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

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Firky said:
Is this him boasting about selling his house for £10,000,000 ?

http://grumpieroldmen.co.uk/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6587&start=0
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Looking at the date, I suspect he's the one who bought it.

Actually that's bollocks. But I don't think they sold it. The way his missus was panicking before she took her twitter account down suggested it was still their home. Plus he's not a director 'oop north' any more - my suspicion is they didn't manage to sell it and then he changed his job and they moved back.
 
From a dead domain he used to run:
HUNKYDORY.BIZ
Code: 
Registrant Name:                            bob ambridge
Registrant Organization:                    bob ambridge
Registrant Address1:                        Farqham Hall
Registrant City:                            Heathfield
Registrant State/Province:                  East Sussex
Registrant Postal Code:                      TN218YW
Registrant Country:                          UNITED KINGDOM
Registrant Country Code:                    GB
Registrant Phone Number:                    +44.7787571462
Registrant Email:                            robert_ambridge@hotmail.com
 
Or he's sad enough to name his semi-detached a hall and list it as such on ebay but they pulled it.

Fuck knows. :D
 
Nylock said:
I suppose that's the trouble with taking exception to the distortions and fabrications of narcissists who are representative of a wider milieu of privileged tossbags speaking as 'the voice of...'. Whether it's journos misrepresenting their sources, artists telling people that if they don't monetise their looks they're just plain stupid or trustafarian hipster 'radicals' spending their waking hours divided between posting trite one-liners on twitter* and partying hard with the rest of the bohos; it's not about the colossal experiential divide between these people and those they appear to 'represent', instead it's all about them. Attack everything that's wrong about what they represent, and you attack them personally because they are what they represent -and no amount of rationale or linking to salient examples will convince them otherwise.

It's worse than tragic, it's fucking desperate. =/



*Caveat: Yes, there are also sound people on trite-er as well...
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These people obviously do not "represent" the working class, or "the left" (whatever that is) in any adequate way. And they might be wankers. And? Why should they be held responsible for representing any one other than themselves? It just seems to me that the working class is in every way responsible and capable of representing itself. And if that does not seem to be happening in an adequate way, the working class is responsible for that failing. To project the responsibility of representation on some random, young middle-class-oxbridge journalist(s) - regardless if they delude themselves to believe that this is something they are actually doing - seems to me to be a declaration of failure. The working class is not some pitiable five year old who has to beg representation from random middle-class journalists. It's the largest and best organized faction of a modern capitalist society. Or at least it should be. But then again, I'm from Norway, so that's how we do these things. It seems that you've lost the plot.
 
Firky said:
Can't find any reference to that hall, loada shite.
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I think I know what's going on. I've looked that postcode up and it's a close with 8 houses on it - nice but certainly not £10,000,000 worth. But Farqham Hall might = fuck 'em all? Would fit with his antisocial individualism. He'll have given the house the name, but really it's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or 8 [name of close]. I won't give the name of the close here but I wouldn't expect anyone would have any trouble finding it.
 
Just a quick one. Seaneen Molloy, quoted in the Laurie Penny article, is by a stunning co-incidence also an aspiring writer and blogger and looks keen on a career in journalism, and is one Laurie's twitter pals ie https://twitter.com/brain_opera/status/320300981646684160 . It would be nice to hear a quote from someone who's outside the London writer/blogger/acitivist clique every once in a while. So there's Rhian Jones and Seaneen Molloy. And someone else who may or may not be accusing her of lying. It might be worth going through some of Laurie's other articles and checking the quotes from people for evidence of mutual backscratching and schmoozing.

