Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent thinks Mumsnet is shallow and self-interested... what do you think?

[JustineMumsnet]

From today's Independent:

Look at the immensely powerful Mumsnet website and some other copycat ones and there is barely any mention of (or fundraising for) the famines in East Africa where mothers push dry breasts into the limp mouths of babies as they die. Jeremy Clarkson wrote an abominable column last week on these starving children. Where is the famous Mumsnet battalion to slap him down? Not much about domestic violence either, or any serious take on the policies of the Coalition government which are leading to unprecedented numbers of female redundancies. They are low-paid and therefore, I suppose, not part of the cosy circle, a Starbucks for the right kind of mummies. But if you want to know about skiing with babies, its all there, plus very efficient guilt cleaning for working ladies and buckets of advice for SAHMs (stay-at-home mums).

You can see the whole article here

Clearly a slow news day for her............

Pathetic really. All she has managed to do is draw attention to the fact that she didn't bother to do her research properly.

Now, off you pop, there's a love .

And lMAO at middle class
I would not chew my arm off, I'd GIVE mya rm to be middle class! I;ve got the degree and the rest of it, it's a certain style and presence I will never. ever get- tehre's no way anyone will ever mistake me for being priveledged.

On the other hand I had betetr retain that arm: I remember offering someone my legs the other day if they woudl take the boy's disability and allow me to work so I might need the arm to wheel myself about

And threads like the one ATM about toddler AIBU are great innocent fun, and great innocent fun is never a bad thing. Especially when it is calorie free.

^"Jeremy Clarkson wrote an abominable column last week on these starving children"

Is that the one that Nunontherun just linked to?^

@MmeLindor:
It was the closest I could find to Y A-B's description.

It's not just me then who thinks it was quite a good, thought-provoking article by JC ? I think it was heavily lain with what might be called irony. Looks like Y-A-B (Yes, you are being !) didn't get it. He even finishes by saying he would do the photo shoot on the rubbish tip if he thought it would help at all (if I read him right) Quite sensitive by Clarkson's standards. (Has improved my opinion of him, even if he does think climate change is inevitable, and car driving is a given)

Nope, not just you, juggling. Was pleasantly surprised, so not sure what YAB's banging on about. A different article?

Love your name SanctiMoanyArse Is it new for this thread ?
Genius
We can teach you everything you might possibly want to know if you stick around long enough ...
From skiing babies to how to order a strawberry frappucino from Starbucks!

''In a two-hour walk I didn't see a single girl under the age of 18.
"They don't survive," said our guide'

How the hell can anyone complain about that article? It made me cry. It's quite possibly the first bit of sense that I have ever heard from the man- and somehow it is brilliant.

charity is utterly fantastic: I worked in that sector, I have seen kid's lives changed and people helped to have calm and happy deaths. But there are palces in this worlkd far beyond what we can imagine and what we try adn do isn't working. Charity is good- better to do soemthing than anothing, my boys used to fundraise at their primary and I was very proud of them for it (another Quaker with a cake stall here) but iisn't even toucing the bottom. To an extent I am not sure our charity even works on the same model as what is needed in some parts of Africa.

Juggling it's Peachy, this one gets hidden away for brief spells but I love it.

I've just read the clarkson interview and even though I think he's a knob I don't know where she's coming from when she says it's abominable...what he's writing about is abominable but I was actually taken aback by how refreshingly Frank and honest his article is. I also take exception to her labelling the discussions people have on mums net as shallow. Why? Because she says so? People can talk about and discuss whatever they want surely?! I find it very judgemental and ironically another thing that women are made to feel guilty about!! "hey, mums netters, how dare you have discussions about your meaningless, shallow lives and concerns!! Don't you know you should be in a constant state of anxiety and turmoil over all the horrendous things that happen in the WORLD?!" oh, piss off!!! I do my bit and I regularly donate and I consider myself to be reasonably well informed. If I wanna post about the bug a boo bee plus then I bloody well will!! Raspberry.

Sancti - couldn't agree with you more about the clarkson article.

Hi sinister. We did have a link to the Red Nose Day donation site on the home page, and something on the Campaigns page as well (I think it was a toolkit for children who wanted to fundraise). It's Sport Relief next year, and I'm sure we'll be doing something!

I quite like being shallow - makes a change from running the house and being the main breadwinner

Exactly, Sanctimoanyarse. I don't think that Clarkson has ever made me cry before.

Very well written, to the point and without emotional blackmail or fluffyness.

I am Sue and I am a lazy bitch

I have never been to Starbucks but I do find this kind of 'journalism' tedious and irritating. Is there anything more utterly dismal than a wannabe Liz Jones? Way to set the bar at ankle-height, Yasmin.

mn is a range of people posting range of opinions and experiences
some of it will be thought provoking and worthy
some of it will be froth
she not completely wrong.but she not completely right ether. mn so big you can find a plethora of posts from gosh where can one get a bilingual nanny or a discussion about brain plasticity and genfder stereotyping,to calls for participants for a research dissertation in attachment theories

if you only read style and beauty youd think it was all which foundation ,which primer dilemmma

if you read only aibu youd think its all aggro and hissy op who wont be told

i read her article, and it is a bit rich her calling anyone shallow. It consisted of slagging off films she does not like, then whinging about an internet forum she does not like. her reasoning, people should not moan because in other countries there is starvation, and in my day it was worse. A really orginal idea.
Oddly she does not write anything in her article about domestic violence, the struggles in famine ridden countries, she just says other people should write about them, make films about them etc

Actually, in the last week:

DH did a skydive to raise funds for a school in Africa
I am gathering up possible educational (2nd hand) toys for as school in Sri Lanka that someone we know will sponsor
I am planning how to distribute a bunch of leaflets for a talk about Green party policies
One or both of my regular DDs to WaterAID/MSF probably went out

But hey ho, I didn't start a thread to raise awareness about it all. Or say much on Facebook about these activites. Or campaign on the High Street. I just quietly got on with it. Slap my wrist for not self-publicising my altruistic activities and talking about banal and self-interested stuff on MN, instead.

Well, Jeremy Clarkson has just gone up several thousand notches in my estimation, so YAB's column has achieved something that many would have thought impossible, even if not what she wanted to achieve. I thought that was a very good article and was actually impressed at how JC traded on his own perceived knobbishness to draw the reader in.

I like jezza.

Mumsnet is deep if you want to go there.

Whoever says different obviously hasn't been here.

It does seem somewhat self-interested and shallow for MNHQ to start this thread.

MN is a business, let's not be naive about that. This is not a charity website. So, any publicity is probably good publicity. That includes drawing attention to what YAB said about MN being influential.

I can't decide if YAB (in bemoaning that an "influential" website should follow her agenda), is being either touchingly Naive or displaying annoying traits of self-importance. :(

Fuck me, I've just read that Jeremy Clarkson article (can't afford to go behind the paywall)

That was a hundred times more powerful than anything I've read by YAB recently.

I don't think she understand the point of MN. I have a foster child in Africa with monthly donations, I give my time for other charities-I don't do it through MN. I do give advice-sometimes people are very grateful-sometimes they are just irritated-it is a debate.