Guardian

Friday

Katy Balls

How FHM readers lost their safe space

'A victory for feminism,' came the cries this week, as news broke that FHM was to close after 20 years. Then came a rush of virtue-signalling males proclaiming that they were surprised anyone still read that old misogynistic rag. Of course how many people actually read it is now becoming pretty clear, yet it was a question I found myself asking strangers while I was working as an intern at FHM in the summer of 2011, on a project meant to help rebrand the lads' mag. The magazine was stuck in a funk after its 90s heyday and struggling to connect with millennials. Not as classy or as cool as GQ or Esquire, as useful as Men's Health or as plain smutty as Zoo or Nuts, FHM had lost its way.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Guardian columnist Seumas Milne joins Team Corbyn

Oh dear. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is about to get a whole lot stranger. The Labour leader has appointed none other than Guardian columnist Seumas Milne as his 'executive director of strategy and communications'. Milne starts the job next week and joins on leave from the paper. https://twitter.com/SeumasMilne/status/656540739753615360 The controversial appointment may well do Corbyn some good, in the sense that when compared to the left-wing columnist, Corbyn begins to look like a moderate. While Corbyn has apologised for the Iraq war, Milne has gone further and actually praised the other side.

Friday

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg finds an unlikely fan in Mhairi Black

In Mhairi Black's maiden speech in the House of Commons, the young SNP MP voiced her opposition to the Tories by criticising George Osborne over his party's housing policy. However, despite calling the Conservatives 'a really dangerous party' in an interview with the Guardian, it appears Black has at least softened in her approach to some members of the party. The SNP MP says that she has a lot of time for Jacob Rees-Mogg, adding that she could listen to the eurosceptic Tory MP all day: 'I could sit and listen to him all day, I disagree with him 99.9 per cent of the time, and that wee percent is just because he’s got good manners. But I love listening to him, his knowledge is incredible, and he’s so polite.

Steerpike

Guardian columnist on spitting protesters: ‘I really don’t have a problem with it’

This week's Tory conference made the headlines after journalists and Tory supporters attending the event were spat at and egged. With Labour MPs quick to condemn the actions of protesters in Manchester, today it fell upon the Guardian's Zoe Williams to come to the defence of the spitting protesters. Speaking on the Daily Politics, Williams said that she understood why they would 'spit and throw eggs': 'I think there is a kind of persistent exclusion from some voices in the debate and you cannot blame people for ultimately becoming quite angry and I really don’t have a problem with it.

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

George Osborne: Corbyn is not the cause of Labour’s problems

George Osborne was interviewed by Kath Viner, editor of The Guardian, this afternoon and offered some interesting thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories have generally kept schtum about the rise of the new Labour leader, focusing instead on the message that he is a danger to Britain’s national/economic security. Echoing the thoughts of Labour’s Jon Cruddas, the Chancellor said Corbynmania is not about the man himself: ‘I don’t think it’s actually about personalities in this sense which is, you know, Jeremy Corbyn is not the cause of the Labour party’s problems, he is a symptom.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Do as I say (not as I do): a Guardian Corbynista lectures Blairites

The Fabian Society's question time event at Labour party conference made for a lively debate. Tony Blair's former staffer John McTernan joined Tim Montgomerie, Labour's Kate Green and the Guardian's Ellie Mae O'Hagan to discuss the future of the Labour party now Jeremy Corbyn is leader. With McTernan criticising Corbyn for a leader's speech which 'gave no indication' that the party had just lost an election, it fell on O'Hagan -- who works for the Centre of Labour and Social Studies -- to fight Corbyn's corner. To kick her argument off, the Guardian writer -- and Corbyn champion -- explained that after the election result she had realised that in order for Labour to win the next election they needed to discover why people had voted Tory.

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

That LinkedIn photograph has served Charlotte Proudman very well, hasn’t it?

Gosh, she’s done well out of notoriety, has Charlotte Proudman. After emerging from entire obscurity after outing an older male barrister for inappropriate remarks about her photo on LinkedIn – I don’t need to remind you about it, do I? – this young lawyer has now come into her own as a columnist on the Guardian today. There was me, thinking she was safely in a university environment doing more sterling work on FGM. Which, obv, I’m against. I mean the practice, not Ms Proudman’s efforts to rid the world of it, which I don’t expect is going to change much.