Here's her website http://seaneenmolloy.co.uk/?page_id=8

Seaneen Molloy is the velveteen rabbit…
Oh, I don’t like the third person.
I’m Seaneen Molloy, and this is my website. Welcome, please take a look around, even though there’s nothing here at the moment. It is the proverbial empty ghosthouse, it maybe spooks you a little, possibly a once-alive person once trod here, and now every time you hear the squeak of your foot, you imagine you’re being haunted…
I’m a writer. I write another blog called Mentally Interesting which I hastily deleted when it surpassed 1.5 million hits, and I’ve also written for BBC Ouch, One in Four Magazine and the Observer.
I had a play made about my blog- surreal, yes. You may have heard my Belfast braw-ing speaking on the radio, if so, I apologise. If you’d like me to write for you and toss pennies into my coffers, get in touch! You can contact me via the form on the contact page, or via anne.elk@gmail.com. I am also represented by Lizzy Kremer of David Higham literary agency, so you can contact her, too!
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It's never easy to write your own "about me" thing, but she does ok there I think. Building a personal brand comes easier to some than others. I daresay being comfortable with rank egotism is something that comes easier to public schoolkids than the rest of us. My personal brand, for example, is pretty atrocious and a travesty and an embarassment. The only consolation is it's an improvement on my real-life personality :D

And I'd like to add, having read her blog on a number of occasions it's worth pointing out that Molloy, in my opinion at least, is an infintely better writer than Laurie Penny with much more to say. Not saying it's perfect or beyond criticism or owt, but I don't feel like I'm being lied to when I read that stuff, or feel that i'm in danger of cringing myself to death. She writes with an assuredness that comes from lived experience, not voyeuristically milking others trials and tribulations to build a career. It should be the likes of Penny kissing her arse, not the other way round. Molloy is far more deserving of a national media platform than Penny, but then again I don't reckon Molloy went to a very posh school and then Oxbridge. She's definitely not as good at monetising her personal brand. They're good at that the rich kids. Thatcher's children y'see. It's almost like an instinct - they see a greasy pole and they know how to climb up it.
 
SpineyNorman said:
I think I know what's going on. I've looked that postcode up and it's a close with 8 houses on it - nice but certainly not £10,000,000 worth. But Farqham Hall might = fuck 'em all? Would fit with his antisocial individualism. He'll have given the house the name, but really it's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or 8 [name of close]. I won't give the name of the close here but I wouldn't expect anyone would have any trouble finding it.
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In fact I've just done a bit more google detective work and found the address. I have no idea why I've bothered really but there you go.
 
SpineyNorman said:
I think I know what's going on. I've looked that postcode up and it's a close with 8 houses on it - nice but certainly not £10,000,000 worth. But Farqham Hall might = fuck 'em all? Would fit with his antisocial individualism. He'll have given the house the name, but really it's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or 8 [name of close]. I won't give the name of the close here but I wouldn't expect anyone would have any trouble finding it.
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Yeah I saw it.I also noticed the pampas grass. :D
 
Odrade said:
... Why should they be held responsible for representing any one other than themselves?...
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That's the point, you pillock! If they were a bog-standard Oxbridge journo, while that would also be a sad example of class reproduction, they wouldn't get the same treatment here if they were doing the basics of investigation, interview and writing. But Laurie Penny and her crowd are appropriating the struggles of others - it's not projecting the responsiibility onto them, it's hoping to God they'll stop doing it, fuck off and do something proper instead. I mean, Misha Glenny (to pick a name of a journo whose book I read recently) is a posh boy, I have some political problems with some of his writing, but by and large he's had a respectable media career as far as they go in our crap society.
 
Self proclaimed voice of a generation and tribune of the modern left and Odrade is seriously asking why they should be held responsible for representing anyone other than themselves?
 
