Laurie Penny

Pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist

How can we change the consensus? Carry on

Perseverance in the face of power is the only thing that can truly change the world.

By Laurie Penny Published 01 July 2011 15:37

"These young people need to learn when they're fighting a losing battle." That's what the judge told the student protesters and anti-cuts activists whose trials got underway this month in Westminster. Young people engaged in this 'losing battle' have now been charged with dangerous acts of proto-terrorist sedition that range from kicking a bin to throwing a tub of strawberry yoghurt at a wall. As the government's austerity programme comes under fire, the press, the police and the criminal justice system appear unanimous that no matter how peaceful the protest, standing against the official consensus is an offence in itself, and the official consensus is simple and terrifying. The consensus is that the livelihoods and futures of ordinary citizens across Europe must be sacrificed in order to finance the debts accrued by the wealthy, and there is no alternative, and anyone who suggests one will feel the fist of power.

I was reminded of this yesterday on the picket lines as almost a million teachers and public sector employees launched the largest co-ordinated strike in Britain in recent memory. A murmur of entirely anticipated disgust ran around the HMRC picket when news emerged that Ed Miliband, the leader of an opposition party purporting to represent working people, had come out in public and on Twitter to say: "these strikes are wrong".

This morning's Times uses the same language. It declares that industrial action, at a time when workers' rights are being hammered with unprecedented speed and savagery, is not just unwise, but morally "wrong". Going against the official economic consensus is now phrased as heresy. The Labour Party is still part of that consensus, as it refuses to fight the coalition's brutal programme of welfare reforms or to support ordinary people struggling to protect their jobs and pensions.

Like almost every centre-left party in Europe, Labour appears to have nothing to offer ordinary people whose jobs, homes and futures are being mortgaged to finance a global debt crisis they had no part in creating. And like almost every centre-left party in Europe, Labour's poll ratings are plummeting, as people find themselves more and more disgusted by the helpless shoulder-shrug our liberal representatives seem content to call politics. As the PCS rally in central London moved towards Westminster, there were whispers of "scab" in conjunction with Miliband's name. It's increasingly difficult to fault the sentiment. The betrayal tastes almost as rotten as the predictability of betrayal.

As the unions lumber and creak into action in the UK, significant parts of Athens are on fire. Tens of thousands of union members and activists are striking and occuping the squares of the capital, as the Greek parliament forces through the gruelling austerity package imposed as a condition of the IMF bailout, designed to prevent the country defaulting on its debts. This austerity package differs from the cuts taking place in Britain only in scale. Greece needs the IMF in order to save itself, and the Eurozone needs Greece stable in order to avert disaster, but it is not necessary to gut the public sector and punish workers in order to save the Greek economy. It is an indulgence on the part of the IMF. It is a savage power show by shock capitalism: we will try to save you, and thereby save ourselves, and in return you will swallow our ideology and betray your people. The Greek people have reacted to that betrayal by striking, and by taking to the streets.

Again, the consensus of the political and financial elites is that, in the words of Mrs Thatcher, as ventriloquised by the Greek finance minister on BBC Radio 4: "there is no alternative." Again, their consensus has become dislocated from the needs and concerns of the people who they are supposed to represent. No wonder the call in the people's assemblies of Athens, Barcelona, Madrid and now London has been for "real democracy". Suspicion is mounting that we've been sold a cheap imitation.

Simply repeating lies until they are wearily accepted as truth is the hallmark of a political consensus in crisis. The frantic repetition of the slogan that "there is no alternative" belies the truth that, in fact, there are many alternatives -- it is just that the governments of Europe are not currently prepared to consider them. Even if one accepts that the best way out of a recession is to pay off a country's deficit as soon as possible, getting the banks and the very wealthy to pay the relatively small amounts of tax they legitimately owe would do so in no time.

In Britain, tax avoidance, tax evasion and fraud cost up to £100 billion a year, and that's before anyone considers actually raising top-rate taxes a scant few percentage points. There are other, grander, alternatives, of course, but a counter-consensus on those alternatives has not yet been reached. This is unsurprising, given that an entire generation has been born and grown to adulthood understanding that socialism had failed, and that free-market laissez-faire capitalism was the only possible future for the human race.

