Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[equationgirl]

What I mean is, has anybody actually had conversations with many members of the working class and asked them these questions?

To be honest, I think the biggest thing that anybody can do at the moment is stop the benefits reforms, stop making the cuts which affect those in our society most and and stop taking from the poor to make the rich feel better.

 

[equationgirl]

Yeah...good point. I'm a complete twat. It's just that I was reading my diary from when I was 13 and saw an entry about someone 'being a retard' and I thought it sounded kinda cool and transgressive, maybe. So I slipped it in to try and look edgy. You're right, I made a total prick of myself.

Well, back in the 1980s nobody batted an eyelid at the use of the word, but times have changed and words like 'lame' and 'retard' are unacceptable in a negative context.

Fair play to you for recognising that you were a prick.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Well, back in the 1980s nobody batted an eyelid at the use of the word, but times have changed and words like 'lame' and 'retard' are unacceptable in a negative context.

Fair play to you for recognising that you were a prick.

No. Fair play to you. Just thought I'd see how that went down.

http://helenlewiswrites.tumblr.com/private/39164543605/tumblr_mftd1spuUT1rpijql



#Exhibit A. “She used the word ‘retard’.”

Yes, she did. In How To Be A Woman, Moran writes:

“I am, by and large, boundlessly positive. I have all the joyful ebullience of a retard.”

I’m not surprised people found this offensive. But - and I never seem to hear Moran’s critics mention this - she has apologised fully for it. She told the Hairpin:

with the word “retard” which I had in the book, that was a quote from my diary when I was thirteen. I know that the word is offensive now.

I wrote the book in such a hurry, and when it was pointed out that it was just kind of sitting there not in the context of what I’d said when I was thirteen, we immediately pulled it, issued a massive apology, and I would never use that again.


This sounds a lot like “listening to critics”, incidentally.#

Sorry. I'm just a bit bored. Was just seeing if I would be let off for listening to critics...which probably makes me even more of a prick. I blame the drink...as I would.

 

[snadge]

Do the 'working class' need or even want help?

Yes we do, why on earth why we shouldn't, luckily I have been shafted by middle class bastards all my life, trying to fight for my right to do something that even the middle class bastards don't even know.

Some of us workers also have education and that is why we detest middle class, also upper class spartacus.

I am a minority though, most of my comrades want too drop me in the shite for their own satisfaction.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Do the 'working class' need or even want help?

We need a spark - & the whole shit house will burn.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Fuckin hell

Adam Ant's just popped up on my telly. He's alive and dressed like a pirate.

Was he good once?..asks the 12 year old.

Erm...? No ...but it's Adam Ant.

Oh, right.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Fuckin hell

Adam Ant's just popped up on my telly. He's alive and dressed like a pirate.

Was he good once?..asks the 12 year old.

Erm...? No ...but it's Adam Ant.

Oh, right.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

I can sing as good as Bobby Womack.

 

[equationgirl]

Yes we do, why on earth why we shouldn't, luckily I have been shafted by middle class bastards all my life, trying to fight for my right to do something that even the middle class bastards don't even know.

Some of us workers also have education and that is why we detest middle class, also upper class spartacus.

I am a minority though, most of my comrades want too drop me in the shite for their own satisfaction.

Ok, so you want help, but what help do you want? I'm not saying the working class shouldn't have help but it sounds very Victorian to assume that help is wanted.

 

[snadge]

Ok, so you want help, but what help do you want? I'm not saying the working class shouldn't have help but it sounds very Victorian to assume that help is wanted.

The world has become very Victorian all of a sudden.

 

[equationgirl]

The world has become very Victorian all of a sudden.

On the threads about benefit cuts and disability assessments, it's been suggested that workhouse reintroduction can't be far behind...

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

The world has become very Victorian all of a sudden.

For which, read: "paternalistic bourgeois imperialst capitalist"...and yet we endow it with a feminine sobriquet. Shame on our collective deficiency in failing to present ourselves duly privilege checked...which, somewhat 'ironically', could be abbreviated "PC".

Check my punctuation...and my privilege in a pear tree.

 

[Steel Icarus]

So why's this check yr privilege stuff...why does it have to be in all this language I don't use? I've no probs someone saying "You're being a bit out of order, mate" if I ever am, so why make it all sound like fucking Nadsat or some shit?

