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”

There used to be some really good journalism in it, leaving it's political leanings out of the equation. Like so many broadsheets the standards have really gone downhill.

Thanks for posting that.

It is sad that decades later she is still being bullied by the likes of Pearson.

Makes no difference to some on here that Rayner was the one bullied.

I hope she doesn't see it as bullying but rather the sad rantings of a woman who, deep down, hates herself more than anyone else.

Indeed, I just think that Alison Pearson is being quite lazy and click baity in applying a stereotype to frame AR in a specific way. So yes, it does not go anywhere near serious conversations one might expect in a more responsible bit of journalism

She's really playing to the Telegraph demographic there with her teen mum/pothole combo.

Honestly these people would peddle turds if they thought there was a quid in it for them.

You are right I mean I lost my virginity at 15 not 13. So that’s another stereotype about teen mums that they must have lost their virginity super young. I think anyone losing it at 13 is most likely a victim of abuse by an older man and her language around that is disgraceful

She was deputy PM because, generally speaking (although not absolutely always - Brown didn’t have a deputy PM), the deputy Labour leader is deputy PM. She was deputy Labour leader because she was elected by the party members.

You say most senior politicians are there through merit - I think they are there because they effectively appeal to their party’s demographic, and so are either elected by them, or appointed by party leaders who think they will boost support. AR clearly appealed to the Labour Party members.

If we’re discussing tax fraud by politicians we most definitely do.

Allison Pearson’s work has always disgusted me, it’s click bait for smug, self satisfied, middle class Tory women. She’s of the same ilk as Nadine Dorries, they both worship at Johnson’s feet.

Alison Pearson used to be a BBC 2 “chattering head” type person back in the 90s/early 2000s and has morphed into a “Daily Mail Hate-type”.

I know people tend to get more mildly right-wing as they get older, but hers is an extreme case.

Nope. I believe in a meritocracy. But keep throwing your childish labels around.

By contrast look at Kemi Badenoch, where she is through merit, not the PLP's box ticking exercises.

You honestly can't believe AR (was) in her post through merit? Open your eyes!!

I think it happens because as certain people get older they realise time is running out and they are not going to get everything they feel entitled to. They feel enraged that people they don't consider 'worthy' - lower class people, immigrants, whatever - might get things that they didn't get. Rather than look at their own failings or shrug and say 'that's life' they start to target the people they feel 'stole' what was due to them.

It's really sad.

Do you believe Boris Johnson became PM through merit?

Fair point, well made.

No but this thread is about AR.

And women on Mumsnet.

Can you provide any evidence for either of these points? Thinking in terms of their political careers as a whole.

You are the one who brought up meritocracy, so the point is relevant based on the topic you introduced.

We're talking about Rayner, it's in the OP. Tice / Reform don't need to be brought into it. I guess thats what Labour supporters do - deflect to Reform Constantly. Their own party is indefensible so they go on the attack.

Fwiw I don't like Labour or Rayner but I can see that article is truly awful. I don't know the journalist but as a piece of writing it's particularly poor quality, however it doesn't change facts about AR (her tax evasion).

Angela Rayner is the pits. I agree that women who hold her up as some sort of paragon of achievement never had to deal with her ilk. The feminism of low expectations. Shudder.

When AR made her comments about making bojo uncomfortable by showing off "her growler" whilst sitting opposite him in the house of commens and Lammy claimed that men can grow a cervix by taking hormones and called women who want actual single sex spaces "rights hoarding dinosaurs" its not misogynistic, racist or classist to say neither of them got their positions by merit and are not fit to be MPs let alone DMP, its a sad fact and evidence of the lack of standards in politics these days

I really would like to see Rayner sue Pearson’s arse for this. It’s unbelievable that it got past The Telegraph’s lawyers.

"Her ilk"

Do you think its acceptable or responsible for a journalist to claim that some demographics of female children are preoccupied with sex? To create a link being WC and exhibiting some challenging behaviour with being obsessed with having sex whilst still a child?
This is exactly the stereotyping that predisposes the most vulnerable girls in our society to CSA and creates barriers to apprehending the perpetrators.

Totally agree