In 2008, the promise of that future was exposed as fantasy, and now, three years later, the realisation is dawning that simply tweaking the system will not work. There is only so far you can push young people and working people without giving them hope that their lives will at least be lived with dignity. The closer ordinary people come to building a consensus that rewarding the rich for their recklessness is not just unwise, but morally wrong, the more vested interests will declare them liars and fantasists, dangerous troublemakers, madmen and fools.

In Britain, the shoots of this new consensus are being stomped down upon with panicked efficiency. Students and anti-cuts activists have gone nowhere, despite being diminished in number after police crackdowns and months of insidious hatemongering in the tabloid and broadsheet press. They continue to stage demonstrations, disruptions and occupations across the country whenever a government minister or public intellectual comes forward to excuse austerity measures and mass privatisation, and they continue to be punished for doing so. They have now been joined by hundreds of thousands of union members and organisers, who yesterday declared themselves "inspired by the students".

In the past few months, I have spent a great deal of time living and working with anti-cuts activists and student organisers in Britain, and I have watched the movement grow and change. There have been teething problems: paranoid internecine squabbles, long gaps of inactivity as key activists sat their finals, meetings whose attendees spent six hours deciding whether or not to have another meeting. There have also been moments of brilliance as the young people of the British anti-cuts movement have done the only thing individuals of courage and conviction can do in the face of public opprobium and police violence: they have carried on. Sometimes, carrying on is enough.

For me, one of the smaller but more emblematic flashpoints was when someone dropped a smoke bomb in a bookshop. The occasion was a lecture by coffee-table atheist A C Grayling, whose private New College of the Humanities threatens to open the floodgates to higher education as a for-profit commodity reserved for the children of the elite. I sat two rows from the front and listened to a man who made his reputation arguing against the unassailable, inevitable orthodoxies of the Church attempt to justify his lucrative acquiescence to the unassailable, inevitable orthodoxies of the market.

This sort of wet liberal apologism is what used to pass for iconoclasm in the west. In the lecture in Foyles bookshop, a staggeringly young female student in a nice white blouse raised her voice to ask Grayling just what gave him the right, as the poorest universities in the country have their humanities departments eviscerated, to charge rich pupils £18,000 a year to have their prejudices about western supremacy and market fundamentalism confirmed by Niall Ferguson and Richard Dawkins. Grayling had no answer. He offered to stay after the lecture to try to think of one. Then the flare went off a few seats behind me, filling the room with roiling red smoke, a spluttering parody of the self-indulgent, philistine act of vandalism taking place in the British academy, and in the culture of this country, as the private sector is permitted to fillet the social democratic settlement that delivered the hope of prosperity to four generations. It was hardly subtle, but it made the papers.

I have learned some lessons in the past few months, and not the kind that you pay nine grand a year for in weary anticipation of one day getting a job in PR. I have learned that sometimes, fighting for a better world is lonely and exhausting. I have learned that if you voice alternatives to the official consensus, or attempt to build a new one, you are likely to be beaten and bullied, hounded into silence, threatened with violence, denounced as amoral and insane, sometimes by foaming bigots who are easy to ignore, and sometimes by people you respect, by your friends and neighbours and elders and betters, people and parties who are meant to be on your side, and that can hurt deeply.

As the Labour leadership mobilises against the strikes, I have personally been advised by professionals I greatly admire to distance myself from "the movement" if I want to carry on working in the media. I refuse to do so, because I believe that the students and striking workers are right. I believe that what they are doing is morally correct. And what you do in those circumstances, when the official consensus is stacked against you, when you are ground down by threats and running out of hope, is you carry on. You carry on because you believe in a better world and a new consensus. You carry on, and you support one another, and you refuse to be cowed, and you do the work that is in front of you. Because perseverance in the face of power is the only thing that can truly change the world. And the hysteria with which those with vested interests in the official consensus are lobbying against any breath of an alternative suggests that they know that, too.

More from Laurie Penny

73 comments

Sat, 2011-07-02 12:00 — Yere

Here we go again:
1 - awful lot of growing up to do.
2 - failure,
3 - ignorance,
4 - the bible of envy,
5 - inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

When is the ground rule strating:

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated.

Mon, 2011-07-04 12:42 — Marcus (not verified)

I would love to see a revolution in this country. A break from the status quo.

Politically i am libertarian by nature, fiscally conservative, but socially extremely liberal.

I believe most people want the same thing. They want freedom, low taxes, fewer laws, a decent standard of living for all, respect and dignity to the weak, ill and old.

Someone needs to do something to take this country back............ so even though i hate socialism and communism to my core i back what you say here.