 

[love detective]

fucking hell, ant music!

 

[equationgirl]

So why's this check yr privilege stuff...why does it have to be in all this language I don't use? I've no probs someone saying "You're being a bit out of order, mate" if I ever am, so why make it all sound like fucking Nadsat or some shit?

Because dressing it up in fancy language makes those it use it seem oh-so-knowledgeable and 'right-on' and at the forefront of political thought, in my opinion, when really they know fuck all and are trying to hide it.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

So why's this check yr privilege stuff...why does it have to be in all this language I don't use? I've no probs someone saying "You're being a bit out of order, mate" if I ever am, so why make it all sound like fucking Nadsat or some shit?

Isn't that the point? If you could put it in terms in common usage it'd be annihilated in minutes. This way it remains an esoteric /invite-only area of discourse. You've gotta be on the plateau to even get your hotdog a sight of the bonfire. You're in the foothills with a tin of Spam and a blunt Swiss Army fork.

 

[Frances Lengel]

On the threads about benefit cuts and disability assessments, it's been suggested that workhouse reintroduction can't be far behind...

If there was only ships still in them docks - Or (more pertinent to me) if Mather and Platts was still open - That'd have made heroin redundant. What the fuck have they done to us?

 

[equationgirl]

If there was only ships still in them docks - Or (more pertinent to me) if Mather and Platts was still open - That'd have made heroin redundant. What the fuck have they done to us?

The company I work for used to employ several thousand people just in the Glasgow site, now it's a few hundred. You can see the effect it's had on the surrounding area. It's run down and has an aura of hopelessness.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

If there was only ships still in them docks - Or (more pertinent to me) if Mather and Platts was still open - That'd have made heroin redundant. What the fuck have they done to us?

They didn't tell us Hayek had it right, only "The Road to Serfdom" was reverse psychology.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Isn't that the point? If you could put it in terms in common usage it'd be annihilated in minutes. This way it remains an esoteric /invite-only area of discourse. You've gotta be on the plateau to even get your hotdog a sight of the bonfire. You're in the foothills with a tin of Spam and a blunt Swiss Army fork.

Quite. I read this earlier: "Any more white men who dislike privilege theory and intersectionality, please unfollow. Also, if possible, stop breathing."

 

[Frances Lengel]

They didn't tell us Hayek had it right, only "The Road to Serfdom" was reverse psychology.

I've never read him, if you can be arsed give us the inside skinny.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Quite. I read this earlier: "Any more white men who dislike privilege theory and intersectionality, please unfollow. Also, if possible, stop breathing."

Jesus wept

Well yeah...that kinda sums it up.
I'm a white guy...First they came for the...

 

[Steel Icarus]

Aye. So much obviously wrong with a statement like that.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

I've never read him, if you can be arsed give us the inside skinny.

He reckoned it was the Socialists that did it in the library with the ice-pick

..while all the time it was Colonel Mustard in the pantry with the corporate hegemony...
And now we're bit parts in a Tolstoy novel...fetishising funny shaped potatoes.

 

[Frances Lengel]

...and yet there was that dullard who used to pull his kex down in the Apollo. He was Socialist. Well, his discoloured underpants were.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

...and yet there was that dullard who used to pull his kex down in the Apollo. He was Socialist. Well, his discoloured underpants were.

Were they deepest red? Had they shrouded oft the martyred dead? Or were they simply testament to the constant effluvia which we must confront and emit?
Judge not, lest....etc

They also serve who only shit themselves
Or drink themselves into a satisfactory conclusion

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

And with that, she finally does one.

So remember have a lucky time in 2013...and check your Umbongo...they drink it in the Congo.

 

[equationgirl]

And with that, she finally does one.

So remember have a lucky time in 2013...and check your Umbongo...they drink it in the Congo.

What do you mean?

 

[Bakunin]

she just wants to get a job out of it. at the guardian.

Hope she lasts longer than she did at the Independent.

 

[Blagsta]

Quite. I read this earlier: "Any more white men who dislike privilege theory and intersectionality, please unfollow. Also, if possible, stop breathing."

Wtf is "intersectionality"?