BBC - Owen Jones

[rekil]

Can anyone point me in the direction of any Marxist critiques of the charity sector?

To some degree charity is a racket in a capitalist system, a way of making our obligations to one another optional, and of keeping poor people feeling a sense of indebtedness to the rich, even if the rich spend every other day exploiting those same people

!

 

[stethoscope]

"Now go out and buy my new range of clothing merchandise..."

(yours for only $50, made in an Honduran sweatshop for less than livable wage)

 

[sihhi]

I have no idea J Ed

Sunny Hundal, Blairite Sadiq Khan, millionaire sister of Tory MP Jemima Khan, Rowan Williams, Ed Miliband, Mehdi Hasan, Owen Jones.

http://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/ne...d-express-support-for-islamic-relief-campaign

Here is the UK director.

https://twitter.com/jehangirmalik

He retweets stuff conforming the general worldview. Turkey's democracy has expanded because of Muslim democracy, bomb threats against mosques are terrorism, Syria must be a focus of anti-hunger efforts.

It sponsors lots of events tied to the Muslim Council of Britain.

 

[sihhi]

Islamic Relief welcoming one of the richest men in the world welcoming one of the most deceitful governments against the poor and hungry maintaining its aid budget.
Long live Muslim-Christian Unity.

https://twitter.com/IslamicReliefUK/status/313180607687561216

Background http://www.urban75.net/forums/threa...iggest-charitable-donations-in-history.241871

 

[rekil]

"Now go out and buy my new range of clothing merchandise..."

(yours for only $50, made in an Honduran sweatshop for less than livable wage)

say it ain't so

 

[sihhi]

He's sneaky and goes with the flow that suits.

He's retweeted this guff about lack of ethnic minority journalists

https://twitter.com/commentisfree/status/354273928421707776

The whole thrust of Chavs was about how it was the absence of working-class figures that needed to be redressed (and when done properly) the ethnic composition would jump up as a result.
His stuff about MPs is also about working-class MPs (naturally he believes it's possible to be a working-class Parliament MP "rooted" in your community )


... we need more working-class people rooted in their communities in Parliament. I interviewed Hazel Blears before the last general election and asked her - there's up to 5 million people stuck on social housing waiting lists, why didn't Labour do anything to solve it? And she - candidly to her credit - said there just wasn't anyone interested in housing. But if you had people in Parliament who had been stuck on a social housing waiting list, or whose kids were in that situation, those sorts of issues would be forced to the top of the agenda. That's why we need more working-class people as MPs; I type this en route to Peterborough, where I'm doing an event in support of Lisa Forbes, a brilliant working-class Labour candidate who will be taking on an odious homophobic Tory MP.
Plus, I already get people accusing me of being a careerist using his politics to build a profile for himself, which to anyone who knows me is a bit of a joke, but if I stood as a Labour candidate there would obviously be the suggestion I was going through the clichéd journey of radical-lefty-turned-ambitious-politico-sellout. But at the same time I fear at the moment I'm unaccountable - no-one has elected me to speak on their behalf, and I worry about just being seen as a lefty rent-a-gob with no mandate to say what he believes.
I do think we need more socialists in Parliament. I want a Labour government that fights for working people, particularly at a time of crisis. At the end of the day, at some point, I'll have to make a judgement based on how I can best push the beliefs I've had - which I've had all my life and will have till the day I have - and try and give a platform to issues, causes and people otherwise completely ignored by the media and political establishment. It's worth pointing out I never wanted to be a journalist and - after ending up here by accident - I'm only using it as a means to an end.
Tip to Owen Jones, you don't have to be an MP to be a sellout.
if I stood as a Labour candidate there would obviously be the suggestion I was going through the clichéd journey of radical-lefty-turned-ambitious-politico-sellout

 

[frogwoman]

So essentially turning the (white?) working class into another identity group?

 

[sihhi]

So essentially turning the (white?) working class into another identity group?

No he has a diatribe in Chavs (which is a waste of money doesn't deserve buying, worth borrowing) about how the left gave up on the working-class and class - evidence is - kid you not - in 2007 the keywords in the database of academic articles shows more for 'post-colonial' and 'women' than 'working-class'. That's 'left' to him.
He's a buffoon.

Weekly Worker says Owen Jones is back in the LRC:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/969/lrc-left-in-the-dark

"And what about that Owen Jones, anyway? A few months ago, comrade Stan Keable took him to task on the matter of Leninism, while conceding “activists in the Labour Representation Committee feel justly proud when we see our very own Owen Jones on TV demolishing rightwing politicians and standing up for students, workers, unemployed and disabled people” (‘Babies and bathwater’ Weekly Worker February 7). Those same activists were no doubt slightly wrong-footed when, in Facebook discussions on the piece, comrade Jones conceded that he had let his LRC membership lapse, and was more enthused about the Coalition of Resistance.
Now, according to some, he is back in the fold."

 

[frogwoman]

Someone on here sent it to me, I haven't read the whole thing but lent it to dotty, I've read a couple of chapters. Is the whole thing worth reading?

