Urban v's the Commentariat

[toggle]

I dunno. I am sure that there are plenty of people who see these things as interlinked but the two people I know who have gone on to work as investment bankers are gay and use drugs regularly, they despise social conservatives just as much if not moreso than the average left-winger but hold the line completely on neoliberalism. According to them, I have no idea because they are really my only direct window on that world, being a 'libertarian pro-free market' (a word they unironically apply to themselves despite supporting bank bailouts) gay bloke that uses drugs is not uncommon high up in the financial sector.

My own experience of being at the very bottom of the financial services industry food chain in a call centre is that while institutional classism, anti-scrounger rhetoric and to an extent racism are all common gay rights, particularly those of gay men, are taken very seriously and most banks have 'LGBT societies'. These societies operate a bit like the societies do at university and do make peoples lives a lot better, for example when a trans temp at Aviva in Sheffield was sacked and the IWW picketed the Aviva office there were people in the society there that voiced support for the sacked worker, though none joined the picket line. They also often include things like fast-tracking people on that basis in order to promote equality within the organisation.

yep.

i don't think rejection of herteronormativity is anything like the act of rebellion they claim it is.

but ti's something that LP can talk lots about. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, woman, moar woman, sex, moar woman, bohemian commune moar woman. she's playing just enough of the fantasy card to get attention and just little enough that it's not actually voyeuristic.

she may not be capable of many things, but she is reasonably skilled as s self publicist.

 

[J Ed]

Neoliberalism is very much capable of integrating this stuff. Look at David Cameron and other modern Tories like Nick Boles, he has a civil partner in the IDF, he makes no secret of it - in fact he claimed Hebrew lessons on expenses! It's mostly the anachronistic right-wingers who flat out hate gay people.

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

 

[toggle]

Neoliberalism is very much capable of integrating this stuff. Look at David Cameron and other modern Tories like Nick Boles, he has a civil partner in the IDF, he makes no secret of it - in fact he claimed Hebrew lessons on expenses! It's mostly the anachronistic right-wingers who flat out hate gay people.

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

which is where the bohemian set are fighting against a 25-30 year old tory manifesto. cameron isn't running back to basics. he isn't peter lilley making young single pregnant women out as public enemy no 1. this lot aren't wedded to christian morality. it's all about the money for them, who cares who you fuck as long as you vote tory and pay the taxes that can be skimmed off into the programs offering well renumerated non exec direcs.

 

[J Ed]

IMO they are fighting against a fictional idea of what the Tory party is because they are quite relaxed with the actual Tory party since they are some of the few that actually benefit financially from it.

 

[campanula]

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

No, they sound like a horrible bunch of trustafarians to be honest (shudder). It is pitiful really, this whole self-publicist thing while pretending to be somehow engaged and active within a wider society when really it is just the exact same social class she probably knew at school...and is actually commodifying this 'experience' . It is the sheer lying, inauthentic amount of manufactured outrage she somehow feels she has (earned) the right to convey while simultaneously living a life of ease and protection. (Toothgrinding again).

 

[J Ed]

I actually can't believe you're now criticising me for not reading and responding to all 209 pages in their entirety. For fuck's sake, I work for a living, scroungers.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

Oh she does, the programmers, engineering graduates, and "young professionals, young unprofessionals, artists, writers, entrepreneurs" she lives with let young LGBT people "in need of emergency housing" sleep in a store cupboard when they need to.
Which, well, I'm not criticising them for that - its good, its just the fact she has to mention it (look how charitable she is - though you do wonder if she couldn't have stumped up for an extra room for them) while mentioning its "always occupied" (LGBT homelessness is a big problem/don't bother asking her to stay the night - they're full). It also indicates that its not a squat (if it was, you'd show the young homelesss LGBT people how to break a squat for themselves) and not a proper co-op or social-housing based commune (both of which the young people could claim housing benefit for on the same basis as social housing once a room came up for them). I mean great for her that she has somewhere interesting to live with people she gets on with (though I don't know why she thinks we're that interested), but its like she's tone-deaf around both the current struggles around housing and the forms of housing that came out of housing struggles in the past.

I also like how she talks about the "straight, white, monogamous man" as if not being monogamous would negate his privilege as much as being black or gay.

 

[toggle]

Oh she does, the programmers, engineering graduates, and "young professionals, young unprofessionals, artists, writers, entrepreneurs" she lives with let young LGBT people "in need of emergency housing" sleep in a store cupboard when they need to.

