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

[sihhi]

Unless you already work in media, you’d probably be stunned to learn the real salaries paid to even well-known women working in traditionally male outlets - particularly if they are young, non-white, or both.

What the frig is this? On which publication are there lower salaries for non-whites? Name the names? No. Just be stunned.

 

[sihhi]

This isn’t about network good, hard copy bad. If I want to make, for example, a private post on my Facebook wall about how I can fit into my ‘skinny’ jeans for the first time in months, I’ll have to do so next to a banner advertising “one simple trick to a flat belly”, unless I download specific software to block those ads. Nor can I be sure that the blogger advising me, in the breathy tones of a fantasy best friend, to ditch my date and curl up with some starchy snacks and a japanese sex toy isn’t being sponsored by the makers of the Hitachi Magic Wand. Although if she is, I want her job.

Anyone want to decipher this, as LP doesn't seem to want to come back.

 

[frogwoman]

A shame that Sugar has gone, their advice columns were good iirc, i used to buy it regularly when i was about 12 or so

 

[cesare]

From the lastest. What class issues (note note the reduction of class to an identity)? Never mentioned again, just used to tick a box.

There could have been something really interesting to write here, in the immediate aftermath of Thatcher's death, if she'd tracked what has happened to the print industry. There's so much she could have written that was worth reading if she'd focused on the print. But no, a fucking puff piece on the back of some magazine no-one's heard of.

 

[butchersapron]

What the frig is this? On which publication are there lower salaries for non-whites? Name the names? No. Just be stunned.

The new statesman? Laurie, as an individual (given you are not NUJ or anything else) the best you can do is expose - so expose. Like, right now.

To give the full flavour of that quote:

Unless you already work in media, you’d probably be stunned to learn the real salaries paid to even well-known women working in traditionally male outlets - particularly if they are young, non-white, or both. I could list several female writers whose names, if you’re a follower of my work or my Twitter feed, you will certainly recognise, who are living hand to mouth, struggling to make rent, bullied into working unpaid overtime with no prospect of promotion by bosses who are almost exclusively male.

And the argument seems to be that she can argue that the sale of other peoples jobs is good because of the internet.

She might be stunned to learn how people outside the media are rubbing by.

 

[frogwoman]

exactly when was the last time polcie went on strike over here?

 

[cesare]

Oh and that "bullied into working unpaid overtime with no prospect of promotion" ain't new and ain't restricted to luvvy-type media.

 

[butchersapron]

There could have been something really interesting to write here, in the immediate aftermath of Thatcher's death, if she'd tracked what has happened to the print industry. There's so much she could have written that was worth reading if she'd focused on the print. But no, a fucking puff piece on the back of some magazine no-one's heard of.

No instinct for news, for history or for issues beyond a narrow self-reflective few - there. I've never been in thrall to the idea of proper journos but god, the avenues that your suggestion opens....for someone who gave a shit of course.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh and that "bullied into working unpaid overtime with no prospect of promotion" ain't new and ain't restricted to luvvy-type media.

She got promoted. QED

 

[butchersapron]

exactly when was the last time polcie went on strike over here?

1919

 

[cesare]

exactly when was the last time polcie went on strike over here?

She's getting confused with the police pay protest march in 2008, I think.

 

[DotCommunist]

exactly when was the last time polcie went on strike over here?

between the wars was it? liverpool?


they aren't allowed to strike now iirc

 

[frogwoman]

so what the fuck is she going on about then .Any ideas?

 

[frogwoman]

Seriously she gets a column in a national newspaper and to be on newsnight and question time and that, what's she whinging about? As you say butchers and cesare it's all about her. Isn't redundancies at a rather lowbrow mag than the new statesman (not that that's a bad thing), likely to be admin assistants, proofreaders and cleaners etc, a mag mostly read by middle and working class women, the sort of thing a feminist should be concerned about?

Shes like a version of that poster on here who used to say that the left made him a tory, made him a zionist, made him scab on a picket line etc. Saying "do we need to mourn the loss of every job" like there is a "we" ffs.

I bet my fucking cats could give a better analysis than that pisspoor load of shite.

 

[DotCommunist]

She's getting confused with the police pay protest march in 2008, I think.

lest we forget

 

[frogwoman]

Seriously here we have somebody whinging about how shit their life is and yet saying they want an even shitter life for somebody else.

 

[Limerick Red]

They are usually indeed "right on" lefties, despise anything that can be considered nationalistic of their own country, and claim to despise all forms of nationalism, unless it's branded as a legitimate struggle for liberation. But it's well documented that they will often side with all sorts of nasty reactionary groups if it means opposing "Western imperialism", unaware that there are rival imperialisms out there that are just as harmful.

