The Guardian: a thread. I was born into a Guardian-reading family. My earliest memory is of my mum giving me the money to go into a paper shop in Cheadle Hulme to get her copy for her. And I wheeled that out, shamelessly, at my job interview.

And then I worked for the Guardian for 16 years, including doing the single job I had wanted in journalism – editing the Friday arts pullout. I left the paper, but remained as a contracted writer. So the Guardian is deep within me.

And as reader, staffer and contributor, there have been times when the Guardian's editorial line or its leadership's decisions have baffled and enraged me. Which is true of everything I have had a deep and profound connection with, including my children.

But I'm really saddened to see so many people today gloating about other people losing their jobs. The people who lose their jobs are less likely to be the star columnists who annoy you than the backroom staff you've never heard of, who have nothing to do with those writers.

They will be production staff whose bylines you never see. Sub-editors who have to get the whole thing out. Not the people making pronouncements about what the world needs now (correct answer: love, sweet love).

And the fact that you can see people from either side of the political spectrum bashing the Guardian for its coverage of their area of interest suggests that in fact the paper does not take one universal line of evil on any of those issues.

For the left: if the Guardian is catastrophically weakened, who else do you think is going to take on the kind of resource-heavy social justice investigations that the Guardian does? Novara? Canary? Skwawkbox? I don't think so. Even if they wanted to, they could not.

British democracy needs a paper like the Guardian. One that holds *all* political parties to account. One that allows writers to differ from each other, and from the paper's own editorial line.

If you have been gloating about today's announcement, do you also greet news that, say, BP is having to get rid of workers with a celebration – that the forecourt attendant should never have gone to work for one of the world's worst polluters?

The sub on the sports pages who might lose their job is no more responsible for that op-ed column that enraged you than the person who sold you 20 fags and a Wispa is for Deepwater Horizon. Please don't celebrate them having to lose their job.