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

[DotCommunist]

She could have said Ian Banks which would have been worse.



Laurie said they were moving, I was wondering if you were aware if any that were moving.

or Ken Mcloed, posadist splitter.

 

[TruXta]

Actually 'Nation' (non-Discworld) is pretty moving.

Did you read it for the kids? Never got around to it meself.

 

[rekil]

Him, me or you? He is for sure.

I just like how 'furiously moral' drips with toynbee tilt-headed liberalism.

 

[TruXta]

I just like how 'furiously moral' drips with toynbee tilt-headed liberalism.

Oh for sure. I don't share his politics, but at least he's not shy about them.

 

[Firky]

I just like how 'furiously moral' drips with toynbee tilt-headed liberalism.

"Unashamedly exotic."

 

[JimW]

Aggressively non-confrontational.

 

[el-ahrairah]

"'ve always suspected that those of us who live our young lives through books get a head start when we finally explode into the world, hungry for love and adventure and sex and danger, because we've read all the instructions first."

i was a bookish youth and i think she's right about the hunger. however, if i'd read the instructions first i imagine i wouldn't have spent so much time in hospital

 

[rekil]

Furiously Moral.

 

[JimW]

I loved books as a lad and grew up in a house full of them, then exploded into a world of alternating unemployment and semi-skilled manual labour. The romance of it all!

 

[TruXta]

I loved books as a lad and grew up in a house full of them, then exploded into a world of alternating unemployment and semi-skilled manual labour. The romance of it all!

If you hadn't read all those books it would've been skilled manual labour. Tut tut.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Why am I not surprised her favourite books are firmly in the fantasy genre and notoriously popular with teenagers?

 

[JimW]

If you hadn't read all those books it would've been skilled manual labour. Tut tut.

I was a furniture-maker's apprentice to start off with, with your skilled Holy Grail gleaming in the distance, but most of his business came from city types rich in the 80s boom and he had to go back to working alone after the crash back then. *Sniff* *Violins*

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

...and every page drips with bourgeois liberal sensibility

 

[TruXta]

I was a furniture-maker's apprentice to start off with, with your skilled Holy Grail gleaming in the distance, but most of his business came from city types rich in the 80s boom and he had to go back to working alone after the crash back then. *Sniff* *Violins*

Sucks. I'd love to be good with my hands, but I've the hand-eye coordination of a snake.

 

[el-ahrairah]

I loved books as a lad and grew up in a house full of them, then exploded into a world of alternating unemployment and semi-skilled manual labour. The romance of it all!

you obviously didnt read them properly

 

[JimW]

Sucks. I'd love to be good with my hands, but I've the hand-eye coordination of a snake.

Yep, would have been a good life I reckon - love the idea of a trade you just get better at as time goes by, and he did a lot of lovely bespoke stuff too to his own design. I wasn't particularly gifted myself, and never got much past glorified tea-boy and sanding monkey. Can still hang a door is about all

 

[DaveCinzano]

View attachment 27190

Furiously Moral.

Has he borrowed someone else's coat?

 

[DaveCinzano]

Can still hang a door is about all

Damn the reactionary working classes - what's wrong with rehabilitation?

 

[cesare]

I also was a bookish youth growing up surrounded by them. My explosion into the world consisted of donning a Tesco overall (very fetching pink and white checked nylon iirc) and working on the tills. The most romantic highlight was probably the morning that I went to work via 2 buses as normal, and walked the length of the shop towards the staff canteen only to be stopped by the Deli Manager and told I had no business working fulltime until I'd learned to dress myself. Skirt caught up in knickers.

 

[TruXta]

Damn the reactionary working classes - what's wrong with rehabilitation?

Took me a second to work that one out

 

[equationgirl]

Like a Cream Egg it's something you rapidly get sick of.

What books of TP's are moving, out of interest? I have read about half a dozen and none struck me as moving?

