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BBC - Owen Jones

Blatant snotty-bitch opportunity well and truly taken, as I'm sure the usual suspects are thinking.
Anyway, no offence intended, sorry.
 
danny la rouge said:
Kb should have said fewer Oxbridge types. Fewer of those people, less of that sort of thing.
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How do you get fewer? Or put another way how do you get genuinely working class people into the same positions of influence within the mainstream media? Genuine question, always read/hear a lot about wishes, less about strategy and plan of action.
 
Smokeandsteam said:
His bessie mate is called Ellie Mae O'Hagan who is a "freelance writer, campaigner and activist". This is a sample of her campaigning "As the tube pulls up at Tottenham Court Road to whisk me home from the latest UK Uncut protest, I catch my own reflection in the window. I’m holding an orange umbrella, or should I say, the orange umbrella: the one that was used as a meeting point outside the Ritz the first time a group of pissed-off activists decided to shut down a Vodafone shop.
It looks luminous against the Perspex, like a glowstick. I’m not sure if its prominence is because of its colour, or because it’s so potent with meaning for me. It’s like a gaudy little piece of UK Uncut history.
I get on the tube, slump down, and audibly exhale. A man opposite spots the sound system I’m also carrying, the one that was used for Josie Long’s set during the protest, and asks whether I’ve been busking. I say no, and tell him I just turned Barclays into a comedy club as part of a protest. The carriage falls silent. I can tell people are eavesdropping whilst feigning nonchalance. ‘Ah!’ he exclaims, ‘So you’re an anarchist then!’ The woman next to him, his wife I think, tuts, ‘she’s not an anarchist,’ she says impatiently, ‘it’s because they’re not paying their taxes.’ I mumble a bit, too tired to get into a debate. Turns out I don’t have to; she goes on a pro-UK Uncut diatribe on my behalf. ‘It’s like that Philip Green,’ she continues, ‘giving all that money to his wife in Monaco.’
It’s the first time something like this has happened to me: an apparent member of the mythical squeezed middle, at least not your average protester, knowing all about us and pronouncing on our behalf. Maybe I was being arrogant, but I couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t immediately have thought of Philip Green if it wasn’t for UK Uncut. The experience was a timely indication, I thought, that UK Uncut is gaining significant traction."

As someone said earlier (LD I think) the system is shitting people like this out constantly.
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I've met her. Works for Unite. She's really fucking irritating, must have name-dropped Owen Jones (calling him "Owen", I assume in the hopes that I'd either ask, "Owen who?" or just be suitably impressed) about 15 times in a 5 minute conversation. No self-awareness whatsoever, went on about how Jones was a nobody when she met him, that she was better known than him. This was at the time of the Carole Malone interview thing, and she also told me that she was "the one" who sent the video viral. I was drinking from a bottle of coke and the time and it very nearly came out through my nose.

These sorts are Gulag bound come the glorious day, right?
 
frogwoman said:
The first time. Really?
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Remember I told you about someone making a daft argument about how union leaders should get high salaries cos it keeps the average up and so helps everyone's pay stay high, and that if you're poor that doesn't mean you will resist austerity, rather it means that you'll simply despair and possibly become prey to the far-right? Guess who that was!
 
killer b said:
none taken. :D
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Thanks :)

Anyway - anyone interested in the works of Ellie-May O'Hagan (she did a piece about how we should all support the police strike recently, if anyone can be bothered posting the link) should look at Helen Lewis-Hasteley and Dawn Forster as well.
I'd love to come up with some ubiquitous male equivalents in order to ensure gender balance, but I can't think of many. Shiv Malik is becoming quite repetitive. Erm. Will think further.
 
SpineyNorman said:
I've met her. Works for Unite. She's really fucking irritating, must have name-dropped Owen Jones (calling him "Owen", I assume in the hopes that I'd either ask, "Owen who?" or just be suitably impressed) about 15 times in a 5 minute conversation. No self-awareness whatsoever, went on about how Jones was a nobody when she met him, that she was better known than him. This was at the time of the Carole Malone interview thing, and she also told me that she was "the one" who sent the video viral. I was drinking from a bottle of coke and the time and it very nearly came out through my nose.

These sorts are Gulag bound come the glorious day, right?
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that's clearly bollocks because WE sent the video viral.
 
I've been told by someone who I trust and who really ought to know that Jones' dad was, at one stage, a Militant full-timer.
 