 

[DotCommunist]

a lot of it is stuff-you-already-know- the whole compare/contrast between how a missing child scam (karen whatserface) was used to tar an entire community as subhuman scum but middle class parents of maddie were treated with nothing but sympathy and horror at their plight etc. Then theres stuff about the anti working class nature of what happened in the aftermath of hillsborough etc.

 

[frogwoman]

a lot of it is stuff-you-already-know- the whole compare/contrast between how a missing child scam (karen whatserface) was used to tar an entire community as subhuman scum but middle class parents of maddie were treated with nothing but sympathy and horror at their plight etc. Then theres stuff about the anti working class nature of what happened in the aftermath of hillsborough etc.

I'm not sure they were treated with nothing but sympathy and horror tho ... although a lot less of that sort of thing than with karen whatserface.

 

[sihhi]

I'm not sure they were treated with nothing but sympathy and horror tho ... although a lot less of that sort of thing than with karen whatserface.

It was a weak comparison, Karen Matthews did have pity at the start when people naturally magnified the call to find her daughter, when it was found out it was a lie, the anger was all the more bitter, the McCanns did not commit fraud and imprison their own daughter, hence no diatribes against them.
I'm not sure how Verso ever published it.

 

[frogwoman]

But there were people in the media implying they were lying, etc.

 

[DotCommunist]

But there were people in the media implying they were lying, etc.

quickly vilified and silenced as having dared to intrude on the narrative of the blameless mganns


I'd agree that the comparison was weak- not that the level of vitriol directed at the whole community was justified or logical though. It did bring out some naked class hatred from journos that had nothing to do with righteous anger at a woman who'd used her child to dupe everyone for finacial gain

 

[sihhi]

But there were people in the media implying they were lying, etc.

That's because Matthews and her partner were lying and police sources to newspapers indicated that their initial statements were misleading.

Anyway, Owen seems to think people should be worried about a drop in Labour funding.


Worried about a drop in Labour’s funding? Don’t worry! Loads of hedge funds, tax avoiding businesspeople and legal loan sharks out there

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/354510936167559168

 

[frogwoman]

quickly vilified and silenced as having dared to intrude on the narrative of the blameless mganns


I'd agree that the comparison was weak- not that the level of vitriol directed at the whole community was justified or logical though. It did bring out some naked class hatred from journos that had nothing to do with righteous anger at a woman who'd used her child to dupe everyone for finacial gain

yep

 

[sihhi]

Also he doesn't understand how rightist capitalism actually wants a highly advanced industrial society to function:

The right will never be satisfied or appeased until the trade unions are completely driven from British political life

 

[frogwoman]

sorry i meant people implied mccanns were lying!

 

[butchersapron]

I think a comparison between say John Diamond and Jade Goody may have been more straightforward.

 

[frogwoman]

Also he doesn't understand how rightist capitalism actually wants a highly advanced industrial society to function:

The right will never be satisfied or appeased until the trade unions are completely driven from British political life

to be fair, then half of the trot left doesn't understand that then ...

 

[butchersapron]

John Diamond gets this (in the travel section oddly enough):

It was no accident that the summer parties he threw with his second wife, the journalist Nigella Lawson, were famous for being attended, in turn, by the famous whom he so enjoyed collecting around him and who, in return, so loved him.

In the summer of 1999, there was another John and Nigella party, this time thrown for them by the architect Lord Rogers and his wife Ruthie. It was, we were told, to mark 10 years of their relationship, though as John had only recently been informed that his condition was terminal it was clear we were celebrating an extraordinary life as well as a marvellous marriage.

Jade Goody get this:

What next? ‘I’m a tumour, get me out of here’?

Here’s a notable first for television — a contestant on a Big Brother programme was told, in front of a television audience, that she had cancer. The woman in question was Jade Goody, whom you may vaguely remember as the coarse, thick, Bermondsey chav who sprung to national prominence for having been allegedly racist on a previous series of the programme.

I assume she really does have cancer and that they weren’t all joking, having a bit of a laugh, ‘pulling her plonker’ as the demotic has it. Or — another consideration — that it’s a publicity stunt whipped up by Jade’s charming agent, Max Clifford. Or again, it is not inconceivable, I suppose, that written into Goody’s contract was a demand that at some point she be seen to be suffering from a potentially fatal illness, given that without one she isn’t very interesting any more. A stroke would have made for more dramatic television, but cancer, you have to say, has a certain cachet. Jade’s life expectancy as a celebrity has certainly entered its tamoxifen and radiation therapy stage, although it is not quite at the no-more-drugs-I-just-wish-to-be-at-home-with-the-family endgame. It has been a fairly brief life in the spotlight, although not brief enough for many. Calling the smug Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty ‘poppadom’ and thus causing a national furore about racism was the high point of her career; since then it’s all been downhill.

 

[sihhi]

quickly vilified and silenced as having dared to intrude on the narrative of the blameless mganns

(At the time at the Sun) Jon Gaunt wrote an attack on the McCanns for them not taking their daughter with them to their evening with a pack of playing cards suggesting it was middle-class selfishness which lay at the root of their ill judgement and disappearance.

