Urban v's the Commentariat

[butchersapron]

We get workfare

We get workfare, they get interns.

 

[DrRingDing]

Think about what anarchism is, and what it stands for and against.

Now, square the philosophy with your posts, and look for the gaps.

Don't be a plonker.

 

[weepiper]

I don't. I don't know anyone who could afford to work unpaid, even with a promise of a job at the end of it.

Me and my mate from school both got a First at university. She didn't have to work while studying. I had to have a weekend shop job throughout. She went on a one year internship after she graduated and her parents continued to support her. I went to work full-time in the shop because there were bills to pay and no-one who could afford to pay them for me. 15 years later she works for the Foreign Office. I'm still in a part-time shop job.

 

[el-ahrairah]

Mostly because they're tool cool and smart to have read "Junky" by William Borroughs, where he makes it clear that it doesn't matter how clever, cool or monied you are, once the smack has locked you in its' embrace you'd still lick a truckstop toilet clean on the promise of a fix.

i dunno, i tried reading that once and gave up. but given some of the things i have done to ensure my fix, i;d say he was right on the money.

 

[butchersapron]

Burroughs kept a habit and kept clean for 60 years because he had money. He always had money.

 

[J Ed]

who has done this?

not saying it's not happened but i'd have thought they'd go for the galloway/respect trajectory, there's also plenty of money in being some sort of liberal "anti imperialist" apologist for dodgy middle eastern regimes (israel's also one but you know what i mean)

the only famous anti zionist i can think who became a sort of zionist is christopher hitchens

I'm not convinced that Christopher Hitchens ever did become a Zionist, I don't have it to hand but I remember reading in Hitch-22 (which is an interesting read but not one that made me very sympathetic to him) that his opinion of Israel was still very much that it was a racist country despite his turn to Neoconservativism-with-a-gloss-of-Trotskyist-rhetoric.

 

[emanymton]

Looks like some interns are earning the equivalent of up top £45,000 a year.

Merrill Lynch did not comment on the length of Erhardt's working hours, and also declined to comment on whether interns – who are understood to be paid £45,000 pro rata – are routinely made to work longer than 12-hour days.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours

 

[DrRingDing]

I know a Russian who did an internship at citigroup and she did more than 12 hour a day.

 

[DaveCinzano]

almost certainly the nose powders. She's from very very old money, I don't think brown is hip with that set

That's what (the late) Baron Kelvedon thought

 

[DrRingDing]

Think about what anarchism is, and what it stands for and against.

Now, square the philosophy with your posts, and look for the gaps.

Sorry can you help me out here. Terribly thick here. Too much interbreeding you see. Got to keep it in the family.

 

[DrRingDing]

Philosophy of my posts?

Blimey.

 

[JHE]

Looks like some interns are earning the equivalent of up top £45,000 a year.



http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours

Leaving aside the very high rate of pay...

This story of the unfortunate young German who was working very long hours has made it into a number of papers, but from what I've seen it is not at all clear how much of a connection there was between long working hours and his death. Maybe there was none. Or maybe - just speculating here - the lad was taking drugs to help him cope with his ultra-demanding temp job and the drugs killed him.

 

[ViolentPanda]

who has done this?

not saying it's not happened but i'd have thought they'd go for the galloway/respect trajectory, there's also plenty of money in being some sort of liberal "anti imperialist" apologist for dodgy middle eastern regimes (israel's also one but you know what i mean)

the only famous anti zionist i can think who became a sort of zionist is christopher hitchens

Most famous example of pro-Pal one minute, Labour Friend of Israel the next is Jack Straw.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Don't be a plonker.

Don't be a disingenuous tossrag.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Me and my mate from school both got a First at university. She didn't have to work while studying. I had to have a weekend shop job throughout. She went on a one year internship after she graduated and her parents continued to support her. I went to work full-time in the shop because there were bills to pay and no-one who could afford to pay them for me. 15 years later she works for the Foreign Office. I'm still in a part-time shop job.

A fine example of "the Establishment" doing what the Establishment does best - perpetuating itself and its institutional preferences and prejudices. Whether it does that by occasionally bringing on board a member of the lower orders or not (something often mentioned by advocates of "the system" to show that really it's nothing to do with institutional preferences) or not, it still operates a policy of exclusion toward people who're not "someone like me" in the eyes of the person doing the hiring.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sorry can you help me out here. Terribly thick here. Too much interbreeding you see. Got to keep it in the family.

Keeping it in the family is "inbreeding", you twat. Interbreeding means widening your gene pool, inreeding means narrowing it.

