Owen Jones hasn’t stopped producing groundbreaking journalistic output since announcing his new “Vote Against Labour” initiative. His latest piece in The Guardian yesterday argued for cuts to defence spending and scrapping Trident, using such high-grade arguments as: “It is true that Nato membership calls for arms spending of at least 2% of GDP, but in practice most states flout that.” That settles it, then…
Owen included damning final evidence in his polemic:
“As the House of Commons Defence Select Committee concluded: ‘The only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it.’”
The only problem? Jones has misattributed the quote to the Committee as opposed to its actual author, which is Greenpeace, in one evidence session in 2006. The quote does in fact appear as the conclusion of the Defence Committee, though only on a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament leaflet. Judge a journalist by the quality of his sources…
Owen defended himself last night by blaming the error on his teeth: “I had dental surgery this week, which has left me a bit of a groggy mess…Basically I don’t have any wisdom teeth.” Hope he’s got BUPA…
Corbynite luvvie Owen Jones has made a shock announcement in The Guardian – naturally – that he has cancelled his membership to the Labour party after 24 years. Cue cries of Labour adopting Tory economics and their stance on Gaza “adding moral indecency to dishonest & vacuity.” So brave…
Guido’s sure Starmer will be gutted with the news that he’ll no longer have the hard-left commentator parroting questionable arguments on his side. Boy Jones has instead set up a new campaign called We Deserve Better to supposedly “send Labour a message”. Guido wonders if he’s actually been looking at the polls…
He may already have fallen at the first hurdle though. On the website, which calls on his comrades to cough up some cash, there’s no cookie policy and their disclaimer is invalid. Looking forward to a lawsuit from Jolyon…
Now then, me thinks the lady doth protest too much…
Yesterday afternoon, The Guardian asked for women in the UK to come forward and share their experiences of being “subjected to online misogyny”. Let’s take a look at how some of the 1,553 replies shaped up:
- “Does a pile on started by Owen Jones which ended with a man local to me developing a fixation on me & leaving me scared to leave the house count?” – Victoria Freeman
- “Owen Jones” – Julie Bindel
- “What, even when it involves your columnists?” – Emma Burnell
- “Well I cancelled my Guardian subscription because I was sick and tired of your biased reporting on gender ideology, which endangers women. Does that count?” – FletchFletchington
- “You removed JK Rowling from your list of celebrity birthdays because her support for women’s rights upset the incels in your IT department” – Simon Edge
- “Ask the female journalists you drove out of their jobs. If you can remember what ‘female’ means.” – Sarah Phillimore
- “There was the time a clownish far-Left publication insisted birthing bodies & chestfeeding were ‘inclusive’ terms. Gross.” – Rita Panagi
- “Is this an all staff email?” – Goody TwoShoes
- “You mean Owen Jones? Glad you finally got there.” – Frances Barber
- “Well, there’s this newspaper I used to read every issue of and then they decided to join a misogynist, science denialist cult and now every day I have to see articles from their journalists pretending women aren’t real anymore…” – Shambolic Neutral KPSS
- “How about the time a newspaper referred to women as menstrators? Which paper would insult women so horribly!? Think real hard. Give up? IT WAS YOU!!!” – Laura Marcus
- “Remember those articles you published about the Wi Spa incident, making out women and girls being exposed to a naked sex offender in the changing rooms were bigots?” – Andrea Paterson
- “I’ve had an awful amount of abuse, and a pile on orchestrated by your Owen Jones, who is really quite a horrific nasty bully.” – Red Tory
- “Just look to Owen Jones’s timeline & replies & write an article about that.” – Sall Grover
- “Seeing you get rid of Suzanne Moore and other female writers so you could keep misogynist opinion and misogynists like Owen Jones. You are truly the nastiest most anti-women paper in the UK.” – Lottie Lewis
You get the idea…
Stationery giant Paperchase has fallen into administration today, having failed to find a buyer for its 106 shops across the country. Tesco is only buying the brand and intellectual property, leaving 800 or so jobs at risk.
Guido’s old enough to remember when Paperchase faced a vicious backlash from angry customers in 2017, after bowing to pressure from anti-press freedom cranks not to advertise in the Daily Mail. At the time, one Owen Jones declared it “another victory against hatred”, and claimed the reaction was evidence of “a rightwing press lashing out from its death spiral”…
Today MailOnline reports on the death spiral of Paperchase, and the Daily Mail continues to sell millions of copies per year. As always: go woke, go broke…
Guido has previously reported on Owen Jones raking in the big bucks from his cash-for-access online entrepreneurship. How times change, now it seems that even Owen isn’t immune to the cost of living crisis, as his Patreon subscriber numbers have since plummeted. He’s currently sat on 1,000 patrons, down from a peak of 1,942 – a decrease of around 49%. Based on the cost of his lower tier subscriptions of £3-10 per month (they range up to £100), Owen’s losing out between £2,800 and £9,420 per month. Cheerleadling for Jez doesn’t go down so well when Sir Keir is riding high in the polls…
Owen’s pockets aren’t the only thing taking a hit from his haemorrhaging donations. His ego also seems to have sustained some bruising as he’s since switched his Patreon stats to private.
Although the champagne socialist may soon have to switch to Prosecco, he can still count on his 1,000 patrons to bring in at least £36,000 per year. This is in addition to the book royalties, Guardian column and YouTube revenue. Poor Owen…