That picture of Clegg, Cameron and Miliband all looking like clones of each other with stupid grins on their faces makes me want to vomit.

That image should in itself be motivation for change.

Sat, 2011-07-02 13:37 — DK (not verified)

@Luddite: I bet you like your rubbish collected. I bet if your house caught on fire, you'd be happy to have someone come to put it out. I bet you're relieved to have a police force around to dissuade the impoverished from simply taking your possessions for themselves. Don't you think all those people deserve to live decently in retirement? It's not "ignorance" or "envy" to insist on this.

Mon, 2011-07-04 12:50 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

Yes Marcus they want freedom. but what is it? Freedom is in nature. That is where the consensus is.

Mon, 2011-07-04 12:56 — Marcus (not verified)

Yes, agreed!

Lets also hope to be free from persecution, free from intrusion, free from confinement, free from limitation.

Let the people fly............

Sat, 2011-07-02 14:49 — Richard (not verified)

"I have learned that if you voice alternatives to the official consensus, or attempt to build a new one, you are likely to be beaten and bullied, hounded into silence, threatened with violence, denounced as amoral and insane, sometimes by foaming bigots who are easy to ignore, and sometimes by people you respect, by your friends and neighbours and elders and betters, people and parties who are meant to be on your side, and that can hurt deeply."

I suspect that they all simply became too tired of putting up with your Lefty bollocks.

Please, Laurie, find a waterway, have a fag whilst you walk its length, and decide to stop writing.

Sat, 2011-07-02 19:30 — Trevor Phillips (not verified)

Secondary School - NUT rep - Staffs.
We are fighting here too - but the apathy amongst some teachers beggars belief -
The teacher’s pension scheme is self funding, current teachers paying for the pensions of those already retired. This government is intentionally collapsing the scheme by making it so unattractive that current teachers and new entrants to the profession will opt out and put their money into ISA’s and other private funds which will be managed by the corrupted banks and their Tory mates in the city. This will result in pensions being withdrawn from current and future retired teachers as there will be no new money going into the scheme to support it.
Personally - I fear the worst - but that doesn't mean I'm going down without a fight.

Mon, 2011-07-04 16:40 — Freeman2

Steve B writes, 'Sorry, Labour haven't been centre-left since 1997.'

That recent?

Mon, 2011-07-04 16:43 — Tony (not verified)

@Mejoff
Very probably. But there may be a chance that with each revolution that occurs, we learn a little bit more from what went wrong (and I accept it’s hard to see any evidence of this so far). At some point, that may produce a positive outcome. That could be hundreds of years away, or it could be only a few. I can’t see it happening though either as would have to happen on a global scale all at once, and the breaking point is going to come to each nation at a different point in time. I guess we’ll get to see it on TV (provided it doesnt clash with Eastenders) before we take part. The ultimate reality show. Then again, the economic effects of Peak oil could impact at the same time as climate change believers are proved disastrously right and then it won’t matter anyway.

Sat, 2011-07-02 20:54 — Attrition47

You call Liarbour a centre-left party? In 2011?? WAKE UP!

Mon, 2011-07-04 17:39 — Mejoff (not verified)

@Freeman
Kinnock, at least, did not treat the word 'Socialist' as an insult, like Brown did in an interview a few years back.

Fri, 2011-07-01 15:53 — Jack (not verified)

Not that you're bothered about crediability, Laurie, but would you mind breaking down your £100bn a year claim?

Nobody doubts that evasion, avoidance and fraud are items that should be tackled, but to pretend that all of this mess would go away if you opened up several tax seams that Uncle Gordon hadn't found is a falsehood when you look at the actual numbers involved.

Sat, 2011-07-02 22:09 — Yere

I would go the other way round.
I do not agree on everything that Laurie says.
I would prefer a less sanitised language. We are shafted by the banks and the parties in power together with the useless opposition. By billions a year and the TV shows us Greece?!?!?!
They are trying to make us pay for their crisis. We have not spent, over-spent or gone bust.
They have!

And if we do that we-the poor bast**rds prols, the people- pay straightaway losing our home and job.

Now they want to lower our salaries to re-launch productivity - a system that does not work as proved in the last 200 years -and "reduce costs" for the benefit of the few.

We have not caused this debt. Whoever was in government bailed out the banks (UK and US) terrorising the working people with the fear of losing their pensions..
That was a propaganda coup d'etat of majestic proportion!! What a farce! but thanks to a well organised propaganda system (from the Sun to the BBC and the Labour Party) the ignorant plebe has been force fed lies as real possibilities.

