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

[StrangeButTrue]

Maybe the SWP will be sending Martin Smith round to have a quiet word.

All in the spirit of the age, of course. Young Spirit. SWP Spirit. Spreading the love.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

Spreading the love in the typical SWP sort of way, of course.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

Aye, it was a shocker. LP sounded like one of those irritating squeaky toys you give your dog to chew on.

Really? Maybe you should let Martin Smith know - give him something to think on while he's on his way.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

I don't think it reflects well on her that she fucks off before the cookery bit.

Whatever are you suggesting? Voluntarily reducing her marriage potential?

What other recommendations would you have for her?

 

[J Ed]

Laura and tory woman: 15:30 - 23:30

It's really fucking bad.

To paraphrase Bakunin slightly - if Laurie Penny didn't exist, Mi5 would have to invent her

 

[butchersapron]

Spreading the love in the typical SWP sort of way, of course.

Hmmm.

 

[butchersapron]

Back to the lib-dem spur of the moment stuff:

Right now, I pay half my meagre salary to live in a room the size of a normal person's toilet (we suspect it used to be a toilet before a dodgy landlord modded the place) in an overcrowded houseshare in inner London, the fourth such houseshare I've lived in since moving here in 2007. Nobody does enough washing up, everyone gets on each other's nerves, and we all have to pretend not to hear each other's shagging sounds through the paper-thin walls. We are also family. We play music together, cook together, discuss politics, write together, share smokes and paperbacks and ideas. We may not be related, but we're enough of a family to have agreed to put up a sign in the window endorsing the Liberal Democrats, and we are voters too.

 

[weepiper]

Huh. Is that the house that Nick owns? You'd think he'd give her mate's rates.

 

[butchersapron]

Don't think it is that one no.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

Back to the lib-dem spur of the moment stuff:

Now you must be getting Martin Smith really angry.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Imagine that. Mates living in a shared house, like a family. The subtext is look at how we're having to live.

 

[weepiper]

Imagine that. Mates living in a shared house, like a family. The subtext is look at how we're having to live.

Yup. Like Gavanndra Hodge being so terribly bohemian by having two little kids sharing a room. It smacks of playing at it

 

[J Ed]

I also love the way in which she acts as if she and her friends are the first people to have discovered sex and drugs.

 

[Steel Icarus]

And yet more royal "we" action.

It's clear that unlike maybe Toynbee who perhaps genuinely doesn't see the clash between making a fucking mint writing about and speaking for working class and unemployed people, Laurie is very careful how she's perceived. She has a brand to maintain, after all. In that radio chat with Peters and Butler there were times where she had to correct herself so she didn't say something that might harm that brand. Maybe she was internally checking her privilege and then choosing the correct thing to say for her audience, like a Terminator with what she STILL gleefully refers to as "weird hair"( as if this is one of the cornerstones of her radicalism). Laurie knows full well how she's criticised and for what, and spends time manoeuvring around these potential pratfalls. Such is the life of a "popular" political columnist*

*word purposefully chosen

 

[StrangeButTrue]

I also love the way in which she acts as if she and her friends are the first people to have discovered sex and drugs.

But she IS, isn't she?

 

[goldenecitrone]

I also love the way in which she acts as if she and her friends are the first people to have discovered sex and drugs.

Pppeople try to ppput us down.

 

[Firky]

The same libdems that voted the benefits cap. Repugnant. When will they learn that the libdems are the slimiest of the three major parties?

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

And yet more royal "we" action.

It's clear that unlike maybe Toynbee who perhaps genuinely doesn't see the clash between making a fucking mint writing about and speaking for working class and unemployed people, Laurie is very careful how she's perceived. She has a brand to maintain, after all. In that radio chat with Peters and Butler there were times where she had to correct herself so she didn't say something that might harm that brand. Maybe she was internally checking her privilege and then choosing the correct thing to say for her audience, like a Terminator with what she STILL gleefully refers to as "weird hair"( as if this is one of the cornerstones of her radicalism). Laurie knows full well how she's criticised and for what, and spends time manoeuvring around these potential pratfalls. Such is the life of a "popular" political columnist*

*word purposefully chosen

The main difference is that Toynbee doesn't think or pretend that she is part of the working class, she writes from the perspective that is clearly observational and sympathetic.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Aye, she is. It's part of the Penny brand to be as near as possible to the downtrodden, eh.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

And yet more royal "we" action.

It's clear that unlike maybe Toynbee who perhaps genuinely doesn't see the clash between making a fucking mint writing about and speaking for working class and unemployed people, Laurie is very careful how she's perceived. She has a brand to maintain, after all. In that radio chat with Peters and Butler there were times where she had to correct herself so she didn't say something that might harm that brand. Maybe she was internally checking her privilege and then choosing the correct thing to say for her audience, like a Terminator with what she STILL gleefully refers to as "weird hair"( as if this is one of the cornerstones of her radicalism). Laurie knows full well how she's criticised and for what, and spends time manoeuvring around these potential pratfalls. Such is the life of a "popular" political columnist*

*word purposefully chosen

You speak of "her privilege": what is this?

Yes, she went to Brighton College, but was that paid for by the college, was she a scholarship gal? I don't know. Do you?

As far as going to Oxford Uni, that's not being privileged: she didn't buy her place, entry is competitive (with quasi-quotas for those without the highest 'A'-level grades), so she got there as a result of her OWN efforts. That's not been privileged, that's the result of working hard, applying herself. (In many ways going to a so-called elite uni can be a burden, rather than a privilege, as it denies the student an everyday interaction with the variety of people making up Britain today.)

For all we know she may be carrying the rich man's burden. (And after all, she's only 26 - something Martin Smith is fully aware of.)

Just saying.

 

[weepiper]

not enough facepalms.

 

[DaveCinzano]

not enough facepalms.

Still, I was having a crap day at work, it was good for a chortle or two

 

[cesare]

Perhaps she is engaging after all?

 

[ymu]

Laurie, is that you?

 

[butchersapron]

Our parents' excesses.

After the crash of autumn 2008, Generation Y realised with a rush of horror that no matter how good we were or how relentlessly we hammered our minds and bodies into the grooves laid out for us by our parents and teachers, everything was definitely not going to be fine. Instead, we are going to spend our lives paying for our parents' excesses, who have bequeathed us a broken economy, a stagnant job market and a planet that's increasingly on fire. This sudden understanding of just how blithely our future has been mortgaged has been festering for a full 18 months, and now a rash of books has broken out, angry and sore, across the body politic.

What was my parents excesses? I think they must have done it in secret.

 

[Fruitloop]

My dad was arrested for knocking off a policeman's helmet. Does that count?

 

[butchersapron]

My dad was arrested for knocking off a policeman's helmet. Does that count?

We are going to spend our lifes paying for that shit.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

Our parents' excesses.



What was my parents excesses? I think they must have done it in secret.

It seems Martin Smith's excesses were done in secret but are now leaking out.

 

[StrangeButTrue]

My dad was arrested for knocking off a policeman's helmet. Does that count?

only if he was convicted

 

[weepiper]

Fuck's sake for someone who used to be a copy editor her grammar's awful too

spend our lives paying for our parents' excesses, who have bequeathed us