Friday
May292015
by 
Josh
Josh Rusbridger descending - Josh 328
Today is Alan Rusbridger's last day as Editor of the Guardian and I am sure we all wish him well whatever he decides to do next.
The cartoon 'celebrates' his championing of divestment from fossil fuels, which we know is a bit of a dark development with 'abhorrent' consequences - so I think we can coin a new term "Divestocide".
Reader Comments (32)
One would assume that he is looking at the world with rose-tinted glasses - but I figure the truth is that they are green-tinted, and pretty opaque, at that.
Captain Rusbridger has certainly mastered < A href ="http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/03/coming-soon-to-science-newsstand-near.html"> the Monckton Demon Weasel Grip
I hope to see many changes at the Guardian but realise that these are false hopes.
Ru55e11: I just love your command of HTML: You really ought to vuck off back to you vvebshite.
Let's hope he ends up in a "sustainable" commune, living off the land on organically-grown food.
No fossil-fuels allowed, directly or indirectly.
Then let's see what the moron thinks.
Another good one, Josh. I'm all in favour of this divestment from fossil fuel investments. For every seller, there will be a buyer able to pick up a bargain. Hopefully my investments are on the buying side of the equation.. There will always be a demand for more fossil fuels, so it can only be good news if investments can be picked up on the cheap.
No way that's Our Al, shurely? Looking reasonably well dressed and almost .... groomed.
Last time I saw a pic of him (can't remember where, justifying Snowden maybe) he looked like a right old pikey.
Them Islington literati, such iconoclasts eh?
12th in UK circulation figures and declining sales.
Flogging a dead horse has lost its appeal perhaps.
Russell
All html require both opening and closing tags, you needed
I much prefer having active links as copying and pasting, especially on iPad, is much more difficult than a click. If only to make my life easier keep trying.
Does he not look a bit like this:
http://game-maps.com/Witcher3/img/npc/UMA.jpg
Found it. Actually a front cover shot for "I don't give a toss that I look like a scruff-pot because I'm an editor and my brain is the size of a planet so you must take me seriously. Whatever. [And PS yes I know that this haircut looks a lot better on Paul Weller]" magazine:
http://www.d-boss.com/comment/rusbridger.jpg
He is probably retiring now so he can benefit from his fossil fuel rich pension scheme!
ssat:
Twelfth?
Seems the Board must have been as dim as most of the readers.
charmingquark, Rushbridger may retire on a nice fat pension, but his successor may not be left with as big a nest egg, especially if it has been invested in unreliables, as Rushbridger has been demanding everyone else should.
It must be good working for the Grauniad, knowing your pension depends on being hypocritical, so it must be ok for your work to be just as bad.
Graeme No 3, the dimness of the Board, may be attributed to their 'work experience' interns, not pedaling fast enough, in the absence of any other reliable energy source. Vodka mixed with Red Bull, is a short term energy sauce, but work output becomes increasingly unreliable.
we have been divested of rubbisher
it has been a good day
Here you go, Sandy :
http://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/05/its-never-too-late-to-reenlist-in-war.html
Hey why aren't the glasses green tinted ? I'd better login to mention it
ah @Harry Passfield already said it first thing !!!
and I'd echo his second comment also ...this is a free speech blog, but if Russ is jst spamming us with links to his VV product then that is spam not "debating in good faith"
..so it's OK to delete them
Hi Russell
We'll get there if we keep trying. For an active link you need the opening tag
(a href="url")link text(/a)
Replace ( with < and ) with > and i'll be a happy man!
Divest-o-cide? Sounds like the trade name for a rather nasty weedkiller. Should be banned, after accounting for much greenery.
SandyS:
Went there, site seems quite inactive.
Doesn't seem to be the usual green gull garbage, rather more toward reality.
golf charlie:
I made my mind up about the Guardian in 1977 on a visit to the UK. It struck me as a feeble excuse for people of a certain persuasion to pose in public. It may have changed since, but I haven't bothered to buy it since then. I gather from the circulation figures that I am far from unique.
So a champagne socialist editor departs, but he leaves behind a number of champagne socialist journalists. I guess there will be little change. Warmists will still prevail.
Doubtless in his new role as Master at LMH, Oxford, he will be in a position to steer OU research in favour of his favourite projects. Plus regular invites to Newsnight, etc. and guest columns back at his former publication. Perhaps he will persuade the Scott Trust to endow some Rusbridger fellowships?
The Guardian is now essentially an American tabloid full of PC garbage, phony whistle blowers and carbon trading.