I'd agree that the comparison was weak- not that the level of vitriol directed at the whole community was justified or logical though. It did bring out some naked class hatred from journos that had nothing to do with righteous anger at a woman who'd used her child to dupe everyone for finacial gain

It brought this out yes but it was (middle-class) newspapers the Telegraph, Independent and Guardian that suggested yoking Matthews and McCanns in order to redouble efforts for media senationalism for the Matthews case.
In both cases what particular special reporting was required other than pictures of the child abducted and where they were last seen, and updates on police labour usage and particular requests.
According to most psychologists, sensationalist extreme coverage allows abductee paedophiles (or murderers) to re-receive their thrills, and doesn't encourage them to come forward and confess.

Just about every crime in a poor area or every injury at work brings out classism in its reporting or the absence of reporting. It was an unsatisfactory start to the book.

 

[sihhi]

Jade Goody get this:

What next? ‘I’m a tumour, get me out of here’?

He does make that comparison as many did at the time of Goody's death - but it is a very short comparison - a line or two.

And for every good two-line comparison, it is full of stuff like:-

'It is middle-class bands like Coldplay or Keane that rule the roost in music'

bemoaning how inauthentic soaps are and how inauthentic Damon Albarn is compared to Oasis.

 

[Casually Red]

It brought this out yes but it was (middle-class) newspapers the Telegraph, Independent and Guardian that suggested yoking Matthews and McCanns in order to redouble efforts for media senationalism for the Matthews case..

in fairness it was also Karen Matthews and her cronies, who almost right away tried to con money off the McCanns .

 

[sihhi]

in fairness it was also Karen Matthews and her cronies, who almost right away tried to con money off the McCanns.

Yes and more to the point:- should every campaign deserve public charity - surely the demand should have been for equal investigation to find missing or kidnapped children?
Owen Jones reduces a complex series of events (hence difficult to yoke together in spite of the ostensible missing child similarity) to the most banal Trot-like (even though he'd hate that! LOL) scream of 'OMG working-class don't get a fair voice in the media'.
For instance, a lot of the column inches and then sympathy donations in the Madeleine McCann came as a result of the McCanns being treated as suspects by the Portuguese police, then there was more interest as others were also questioned as suspects including another British holiday home owner - it was a rolling story.
Karen Matthews' story did not have the same rolling new details of information effect in part because it was a hoax. Police found no sightings of anything at all happening much less anything suspicious, nothing and nobody to particularly question until doubts began to develop about the behaviour of her parents/carers.


Anyway a public meeting with OJ and purely ultra peaceful protestor Ellie Mae O'Hagan.

People's Assembly: people, listen to union bureaucrats and weekly Indie columnists


https://twitter.com/PeoplesBookshop/status/354694172436987908

 

[sihhi]

For what? What do you think that's what it is?

It's a campaign against hunger - hence a lavish slap up, fine China, crystal glass four course meal makes perfect sense. One in the eye for people like you who don't like it or something ...

https://twitter.com/y_alibhai/status/353071149657235456

Thanks Mehdi Hassan for invite to the Islamic Relief dinner. The charity has declared war on hunger. How will rabid atheists respond?

Is that "rabid athiests" meaning "athiests" are essentially "rabid" or the rabid ones of them believe religions don't do charity, Yasmin? I'd say weak Labour luvvie Muslim liberals but I'd be an Islamophobe.

 

[frogwoman]

Thanks Mehdi Hassan for invite to the Islamic Relief dinner. The charity has declared war on hunger. How will rabid atheists respond?

War on hunger, how good of them. Plainly this is proof of God's existence

 

[frogwoman]

Wait...what?

 

[sihhi]

I don't even know if it's the real Yasmin Alibhai Brown the tweets are so outlandish and cartoon liberal

Chief Rabbi warns Jewish people marrying out will kill Jewry. So, what to do? Forced marriages? Mixed kids expelled? Some chief, some Rabbi

Met Martha Lane Fox properly on thurs night. Open, bright, warm, so too her man passionate about saving our oceans. Being good humans.

Was in Belfast on BBC Sunday Live. Saw Catholic/Protestant couples, diverse, cool folk, gay pride march. What a difference peace makes

Made a short polemic film on the new sport of bashing the poor. Catch that and the follow-up debate on Sunday Morning Live BBC1

Defended the Venable decision on the Jeremy Vine Show. Brits were humane when Mary Black , 11 murdered two younger children. Not any more

Was not invited to Osborne's party for successful Ugandan Asians. Maybe retribution. Must learn to suck up to power.

British Library this pm with historian Linda Colley and Jonathan Freedland- talking about Britain's image abroad. Anyone from Ukip coming?

Hateful Muslim rapist barbarians never knew the joy of consensual sex. And never will. Pity the sinners.

The Night Alive, the Donmar- in your face and heart. Between people who have nothing, love comes through. A 'shirkers' triumph. Brilliant.

This is the best

Lawyers stop legal aid withdrawal; historians beat back Gove's spun history. Labour fiddles. Professionals- new leaders of the opposition

 

[frogwoman]

WJR have sent me some ridiculous spam sihhi, including raising money with a "business breakfast with terry leahy"

The fact is that many of these charities especially the larger ones are basically businesses. No matter how "religious" they are.