Thursday, 16 July 2009

Guest Post - Christian May

Having mentioned Laurie Penny earlier today, it seems she annoys someone else too:

LabourList
came about as part of an attempt to counter the growing success and influence of
ConservativeHome
. However, whereas the latter hosts serious policy discussions and conducts interesting research, the former has simply become a forum for disgruntled left-wingers to rant and moan. One article in particular sums up this approach.

Laurie Penny
, a 22 year old "blogger and activist" has written an extraordinary piece on the recent "
Every Family Matters
" report from the superb
Centre for Social Justice
. By way of introducing Penny, let's look at her
LabourList biography
: "Likes include: boots, books, fags, tea, socialist feminism. Dislikes include: bigotry, green peppers, people who think short people are funny." I don't know Penny's height, but I do get a chuckle out of seeing Hazel Blears behind a podium.

Her article has the catchy headline: Undermining reproductive freedoms, sellotaping together unhappy couples and bribery - the Tory agenda for Happy Families, and it pretty much sets the tone for the rest of her rant. It’s littered with clever little phrases like “Torygeddon” and “evilly recalcitrant plans.” Honestly, you’d think we Conservatives were planning to slaughter the first born. (Mind you, this is the level of rhetoric and debate that we’ve come to expect from a dying Labour movement).

Let’s deal with some of the specifics in her “article” for a moment. Apparently, Conservatives want to see ‘men in the office, women in the kitchen.’ Not sure where she got this one from, but it just shows her out of date and out of touch she is. Moving on, we learn that “Cameron and his cronies simply do not LIKE women who live independent lives, or single parents, or gay people, or people with alternative notions of what a free and happy family constitutes." Is she referring to the same ‘cronies’ that support same sex marriage, favour equality and have today announced plans to make it easier for people to care for disabled relatives? It would appear so.

There’s absolutely no depth or focus to her rant. It’s just a collection of student union style debating points. Here’s my absolute favourite: Referring to the planned tax break for married couples, she says “that kind of logic is cargo-cultism, and it’s lazy, and it’s stupid, and it won’t work because it’s stupid.” In other words, “Toreez smell and I don’t like them because they’re smelly and they smell.” I think Penny should grow up. Her views are out of date, unhelpful and riddled with inverted snobbery.

The Centre for Social Justice has come up with more proposals for helping the worse off than a decade of Labour government has managed. The left simply don’t like the fact that the problems that they’ve claimed as “their own” (unemployment, deprivation, youth crime etc) are in fact best tackled with conservative policies, as opposed to quangos, targets, officers and committees.

Penny concludes that she doesn’t want live in a country run by Conservatives. Who is going to miss her?

Ed: On your bike love.

13 comments:

N.B. said...

Hardly an intelligent piece, having sadly wasted time in reading it. Her style is more of a stroppy teenager with "problems" than a coherent analysis of the policy. How unexpected...

Knut said...

Can we hold a collection to send her to Cuba or some Workers' Paradise then?

Perhaps she would do better if she came up with coherant arguments rather than a list of ad hominems and "facts" of dubious veracity.

Daniel said...

I just perused her site.....she is clearly window-licking crazy.

By inference, baiting her will probably end up with her getting herself worked up into such a frenzy that she will argue herself around manically in ever decreasing circles, till, in all probability, she'll disappear up her own backside.

Anonymous said...

Careful, she may be a self harmer. It's the Tories wot made me do it, spewed over and over again on Womans Hour and all the other self indulgent wimmins stuff which poses as social commentary on Radio Four

Penny Red
said...

I'm happy for you guys to fund me to go on holiday. But I'm quite confused by the accusations of craziness. What about my writing is crazy, other than the fact that you don't agree with me?

It seems you're also all teed off at me for having the temerity to be young. Good luck drawing the youth vote if you're going to automatically dismiss anything said by anyone under 27 as 'teenage' and 'student uniony'. What's wrong with being a young person with opinions?

Finally, I'm dreadfully amused that you're all accusing ME of resorting to ad hominem attacks when what you find to say about my writing is that I'm crazy, irritating and young. Well, I'm sorry for being crazy, irritating and young, but I've still got a decent argument: care to actually respond to it?

Hipponess
said...

I did try to read this "Penny" post, got lost on hetrophobic angle. She is everything I despise in my own sex. No use sending her to Cuba, they'd send her back. There's a few oceanic trenches we could bury her in though.

North Northwester
said...

"There’s absolutely no depth or focus to her rant. It’s just a collection of student union style debating points."

So she won the 2010 Labour Manifesto contract then?

Foaming Tory said...

I bet she's a pretty little dear though. So long as she's kept in the kitchen or the bedroom she won't do much harm.

Andy said...

She appears to have no understanding of the proper usage of the word "recalcitrant".

Logicmeister said...

Ah, I remember Little Penny as a pleasantly incoherent young upstart at Oxford a few years back, acting like it was still 1969. (More on this later, if your readers would like the details)

Nice girl, but incapable of any logical train of thought. And it shows in her 'arguments'/unsubstantiated assertions.

Laurie, my problem with your writing isn't that I disagree with your conclusions, it's the way that you reach your conclusions, as time and again, (as you did in the local Oxford rags) you seem incapable of substantiating your assertions, instead launching pre-packaged assumptions at the reader, without having ever really questioned those assumptions, or tried to pre-empt the most obvious points people may try to make against you.

Your writing also suffers from a certain instinctive "all left-wing/feminist=good, all right-wing=bad" tendency. I'm no Tory. But that doesn't make me think that all Tories are baby-eating devil incarnates. Engaging with (and criticisng) what the Tories actually are, instead of what you'd like them to be, will go a long way.

Finally, I can confirm that Penny is indeed both very crazy, and very young. I'd draw the line at 'irritating' (her logic certainly can be), since I don't find her personally objectionable, and she really is a rather sweet, well-meaning young thing. But she is barmy, and comes out with the loopiest negations of any kind of sequential thought.

The Voice of Treason said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
TLA
said...

For all her undoubted craziness and rhetorical hyperbole, at least this young lady discussed the Every Family Matters report.

Perhaps some of you would care to do the same?

P.S. My blog also has a few things to say about it (shameless plug)

Anonymous said...

"LabourList came about as part of an attempt to counter the growing success and influence of ConservativeHome. However, whereas the latter hosts serious policy discussions and conducts interesting research"

Aha ha ha ha ha ha.

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