Janet Street Porter on the mumsnet 'mafia'

[atlantis]

It seems Ms Porter doesn't like mumsnet

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1251003/JANET-STREET-PORTER-This-smug-Mumsnet-mafia-wont-vote.htm l

I think she has a point.

If I was a childfree 50 something woman the last place I would want to go to is a mumsnet party wearing Boden.

Yes its another way of ensuring that MN makes the newspapers again [yawn]. Its getting a little embrassing though I'm glad that MN is my guilty secret and I never bought the t-shirt.

Loving the responses, as though JSP will actually be bothering to read them.

She IS very funny, and I have to agree with her - why on earth was she invited to what is apparently quite an exclusive party?

lol, yes, that is why i went quiet. that, and the fact that dh just cooked the Most Magnificent Fry-up Ever and i am still trying to clean fried egg yolk off the walls thanks to dd2 and the rule that when one parent cooks, the other cleans. (a rule most often adhered to when dh cooks, i note ).

anyway oh yes i am invited. mn contributor, cos of the newsletter. i don't have a single boden items and don't do stockings. whether i attend will be contingent on train prices as it'd have to be quite a paaaaarty to tempt me out of my financial hole at the mo.

I understand the inadequacy bit. Being a high achiever and feeling inadequate are far from mutually exclusive.

The funny thing about Mumsnet is that there is a yummy element, quite a large one. The I really care about big and meaningful ishoos camp is much smaller I think.

It's full of all sorts. If you were to draw a Venn diag, there would be a huge overlap on thNe competitive poncing and competitive skinting. Which is right as there are all sorts of different people here. Perhaps JSP was more fucked off by the poncing?

I have a very big sift spot for JSP.

'Why are heavyweight politicians bothering to answer trivial questions they might normally chuck in the bin?''

I thought the popint was that GB didn't answer that question.

I thought the whole article was quite balanced. And much better than old Imogen/India/Ingrid/Isobel whoever it was in whichever paper it was yesterday.

I admire her a great deal, tbh.

I haven't read this thread but memo to JSP:

I do not wear boden, I may be a tiny bit middle class and I'd like to be a yummy mummy but I have never looked at a boden catalogue in my life and I find your comments insulting and defamatory.

I only joined mumsnet when my darling 14 month old daughter died last year. It's not full of bullies and trivial stuff, it has provided my only support since she died. I owe my mental health, my career, my second pregnancy and almost my life (in my darkest days following my daughter's death, I could log on and be in a healthy fun place wih real support from people who understood)to mumsnet. It's much deeper than biscuits, trolls and boden.

And I do vote on charisma only, no policies

Oh crumpette. You have made the points I was going to make so much more powerfully.

I have been posting here, on and off, since 2004. I don't recognise "my" experience of mumsnet in any of the recent articles written about it.

I find it supportive, funny, inspiring, grounding and lots more besides.

Also, am I the only one who didn't even glance at the Gordon Brown or DavCam threads. Don't get me wrong I am engaged politically, I just didn't think there would be anything in those threads that would sway me. I wonder how effective those threads were for either of them?

you're not the only one acciopinotgrigio

Having a great big sift spot for JSP makes it sounds like I have a huge, pulsating and weeping syphallitic sore for JSP.

I have a soft spot for her.

Bibbitybobbity - I always find myself nodding at your posts.

it is fair enough
wonder why she was invited

FioFio But Mumsnet put "dress code Boden" on the invitation, so clearly it's an image they would like to see perpetuated. JSP is merely doing them a favour by throwing back the brand that they themselves refashioned (hotchpotched) and sold on.

tommy

i woudl presume its a joke.

I think most of it (the boden invite, the origami rocket) is tongue-in-cheek humour that those who are not MNers would not 'get'.

Likewise a lot of what is classed as mafioso or at worse bitching is either bad humour or playground antics. It is employed by I'd say maybe .05% of the site's 850,000 users.

The bereaved mummies thread has been my saviour this year and I owe the lovely mums on there everything*. The antenatal thread I was on kept me grounded and supported and stopped me storming out of my office in a hormonal mess. The media simply pick up on some of the rubbish on AIBU, chat etc

You know the comments people make underneath, are they all peopole from rival forums or something. There seems to be so much bile and vitriol from them and I just can't understand why they would all get so worked up about a place they never visit.

Janet street porter was always someone I quite admired. Shame. Wonder, do the Daily Mail have it in for Mumsnet since the whole mumsnet column thing?

swedes - i wondered if your soft spot for JSP was a nice peaty bog somewhere in the Highlands. She likes walking after all.

trad media is COMPLETELY threatened by the internet, totally and utterly. and with good reason, it's killing it stone dead. it needs to present us all as complete ninnies, because if we're capable, insightful people who can write, then by their logic we should be in the papers.

and look at the other end, with random celebs writing more columns (beth ditto agony aunt, for example?) journalists are seriously fucked, and i'm one of them. fortunately i am keeping my head firmly in the sand.

But not threatened by MN surely? I wouldn't read mn as an alternative to a newspaper.

The hostile coverage seems less rationally motivated than that? Just seems like the pulling down of something that has been puffed up, in the age-old cycle of celebrity creation and destruction?

agree with the dueling fanjo, they even had a go at that word didn't they?

totally threatened by MN, we are being courted in the way that the newspapers are used to being. it's terrible for papers, the ads are disappearing up the spout, numbers are down and in order to maintain profile they're investing in mahoosive websites that are nowhere near turning a profit. they're holding on by the skin of their teeth. or so they tell their employees.

plus wrt mn there is also the tall poppy thing that was ever thus, but that doesn't alter the fact that all journos doubt their career longevity.

it must be how Fatty Arbuckle et al felt when talkies came in.

and it's hard to separate parenthood out from paper-buying, but i no longer buy a daily so that's five a week i'm down.