[Philip Marlow]

For the record, I did get the Animal Farm reference. Just wasn’t sure who’d originated the comparison. I suspect at least a part of my antipathy to it is that I keep seeing it used by people who I suspect dearly need to read another book.

Having had a quick root round, I may have been mistaken re him supporting Smith. I’m sure I remember him doing so - and he’s certainly had endless shit for betraying the Corbyn faith at one point - but I’ll happily concede that I may have been wrong there.

[Philip Marlow]

Mother of the gods lads, calm down. The young Owen is known to drink at the Lexington from time to time (never seen him there: good pub) and has been infamously belaboured on the premises in his time. If anyone would like to have a go at bolstering their hard bastard credentials I can provide directions.

As Oz points out he is an actual war correspondant currently in a war zone. Getting into a fight in the Lexington is not quite the same thing .

He didn’t ‘get into a fight’ though, did he? He got jumped. And I suspect that if a journalist who was more ‘one of us’ in mainstream medialand terms had been attacked by some far right loon there might have been a tad more made of it.

Fun fact: the guy who went for Jones kicked things off, literally, by kicking him in the back. I mean be a neo-Nazi if you must, but don’t be a coward while you’re at it.

[Bones McCoy]

Mother of the gods lads, calm down. The young Owen is known to drink at the Lexington from time to time (never seen him there: good pub) and has been infamously belaboured on the premises in his time. If anyone would like to have a go at bolstering their hard bastard credentials I can provide directions.

As Oz points out he is an actual war correspondant currently in a war zone. Getting into a fight in the Lexington is not quite the same thing .

He didn’t ‘get into a fight’ though, did he? He got jumped. And I suspect that if a journalist who was more ‘one of us’ in mainstream medialand terms had been attacked by some far right loon there might have been a tad more made of it.

Fun fact: the guy who went for Jones kicked things off, literally, by kicking him in the back. I mean be a neo-Nazi if you must, but don’t be a coward while you’re at it.

Jones isn't my flavour of left, but I remain appalled at the attack.
These days I'd likely be just as appalled if an unpleasant Mail columnist were assaulted.
Mainly because I think we're better than that - and I expect Littlejohn's diet to do the job for us.

As for Neo Nazis and cowards, I find the two often exist in parallel.
A gobby and fighty bunch in large Stella powered crowds.
Prone to "making their excuses and leaving" when you stand up and look them in the eye.

[The Weeping Angel]

Mother of the gods lads, calm down. The young Owen is known to drink at the Lexington from time to time (never seen him there: good pub) and has been infamously belaboured on the premises in his time. If anyone would like to have a go at bolstering their hard bastard credentials I can provide directions.

As Oz points out he is an actual war correspondant currently in a war zone. Getting into a fight in the Lexington is not quite the same thing .

He didn’t ‘get into a fight’ though, did he? He got jumped. And I suspect that if a journalist who was more ‘one of us’ in mainstream medialand terms had been attacked by some far right loon there might have been a tad more made of it.

Fun fact: the guy who went for Jones kicked things off, literally, by kicking him in the back. I mean be a neo-Nazi if you must, but don’t be a coward while you’re at it.

Ok so he was attacked. It still doesn't change the fact that he's having a go at an actual war correspondent who's living in an actual war zone by claiming that he's fighting a war with people on twitter. So yeah he was rightly put in his place.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've stood up for him sometimes on here, but this is pretty spectacularly stupid. You can hate misgendering and cracking trans gags (parents of dead trans woman present or not) while also believing in sex in the sense Starmer does here. I reckon a fair few of the population lie somewhere in this territory.