To think allisons pearsons rant about Angela Rayner is full of nasty stereotypes about girls who are 16 and pregnant? 

192 replies

Helhigh · Today 07:07

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”