All 7 entries tagged Guardian

That RAE analysis in full

Times: “Former polytechnics give Oxbridge a run for its money in rankings”

Guardian: ...”ex-polytechnics have failed to wrest a significant number of the stars awarded for research away from the research giants of the Russell Group of universities including Oxford and Cambridge.”

: 18 Dec 2008 15:15 |  Tags: Education Guardian Newspapers Rae Times Universities |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

If Charlie Brooker was a newspaper…

...it’d probably be the best newspaper in the world

: 19 Nov 2008 17:29 |  Tags: Charlie Brooker Guardian Mashups Media Newspaper |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

RSS comes of age

My RSS reader became much more useful yesterday.

The Guardian became the first major newspaper in the world to include its full articles in RSS feeds.

Sounds technical, but what it means is you can read the whole paper without going anywhere near the paper – and for free.

The best bit is the ability to filter things out. My blog reader is now getting updated any time Simon Hoggart (RSS) writes one of his brilliant parliamentary sketches. It gets George Monbiot’s (RSS) environmental polemics, and it gets Charlie Brooker’s (RSS) screenwipes and rants. You can also filter by subject.

I suspect this is unlikely to make The Guardian much money from advertising. Instead, I think they’re probably doing this to boost their international standing. It’s always been the pioneer among newspapers online, although I think others will be reluctant to follow suit on this one.

: 28 Oct 2008 08:30 |  Tags: Guardian Internet RSS |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Housing or railways – which is worse?

I can’t decide which is in a bigger state of crisis: Britain’s railways or its housing?

Ruth Kelly must have been stifling her laughter last week as she announced exciting plans to essentially cut the number of train seats in Britain. Oh yes, she’s going to increase the actual numbers by about 2-3%, but compare that with the 10% rise in passengers and you can see what sort of mess we’re in. We either need double-decker trains or a new high-speed line up and down the country. But that would put us in danger of getting something right, and we can’t have that.

But then there’s Andrew Gilligan’s documentary on housing which was broadcast on Channel 4 last night. The first section didn’t quite work (it was new homeowners whinging about the quality of new-build homes, and naturally wasn’t very surprising), but the levels of corruption between the government and the construction industry in the latter two-thirds of the programme was incredible, and ultimately depressing.

Remember John Prescott’s miracle £60,000 house that was wildly trumpeted in the heady days of New Labour? He showed us all a prototype and said it would solve all our problems.

Well, it will if you’re willing to pay £255,000 instead. Because that’s what it sells for in reality.

Regular readers of this blog won’t be surprised to hear that I have a solution (albeit pilfered). Will Hutton has the right idea, as usual. Debt-financed railway building, as proven by the wonderful world of private equity. But more surprisingly, Germaine Greer has the right idea on housing: we need to build upwards. Not only that, but we need to make high-rise attractive. There’s not enough land, we all seem to want to work in cities, and it’s the only answer.

If I was in a sarcastic mood, I’d suggest letting Guardian columnists just launch a coup and be done with it. The Polly Toynbee-loving Tories might not complain any more.

: 31 Jul 2007 16:50 |  Tags: Guardian Housing Politics Railways Transport |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Charlie Brooker is so right, it hurts

You’ll have seen the adverts. Mitchell and Webb play a PC and a Mac. The PC is a dull geek while the Mac is a cool kid.

Except the whole advert is founded on ten tonnes of utter bollocks, as Charlie Brooker brilliantly explained in yesterday’s Guardian.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with “work stuff” (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at “fun stuff”. How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at “fun stuff”, my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac.

I get fed up with my PC crashing, just like everyone else does. But it’s so true that Macs are still niche products capable of ‘professional’ things, while PCs are multi-purpose and can do most things just as well as a Mac.

Having said that, I’ve no intention of ruining my relative calm by installing Windows Vista, which sounds like a bloody nightmare.

P.S. If anyone can find anything in the canon of Charlie Brooker’s work which they disagree with, please do let me know.

: 06 Feb 2007 15:10 |  Tags: Charlie Brooker Guardian Macs Mitchell And Webb Pcs Video |  Comments (18) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Well done Boar

Congrats to the Warwick Boar, who’ve picked up 8 nominations in the 2006 Guardian Student Media Awards.

Student Feature Writer of the Year
Ali Plumb

Student Website of the Year
www.warwickboar.co.uk

Student Critic of the Year
Leo Robson

Student Sports Writer of the Year
David O’Kelly
Tom Morris

Student Diversity Writer of the Year
David O’Kelly

Student Travel Writer of the Year
Tanc Newbury

Student Columnist of the Year
Fred Forse

But… is Fred Forse real or a pseudonym? Regardless, well done to all – RaW finds out how badly it’s done this Thursday.

: 09 Oct 2006 11:06 |  Tags: Awards Guardian Newspapers Student Media Warwick Boar |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Letter to the Guardian

Letter printed in The Guardian, 10th April 2006

Dear Sir,

As dedicated student journalists, we were disappointed to read that the prestigious Guardian/Sky News Student Media Awards 2006 were again discriminating against student broadcast journalism.

Student broadcast journalism is thriving, with student TV quickly catching up with nearly half a century of groundbreaking student radio.

But it is upsetting to find that the Student Media Awards do not reflect the hard work of people working in radio and TV, as the name 'student media' (and its sponsor Sky News) suggests it should. Many of the judges work in broadcast media, and we're sure they too would wish to see the awards become less exclusive.

May we suggest that in future years, at least some of the categories are explicitly opened up to work from all forms of media, thereby representing the full range of the industry which MediaGuardian is unique in promoting. Otherwise, shouldn't they be called the 'Student Press Awards'?

Yours,

Chris Doidge, Adam Westbrook and Jimmy Buckland

: 11 Apr 2006 14:01 |  Tags: Guardian Letter Student Journalism |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem