Invincible Ignorance

Polly Toynbee on "chavs" :

"Wrapped inside this little word is the quintessence of Britain's great social fracture. Over the last 30 years the public monstering of a huge slice of the population by luckier, better-paid people has become commonplace. This is language from the Edwardian era of unbridled snobbery. When safely reproduced in Downton Abbey, as the lady sneering at the scullery maid or the landowner bullying his workers, we are encouraged to look back smugly as if these shocking class differences were long gone. The form and style may have changed – but the reality of extreme inequality and self-confident class contempt is back...

Chav is used to mix together anyone of low status the speaker wishes to despise - and that includes the entire working class - on matters of taste as well as morals. Just go to the dreadful ChavTowns site and see how the two are elided."

Polly is so far off the truth you wonder if her ignorance is deliberate. She hears some posh person (in this case a Lib Dem politico tweeting unwisely) using the term and conjures up a conspiracy to demonise an entire working class.

The contributors to ChavTowns are overwhelmingly themselves working class people (and by the spelling and grammar, people who have been failed by our comprehensive system).

Working class people detest the chav/underclass far more than middle or upper-middle class people do, because they live among them and are exposed to their behaviour on a daily basis. That's why the contributions to ChavTowns are so bitter, angry and heartfelt.

Polly Toynbee comes out in support of Miliband

The David Miliband CiF piece which launched his 'leadership bid' received over 850 comments, nearly all negative. The polls say Miliband would be less popular than Brown. As I've already said, Miliband is one of the the few people compared to whom GB looks like Mr Ordinary Bloke.

Now Poll Pot has come out for Miliband, sounding pretty much like she did a year ago, coming out for Gordon Brown. Perhaps more breathless and girlish, if anything :

Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.

David Miliband stepped up as the man with a plan to take the fight to the Tories, the man to free the party from the bondage of disastrous leadership. With the deftest of brush strokes in his Guardian article, he painted the policies of optimism ... here was a sketched outline of radical policies. Judging from an avalanche of emails pouring in, out there Labour people are ready to return if the party offers something better.

He set a small stone rolling down the hill, its effect unpredictable: already it has become a boulder. His press conference and performance on the Jeremy Vine Show gave his party the chance to look at him in a new light. His breezy ease ... he dismissed suspicion that this silver-spoon-fed political princeling hadn't the guts to reach for the sword in the stone, nor the muscle, the will or the street-fighting canniness for power.

Downing Street's crude retaliations - "immature self-serving traitor" - were tossed away with a smile.

Blimey. A new champion steps forth. Dungeons, princelings and swords. Who is that lonely maiden in the tower, her fair hands embroidering a Trades Council banner ?

Polly, Polly, let down your long hair !

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

Or maybe :

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

As usual the comments are the best. This one is perfect :

If one believed Pollyana, (a far-fetched notion, I admit), Brown was a winning combination of Solon, Merlin and Max Planck. I and many others at the time pointed out the absurdity of Pollyana's analysis. That Brown was just more of the same. He was a man who had marched in lock-step with the discredited Blairite Project every inch of the way. But, alas, Pollyana was giddy with love and wouldn't listen.

Now the scales have fallen from her eyes to reveal...another set of scales. Is there any limit to this wretched woman's foolishness?

Doesn't seem to be, does there ? I do start to wonder if the CiF writers are just in it for the page reads now - under orders from the editor to attract as many hits as possible by writing indefensible nonsense - thus attracting a swarm of angry comments.

Laban is Lazy

Polly Toynbee bemoans the effects of the sexual revolution which she was such an enthusiastic participant in. Laban sticks his four penn'orth in, rehashing his usual themes.

Polly Toynbee - "Calls for abortion up to full term"

Apparently (if the CiF comments are to be believed), in a BBC News 24 "Head 2 Head" (sorry) debate with the Tory MP Michael Gove, Poll Pot called for abortion to be available up to the full nine months.

Anybody got the video ?

Polly and Gordon "to split"

Never mind Britney and Kevin, the really turbulent relationship stuff is here.

In 1994 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown purged socialism when they forged the New Labour project: Clause Four was indeed an archaic nonsense. This week Brown and Darling all but killed off social democracy too.

It was only a couple of months ago that a new age of plutocrat-bashing was dawning. Then the first small doubts on honeymoon. Now this could mean irretrieveable breakdown.

I'd watch out, Gordon. Hell hath no fury like an unsatisfied Ms Toynbee.

Only 50 Enemies ?

Poll Pot on the cursed bloggers. Prague Tory and a number of other bloggers have fisked this pretty well, I'll just add my two penn'orth.

"Toynbee conceded that she is no "insider" with powerful friends"

Hence the weekend Chequers invites.

"I have around 50 arch-enemies who seem to get up at about five in the morning — they have obviously never bought The Guardian, they wouldn't contaminate their fingers with it, and they are right-wingers who hate The Guardian and everything it stands for. They really, really hate me."

Poll Pot, of course, is above such hatreds.

I'll leave the last word on Ms Pot to Free Born John - a wonderful post that I've linked to before, and doubtless will again.

One thing, and one thing only, keeps people trapped in the kind of poverty of mind where they don't feed their children properly even when they could, and shit in their own stairwells. It's a lack of ownership; a lack of self-reliance. It's a lack of the very concept of self-reliance. It's an idea that the mere thought that they should be self-reliant is immoral, evil, callous and cruel. And though this idea is gibbered out by halfwits, it actually derives from Polly Toynbee.

UPDATE - the very wonderful British Spin, back in the real world, agrees 100% with Polly.

The trouble is that the biggest outbursts of outraged ranting and ill researched nonsense tends not to come from the small audience lunatics like me, but from blinkered idealogues given space in the Guardian and the biggest source of ill informed gossip and speculation as central fact are the TV news channels.

Whether it's Andrew Murray, the always reliably barmy A L Kennedy, or today's effort from Geooffrey Wheatcroft, the Guardian has done more to promote ranting than any number of blogs. And whether it's Natasha Kaplinsky, Andrew Neill or Kay Burley, the TV news channels have done more to promote superficiality and scandal as the currency of news than any number of spittle flecked bloggers like Guido Fawkes.

Zoe Williams defends Poll Pot

Or ...

the unreadable defending the unspeakable.




UPDATE - while it seems to be generally accepted that Poll Pot sent the sprogs private, no man can tell to which school. But thanks to the comments at the Graun, we now know that Zoe Williams attended that well-known comprehensive Godolphin and Latymer (fees £12,000 pa plus meals, music lessons etc).

Ms Williams lives in Camberwell - but I'd suggest there aren't many faeces in the stairwell chez Zoe. Not like the tower blocks in this excellent Peter Risdon post.

One thing, and one thing only, keeps people trapped in the kind of poverty of mind where they don't feed their children properly even when they could, and shit in their own stairwells. It's a lack of ownership; a lack of self-reliance. It's a lack of the very concept of self-reliance. It's an idea that the mere thought that they should be self-reliant is immoral, evil, callous and cruel. And though this idea is gibbered out by halfwits like Norman the carpet, it actually derives from Polly Toynbee.

Read the whole thing.

Clash of the Tory Titans - Churchill vs Toynbee

Brilliant piece of Cameronian triangulation ? Political suicide ?

We'll let you be the judge.


(Mr Eugenides I think we can call a 'Noe')

Swearyblogging Pollyanna

I think the Devil's Kitchen is not alone.

Polly Toynbee a "Sexy Beast" Shock Horror

Sunday Times.

However, some students failed to fulfil their early acting promise. Nick Elliott, now head of ITV drama, says that the “real sexy beast” among his fellow students was Polly Toynbee, the left-wing commentator. She confirmed this weekend that she was a “real raver” ...

It makes you see stuff like like "Reid was unleashed on a hogtied Brown" in a whole new light, doesn't it ?

"the best possible nanny"

La Toynbee :

"if they want to avoid future generations of scary youth, they should urge higher taxes to pay the state to become the best possible nanny to all babies. "

Erm ...

Three-quarters of children in care have no educational qualifications at all when it ends, a report into the state of the care system claims.

Out of the 6,000 children who leave the care of the state each year, 60 make it to university, says a report by think tank the Centre for Policy Studies.

Report author Harriet Sergeant said a failing system was a "major contributor to social exclusion in this country".

But don't worry - something is being done.

The Department for Education said it had plans to help children in care. A department spokeswoman said: "We are already working on a major consultation document"

Rats In Attempt To Take Over Sinking Ship

Huzzah ! Labour Party members have elected Walter Wolfgang to their National Executive Committee.

Mr Wolfgang, a far-left peacenik of the sort who wants Britain (but not her enemies) to disarm, is the chap who was slung out of conference last year for heckling Jack Straw. While his treatment was disgraceful, and typical of Labours authoritarian control-freakery, rewarding his conduct with an NEC seat is the sign of a party that's got fed up with winning elections.

They never did like Mr Blair. But he just kept on winning. Even as the Iraq war loomed, MPs looked into the abyss of life sans Blair and said 'no thanks'. It's an article of faith on the Left that Iraq has destroyed the government, yet Labour in the 60s or 70s would have bitten the hand off a leader who'd deliver 80-seat majorities as Blair did only last year.

Blair's reign has of course been domestically a disaster for the British, and particularly the English, since the moment he sacked Frank Field and gave up on welfare reform. He and Brown have been fortunate in their timing - the globalised world economy has kept afloat and survived the dot-com, 9/11 and high oil price crises remarkably well. We'll only see the real damage - to social cohesion in particular - when things get a little more pearshaped (are there any builders specialising in gated developments ? buy, if so). I see interest rates are now at 4.75%.

A few years back being cast out of Tony Blair's Cabinet was an "outer darkness" job.

Now,

"they flee from me that sometime did me seek"

Who will be left as the inevitable hour (which in fairness, I've been predicting since 2003) approaches and the Blairite ministers console themselves with the prospect of their fat pensions, something no working man or woman will have in future years ?

Perhaps at the very end, as Blair lies in the Forum, with twenty trenchèd gashes on his head, the least a death to nature, only one will remain. Polly Toynbee, arms wrapped round the bloodied corpse, will echo the words of Caligula's wife to her murdered husband in "I, Claudius".

"You should have listened to me, Tony - you should have listened to me"

Polly, Pope, and Prophylactics

Light blogging due to work : so take a gander at Ian Murray on the slow but sure separation of the working class and Labour (todays events at Longbridge just reinforce this), James Hamilton with another fine post on the same subject, and Non-Trivial Solutions and Squander Two on the Pope, Aids and condoms. A perfect antidote to Poll Pot, who has discovered Africa and condoms a week later than everyone else.

NTS :

I'm not a religious person, so I tend to look upon religions as like private members clubs. Stick to the rules, and you're more than welcome. That's why JP2 was good for Catholicism - because he upheld the Catholic tradition. If you don't like the rules, go join the C of E. They don't really have any worth mentioning. The ones you don't like, they can change. Hey, it's a broad church. And indescribably shallow.

SQ2 :

Not being a Catholic myself, it's possible that I've missed some recent doctrinal development, but, last I checked, the Catholic Church was preaching that each person should have a maximum of one sexual partner per lifetime. Follow that advice, and your chances of getting any STD are virtually nil. The African AIDS epidemic has not, therefore, been caused or exacerbated by Catholics doing what the Pope tells them to. In fact, if everyone in the world had followed the Pope's advice, AIDS would be an unknown disease.

Ah, say the idiots, but you can't really expect people to have enough willpower to stick to that rule, can you? Perhaps not, but if people can break one rule, they can break two. If you don't expect people to follow one of the Pope's instructions, why are you convinced that they have no option but to follow one of his others?

Polly Toynbee on the Livingstone affair

"this latest episode of Evening Standard bullying"

Ken "says what he thinks and does what he thinks will work", his "plain and sometimes impolitic speaking does him good with voters." Some voters anyway.

In contrast, "Michael Howard - no plain speaker he, but carefully weaselling ...". Well, he would, wouldn't he. You know what he is ? They'd sell their own grandmothers.

"Howard's own grandmother died in the Holocaust when Europe refused to save Jews, yet he would tear up the Geneva convention that sprang from that horror and bar people from even seeking asylum here with an arbitrary quota."

Worse still, "an ICM poll finds that two-thirds of voters support it".

Polly loves mankind. It's people she can't stand.

Of course I don't really think Toynbee, for all her sins, is anti-semitic. What's entertaining is that both she and Martin Jacques, in today's Guardian, still don't seem to have grasped the Blair administration's modus operandi seven years on. Talk tough. Soundbite. Initiatives 'with which I can be personally associated'. Crackdown. Blitz. Czar.

And on the ground ? Business as usual. David Blunkett's tenure of the Home Office was a prime example. He talked tough on crime, then found he was running out of prison space - so started releasing prisoners. That sort of thing can't work for ever, but Blair's done pretty well so far.

