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

[love detective]

I remember that book. Pinkish cover?

I preferred Colin Ward's Steaming In. Who knew Britain's most famous anarchist could be so tasty at the Clock End?

Yep, Jay Allan - think it was the first of its kind at the time

 

[equationgirl]

You see the vid of her trolling David Harvey? Amazing scenes.

Check your privilege so-called professor.

Do you mean David Starkey?

ETA. I see she has form against Professors. Or people named David.

 

[rekil]

No. Got a link?

She gets everywhere. Saw this video on a blog I look at now and then. It's of a meeting in New York and an absolute masterclass in how to fuck up a potentially interesting forum discussion - the moderator spends a self indulgent 20 minutes asking questions that one suspects add up to his personal views, then only gives the speakers 10 minutes to respond to the 20 minute long questions

But Laurie asks a question at 1.37.30 - fair enough to ask why all the panel were white males but why ask the panel? It's hardly their fault.

This do.

Harvey chaired a thing in NY around that time featuring students from Canada and Chile. I'm amazed that Laurie didn't turn up to troll that as well. 'Vallejo, you're doing it wrong.'

 

[Red Cat]

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.

Ours isn't ex LA, I don't think, but ex housing authority, late 60s, and we have a block of garages ( I mean a garage within a block not the whole block). I didn't think they were that unusual.

 

[JimW]

....

I preferred Colin Ward's Steaming In. Who knew Britain's most famous anarchist could be so tasty at the Clock End?

I'll show you...oof...town and country...argh...planning...biff...

 

[butchersapron]

Note her not asking the same question of her panel here or of many other that she participated in.

Note also the claim that she's a fan of the work of Kliman, Mattick and Goldner. Really laurie? Really?

And note the new york accent.

That's really embarassing actually, totally out of her depth intellectually there, no idea of what this series of events were supposed to concern (namely, detailed analysis of whole period of economic and social development) not just shouting how radical you are - and by implication, that others aren't. Clear evidence of paucity of reading and lack of breadth of reading and understanding on show there.

 

[imposs1904]

She gets everywhere. Saw this video on a blog I look at now and then. It's of a meeting in New York and an absolute masterclass in how to fuck up a potentially interesting forum discussion - the moderator spends a self indulgent 20 minutes asking questions that one suspects add up to his personal views, then only gives the speakers 10 minutes to respond to the 20 minute long questions

But Laurie asks a question at 1.37.30 - fair enough to ask why all the panel were white males but why ask the panel? It's hardly their fault.

I wanted to go to that meeting but couldn't get a babysitter at such short notice. Has the organisers of the meeting, the Platypus Society, turned up in the UK yet? Maybe it's just me but they come across as the smuggest gits since the RCP in its clipboard-on-the-high-street heyday.

 

[rekil]

You know what would happen if somebody asked her something like that (questioning her radicalism) at one of her dos and pointed out that she backed the Libdems, Nato, unspeakably sexy Obama, etc etc.

 

[equationgirl]

Ours isn't ex LA, I don't think, but ex housing authority, late 60s, and we have a block of garages ( I mean a garage within a block not the whole block). I didn't think they were that unusual.

I live two streets over from an area of social housing built in the 1970/80s as part of of regeneration of some streets in Glasgow. It's well laid-out with a couple of small play-areas for children and green spaces as well as a private rear garden for each property (mainly terraced two and three-storey dwellings, with some sheltered housing), but no garages and not a huge amount of parking.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I remember that book. Pinkish cover?

Bloody Casuals is that?

 

[imposs1904]

Bloody Casuals is that?

Yep. I could remember the author's name but couldn't remember the book title. I must have bought it in Sportspages on Charing Cross Road.

 

[cesare]

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

That reminds me of my brother. Brought up in the same environment as me (my mum had 3 of us within 3.5 years) so very similar age and also surrounded by books. But no interest in books at all. Didn't start reading from choice until his 30s. His instruction manual was Haines and he commandeered any spare spot with dismantled pistons and oily rags.

 

[rekil]

Brighton College library is fierce swanky. None of my schools even had one.

Brighton College Senior School Library is committed:

To encourage pupils to develop reading and research skills to access information efficiently, to evaluate information critically and competently, and use it accurately and creatively, encouraging them to become independent learners with the aim to raise user autonomy and information literacy.

Bit of a fail.

 

[sihhi]

Note her not asking the same question of her panel here or of many other that she participated in.

Here is Laurie Penny summing up her talk on the effects of modern capitalism in her own trade - her own area of expertise - where she has worked at since the age of 21. The event hosted by Counterfire (owners of Firebox), Who Runs Britain? Media, Power and Democracy.



