Oh Guardian, you silly old thing. You were once a student paper of some renown – many of the greats got their start in your pages, and you rightly won awards for their exposés. Whatever happened?

You can’t even publish biweekly any more. Now it’s monthly, if we’re lucky. You don’t seem to have any editing staff, considering that the current edition refers, in a front-page article headline, to protests in “Glasow”. But I could forgive that, if the writing were worthy.

Oh, Guardian. Why did it have to be this way? A leader article, a 4th page continuation and a centre-spread all on the illegal Sir Alwyn Williams Building occupation, without a word of criticism or even a hint that anyone on campus was opposed to that ridiculous publicity stunt? How on Earth did you manage to miss it? This can’t be down to a simple lack of investigation: you’d have to cover your ears and shut your eyes while doing any research on the topic not to see the innumerable opposition groups. There must be something more.

I see. These articles were written by the same socialists who occupied the building, and so their objectivity simply could not be in doubt. I mean, we all know full that communists would never twist the facts to fit an insane political agenda. That would just be silly.

The worst of this issue’s offences, however, is a different article entirely. This is a column called “Debate”, which is unsurprisingly given over to arguments made by a right-winger – Aidan Cook – and a far leftist – James Foley. The topic this week was stem-cell research, and although I disagreed with Aidan, he made his point. Foley, however, rambled nonsensically in a desperate attempt to bring the topic round to one of the few issues he can hold in his head at any one time – “war is bad”, a notion he (along with the rest of Stop The War) equates with “socialism is the solution to everything”.

And then, of course, he mentioned Israel. In an article about stem-cell research. No, it doesn’t make any more sense when you actually read it. The word “Israel” just seems to float there, unneeded and impotent. Why, Mr Foley? That’s all I’d like to know.

I’d offer to link the article, but Guardian’s website hasn’t been updated in 8 months. Oh Guardian, to have sunk so low.

Edit: Guardian does now have a website! Here’s the article on the occupation, uncritical though it is.