They taste shit but "we are all in this together" and "we must reduce the debt" ideology is winning.
For the "common good" the banks go scot-free!!

I dont really care whether Laurie makes a "balanced", properly formulated, BBC like, insipid, full of political correctness article.
Laurie is taking the short cut! Those who suffer know exactly what she is talking about.

No need of satisfying the pseudo-intellectuals that live for the sunday edition of the Telegraph and regurgitate their shallow opinions on this blog.
Life is hard enough and Sunday is always too far away.
I know that when I read Laurie's articles she is going to raffle a few feathers. Ahh I love that!

And she can throw some good punches too for a woman (beat the shit out of a lot of men journalists too).
I like a good fight, and if I needed somebody with me to deliver a petition to No 10 I would make sure she comes with me.

Fri, 2011-07-01 15:59 — Lou (not verified)

Do you honestly believe Labour is a centre left party still?

Fri, 2011-07-01 16:04 — alanm

Absolutely right Laurie, we must carry on, all of us who believe in the betterment of all humanity not merely a few, and in defence of the legacy of the Attlee Settlement. We need to openly oppose Blue Labour thinking as well, support the Unions and defend the most vulnerable in society in light of the fact that Labour clearly won't.

We have many eloquent and incisive speakers on behalf of the growing sense of the necessity of an alternative: Mark Serwotka, Caroline Lucas, Rowan Williams... and it is still growing. From tiny acorns...

And other dialectical initiatives have been springing up widely challenging common narratives, including Owen Jones' Chav, and my own effort on behalf of like-minded poets, Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State, which can still be sampled on the Recusant www.therecusant.org.uk

Fri, 2011-07-01 16:28 — james (not verified)

"You carry on because you believe in a better world and a new consensus"

You presumably think you are, as Engels dogmatically argued, in a state of "correct conciousness" and everyone who doesn't give a shit about failed ideologies like socialism, are in a state of "false conciousness". Only you and a few others are clever enough to know the truth and stand on the sidelines of society cynically whining and wallowing in self pity that you are victims of the cruel system that is capitalism.

Capitalism arguably needs to be reformed but you surely can't be serious when you say the utopian bullshit cliche "better world" and "new consensus".

Sat, 2011-07-02 12:57 — Jack Elam (not verified)

An article celebrating perseverance and faith in the rightness of one's cause, followed by a million comments sniping at it and each other over unimportant details for the sake of point-scoring and self-aggrandisement. No wonder I basically gave up a while back.

Fri, 2011-07-01 16:31 — james (not verified)

"We have many eloquent and incisive speakers on behalf of the growing sense of the necessity of an alternative: Mark Serwotka, Caroline Lucas, Rowan Williams"

All i can say is fail, absolute fail. As George Orwell said, "As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."

Mon, 2011-07-04 18:53 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

Yere

"@Spud

"a censorious authoritarian dipshit"

"complete hypocrite"

"authoritarian Liberal useful idiot"

"style is clunky and puerile"

"full of shit "

say no more spuddy boy...."

"say no more"?...more censorship?...you just can't stop yourself can you?

Sun, 2011-07-03 03:48 — guy_debord

I love that it took Luddite 27 hours to work out the answer to the sum.

Sun, 2011-07-03 07:26 — Fergus Pickering (not verified)

I do like a good sneer. Thank you, Laurie, for giving me so many opportunities. Why, by the way, am I not a working person? I have always worked for my living. What else do I have to do to be a working person?

Sun, 2011-07-03 10:41 — Luddite (not verified)

DK it's about fairness for all, not just the privileged few, to many can't live with-out a silver spoon rammed up their arse. So DK when did the public sector stop being our servants and became our master's. The New aristocraticacy should understand its us serfs that pay their wages, and the previous Labour government ran out of our money. It's not rocket science.

Sun, 2011-07-03 11:07 — betterdeadthanred (not verified)

How did Laurie Penny manage to get so boring so quickly?