I also like how she talks about the "straight, white, monogamous man" as if not being monogamous would negate his privilege as much as being black or gay.

it's the usual problem with the bastardised form of intersectional politics they espouse. it is all boiled down to which special characterirstics you have, which is one of the reasons you get people like her tripping over themelves to identify queer credentials. it's another rung on the anti-privilage ladder.

but unlike where intersectional politics came from, it completely lacks class conciousness; won't recognise that wealth has always bought a lot of 'licence to be different', to be black, to be gay, to be female and to be in charge of your life and be safe. and the community spokespeople are of this sort. not the people at the bottom of the pile whose multiple intersecting expereinces of being shat on were supposed to mean they got consulted about how to simultaniously fix gender/race/class division and discrimination.

Which, well, I'm not criticising them for that - its good, its just the fact she has to mention it (look how charitable she is - though you do wonder if she couldn't have stumped up for an extra room for them) while mentioning its "always occupied" (LGBT homelessness is a big problem/don't bother asking her to stay the night - they're full). It also indicates that its not a squat (if it was, you'd show the young homelesss LGBT people how to break a squat for themselves) and not a proper co-op or social-housing based commune (both of which the young people could claim housing benefit for on the same basis as social housing once a room came up for them). I mean great for her that she has somewhere interesting to live with people she gets on with (though I don't know why she thinks we're that interested), but its like she's tone-deaf around both the current struggles around housing and the forms of housing that came out of housing struggles in the past.

nope, it's the charitable offer of their table leavings, the bit of space none of them want to live in. that makes them abkle to say how great and charitable they are without actually having to give anything up. or help anyone do something for themselves. it's about making her feel good.

 

[red & green]

I don't know what she is on about half the time

 

[cesare]

I don't know what she is on about half the time

Yeah, same here. Bores me to tears.

 

[toggle]

Yeah, same here. Bores me to tears.

I get it, cause i've skimmed past enough of the stuff it's based on to recognize what it is a self serving form of (eg, I picked up a book on the political use of the idea of the family in verso's last sale and reading this stuff stops insomnia becoming insanity) . but i suspect that you (as in someone who has better things to do with their life than read a bunch of critiques of various strands of neoliberal theories and policies) not getting it is part of the point, it's about proving all the stuff she thinks she knows, her own superiority. the other part of the point, the bit where you're supposed to have turned into an ego worshipping sheep seems to have failed somewhat spectacularly. but there's more than enough out there to give her the attention she craves.

 

[red & green]

Just comes across like she thinks she's special - not interested tbh

 

[treelover]

Fuck - what a solipsistic pile of garbage. Utter drivel. The tone of smug, self-congratulatory narcissism is truly unedifying...and this is supposedly journalism - a 'look at me, I am so, so...special' piece of romanticised rubbish...with not so much as a mention of the real travails of house shares with 9 other (obviously self-obsessed nitwits) - pink tutu ffs. What about the toilet cleaning! And what are the arrangements for leasing this, (ahem) commune...because I am pretty certain it will not be the usual outer London squat scenario which I, and 3 decades later, my daughter, are so familiar with (harrassment, bailiffs, insecurity, anxiety, horrible living conditions...although it should be remembered, it is still summer - all these utopias look different in a gloomy english winter with no electricity). And, of course, there is the question of choice...or lack of it.WANKER.

Radical chic, its got a long pedigree, I used to think it was ok, but these are desperate times and there are many desperate people, my friend has a boat in Goole and she is aware of sanctioned families nearly starving.

 

[Bakunin]

Radical chic, its got a long pedigree, I used to think it was ok, but these are desperate times and there are many desperate people, my friend has a boat in Goole and she is aware of sanctioned families nearly starving.

You wouldn't think so, according to that bilge.

 

[cesare]

If people weren't at risk of starving there wouldn't be food banks ffs

 

[brogdale]

Radical chic, its got a long pedigree, I used to think it was ok, but these are desperate times and there are many desperate people, my friend has a boat in Goole and she is aware of sanctioned families nearly starving.

But does the boat in Goole have a "former storage cupboard has been repurposed as a crash-pad for young LGBT people in need of emergency housing."?

 

[Buckaroo]

Forget food banks, the poor should eat their children. It's a modest proposal.

 

[Coolfonz]

Neoliberalism is very much capable of integrating this stuff. Look at David Cameron and other modern Tories like Nick Boles, he has a civil partner in the IDF, he makes no secret of it - in fact he claimed Hebrew lessons on expenses! It's mostly the anachronistic right-wingers who flat out hate gay people.

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

Lots of experience with these people. A lot of market-heads are `socially liberal`, vote Labour/Lib Dem and all that wank, but in my experience class prejudice is rampant. That includes class prejudice towards other `neo-liberals` who work alongside them.

 

[brogdale]

Just comes across like she thinks she's special - not interested tbh

tbf she/they are pretty special...

The only way my friends and I could find to buck the trend was to improvise a whole new way of living, where we pool resources and share our labour, from carpentry to cake-baking. Imagine our surprise when we found created a post-capitalist anarcho-syndicalist utopia entirely by accident.

