but it is also a system which belongs to the voters who now complain so shrilly about it."
posted by holgate on Nov 19, 2000 - 2 comments