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:34 — Ally777 (not verified)

the consensus is wrong, people are fools.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:34 — Sciamachy

James - there was a tumblr post about this not long ago, here: http://s.coop/2a2l

When the left campaign, they campaign on the issues. When the right campaign, they attack the people or make rude remarks.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:34 — Anonymous (not verified)

An inch, it's small and it's fragile, and it's the only thing in the world that's worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:28 — Sciamachy

Lou - whether Labour are a centre-left party or not isn't the issue. The issue is that they sell themselves as such. They call themselves "a democratic socialist party" whether they are or not.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:34 — Steve B (not verified)

Sorry, Labour haven't been centre-left since 1997.

You're totally right that we need an alternative to the consensus, and that opposing the cuts is the morally correct thing to do.

It would be great to have a centre-left party. Not sure they're electable under this FPTP "democracy" we have going, though.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:41 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

I was hoping that the mud had drowned her, ah well.

Fri, 2011-07-01 17:54 — Parasite (not verified)

What would you know about working people? You're public school and Oxford, playing revolutionary on a jolly wheeze in Trafalgar Square with similar middle class students.

Fri, 2011-07-01 18:07 — Skymonkey (not verified)

Sweet lord. You do talk through your hole. Highlighting this is a particular joy:

"what gave [AC Grayling] the right, as the poorest universities in the country have their humanities departments eviscerated, to charge rich pupils £18,000 a year".

It may have escaped your notice but Grayling has every right to charge whatever he likes for his crappy private college.

"Grayling had no answer. He offered to stay after the lecture to try to think of one."

Yes, I'm sure he was stumped by the "staggeringly young" student's question. More likely he thought it best to stay behind to explain to the (obviously) cretinous young thing, that charging a fee for a private educational service is not illegal.

Plus, I admire your feminist chops here. "Female student". Excellent. No doubt a piece about NHS cutbacks might highlight points made by some nice "lady doctors".

And finally "nice white blouse"...are you kidding? Are you fupping kidding?

Hahaha

Fri, 2011-07-01 18:16 — Reggie Perrin (not verified)

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre.

Fri, 2011-07-01 19:33 — Patrick Osgood (not verified)

FACT CHECK

"Labour's poll ratings are plummeting"

In a screed absent of any real understanding or discussion of the matters at hand, this is perhaps Laurie Penny's worst, laziest mistake.

Penny rarely bothers to cite facts in her articles, preferring purple, histrionic prose comprised of a salad of stock phrases with which those who read her articles regularly will be all too familiar.

And it seems that her rare sojourns into the world of facts are uniformly unsuccessful.

Labour's poll ratings are not plummeting. Not one bit.

Latest aggregate polling shows Labour Polling at 42%, the average poll number for the past two months, and broadly the same as for the whole of 2011.

People can check this for themselves by visiting http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/

Laurie Penny clearly assumed Labour's poll numbers are plummeting, without troubling herself to see if this was actually the case, in order to further her argument.

This is poor, lazy, cynical practice. It also raises questions about the soundness of her (general, sweeping, muddled) argument when it has to be based on stuff Penny simply makes up.

Will the New Statesman now remove this assertion and note the correction?

Or will editors continue to allow the publication of untrue assertions of fact without checking them?

Fri, 2011-07-01 20:37 — Larry Abrams (not verified)

you go girl. These are the early days, later, though not sooner, Labour will be following the lead of the workers, students and activists, wagging their beshitted tails behind them.

Fri, 2011-07-01 20:54 — John Moss (not verified)

Everybody with an ISA "avoids" paying tax. Every pension contribution which attracts tax relief, "avoids" paying tax.

High tax rates create a demand for tax avoidance, but it isn't illegal. Low tax rates generate higher tax receipts, because "avoiding" paying tax is increasing less cost effective.

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:12 — Simon Clare (not verified)

As one of the people whose mind you wish to change, I can assure you that "carrying on" will not change anything. How about "Come up with some objective, indisputable facts" as an alternative tactic? I'm ready to be swayed by those, but I'm only seeing subjective, juvenile stuff here.

Sun, 2011-07-03 19:07 — JB (not verified)

Carry on, carry on, carry on. For those of us at the bottom of the heap this is our only alternative.

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:15 — Yere

I dont know where these people come up with these polls. Certainly their are not representaive. Traditional Labour support is midlands, factory and shops workers, unemployeds. Are the poll done in the high street of some bog standard city then adjusted to the national coefficient or are random sample at various places in the uk??
In either case they are WRONG!!
I work in a factory of 1000 people and speak occasionally with with friends about politics. They are getting more and more alienated by the "opposition" of Miliband and as now either they would not vote for any or they would vote Green Party.
The third party is the Green Party now. It has taken the initiative from labour and has focused its programme against tax evasion and a lot of other social economics issues. Labour are losing votes left, right and centre.