Now, instead of coming the chippy wanker, why not try doing what I asked? We both know you're capable of doing so, and we both know you're deliberately avoiding doing so. What I don't know is why.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Philosophy of my posts?

Blimey.

Oh, and learn to read things properly rather than skimming. I didn't write anything about the philosophy of your posts.

 

[DrRingDing]

Keeping it in the family is "inbreeding", you twat. Interbreeding means widening your gene pool, inreeding means narrowing it.

Now, instead of coming the chippy wanker, why not try doing what I asked? We both know you're capable of doing so, and we both know you're deliberately avoiding doing so. What I don't know is why.

Avoiding what? You've been mugged off by frillyaprons comments yesterday...I expected more from you...and not even bothered to read my words. Then slag me off for what some other cretin implied.

Well done.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I just got this email from the US campaign to end the occupation. On their website there's a link to this:

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/downloads/InternshipSpring2012.pdf

I know loads of people here have been involved in PSC stuff, anyone fancy an unpaid internship working up to 30 hours a week for it? You can only apply if you've graduated from uni recently. And being an activist counts towards your degree now. talk about fucking co opting dissent?

am i wrong to think that stuff like this shouldn't count towards your degree, people who organised gaza sit ins were in some cases hounded by uni management?

what do people think about this, DrRingDing etc?

There is no doubt that cultural studies has attempted to further emancipatory social aims - socialist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist. Its intervention has been in those substantial, specified senses political. But it is romantic to go on thinking of cultural studies as an 'intervention'. It is now an instituted academic activity; and academic activity, whatever its intrinsic merits, is inevitably not the same thing as a political project. What happens when an oppositional tendency becomes a budget holding discipline, offering credentials, careers, research funds? More or less what any realistic observer would expect. No academic discipline may honourably or realistically apply political tests to its students and teachers. The day cannot be far off - indeed, it has probably arrived already - when the first real professionals of the discipline, trained in it and now pursuing it as a scholarly career, take their places in classrooms to give the introductory lecture on "subversion" or some other such routine syllabus heading.

From an essay by Francis Mulhearn called The Politics of Cultural Studies.

 

[SpineyNorman]

That is magnificent.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Avoiding what? You've been mugged off by frillyaprons comments yesterday...

That's your assumption. It's an inaccurate one. The only point of his I paid any attention to was about your being an anarchist, which is what provoked my comments in the first place - can an anarchist, of whatever school, square even tacit support for a system of internship where the majority of the placements deprive people of paid work?

I expected more from you...

Your expectations of me are meaningless, they're merely an attempt to make me feel guilty for daring to gainsay you. Psychology 101 doesn't work on me.

...and not even bothered to read my words.

Oh, I read them.

...Then slag me off for what some other cretin implied.

And where exactly have I slagged you off? You'd have to possess an eggshell-thin ego to take anything I've posted as "slagging off". I find the fact that you always respond to perceived criticism of you with a tedious formulaic barrage of whiny second-rate abuse rather interesting. Did it used to work for you back at school or something?

Well done.

You have been.

 

[DrRingDing]

Fuck right off.

Let's go back to your initial accusations.

Can you back them up?

Can you?

No. You're a worse gobshite than me. So don't even try it.

 

[butchersapron]

You're not very good at this. Say something. Something with content. I dare/beg you.

 

[DrRingDing]

You're not very good at this. Say something. Something with content. I dare/beg you.

Why don't you try and say something positive rather than sneer from a position of assumed knowledge of all things.

 

[SpineyNorman]

To be fair that's better than screaming about how everyone's a cunt from a position of ignorance of all things.

 

[DrRingDing]

To be fair that's better than screaming about how everyone's a cunt from a position of ignorance of all things.

In this instance ( ) I've been landed with vague and weird accusations. I'm merely asking what exactly this accusations are.

I'm totally in the right for defending myself.....in this instance.

 

[SpineyNorman]

In this instance ( ) I've been landed with vague and weird accusations. I'm merely asking what exactly this accusations are.

I'm totally in the right for defending myself.....in this instance.

I think you're accused of getting all defensive and making things personal when someone tried to make a political point about internships.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think you're accused of getting all defensive and making things personal when someone tried to make a political point about internships.

the personal is political

 

[SpineyNorman]

the personal is political

Except for when it isn't.

 

[butchersapron]

In this instance ( ) I've been landed with vague and weird accusations. I'm merely asking what exactly this accusations are.

I'm totally in the right for defending myself.....in this instance.

You are one twisted - and transparent - individual. I try to establish some facts about internship and you do your best RADA/yokel you spilt my pint shit. Thus stopping pretty much all discussion beyond what an empty barn that you are. Go away, come back with some politics.