Please check my transcribing against it, suggest any punctuation improvements

The problem of the monopoly of ideas is over because of the net. You can't have that one paper any more. We're not living in a few-to-many world, obviously we're in a period of change, we're making the transition between papers and the net but now the fact is that anybody can write and put their ideas out there, the sphere of debate that increasing numbers of us live in is one where anybody can write where the cost of entry into journalism is very, very low.
This brings us onto the other issue which is journalism as a labour issue which is very, very important to think about. Obviously you've got writing on the internet which is done for free, and a lot of journalists are terrified at the moment 'Oh my god, what's this going to do to our salaries, we can't have our villas in Tuscany any more, oh no' which I think is a bit disgusting in many ways.
But it's very important to see journalism as a labour issue because control over ideas and control over your own ideas as equivalent to control over the means of production. I was calling a friend recently I was saying 'They want me to write about fluffy things, they want me to write about, and I don't know whats happening to my column and she said 'Laurie you've got to see this as not an issue about whether you're a good writer or not, you've got to see this as an issue of labour, as an issue of your work.'
Now a lot of journalists don't think about it in that way partly because journalism is such a competitive industry and it's so, it's increasingly controlled by this hand-down system of internships which what you're [a questioner] talking about because the professionalisation of politics is also the professionalisation of journalism. Very, very hard to get into mainstream journalism unless you have an internship, unless you have that money, and it means increasingly it's not just... obviously at the top you have your Rebekah Brooks but the next generation it looks like it's going to be even more the sons and daughters of the elite who are entering into that profession. Power talking to itself. So very important to see journalism as a labour issue, very important to challenge the monopoly of power talking to itself at the top, and to understand and organise ideas, within journalism like control over the means of production and means of producing your words, your ideas but also it's not necessarily all bad because the idea of centralised media monopoly controlling the message is going to break down because of the internet.

I'd be wary in case some of the discussion on this thread on women and capitalism features as part of her new work - the full-length book on women, work and capitalism.

Because in a world of 24-hour news cycles and instagram, good writing, and good, clear, original thinking, still matter, are still worth something. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, because I’ve got a good fifty years of rent checks still to make. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know whether what I’m trying to do, and what some of the most audacious, inspiring young people I’ve had the privilege to meet over the past two years are trying to do is worth all that much in the long run. There’s always a chance, isn’t there, that my affection for my friends and colleagues makes the best efforts of our young lives loom larger in the heart than their ultimate significance deserves. Privately, though, I doubt it.I believe in fearless journalism, and I believe that it will continue, and I have seen it change the world in the most daring and intimate ways.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Or whose Dad had won a ton down the bookies

Didn't happen with my dad's luck!

 

[sihhi]

Brighton College library is fierce swanky. None of my schools even had one.

Bit of a fail.

Not a fail at all:

I started reading feminist books around the age of ten, and from there I went on to read a lot of philosophy and social history, but I was still in love with fantasy and horror - it was about this time that I discovered the works of Anne Rice, and I remember my first girlfriend and I swapping and sharing two things, The Female Eunuch and The Vampire Lestat, and getting extremely excited by both. At about 13 I started ploughing through the works of Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, as well as getting heavily into comics, and into poetry - I loved the modernists, but also a great deal of really old, traditional stuff, ballads and ancient fairy stories. I also read a lot of plays around this time, and I started going through the works of Shakespeare quite systematically. I'm lucky, because the town where I grew up had a small Shakespeare festival down at the old castle, so whenever there was a play on I would take the dog for a walk behind the castle wall, sit on the wall and watch the plays for free!
At 15 I started reading Rimbaud and Baudelaire, which led me to the Beats, which led me into that whole seam of 1950s-1960s American literature, into psychedelia and sex and zen and transcendence, all of which were extremely alien to me as I'd barely had an alcoholic drink at 15, much less drugs or a f**k. I was a late starter in a lot of ways. But I'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.

Lewes - 'stockbroker suburbs' - ie a commuter town is very posh.

HSBC took a a load of US taxpayer funds via their subsidiaries - injected over three quarters of a million into the UK division to remain a "good bank" "not reliant on state assistance" etc. They are funding assisted places - scholarships into Brighton College and elsewhere, the model based on a Brighton College partnership system.
Quietly announced last year, started this academic year:

HSBC announce £12 million scholarship programme
29 Nov 2011
HSBC is to provide funding of more than £12 million over five years to help more than 200 bright students attend leading schools and universities in England. HSBC's Scholarship Programme is designed to support education for students who have strong academic potential but come from disadvantaged areas and backgrounds.

