Guardian

Earlier this year the Guardian vetoed HP sauce for its readers on the grounds that it is the sauce of the establishment. In May, the newspaper then went on to criticise tea drinkers, who exhibit ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism and the class system’. Now, it’s time to step away from the fire lighters, put the skewers down and ignore the impulse to put HP sauce on your charcoal grilled meats, as barbecues are now facing the heat. According to the Guardian, the barbecue ‘has its roots in the cooperation between black and indigenous peoples struggling to get or keep their freedom from colonialists’. As Michael W Twitty, a culinary historian, explains: ‘Barbecue is

Over ten years ago, the satirical American magazine the Onion published an article under the headline: Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does. If you’ve ever heard someone insist that pole dancing is empowering, the Onion predicted it. In a take-down of the lazy gluttony of ‘choice-feminism’, it told us: ‘Whereas early feminists campaigned tirelessly for improved health care and safe, legal access to abortion, often against a backdrop of public indifference or hostility, today’s feminist asserts control over her biological destiny by wearing a baby-doll T-shirt with the word “Hoochie” spelled in glitter.’ I thought I was reading the Onion all over again yesterday, when I stumbled across the

The Guardian ran an article today about research by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. The commission claims around 70 per cent of jobs at law, accountancy and financial firms go to applicants from private or selective schools. And the Guardian goes into full class war mode. Its article — which has the rather provocative headline ‘poshness tests’ block working-class applicants at top companies’ — reports on the findings of the study, which is in contrast plainly titled ‘Non-educational barriers to the elite professions evaluation’: ‘The research by the social mobility and child poverty commission found that old-fashioned snobbery about accents and mannerisms was being used by top companies to filter out

Sore heads over at the Guardian this morning after yet another leaving party for Alan Rusbridger. In what Mr S makes to be Rusbridger’s third leaving do, politicians and celebrities gathered at the Battlebridge Room of Kings Place to raise a glass to the departed editor. Ed Miliband chatted away to Benedict Cumberbatch over a bottle of Sol, while Chuka Umunna and Harriet Harman tucked into the prosecco. No sign of any of the Labour leadership contenders, but a smattering of Tories were in attendance, including Lord Grade and David Davis. Perhaps the most surprising appearance was from Jonathan Aitken – after all, it was Rusbridger’s dogged pursuit of the disgraced former Tory MP

When Alan Rusbridger stepped down as the editor of the Guardian last month, there were emotional scenes at Guardian HQ as he handed his crown to his successor Katharine Viner. In fact so emotional, that some bright spark thought the storyline was perfect for a film: The video – which Mr S titles ‘Alan Rusbridger and the Sword of the Truth‘ – runs through Rusbridger’s achievements while at the paper, and offers startling insight into the man behind the legend as he reveals what he eats for breakfast. ‘It’s true Guardian editors really do eat muesli,’ he tells the camera on the day of the Murdoch hearing. Other highlights include Rusbridger showing

Martin Williams, former head of the government’s air quality science unit, has declared that the reason we have a problem with air pollution now is that ‘policy has been focused on climate change, and reducing CO2 emissions, to the exclusion of much else, for most of the past two decades. Diesel was seen as a good thing because it produces less CO2, so we gave people incentives to buy diesel cars.’ Yet another example of how the global warming obsession has been bad for the environment — like subsidising biofuels, which encourage cutting down rainforests; or windfarms, which kill eagles and spoil landscapes; or denying coal-fired electricity to Africa, where

This week, the Guardian published its annual university league table. The rankings are as bewildering to anyone acquainted with the reality of university reputations as they are misleading to anyone who is not. Should you wish to study Economics, for instance, you are told that you would do better taking an offer from Surrey (4) than LSE (13). If you’re really short of options, then you could settle for a place at Manchester (54) or Newcastle (60). Equally, for an aspiring physicist Leicester (5) or Hertfordshire (6) are deemed superior to Imperial (8) or indeed UCL (12). This list does not reflect what graduate employers actually think. From an employer’s perspective,

What are newspapers for? The answer, of course, is not just to tell us what’s going on and explain the implications, but also to select the most important items from the background noise. Over the last few years, though, we’ve started to get our news in a different way: through Google, where selections are made on the basis of a constantly evolving algorithm, and through social media sites where news stories are recommended by friends. Throughout this change, Google has argued vociferously that it is not a publisher. Particularly in Europe, issues such as privacy, copyright and the right to be forgotten have led it to claim that it’s simply a