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:23 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

" I have personally been advised by professionals I greatly admire to distance myself from "the movement" if I want to carry on working in the media."

They just can't handle your truth Laurie...Stay strong.

jesus wept

FFS Laurie...don't be so melodramatic and hysterical. You're not the plucky principled heroine of a John Le Carre novel. You're a silly fantasist.
Or are you really claiming the Neoliberal patriarchy are out to silence you? Putting the dramatics and the self-aggrandisement aside for just a second...wouldn't they start with the proper left-wing journalists?...the ones with a bit of objectivity, integrity and no attention-seeking issues?

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:24 — Yere

.... please... isa are tax evasive now...? yes, technically for a accountant they are. you are not an accountant are you?? tax evasion is rife among medium and big companies. Then when we come to big banks and corporation instead, they can manupulate their taxes in such a way that they become tax negative although their bosse make millions and their managers earn big money.

Tue, 2011-07-05 22:51 — Mary Tracy (not verified)

Outstanding. Just brilliant.

Fri, 2011-07-01 21:58 — Yere

Why is it that NS does not adopt a entry criteria, rule book or whatever you want to call it and take hackers off?
Where is the contribution here?

1 -" melodramatic"
2 -"hysterical."
3 -"plucky principled heroine"
4 -"silly fantasist"
5 -"claiming the Neoliberal patriarchy are out to silence you? "
6 -"silly fantasist"
7 -"dramatics and the self-aggrandisement"
8 -"with a bit of objectivity" " no integrity and with attention-seeking issues"

I hope this guy is struck off!!!

Fri, 2011-07-01 22:00 — Yere

This is waht the Guardian uses:

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated.

Sun, 2011-07-03 20:49 — DeusExMacintosh (not verified)

There **IS** an alternative... but unfortunately I don't have the £150,000 I need for the croft in Shetland. =8-(

Fri, 2011-07-01 22:29 — academic_bunny (not verified)

the vitriolic comments against this young journalist makes me think that they 'doth protest too much'.

Sun, 2011-07-03 22:07 — JBK5 (not verified)

Miss Perseverance herself. Miss arrogant fuckwit/ sorry my editor has refused to allow me to continue with this story about attack on disabled website and lets down genuine guy who waited all day for her to turn up or return the call. No time for the bitch. Go collect your fee. you'll "make" alright during this recession and austerity even if genuine people do not get through.

Fri, 2011-07-01 22:46 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

So she hints the forces of darkness are out to silence her...and the response from her devotees?

"Why is it that NS does not adopt a entry criteria, rule book or whatever you want to call it and take hackers off?"

"I hope this guy is struck off!!!"

...demands for censorship.

Brilliant.

I remember when the Left had self-awareness...now it's just a big latte-drinking talking-shop for authoritarian bourgeois liberals trying to look like they give a shit.

Did you know 'useful idiot' is an anagram of 'due foil suit'?

Fri, 2011-07-01 23:44 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

'Significant parts of Athens are on fire'

Really? What parts exactly? The significant parts! Like the Tower Bridge, the Eiffel Tower and Tower Hamlets?

Sun, 2011-07-03 22:51 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

Yere

So basically you want me struck off because you consider...sorry you know for certain...that my apparent differences with Ms Penny's worldview amount to "persistent trolling and mindless abuse".

But that's kinda cos you're pretty switched on and hip to things like "persistent trolling and mindless abuse"...cos you're a right-on progressive sorta guy?...not cos you're a censorious authoritarian dipshit?

only later you claim that: "I would prefer a less sanitised language".

..."less sanitised" in what sense? A minute ago you wanted my language drowned in a tsunami of concentrated fuckin bleach. Do you mean you're happy to tolerate more 'robust' language as long as you agree with the sentiments?

You're a complete hypocrite Yere...an authoritarian Liberal useful idiot...and your prose style is clunky and puerile.

...and I earn £56 a month more than you...loser...then again, I probably don't since you're clearly either Laurie Penny or her best mate in which case you're full of shit and you earn far more.

unless of course you're her PA...in which case you'll be on less than minimum wage, if memory serves...and you have my deepest sympathies.

Fri, 2011-07-01 23:50 — Mr. Divine (not verified)

What is the alternative to the Greek financial crisis? You say there is one, but what is it?