The guy hosting that radio programme is Aaron Peters:
A similar view comes from Aaron Peters, 26, a former member of David Miliband’s Labour leadership campaign team with a tendency to pull an Incredible Hulk act when out on protests. “Parliamentary politics is basically over – it’s dead,” he says.
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2011/01/student-protesters-young
He's the guy who described himself as a:
Aaron Peters said:
After all, one only has to go on Twitter to see that #solidarity is trending. The mood music is decisively shifting left and the tools of the information age and Net 2.0 mean even the little guy on the street can really turn up the volume.
Is #solidarity really trending? Can the little guy really do that?
Some posters have attacked me for pointing out LP's family lived in Lewes (something she has mentioned on twitter), that some of her associates (not blood relations) in America are businesspeople catering to the alternative crowd (something again visible from twitter, the links are there if you use twit-tunnel) and linking to her instagram account (something she popularised on twitter).
Re-posting what she has already posted has been declared "creepy" and "stalky". I understand now what the problem is, in that although I have never actually seen LP and simply reposted what she posted elsewhere, that re-posting itself might encourage the kind of vile dribble above.
So again, let's play the ball not the player - asking questions and pointing out the hypocrisies only, and not use sexism and able-ism against her as a target, because that will only backfire and weaken "the movement".
For some others LP being 26 and having once had but is completely cured from a mental illness (as explained in her own journalist output) means a need to shift to softer-left figures. There's a danger of ex-sufferers becoming ongoing sufferers for ever with this approach, but nonetheless - Sunny Hundal.
The only sensible thing you can say about him is 'Down with Sunny Hundal' All of him: his 'New Britishness'!' - his 'citizenship on the say-so of Miliband', his Indian unitarism 'certain Indian states have a problem' , his Fabianism, his vote Tory for civil liberties advice in 2008 (now deleted off the internet - smarter than LP when it comes to online history), his Obama-ism, his publicly telling off UK Uncut for doing a protest outside a coalition MP's home (MP's family wasn't in) for being like stalkers - ie "stalky". He has nothing - he is nothing.
Perhaps the thread could be named into something more sensible not about the figures by name, but about the process.
On "stalky", this write-up of student protests in 2011 going on about how one student is the real organiser doing it all, could be understood in sinister terms:
“People died at the Brixton riots in 1981,” Ben mutters. “People might die today. We all know what’s at stake.” There is a resolved silence as they pad their jackets with protective cardboard and scribble lawyers’ numbers on their arms. Peters calls for silence as Techie Sam puts a YouTube clip on the projector. A well-known actor’s voice floods the hall, reciting from Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of We stand until we’re forced to the ground, crushed under a heap of bodies brothers;/ For he to-day that sheds his blood with me/ Shall be my brother . . .” Ten hours later, many of these same teenagers will stagger back from the protest with blood running down their faces. “Whatever happens now, everything has changed,” 23-year-old Sarah tells me as we walk to the march assembly point. “We’ve changed. Politics is the main topic of conversation. Demanding our rights has became normal.” In the occupied college building, education is not a commodity, but an intimate weapon of social change, and Sarah seems to understand that better than anyone else. She grew up on a working farm in South Wales; she wears sensible fleeces and non-designer spectacles. Only gradually, after spending time with the occupiers, do you realise that it is this soft-spoken geography student, not the more dramatic male activists, who is running the show, organising the meetings, making sure the younger ones are listened to.
Isn't it creepy to do this to people?
Ben Beach is the Justin Bieber of the new left: a baby-faced riot messiah from Bethnal Green in east London with a tendency to hog the megaphone at demonstrations.
Or to have serious pieces illustrated with photography like this? Obviously staged, obviously trying to make the students appear like clowns. Note I'm not saying that this is LP's intention unlike a right-wing hatchet job.
with particularly obtuse strap lines
