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

[Bakunin]

i don't think that's a search term laurie could ever bring herself to type.

Fair's fair, you're expecting our fearless heroine, latter-day La Passionara that she undoubtedly is, not only to actually experience self-awareness and humility, but also to have the courage of those convictions. For example:

Un-named working class revolutionary: 'The revolution has started! All into action to defend our hopes and dreams of a new society! We need every able-bodied fighter to protect the Revolution!'

Penny Dreadful: Yes! Everybody (else) to the barricades for, as your self-appointed spokesperson and the One True Voice Of A Generation, I am determined to continue my inexorable rise to global stardom by fighting to the last fighter, last bullet and the last drop of (everyone else's) blood!

'Onward, To Glory!'

 

[killer b]

ok, i think we've got it now.

 

[Balbi]

I quite like her and her stunned calf style.

 

[barney_pig]

Is the esteemed right honorable professor still alive? And has any actually pinned down his exact relationship with his non son and his education?

 

[Pickman's model]

Is the esteemed right honorable professor still alive? And has any actually pinned down his exact relationship with his non son and his education?

you're a man 'of a certain age' so you might appreciate this

 

[barney_pig]

you're a man 'of a certain age' so you might appreciate this

That reminds me of a teenage crush.

 

[rekil]

Twitter knows.

 

[MAD-T-REX]

That list is incomplete without Sunny Hundal.

 

[Frances Lengel]

These days, I live in two cities. In one of them, I'm a precariously employed young person. I associate with activists and jobless workers in squats and cramped, overpriced flats rammed with empty cereal packets and internet cables. People eat food out of skips and wear out their trainers running away from the police. In the other, I'm a media luvvie and mingle with people who take taxis to events that have name tags to make it clear something important is under way. TV and radio programmes are made, editorial meetings are held, and networking takes place in large glass buildings. More than any other city, London is a chimera, a human monster stitched together from overlapping lives. Sometimes there is irritation at the seams.​

I didn't know who Laurie Penny was & I wondered why posters on here were being so mean to her but that is an absolutely awful piece of writing _ I'm cringing on her behalf. And why are their flats rammed with empty cereal boxes? Don't they take the rubbish out? - If you can't find owt else to do, you can always clean up.

 

[Belushi]

I like the way she distinguishes between activists and workers.

 

[articul8]

That list is incomplete without Sunny Hundal.

When I first encountered Ms Penny it was in the company of Mr Hundal. I associate them as part of the same crowd.

 

[butchersapron]

They are( and so are you) - he took her on his shit lib-dem-in-disguise blog, this was after her two unpaid labour party internships of course. He wrote a hilarious whiny defence of her around the time this thread started, it was pretty clear that he was simply 'doing business' rather than agreeing with her political tripe.

 

[andy2002]

If anyone's interested, Penny has written a guest blog over at Warren Ellis's site...

A little over a year ago, before Occupy Wall Street began but well after the first wave of student riots had made political resistance more than a storybook fantasy in Britain, I found myself at a gathering of activists and anarchists. The occasion was the opening of a free university in an empty pub in central London, and journalists were strictly forbidden in the space. I had been let in on the condition that I hand in all my recording equipment before I was allowed to drink, which is a cruel thing to do to anyone who writes for a living.

Nonetheless, just after midnight, a man with dreadlocks who I had never met before in my life started jabbing a less than entirely sober finger in my face, calling me scum, asking how I dared to speak on behalf of others, and attempting to assault me gently with a rusty bicycle. I was moved by the idiosyncracy of this attack, but far more perturbed by the fact that five or six comrades, people I had stood beside as police horses charged into lines of protesters in Parliament square, people I would have trusted if not with my life, then at least with my dignity – they turned away, and they pretended not to see.

I was bewildered, and heartbroken. More than any other print journalist working in the mainstream media in Britain at that point, I understood what these people were trying to do. I was the same age, I had read the same books, I went to the same meetings, I declined to name names when to do so might have endangered activists, I stepped outside my job description to report faithfully on protests and incidents of police violence that the rest of the press ignored. None of this, by the way required any special cookies for effort - but I thought it might at least be enough to prevent me getting thrown out of a party by drunk hippies.

It goes on (and on and on) here: www.warrenellis.com/?p=13926

 

[belboid]

I stepped outside my job description to report faithfully on protests and incidents of police violence that the rest of the press ignored.

This makes me intrigued to see her job description.

 

[articul8]

assault me gently with a rusty bicycle.

 

[killer b]

Whack my bonobo.

 

[rekil]

Why is it that in London, in New York, in California, in Egypt and across the world, it is young journalists who have come to be identified, in the absence of named leaders, as figureheads in these new movements? Why not orators, organisers, artists, musicians, singer-songwriters? Why journalists?

Because people are sick of being lied to.

Identified by whom?

 

[imposs1904]

Identified by whom?

she really is boosting herself, isn't she? I usually admire chutzpah but this is a bit too much for my taste.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

When I first encountered Ms Penny it was in the company of Mr Hundal. I associate them as part of the same crowd.

Really?

 

[articul8]

is this sarcasm?

 

[Kid_Eternity]

is this sarcasm?

Nope. How do you know them both?

 

[articul8]

I don't really know Laurie at all - I know Sunny a little from the odd event

 

[killer b]

did they serve canapes?

 

[Steel Icarus]

If anyone's interested, Penny has written a guest blog over at Warren Ellis's site...

That article really is the most projectile-puke-inducingly-self-aggrandizing doggerel. "I will continue like I've always done....fearlessly telling the truth". Except for, as this thread shows, all those times she's fearlessly lied.

 

[Bakunin]

If anyone's interested, Penny has written a guest blog over at Warren Ellis's site...

It goes on (and on and on) here: www.warrenellis.com/?p=13926

Cheers. I was actually eating my evening meal when I had the stupidity to click on that.

 

[articul8]

did they serve canapes?

he's the kind of character who "works the room" and is always on the look out for someone really important to schmooze

 

[Idris2002]

did they serve canapes?

Fuck the canapes, was there free wine?

 

[killer b]

you think anyone would go if there wasn't?

 

[belboid]

the sad thing is, yes they would

 

[rekil]

And why are their flats rammed with empty cereal boxes? Don't they take the rubbish out? - If you can't find owt else to do, you can always clean up.

Like she says, they've worn out their trainers from running away from the police. They can't get out. So they live off a handful of rice krispies a day and the rubbish piles up and up. I believe the VC had much the same problem in the cu chi tunnels in 'Nam.