JimW said:
That's the point, you pillock! If they were a bog-standard Oxbridge journo, while that would also be a sad example of class reproduction, they wouldn't get the same treatment here if they were doing the basics of investigation, interview and writing. But Laurie Penny and her crowd are appropriating the struggles of others - it's not projecting the responsiibility onto them, it's hoping to God they'll stop doing it, fuck off and do something proper instead. I mean, Misha Glenny (to pick a name of a journo whose book I read recently) is a posh boy, I have some political problems with some of his writing, but by and large he's had a respectable media career as far as they go in our crap society.
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Impressive with what turned out to be an actual Norwegian insult! Still an insult, though, but I can live with that. So the problem is not that they should represent "the left" in a better way, but that they should stop acting as if the working class is some charity case that needs representing by uninformed random middle-class people without any actual understanding of working class politics or experience? Seems more fair, as points go.

Anyway, I stand by the Dunham point, if you happen to be a middle class, Oxford student, you should still be free to make your points and live your life, without being held responsible for every systemic injustice that goes into this "privilege" thing english-and-sweedish-speaking-people seems to have going on for themselves.
 
equationgirl said:
We're not laying it all at Laurie's doorstep by any means.
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The problem is with the British establishment as a whole (and that includes the Left). When the British establishment casts around for a radical, subversive voice to express popular opposition to the Tories they come up with.... a public-school educated Oxbridge graduate. Again. As always.

It's not the fault of the individual in question. But it is infuriating nonetheless.
 
teuchter said:
For the record what ymu did was not just make an argument but also try and slur me personally as a misogynist. That's the level she is operating at.
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If you prefer, the act of creating a thread to take the piss out of anti-sexism whilst hypocrisy-hunting anti-Thatcherites without ever once recognising the misogyny of the Thatcherite drooling and their ludicrous promotion of a song about wanking over her, is a misogynist one.

You acted like a misogynist and, misogyny not being considered a permanent, immutable, characteristic, that makes you a misogynist.

Or someone too ignorant, and wilfully so, to understand what misogyny is. If we're going to be charitable about it.

I seem to recall suggesting that you actually just don't know what the term means, because you set up a whole thread for it yet failed to post any egregious examples (of which there are now at least six, the worst insta-edited on request, because P&P doesn't tolerate misogyny even if there are enough unthinkers on the rest of the boards that we're still stuck in the 1990s with childish neanderthals screaming to be allowed to stay there).
 
el-ahrairah said:
i've always had a problem with this statement. i mean, prostitution isn't a profession unless there's some sort of professional standards board of which i am unaware. and secondly, if we assume that a profession = a job, how do people know it is the oldest. do all sources agree on this? citation needed.

i suspect people want to believe that so that they can pretend that there is some sort of historical tradition to prostitution, rather than it being indicative of values and power dynamics within the society.
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I'm not sure it's an evidence-based statement. Its truth or otherwise (whether historical or semantical) doesn't really alter its meaning. So its a bit of a pointless thing to ponder on. Unless the actual point is something you don't want to address.

(Not an accusation, just an observation that focusing on semantics or language or pinning down a difficult to pin down fact when none of these affect the point being made, is the kind of thing that people often send themselves running in pointless circles over, and it is a useful distracting tactic for those who don't want to discuss the point. See: bigots with delicate sensibilities over obscene language. I won't address what you say unless you say it politely. Then I will ignore it until you are swearing at me again. Rinse and repeat.)

See, for example, this multiway spirited defence of someone labelling me a feminazi (from the anecdote that started it).

Am I wrong to be pissed off about this kind of thing?
 
"It's my parents' grudge, really," Sky admitted. "But looking at the world we're living in now, I understand that a lot of it evolved from her policies."
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She admitted it. She didn't say it at the start of a perfectly sound political argument, she admitted it.

Pure spin journalism, posh tabloid. She'll end up writing click-bait for the Mail.

:facepalm:
 
Firky said:
Pop psychology is for winners.

I'd love to walk into an job where I can post shit to the internet and get paid for it. Imagine if each one of my likes was a quid! :cool:
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I hope that's not the way Odrade is being paid; it hasn't yet broken its duck. Might as well be on Workfare :(

(You, on the other hand, would be having to look at setting up FirkyCommentingLtd as a way of minimising your tax liability ;))
 
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