Just imagine...

 

[treelover]

But does the boat in Goole have a "former storage cupboard has been repurposed as a crash-pad for young LGBT people in need of emergency housing."?

No, my friend is a saint, she feeds people, gives them work she doesn't really need doing, looks after the kids so the mums can look for bits of work, etc.

 

[brogdale]

Neoliberalism is very much capable of integrating this stuff. Look at David Cameron and other modern Tories like Nick Boles, he has a civil partner in the IDF, he makes no secret of it - in fact he claimed Hebrew lessons on expenses! It's mostly the anachronistic right-wingers who flat out hate gay people.

Of course, if you are gay and poor then you are scum like the other poor people. She doesn't mention those people as being a part of her bolthole though.

Indeed. Her perception and description of the workers required by a functioning conurbation appears quite telling...

It is no secret that London, even more than most major world cities, has become all but uninhabitable for young professionals, young unprofessionals, artists, writers, entrepreneurs - all the people, in short, who make a city more than just a coincidence of twelve million people breathing the same sooty air.

So fuck off anyone who isn't young, a 'creative' or (ffs) an "entrepreneur".

 

[Idris2002]

Forget food banks, the poor should eat their children. It's a modest proposal.

Careful now. Someone might tolchok your Gulliver for talking like that.

 

[rekil]

It's like they're living in 50s alabama and the last 70 years never happened. Capital has made a market of this stuff - it's one of the internal enclosures that capital requires - and this mindset is actually part of the cultural legitimation of it.

Helen Lewis's thing about 'virtue signalling' struck me as being a bit of a passive aggressive attack on LP, since she referred to a Matt Bruenig article which linked to a piece having a go at our old friend Malcolm Harris and his generational war guff and featuring an exchange involving urban75 poster and revolutionary socialist lauriepenny.

 

[cesare]

No, my friend is a saint, she feeds people, gives them work she doesn't really need doing, looks after the kids so the mums can look for bits of work, etc.

Why the fuck are you putting your friend in this thread.

 

[J Ed]

Helen Lewis's thing about 'virtue signalling' struck me as being a bit of a passive aggressive attack on LP, since she referred to a Matt Bruenig article which linked to a piece having a go at our old friend Malcolm Harris and his generational war guff and featuring an exchange involving urban75 poster and revolutionary socialist lauriepenny.

Don't forget his idiotic scab rhetoric, considering the fact he calls himself left-wing while undermining organised labour maybe Helen Lewis should give him a regular column, he'd fit in

 

[rekil]

Don't forget his idiotic scab rhetoric, considering the fact he calls himself left-wing while undermining organised labour maybe Helen Lewis should give him a regular column, he'd fit in

He seems unhappy that the Onion is doing a Vice pisstake. (edging a bit too close to home - all the sads)

 

[Bakunin]

He seems unhappy that the Onion is doing a Vice pisstake. (edging a bit too close to home - all the sads)

 

[steeplejack]

ooft, that Penny Red article. She really needs to look up "self-awareness" in the dictionary. Just an impotent squirming bagful of lifestyle-choice eels.

I've only really just noticed how big this thread has become...I did give her slight credit for coming on here to face butchersapron with a hangover on a greentop...sadly after the Somerset curmudgeon had trapped her lbw in the first over the rest of her "contributions" featured suggestions that the other team were full of psychos, and the umpires were misogynist.

Still not as bad as that garbage she's just penned, though.

 

[equationgirl]

ooft, that Penny Red article. She really needs to look up "self-awareness" in the dictionary. Just an impotent squirming bagful of lifestyle-choice eels.

I've only really just noticed how big this thread has become...I did give her slight credit for coming on here to face butchersapron with a hangover on a greentop...sadly after the Somerset curmudgeon had trapped her lbw in the first over the rest of her "contributions" featured suggestions that the other team were full of psychos, and the umpires were misogynist.

Still not as bad as that garbage she's just penned, though.

All of us were misogynistic though, including the women. And most matter how many people explained that actually no we weren't, she just flounced off declaring us all to be anyway.

Not forgetting she works for a living, of course.

 

[Bakunin]

Still not as bad as that garbage she's just penned, though.

Although, to be fair, 'Saudade' and 'Fifty Shades of Socialist feminism' have been the crowning turds in the waterpipe thus far.

All of us were misogynistic though, including the women. And most matter how many people explained that actually no we weren't, she just flounced off declaring us all to be anyway.

Not forgetting she works for a living, of course.

I remember it well.

And lots of people work for a living and still have serious difficulties meeting rent and bills, not forgetting the people who can't work but are arbitrarily cured by Atos, until they die anyway.