Online readership
United States 33.8%
United Kingdom 19.0%
India 8.0%
Australia 4.2%
Canada 3.0%
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com
Just another English Lit major imposing his world view on the benighted masses. More evidence that wisdom and IQ do not go hand in hand. His role in the execrable and appalling 10:10 "No Pressure" campaign should never be forgotten.
The thing I've always noticed about AR is the optical effect of his spec prescription making his eyes look tiny - beady in fact.
Retired he might be - but I think we've not seemed the last of him - his emeritus status will garner much BBC pandering and so forth....
Not only Master at LMH
Rusbridger quote:
“I am honoured to succeed the quite brilliant Liz Forgan as chair of the Scott Trust, preserving the independent editorial values and the long-term financial stability upon which our future depends. We have strong future leaders in place with unparalleled news and digital experience, and I know that our journalism will be in the best possible hands.”
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/10/alan-rusbridger-stand-down-guardian-editor-in-chief
More stepping up, than standing down methinks. His malign influence over the Guardian will continue.
I really do not get this divestment idea.
What is supposed to happen next? Do they think that selling the shares will make the oils and coal companies go out of business?
Do they think the fossil fuel companies are going to go down the pan anyway and they are getting out in time for good commercial reasons?
Do they think it is a moral, principled act? If so then they need to be more convincing. I mean if, say, you had a collection of guns and one day you decided that guns were evil then planning to sell your collection over the next 5 years would not be a very convincing moral statement.
There was a fascinating, grown up article in USA Today about mass dissent in the Guardian ranks over Rusbridger's little fraud, Edward Snowden.
==
The Snowden story was owned by a small circle at the paper: primarily, Rusbridger, who became its most public face; Janine Gibson, the Rusbridger acolyte with a reputation for sharp elbows imported from London to run the New York office; and Glenn Greenwald, the freelancer who had brought the story to the Guardian (and who discontinued his relationship with the paper shortly after the story broke). What's more, the story, which Guardian management believed would be a financial boon, attracted little advertising revenue and instead became a cost center — and other parts of the paper had to absorb the hit.
There developed, too, a sense of journalistic queasiness around Snowden, difficult to express at the party-line Guardian. Questioning Snowden's retreat to Russia and his protection by Vladimir Putin was internally verboten. There were Gibson's efforts to carefully monitor staff tweets, making sure Guardian journalists toed the line in support of Snowden and Greenwald. Then there was Rusbridger's interview with Snowden in July, which made Rusbridger seem, to many, like something of a fawning groupie — and left a sense of embarrassment among many staffers.
What's more, causing organizational tremors, Gibson, who'd worked with The New York Times on shared aspects of the Snowden story, hoped to jump to a job there, it emerged in the aftermath of Times executive editor Jill Abramson's dismissal. (CurrentTimes executive editor Dean Baquet's dislike of Gibson, and her handling of the Times-Guardian Snowden relationship, was so intense he threatened to quit if she were hired.)
###
But in a small and shocking revolution — something like a North London Spring — the vote went resoundingly against Gibson and, by inference, the Rusbridger legacy. Viner came in first and Bell second, each in their own way promising a softer, gentler, less doctrinaire Guardian.
In the final weeks, Ian Katz — once the heir apparent who, in a dispute with Rusbridger, left in 2013 to head the BBC's Newsnight show (and who, holding an outside job, sat out the election) — also reemerged as something of an anti-organization candidate.
The Guardian remains an insular place with much more left unsaid than said. But it's hard not to understand, that a profound backlash had taken place in Guardian culture, and that the Scott Trust, which Rusbridger will now chair and which has final say over the appointment, had no choice but to accept a quiet rejection of Rusbridger and, as well, the ultimate Snowden effect.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/wolff/2015/03/20/new-editor-for-guardian-newspaper/25094233/
US editor Janine Gibson favourited my tweet about the Guardian being the dirtiest, little intelligence whorehouse in Europe. She was the big loser.
esmiff:
Nicely done. Looks like there is work for ex-Kremlinologists figuring out who has been air-brushed from pictures and bylines and who is in and who is out.
bernie1815
LOL!
There will be some faces that we'll never see again. It also shows some close collaboration with the equally vile, NYT.
When I asked Greenwald whether the Guardian had paid for his Brazilian rent boy, his minder, Gibson cut in and said she always paid for her own rent boys. To be fair, that was pretty funny.
Below Rusbridger´s farewell story only praising comments are preserved. As usual don´t be fooled, anything vaguely critical was wiped out to invisibility. What a legacy after Scott. Comments were not Free and Fact were not Sacred under this Oxbridge dictator.