Monstrous regiment was pretty good, and I enjoy the Guards' series, but I'd never describe any of them as 'moving'.

The last book I read that was moving I can't bring myself to read again - 'Singled Out', about the two million single women who suddenly found themselves without the prospect of marriage after WWI and the political, economic and social changes that resulted. What moved me was the interviews reproduced from some of these women, and the hardships they'd had to endure - like being sacked because a man was coming from the war and needed his job back but not having any recourse in law.

Well worth a read.

 

[Favelado]

Like a Cream Egg it's something you rapidly get sick of.

Depends where you put them.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And to take that point one stage further ...

Bias isn't just possible, it's probable. Everyone does it, consciously or not. And not all bias equates to unlawful discimination either, it can be as simple as preferring a candidate with gardening as a hobby as opposed to, say, playing a musical instrument.

True, but Ms. Penny isn't talking about the natural bias that everyone, including her, exert. She's pretty much stating that men inhere a duplicity specifically based on gender - that they'll always favour other men over women because of this inherent trait.

But because bias can result in perpetuating imbalances in the workplace; recruitment, reorganising, training, promotion etc have to be looked at carefully. So for example someone should be looking at job descriptions/person specs ( at whatever stage) and saying "hang on, you don't need a degree for this" "you don't need 3 years work experience to do that, a school leaver could do it" "you don't stop being able to do that job at 65" "you don't need written and spoken English for that" and so on. There's a whole raft of checks and measures that should be in place to try and address structural inequalities.

Not box ticking. Not gathering (intrusive) data by way of EO monitoring forms then filing the forms in a dusty corner. Not quotas instead of (as unbiased as possible) merit.

None of it happens overnight and working towards a situation where you don't have to spend bloody hours arguing why women are just as capable as men of taking an inside leg measurement has taken decades to achieve. So LP swanning up and tritely advocating quota systems which are already proven to fail, just shows the depth of her lack of understanding. And it's pretty bloody galling to say the least.

When I was in the CPSA the union heirarchy made noises about getting a number of female branch reps commensurate with the overall percentage of female membership, but soon had to backtrack when they realised that they'd made assumptions about how much personal time female members would have free to deal with union matters, not having factored in stuff like familial responsibilities.
As you say, you can't just graft this stuff on, you have to construct fairness and equity from the ground up, or else you're just patching rot.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Depends where you put them.

There was a bloke in my year whose younger brother was notorious for supposedly eating a creme egg from his girlfriend's twat. Sort of a 1970s version of Mick 'n' Marianne's Mars bar.

 

[love detective]

I also was a bookish youth growing up surrounded by them.

Other than a book written by an Aberdeen casual, I don't think I read a book until I was in my mid to late twenties - had to explode into life without the head start of the instruction manual

#universityoflife

 

[Favelado]

I was just talking about the fridge VP you sick bastard.

 

[love detective]

There was a bloke in my year whose younger brother was notorious for supposedly eating a creme egg from his girlfriend's twat. Sort of a 1970s version of Mick 'n' Marianne's Mars bar.

not related, but a guy called tommy gray who i went to school with could blow smoke out his ears

(he also once wore a tank top underneath his shirt)

 

[ViolentPanda]

Nah you're not listening. Garages or houses built with driveways are (like my mums) round here none were built with drives and garages as it was assumed that people who live in council houses wouldn't have cars.

Pretty much all the local authority social housing I've lived in, built between the '50s and '70s, has had on-street parking at best, and even then, there was usually only enough spaces for about 20-25% of households to park a single vehicle.

 

[Firky]

There was a bloke in my year whose younger brother was notorious for supposedly eating a creme egg from his girlfriend's twat. Sort of a 1970s version of Mick 'n' Marianne's Mars bar.

What did they do for the other 48 weeks of the year?

 

[ViolentPanda]

not related, but a guy called tommy gray who i went to school with could blow smoke out his ears

(he also once wore a tank top underneath his shirt)

I find the second fact far more disturbing than the first!