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 also am a bit about the guest list for this party. Instead of being a celebratory party for the users of MN (kind of like the Christmas do), it seems to be a party to generate more publicity and editorial pages written about it. Makes me feel that perhaps the future direction of MN is veering away from being user driven to something else.

Hilarious that she was invited at all.

A childless journo with no affiliation to MN whatsoever.

Yet I'm not surprised, on another thread, Helen from MNtowers confirmed that various politicians and journos had been invited ( though she said it would be those who had been 'supportive' of MN.')

To be fair, JSP makes a fair point. The politicians are convinced that women will win the next election for them and are honing in on MN as some sort of easy access to voters.
Justine et al are playing a blinder by milking this for all it's worth. Good on you I say, when all thios has died a death MN will have doubled its membership and ad revenue will increase accordingly.

I just started a thread for afantasy guestlist

Not desperate, twinset, just good business, no?

And let's not forget that this is what MN is - a business. We might like to fool ourselves into thinking this is some quasi charitable-counselling-political forum. It's not.

What we post, is incedental to us actually being here and making up the numbers for sponsorship.

This isn't a critisism by the way. I run a website myself that has a similar function - though not for parents. Tis bums on seats that count. And if the punters enjoy themselves/are helped etc all well and good. But thta's not its main purpose for me.

I hope they five her place to someone who get's mn. I agree she didn't understand the boden joke, no-one would unless they were a regular.

Well I'm not middle class but I am over 40 and single with a teen. So just fit her stereotype. I agree that anyone who looks at/lives life which alternates from the cosy married, middle class norm can be bullied on here. Happens to me regularly, but I still stick around.

'Give' not 'five'.

The problem is, she has a point. It's very true that Mumsnet is a great source of information and can be really supportive and helpful, which is why I joined and stay. But there is also a lot of middle-classness, snipy/snippy sniggering at people, and stuff like that - there's a bunch of people on here who are the adult versions of the girls who made my life miserable at school and put me off women.

And even though that's the minority of posting, it has a powerful presence and puts people who aren't like that off. so they miss out on the good stuff.

If you removed every post with a in it, and anything that says ... it would all be much pleasanter.

what gets me about this sort of journalism is the outrageous hypocrisy of it. 'Comfortable middle-class' they sneer, as though journos for national dailies live starving in garetts these days. Wearers of 'uniform' items of supposed fashion they whine(here is JSP at a Philip Treacy show, nice if you can afford couture lovey, but few of us can), though I very much doubt they go about clothed in items sourced from Tescos, Asda and charity shops. I doubt this little number was one of those lucky starting bids on Ebay... though possibly she thinks she isn't party to sleb fashion luvvy-ism because she wore it twice. Politicians shouldn't look to specific partial groups of the popululus for support (such as, say, mothers) they cry. whilst currently an even smaller group of people (ie journalists) hold a disproportionate level of influence over the politics of the day.

Basically the average journo probably only writes this stuff in a state of total blindness to what they are, or in complete cynicism. The next one to call me middle-class gets a slap.**not because i am not middle class, 40% of the population or thereabouts is, but because they use it as a derogatory term for someone they view as richer and less liberal than they are. I am poorer and more liberal.

I lost a lot of respect for JSP when she wrote something in the Indie saying how shocked she was the children started school unable to read or some such drivel. Made me quite cross.

snurk. what did she think children go to school to learn then?

One suspects JSP is from a gobby family that loves words both spoken and chained to the page, as a v. gobby and literary lady herself - and can't imagine things being otherwise as still being ok.

actually more people think they are WC than really are. see this article in the times...

The uk is a rather affluent country, and of course, wealth is just one consideration....

anyway, my point is that MC covers people from the ranks of the unemployed to highly paid lawyers, and journos seem to look at the highly paid lawyers and say 'oh they are such fecking MC snobs, they aren't real and down to earth like me' whilst doing very nicely thank you themselves - and very greatly better than the average MC person.....

it strikes me as 'one downmanship' for a journo to use the term in a derogatory fashion, as though they are in some way underprivelidged. that is what bothers me about it. Journalists stike me as a rather priveledged bunch, on the whole, who don't appreciate what they have....

I like Janet Street Porter. She talks a lot of sense.Plus I agree with most of what she says on this article too.

She does hit the MN stereotype nail on its head though, you have to admit.

I agree fiofio, I think that there is an element of posters clinging to the middle-class stereotype because they like the label (whether or not they are middle class or not).

And those that doth protest too much about being working class, when in fact, they also like the middle class association. Even if it's try and prove to everyone that they are equal or better. There is a strange dynamic with the class issue on here.