Saturday

Damian Thompson

Corbyn wins: a delicious humiliation for the liberal Left

The groans that must be coming from the newsrooms of the Guardian and the BBC right now! With a descant of coloratura shrieks from right-on luvvies. And, needless to say, vigorous hand-wringing – they'll be sending out for Band-Aids to treat their sore fingers by the end of the day. 'Progressive' Labour supporters in higher income brackets did not want Jeremy Corbyn to win today. You only have to read the agonised Twitter streams of just about every liberal journalist in the country to realise that. You don't have to tell me that the man's policies are bonkers and the sympathies of his far-Left supporters verging on the sinister.

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

Sharing a photo of a dead Syrian child isn’t compassionate, it’s narcissistic

Have you seen the dead Syrian child yet? Look at his lifeless body. His head buried in the sand. His sad, resigned posture after he and his family made the treacherous journey from Syria to Turkey only to wash up dead on a Turkish beach. Isn’t this just the saddest photo you’ve ever seen? And gross too? Quick, share it! Show it to your friends — on Twitter, Facebook — so that they will feel sad and grossed-out too. Gather round, everyone: stare at the dead Syrian child. We all know about the problem of sexual pornography on the internet. Now we need to talk about the problem of moral pornography.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

I’m utterly sickened by this story of a man trying to talk to a woman on a train

What can we as a society do about the relentless harassment of women by terrifying men? Menacing men, threatening men, priapic men. Something must be done — and quickly. I reached this conclusion after reading a deeply distressing article by the Guardian columnist Daisy Buchanan, who announced that she has imposed a curfew on herself after a series of deeply unpleasant incursions by bestial males. ‘I can’t believe women have to live like this in 2015,’ Ms Buchanan lamented, having revealed that she has also given up dancing in case the same sort of thing happens when she is on the way home from wherever it is she dances.

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

Jeremy Corbyn is right – it’s time for women-only carriages on trains

What can we as a society do about the relentless harassment of women by terrifying men? Menacing men, threatening men, priapic men. Something must be done — and quickly. I reached this conclusion after reading a deeply distressing article by the Guardian columnist Daisy Buchanan, who announced that she has imposed a curfew on herself after a series of deeply unpleasant incursions by bestial males. ‘I can’t believe women have to live like this in 2015,’ Ms Buchanan lamented, having revealed that she has also given up dancing in case the same sort of thing happens when she is on the way home from wherever it is she dances.

Steerpike

The Guardian declares war on the Sunday roast

A time will come when the Guardian declares war on your favourite food. The lefty bible has so far deemed HP sauce to be the condiment of 'the establishment', tea drinkers to be on the same level as 'colonialism and the class system' and barbecues to be approaching racist. Now, the Sunday roast has had its comeuppance. In a head to head titled 'Should Sunday roast dinners still be on the menu?', Philip Hoare -- a cultural historian -- writes in the Guardian that the traditional roast is an 'oppressive outmoded practice'. He says that just the thought of a roast dinner evokes 'received memories of oppression and an enslaved work force'.

Friday

Steerpike

Labour’s attack dog takes a swipe at the Guardian after Burnham snub

Oh dear. Is the Labour leadership campaign beginning to get too much for the Burnham camp? After the Guardian announced last night that they would be endorsing Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham's campaign manager Michael Dugher was quick to tweet a link to the Guardian's 2010 endorsement of Nick Clegg. https://twitter.com/MichaelDugher/status/631885221554749441 As this endorsement didn't work out too well for the Liberal Democrats, some users took this to be a thinly veiled dig by Dugher -- who previously worked closely with Labour spin doctor Damian McBride under Gordon Brown -- to suggest that the paper's endorsement is not worth much. https://twitter.