Working in six of the UK's largest cities, the Scholarship Programme will fund over 100 places at 20 leading independent schools for Years 12 and 13, over the next five years. This programme builds on an existing successful pilot between Kingsford Community School and Brighton College, which has been running for four years. During this time eight students from Kingsford School, located in a deprived inner-city area of London, have attended Brighton College, a leading independent school. All of the students on this HSBC Scholarship Programme who have completed their sixth form studies have gone on to win places at leading universities.
...
This extension is a response to independent research commissioned by HSBC, undertaken by Professor Steve Hodkinson, former Vice Chancellor of Brunel University, which concluded that the Bank could make a significant difference to the 'learning futures' of young people through a programme of targeted educational philanthropy

http://www.newsroom.hsbc.co.uk/press/release/hsbc_announce_12_million_schol

One of the schools is David Willetts' old school the 7th highest-performing A-Level school in the country King Edwards School, the premier private school in the Midlands. It has its own scholarship+assisted place scheme which HSBC has added to this academic year 2012/13.

http://www.kes.org.uk/assisted-places.html

If your family income is less than £20,000, you might qualify for a free place.
If your family income is £30,000, you might only pay about £1,000 per annum.
If your family income is £50,000. you might only pay about £4,000 per annum.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

#At least, that’s what I’m telling myself, because I’ve got a good fifty years of rent checks still to make.#

"Rent checks to make"..."it's up to yooooooo..nu yoik, nu yoikkkk"!

 

[weepiper]

It's a bit tbh. You don't learn about love and sex and danger from reading about them in books. You learn by doing them surely.

 

[love detective]

Note also the claim that she's a fan of the work of Kliman, Mattick and Goldner. Really laurie? Really?

That's really embarassing actually, totally out of her depth intellectually there

I can't bear to watch the thing again to confirm, but she said something like she hadn't learnt a thing from listening to them speak at the session

we've all got our criticisms of marxist academics (male and female - something she doesn't seem to get) but thought that was an arrogant as fuck thing for someone like her to say, just shows how out of her depth she is that she can so publicly display it without realising it

 

[DotCommunist]

doing the mark oaten grip there as well

 

[bluestreak]

Lewes eh? Explains a lot.

 

[rekil]

Not a fail at all:

I meant that if the library is supposed to "develop reading and research skills to access information efficiently, to evaluate information critically and competently, and use it accurately and creatively", then it has failed because evidently, Laura here cannot do any of those things.

 

[love detective]

because control over ideas and control over your own ideas are equivalent to control over the means of production

no it's not, you fucking tool

 

[bluestreak]

It's a bit tbh. You don't learn about love and sex and danger from reading about them in books. You learn by doing them surely.

for me, as a young knowitall, the knowledge i got from reading about them was the same. of course, now i'm prematurely aged by life, and i know that i only learnt a bit of theory, most of it fictionalised by white middle class men who hadn't lived it!

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

most of it fictionalised by white middle class men who hadn't lived it!

Sublime

 

[rekil]

I can't bear to watch the thing again to confirm, but she said something like she hadn't learnt a thing from listening to them speak at the session

I think she started by saying that the panel just told her things she already knew (about how capitalism works) then contradicted herself at the end by saying she learned a great deal. PD cite her as a pioneer of multitudinous positionism.

 

[bluestreak]

and ridiculous.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

"most of it fictionalised by white middle class men who hadn't lived it!"

...and a fitting reminder of the progress we've made...now women get a go.

 

[_angel_]

Ours isn't ex LA, I don't think, but ex housing authority, late 60s, and we have a block of garages ( I mean a garage within a block not the whole block). I didn't think they were that unusual.

Happen they were forward thinking or later. These houses here are older 30s! I did live in a block of council flats that had some garages but
I know also they were built privately and purchased later by the council.

 

[love detective]

I think she started by saying that the panel just told her things she already knew (about how capitalism works) then contradicted herself at the end by saying she learned a great deal. PD cite her as a pioneer of multitudinous positionism.

I thought she meant that she hadn't learnt a thing listening to the discussion of the panel (as she, as a 26 year old, has more accumulated theoretical & analytical knowledge than 4 people who have spent all their adult life researching this kind of stuff), but had learnt something by seeing what the make up of the panel was, i.e...deep breath... white men, spit...

thing is, if she'd criticised it for being a very academic exercise, as analysis for the sake of analysis rather than as a means to something else, she would have had a point, but as usual she can barely even make out a single instance of a tree let alone the fucking wood