Penny Red

This blog now updates at http://www.penny-red.com/ . It's been a fun four years at blogspot, but the new site is much shinier. Update your bookmarks! :)

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/05/this-blog-has-moved.html

As you can see, I'm still in New York, I have a marvellous new hat, and here is another round-up post. This month I've been writing about, amongst other things, sex, politics, the future, ne...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/04/men-sex-journalism-armageddon-and.html

(Image via The Daily Beast) Things that Jean-Jacques Rousseau really liked included: the philosophy of universal liberty, and having young ladies spank him into a frenzy. In "The Confessions",...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/04/chains-of-oppression-katie-roiphe-lena.html

"24 NOTES The Tsolakoglou government has literally wiped out my ability to survive, based on a decent pension which I paid for myself over 35 years with no help from the state. If one Greek ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/04/in-syntagma-square.html

I write and publish a great deal these days, and sometimes, like this week, there'll be a publication run where pieces I'm reasonably proud of will come out almost every day. Not only do I no...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-write-and-publish-great-deal-these.html

In some ways it was the first place I ever knew. Seventeen, sick and living in a box-room belonging to an octogenarian friend of the family, every day once I was just about well enough not to hav...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2012/02/love-letter-for-london.html

Well, I arrived in New York, where I'm staying for a month, just in time to see the Occupy Wall Street camp torn down by the NYPD. You can read what I wrote about it for the Guardian, here (comm...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-website-new-city-new-post.html

Mic check? Mic check! Ok... Right now, I know that things are tense. I know that you're waiting for the word on whether or not you will be evicted from Liberty Plaza tomorrow, from the beautifu...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/10/dear-occupy-wall-street.html

My third report from Occupy Wall Street, from yesterday's Independent. ****** They said it could never happen in America. At the foot of Wall Street, in the belly of the beast of aggressive m...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-is-patriotic-marching-on-wall.html

I'm in New York, reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests. This was my first report for the New Statesman ; you can also find my coverage at The Independent . *** The big bronze bull is sur...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/10/bringing-down-wall-occupy-wall-street.html

Well, I'm back.* I spent two weeks on a tiny, beautiful ship, pitching and tossing in the middle of the high Arctic. I met a polar bear, a whale, some reindeer, several fat seals, an arctic fox, ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/09/news-from-nowhere-2.html

I've left London, and I am sailing to a new island that has appeared out of the ice in the Arctic circle. No, this is not a prank. I've been invited along with an eclectic collection of academics...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/09/news-from-nowhere.html

A drunk woman in a bright yellow tabard that marks her a right-wing organiser is crying on the pavement, as a yelling man is cuffed by the police inside a closed betting shop on Minories Street. ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/09/one-sunny-september-day-edl-march-in.html

I don't normally like to do this sort of thing, but the good people at Pluto Press have reminded me that unless I get off my tiny backside and actually tell people about this book of columns we'v...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/book-of-blog-and-why-im-not-going-on.html

I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

In Greece, they raise their hands. In Iraq, they throw their shoes. In Britain, we throw pies. This probably says a lot about us as a nation. Like everyone else, when I saw young comedian Jonnie ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/07/of-pies-and-circuses.html

A much-needed holiday, which of course means that I'm running about like a blue-arsed Tory SPAD trying to mop up all the little bits of things I hadn't had time to do for ages. Like some of th...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/05/books-etc.html

I wrote about UKUncut, the intimidation of protesters, and what that says about the government's confidence in its own spending plans, in the Independent today. Read it here .

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/05/from-persuasion-to-coercion.html

I can't help but notice that it seems to be the fashion nowadays to up one's blog hits by writing random, ad-feminam 'let's hate on Laurie Penny' posts. My response to today's 'in defence of' pos...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/05/asking-for-it.html

I am in the process of trying to write an article for ADBUSTERS about 'Revolution in the UK'. The question I was set - "can it happen here like it happened in Tahrir Square?"- is broad and, I...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/04/riots-and-romance-thoughts-on.html

Hello, the blog. It’s been a very strange few months. Things have been moving fast and, due to an auspicious combination of luck, class privilege, working twelve-hour days and being in the righ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/02/notebook-responsibility-and-writing.html

Please note: I have received over four hundred applications; I am working through them as fast as I can, and will get back to everyone by the end of this week. Thank you to everyone who took the ...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/01/filthy-assistant-required-please-help.html

Good lord, a whole month - that's the longest I've gone for three years without updating this blog. It got to the stage where the guilt was festering away like a delicious and quite important san...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/10/its-been-while.html

Now the Pope has gone home, the left needs to rediscover the courage of its convictions. The atmosphere amongst the liberal left in the aftermath of the Pope's state visit to Britain calls to m...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/09/lessons-from-pope-protest.html

For months, feminists have been trying to untangle the complex knot of racism, imperialism and misogyny that is the Sabbar Kashur case, in which an Arab man was sentenced to 18 months imprisonmen...

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2010/09/zionism-chauvinism-and-rape-culture.html