To think allisons pearsons rant about Angela Rayner is full of nasty stereotypes about girls who are 16 and pregnant?

[Helhigh]

Well I’m not a fan of Angela Rayner and have never voted labour but Pearsons rant in the telegraph yesterday was half assumptions that Rayner must have been a bully who thumped classmates for doing their homework and distracted the class by talking about how many boys she shagged.
And of course reading books and having a child at 16 is mutually exclusive.
I don’t think Rayner has ever said she was like this Pearson has just made a load of assumptions because she was 16 and pregnant.

Anyway it’s behind a pay wall so I had to copy and paste the nasty part:

“I have noticed a tendency among politicians and commentators, particularly the posh ones, to praise Rayner’s flame-haired “authenticity”. That’s because they didn’t go to school with an Angela. Those of us who did know the harm that the Angelas do to kids from poorer homes who want to work hard and do well but whose lessons are permanently disrupted by those who don’t. The Angelas sit in the back row of the class putting on make-up, doing their nails and chatting loudly, throughout readings from the set book, about who they’ve sh---ed. They disdain the teachers who are rather scared of them.
Angelas have sex by the age of 13 (they mock those of us who are saving our virginity for later). Pregnant at 16, they leave school without any qualifications and work behind the till in Mac Fisheries before embarking on a romantic life which features at least two injunctions and a restraining order. By the age of 37, they are grandmothers (as Rayner was).
Believe me, all the kids who want to get on in life breathe an almighty sigh of relief that the Angelas have left school because now they can hand in their homework and try to pass their exams without being ridiculed or thumped by an Angela.
So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join in the applause for Angela Rayner’s vibrant “back story” and her ascent to the top of government through militant trade unionism. The working-class kids I admire often came from difficult council-house homes, as Rayner did, but they clung on to education like a life raft. Or they saw a job opportunity and grasped it with both hands. They did that old-fashioned thing called bettering themselves”

I thought Allison Pearson’s piece was BANG ON.

You know that being a woman doesn’t automatically make you a good or bad person, right? Cunts come in both sexes.

I get that some people like her but expecting nobody to criticise her because she had a vagina is ridiculous. Contrary to the beliefs of some people on here, the sisterhood doesn’t exist and never has done.

That says rather more about you than about the article.

Well that isn’t very nice to say to someone who might be a woman, is it?

Good for you. Not really a surprise that you think that though.😉

That’s a gross misrepresentation of what Pearson and some of the posters here have done. Criticism is fine. Fabrication is not. It’s unfair to confect a narrative in order to criticise.

Does it, now.

Then I shall continue - Rayner is that toxic combination of thick, grasping, deceitful, over-promoted, anti-intellectual, and incompetent.

A truly awful human being who does no favours to women.

Should she become PM, then god help the UK (I am no longer a tax resident, but it’s a terrible thing to witness).

Yes I remember her being a better sort of journalist and seemingly a nicer person if you like.

Yes this stuff is what pays well as its what many want to read.

You may have missed my question to you on the previous page. Asking again!
PS am not a huge AR fan but don’t agree with AP here at all.

Do you think it’s ok to make up lies about her childhood and then vilify her for that? Simple question.

And what is the relevance of this statement? Nobody here has said AR should not be criticised. We are simply saying she should be criticised on her actions (proven ones, not ones confirmed by a former Tory PM to not have happened), not on what she might possibly have been like at age 16 (and this last has already been refuted by her former headmaster).

Anyone agreeing with this Allison Pearson piece is as bad as she is - a misogynist, classist snob.

So you think it's OK to lie about someone and then smear them by pretending those lies are true. Got it.

Politicians and journos are all the scum of the earth and deserve each other - none of them would know the truth if it hit them in the face. So no I don’t like either of them.

It is a yucky fantasy piece about 13 year old and 16 year old girls having sex. It has a jealous tone and is written for loud guffaws from privileged Telegraph readers.

Let me put it this way - up thread, a vulgarity has already been used to describe the female genitalia.

I think Rayner is a cunt. A magnificent cunt, in fact.

I do wonder if what is purported in this article is entirely baseless or based on any real knowledge about Angela Rayner's formative years. However, many of the tropes mentioned in the article do unfortunately ring true.

The "Angela" at my school and her cronies bullied me and others relentlessly. I attended a state school in a relatively affluent area, but the "popular" bullies who essentially ruled the roost were all from working class backgrounds- not the sort where working was the priority. They smoked, plastered their faces in make up, boasted about their sexual escapades, drank in the street and made people's lives hell. The Angela at my school is now my age (early 30's) with an 18 year old son and multiple other kids with a different dad. Her friends all have kids, some by multiple men. Sixth form was far more pleasant after they departed to pastures newer but not so green.

I look at them with some amusement now, stuck in their hometown, much fatter and struggling to feed their multiple kids on minimum wage jobs. Angela et all are part of the reason why I would never consider sending my children to a state school if I chose to have them.

Why do you think that?

Rayner’s headmaster, Ian Tunnard, suggested she was his shadow. She was the one bullied.

‘He has strong recollections of Rayner, calling her a ‘little shadow’, because she was a semi-permanent fixture by his side during lunch and break times – particularly, he believes, from the age of 13 or 14. The reason?
She needed to be protected from other children.
‘Things were difficult for her. She was bullied. She came to tell me, though, and I gave her a place of safety. I wasn’t aware who I was protecting her from – she never told me that.
‘I understood why. In her case, there was a very real possibility that she would have had to walk home with those same protagonists, and I wouldn’t be there to protect her then. I could not make sure she was safe around the clock. She was clearly vulnerable, because she came from a very difficult, deprived background.’

Quote from Lord Ashcrofts book.

Criticise her all you like. I haven’t seen anyone saying that you shouldn’t. I’m not a fan, and I believe politicians should be held to the highest standards. But I will not tolerate rampant misogyny like that Pearson piece and nor should anyone else who calls themselves any kind of feminist.

So you're afraid to admit that you think it is OK to make up lies about someone and then smear them based on those lies. You may as well say it.

Carry on arguing with yourself - I have made my point.

Nope, you've just obfuscated.

Seriously? So what are you going to do to show you don’t tolerate it?

As for feminism. AR fawned over the trans lobby so I would argue that she isn’t a feminist given that she doesn’t give a shit about the rights of women and girls.

You can bet that I could not have cared less about their miserable home lives. I truly wished them ill. I was so terrified of them that I bunked off to avoid them. My grades suffered and I truly believe their treatment of me contributed to my lifelong anxiety issues. Their male counterparts were just as bad, I recall one of them undoing my bra through my shirt. The teachers hardly noticed and did nothing. I think they were also intimidated by them.

But none of this is about Rayner. Her headmaster has said she was bullied by others because she was from a deprived background.

Angela Rayner has done very well, how dare she.

People should strive to do well, just not Angela Rayner.

Horrible thread, but expected.