The defeat of imperialism should always be supported by the left, regardless of how reactionary the anti imperialist forces are, as only the defeat of imperialism can breed progression. The majority of the british left can never accept this, hence why the majority have a shit view on Ireland, had an even worse view on Libya, and for the most part have nothing worthwhile to say on Syria.

 

[cesare]

No instinct for news, for history or for issues beyond a narrow self-reflective few - there. I've never been in thrall to the idea of proper journos but god, the avenues that your suggestion opens....for someone who gave a shit of course.

It's as if she's so self centred that whatever she writes will be confined to the limits of what she's comfortable with. And if she goes outside that, she doesn't do any hard investigative work but crowd sources her opinions from a self selecting group of sycophants.

 

[sihhi]

The new statesman? Laurie, as an individual (given you are not NUJ or anything else) the best you can do is expose - so expose. Like, right now.

To give the full flavour of that quote:



And the argument seems to be that she can argue that the sale of other peoples jobs is good because of the internet.

She might be stunned to learn how people outside the media are rubbing by.

The whole thing reads like an attempt to curry favour with certain kinds of people in the journalism world.

That quote bit forces people to follow her twitter not just the paid output closely to guess as intelligently as possible who those in such a position are - is it Bim Adewunmi on the New Statesman, could it be Lucy Mangan on the Guardian? It's Probably not Holly&Rhiannon who write the Vagenda column for the New Statesman.

And we were told off for examining her stuff too closely?

 

[Tom A]

The defeat of imperialism should always be supported by the left, regardless of how reactionary the anti imperialist forces are, as only the defeat of imperialism can breed progression. The majority of the british left can never accept this, hence why the majority have a shit view on Ireland, had an even worse view on Libya, and for the most part have nothing worthwhile to say on Syria.

Even if it means the creation of tyrannical regimes that brutalise their own people, such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Taliban?

 

[Limerick Red]

Even if it means the creation of tyrannical regimes that brutalise their own people, such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Taliban?

absolutely, why whats western imperialism offering thats better?

 

[frogwoman]

The defeat of imperialism should always be supported by the left, regardless of how reactionary the anti imperialist forces are, as only the defeat of imperialism can breed progression. The majority of the british left can never accept this, hence why the majority have a shit view on Ireland, had an even worse view on Libya, and for the most part have nothing worthwhile to say on Syria.

i was about to reply disagreeing with you but not got time for an argument tonight, so just gonna say i dont entirely agree and leave it at that

 

[Tom A]

absolutely, why whats western imperialism offering thats better?

What's Western imperialism offering that's worse? Some people of Kosovo and Sierra Leone actually welcomed intervention, naming their children after Tony Blair for example.

Is the whole crux of your argument that people like Assad are heroic freedom fighters, and allies of socialism?

 

[agricola]

absolutely, why whats western imperialism offering thats better?

The quality of its twitter personalities?

 

[butchersapron]

Wrong thread tom and LR. Really the wrong thread. Unless you're talking about LP loving them bombs on libya.

 

[cesare]

Oh! David Starkey's on QT

 

[Tom A]

Wrong thread tom and LR. Really the wrong thread. Unless you're talking about LP loving them bombs on libya.

I wasn't intending to continue this argument for much longer anyway.

 

[DotCommunist]

summoning casually red

 

[Limerick Red]

What's Western imperialism offering that's worse? Some people of Kosovo and Sierra Leone actually welcomed intervention, naming their children after Tony Blair for example.

Is the whole crux of your argument that people like Assad are heroic freedom fighters, and allies of socialism?

Again absolutely not, but I dont think either of us are naive enough to believe the western intervention comes without a colossal price for a region, the plantation of a pro western government, contracts for resources and rebuilding going to western companies,in the case of Syria and Libya the reinforcement of sectarian division to prop up the inserted governments.

edit : Sorry ! fair enough completely off topic, just wound up! will drop it here!

 

[butchersapron]

But writers are always more at risk of producing bad content when we have bad bosses, when we have editors and managers who exploit us, or encourage us to exploit ourselves in our turn.

She forgo the sub-editors.

Look at this rock-star-model. I'm the talent i can't produce with out a b and c. And it's me that sells this mag. The mag that's dying. But she means other mags, and imagines that they are a) no=t facing the same laws of capital as all others (which is why the mag that she helps edits refuses to recognise unions) b) that they are about quality of content - what world is this?