SpineyNorman said:
. This was at the time of the Carole Malone interview thing, and she also told me that she was "the one" who sent the video viral. I was drinking from a bottle of coke and the time and it very nearly came out through my nose.
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Proletarian Democracy should have a decorations system. Anytime someone like this reels off their day's victories you could just pull out a medal and pin it on them. Official recognition would help foment a healthy competitive atmosphere.
 
Owen Jones was a fairly well-known leftist in the days of Socialist Alliance. I say fairly well-known, because he was pretty young and quite articulate as I remember, and he wasn't lost to the plethora of infighting that seemed to dominate that period. He put his name about on UKLN in various ways (if it is still up, I am sure there is interesting stuff on there by him) and you can source articles in the weekly worker from around twelve years ago that he wrote.

I think people comparing him to Laurie Penny are unfair, they may have similar backgrounds and now wade in a similar environment, but he has totally different roots.
 
Kid_Eternity said:
How do you get fewer? Or put another way how do you get genuinely working class people into the same positions of influence within the mainstream media? Genuine question, always read/hear a lot about wishes, less about strategy and plan of action.
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Your question illustrates the problems with that line of thinking brilliantly - that there need to be more "genuinely working class people into the same positions of influence within the mainstream media". Why?

Putting resources into such an aim is an utter waste of time, there are plenty of more important issues (the cuts, continuing attacks on labour conditions, etc) that need tackling. If we win those fights then the problem of the over representation of Oxbridge types in the media will be fixed by itself.
 
It's really a bit of a stretch to compare Owen Jones to Laurie Penny, there's a big difference between what they write.

The only way in which they're remotely comparable is that they're both young-ish left-wing spokespersons who have reached a (relative) degree of success and fame. If this alone is justifiable grounds to attack them then count me out. The fact that people are reaching to find something to bash him with seems really perverse to me. There's an almost palpable sense of disappointment, on both left and right, that he didn't go to a public school, for example, as that deprives people from being able to make ad hominem attacks against him.

Whereas Penny makes me cringe 99% of the time I read anything of hers, Owen Jones' work seems very good to me. Chavs is dangerously close to being classic, there are various sections of it that are amongst the best left-wing polemnic I've read in years, so fair play to him. I also think he does an excellent job of putting accross class-based politics in a media environment which is overwhelmingly hostile to the left.
 
Delroy Booth said:
It's really a bit of a stretch to compare Owen Jones to Laurie Penny, there's a big difference between what they write.

The only way in which they're remotely comparable is that they're both young-ish left-wing spokespersons who have reached a (relative) degree of success and fame. If this alone is justifiable grounds to attack them then count me out. The fact that people are reaching to find something to bash him with seems really perverse to me. There's an almost palpable sense of disappointment, on both left and right, that he didn't go to a public school, for example, as that deprives people from being able to make ad hominem attacks against him.

Whereas Penny makes me cringe 99% of the time I read anything of hers, Owen Jones' work seems very good to me. Chavs is dangerously close to being classic, there are various sections of it that are amongst the best left-wing polemnic I've read in years, so fair play to him. I also think he does an excellent job of putting accross class-based politics in a media environment which is overwhelmingly hostile to the left.
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Sort of person that we need on The Moral Maze
 
redsquirrel said:
Your question illustrates the problems with that line of thinking brilliantly - that there need to be more "genuinely working class people into the same positions of influence within the mainstream media". Why?

Putting resources into such an aim is an utter waste of time, there are plenty of more important issues (the cuts, continuing attacks on labour conditions, etc) that need tackling. If we win those fights then the problem of the over representation of Oxbridge types in the media will be fixed by itself.
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The line of thinking was framed in response to the line of complaint.;)
 
Delroy Booth said:
The only way in which they're remotely comparable is that they're both young-ish left-wing spokespersons who have reached a (relative) degree of success and fame. If this alone is justifiable grounds to attack them then count me out.
Click to expand...
Has anyone actually said that, you silly billy?
 
Delroy Booth said:
Chavs is dangerously close to being classic, there are various sections of it that are amongst the best left-wing polemnic I've read in years, so fair play to him. I also think he does an excellent job of putting accross class-based politics in a media environment which is overwhelmingly hostile to the left.
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It's a media environment that is overwhelmingly hostile to the working class and to working class politics. Not so much to Oxbridge lefties.
 
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