New blog for New Statesman

So you guys: I've been wheedled away to write a blog for New Statesman with the promise of enough cash to keep me in gin and ribbons for a while. It's all been a bit touch and go, so I didn't want to announce until it was certain, but for the next few months Penny Red will largely be moving to New Statesman online - here. The site isn't finished yet, hence at time of writing my lovely new blogroll mysteriously contains Alastair Campbell.

I will be writing about - well, the same sort of things I write about already, feminism, youth politics, socialism, pop culture. It will all be cross-posted to here under a cut, so the discussion can continue here and at the Staggers. I'll have to run everything by the editors until such time as they're confident that I'm not going to get drunk and post pictures of my bum, so if there's ever anything that needs an immediate response - or anything a bit too heartfelt for the Staggers - that'll be appearing on here too. So, this is by no means goodbye, just a sabbatical. They want me to post 3-4 times a week, too, which is very exciting and also a little bit scary, so expect the content here to go up rather suddenly.

So there's no need to update yr feeds, but I'd rather you did, and I'd love it if people could occasionally link to or comment at the NS blog, simply because if all goes well and there's lots of traffic then I might be assured a more permanent source of income. Blackmail is such an ugly word.

This is, of course, absolutely the worst time for this nice thing to have happened, being that I'm still living out of a suitcase, recovering from a battered heart and attempting to settle into a new job at Morning Star. But I've come to understand that this is always the way of things, that hard work happens when it happens and all you can do is step up to it. I am going to be relying on those who know me in real life to remind me that cigarettes replace neither meals nor sleep. I suspect there shan't be time for many frisbee competitions this summer, but really, does this face look like the sort that enjoys the sunkissed look?

My first column is about Sex and the City and the death of shoes-and-shopping feminism. Enjoy.