Sunday

Rod Liddle

The BBC is biased in favour of the establishment, not the government

The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some six feet in length and presided over a staff of four people, operating out of one long room. Reith confessed that he did not actually know what broadcasting was — an affliction which you might say, a little cruelly, has been shared by one or two of his successors over the years. The parsimonious approach was not to last, of course. Ten years on and the corporation was ensconced in the Stalinist art-deco edifice of Broadcasting House; today the BBC employs more than 20,000 people — some of them actually involved in making programmes — and struggles by on a budget of £5.1 billion.

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Here’s more evidence that the left might be screwed

Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed.  Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one day they will realise that this is because the left is wrong. Anyhow – evidence for the (b) answer seems to grow by the day. The Labour leadership race aside, consider the Guardian newspaper, which is a pretty good weathervane for what has gone wrong with the left.  In the last fortnight the paper has interviewed two prominent British Muslims.

Friday

Steerpike

Guardian journalist enjoys wild night on David Cameron’s private jet

With the newspapers frequently filled with tales of former public schoolboys misbehaving abroad, Mr S was unsurprised to hear reports that a Westminster School alumnus had enjoyed a rather lively flight from Asia to Britain. Still, given that the man in question was aboard the Prime Minister's private jet, perhaps he ought to have known better. Step forward Patrick Wintour. Word reaches Steerpike that the Guardian's political editor has become the talk of David Cameron's Malaysia trip after being the life and soul of the party on the flight back to Britain. According to Mr S's mole the journey got off to a bad start when Cameron failed to call Wintour by his name on board, instead opting for simply 'Guardian'.

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Let’s pay for the BBC content we use

What follows is a proposal for reducing the BBC licence fee and improving the corporation’s output while saving the British newspaper industry. All that’s involved is a basic understanding of pricing psychology combined with a digital currency for micropayments. Under my proposals, half the licence fee would fund the BBC’s Reithian purpose; the other £60 could be paid direct to the BBC as now or, if you chose, paid to you as a digital currency (6,000 Beebcoins). People could buy additional Beebcoins, which could be spent on BBC or competitor content — including content from newspapers. Notionally the BBC would lose out; in practice they would gain revenue, as they could now sell premium services.

Thursday

Ella Whelan

Feminists want to be both whistled at and ignored. What’s a man to do?

'Seasoned feminist’ Jessica Valenti has written in the Guardian about catcalling and the detrimental effect it is having on her self-esteem as she grows older. Valenti mourns ‘the hellishness of my teen years’, ruined by unsolicited comments from strange men, and feels even more sorry for herself now, a slightly older mother who gets fewer catcalls and feels like she is becoming ‘invisible to men’. Feminists are never happy: whistle at them, and it's an act of abusive male entitlement; don't whistle at them, and you're ignoring women, treating them as invisible. What are men to do? Our relationship towards social interaction is changing.

Rod Liddle

The left pillories Tim Farron for his popular view

I wonder who will win the battle for Tim Farron’s soul — the Guardianistas or God? This is assuming that God gives a monkey’s either way. I know that He is supposed to care very deeply about all of our souls, but this is the leader of the Liberal Democrats we’re talking about. ‘Eight seats? Eight seats? You want I should care about someone with just eight seats? Farron, schmarron.’ (Yes, I know, this is God as a slightly camp New York Jew. Apologies to all of those possibly offended.) Either way, my money’s on the liberal lefties. God just does not have the heft these days: he’s too tolerant, that’s the problem. He has mellowed since running amok in the Old Testament and rarely gets around to any judicious smiting.

Monday

Rod Liddle

Jon Ronson is wrong — Katie Hopkins isn’t insane, damaged or weird

Another conflict of interest and indeed of my mental state. I can think of no journalist I enjoy reading more than Jon Ronson. He is, I think, unequivocally brilliant and my only complaint is that I do not get to read him in the papers more often. His books are very good, too. But this last weekend he turned his attention to Katie Hopkins, a fellow Sun columnist of mine, and he approached his subject as one might approach the inmate of a heavily-guarded lunatic asylum. Some of the stuff in that ludicrous first four hundred words was designed to sell the piece to the (Grauniad) reader, I suppose. But still. I do not always agree with Hopkins – indeed of late have rarely done so.