Jacques writes "Our hoary old friend immigration is back on the agenda, near the very top in fact. The opinion polls suggest that people are worried. New Labour is now desperately seeking to outflank the Tories while, predictably, utterly failing to make any stand against the new populism and its racist subtext. Of course, the charge of racism is denied on all sides: nobody ever owns up to racism. So why, pray, are the unskilled from the European Union welcome while those from the developing world are not?"

The reason people are worried, IMHO, is simple. Numbers, numbers, numbers. And the reason the unskilled of the new EU are welcome is that the Blair administration, unlike other EU nations, put no transitional arrangements in place. Unskilled EU citizens are entitled to come here. The Home Office's 6,000 to 13,000 projected figure is currently 90,000 plus - and that's assuming that the other 910,000 people are, like Michael Howard's grandfather, telling the truth.

Given that people are worried, Blair could shout 'all are welcome' or he can talk tough. He doesn't seem to think the former is a vote-winner. So he'll talk tough, to Martin and Polly's horror. But nothing will happen on the ground. I simply can't see any will, in any public body to take any measures which could possibly be construed by anyone as "racist" - the kiss of death for a career in "public service". This would be a problem even for a Tory administration - under Labour I don't think it possible.

Martin and Polly are right that moving race and immigration into the centre of debate does shift the centre of political gravity 'to the right', in her terms. But this will happen in any event as Native Brits become the minority community, first in the major cities and then in larger towns.

Polly's attitude to the UK electorate has always been that of the nanny who knows what people need better than they do themselves. This tendency extends to our elected Government as well. Fancy the Blair administration, in its simplistic way, thinking that it knows better than Polly how to win an election !

"Labour holds all the strong cards - from economic competence to successful delivery. Yet all that macho front goes weak at the knees if the Tories say boo on race or tax. Meanwhile, Labour's real enemy is behind them: their own defecting voters waiting for leadership and a reason to vote at all. Labour has answers: behind the pledges are all that's been done and five-year plans ahead. What's the real "forward offer"? If they must use market-speak then it's not the "what's-in-it-for-me?" pledges. Social justice is Labour's only Unique Selling Point. And the only one missing from its pledges."

There Is No Liberal Elite

Thanks to the Freedom Of Information Act, Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb and the Daily Mail, we can see who came to dinner at Chequers from 1997-2001, and it’s a list to confirm all one’s prejudices.

Can you guess which newspaper would have most representation ? I’ll give you a clue – Alan Rusbridger, Polly Toynbee, David Walker (Polly’s paramour), John O’Farrell, Jackie Ashley, Will Hutton.

Mr Ashley, Andrew Marr of the BBC is there, along with John Birt, former Director-General, Greg Dyke, then current D-G, Radio 4’s Melvyn Bragg, the Today programme’s James Naughtie and gorgeous governor Deborah Bull. Even the Indie gets a nod with ex-editor (and ex-smackhead) Rosie Boycott as well as Peter "I hope Price Harry goes to Auschwitz" Kellner.

One or two other standouts – a high rock’n’luvvie quotient - Elton, Sting’n’Trude, the Thompsons, the Bowies, Stephen Fry, Dame Judi, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons, the Frenches (Dawn and Lenny), even Joan Collins (pre-UKIP) and Michael Winner.

One thing that strikes me is the under-representation of ethnic minorities at these bashes. Where’s Lee Jasper, Trevor Phillips, Yazza or Mrs Patak ? Reinaldo da Silva (Peter Mandelson’s significant other), one Dorian Jabri (Chris Smith’s ditto), and TV tycoon Waheed Alli might possibly supply some missing colour, and their sexuality means you get two minorities for the price of one, but otherwise I can only spot Bill Morris, Iman (Mrs Bowie), the wonderfully named Thai Ping Wong (I had one the other night, and jolly nice it was too) and Lenny Henry.

The other notability is the low number of ‘partners’ among the dull old political straights. Old Labour are very married, and even among New you only find ‘partners’ for Stephen Byers and Aleister Campbell (Robin Cook brought Mrs Cook before returning to his secretary on the Monday), as well as Irish Premier Bertie Ahern. Ahern would have had them cut off for that in Ould, Catholic Ireland.

This conventionality at may not last though, if Professor M.W. Adler (‘leading academic who advises the Government on its Sexual Health strategy’) gets his way. My informants tell me his strategy for improving the Sexual Health of a Chequers weekend involves guest Helen Mirren re-enacting her memorable staircase entrance from the 1971 film ‘Savage Messiah’, as well as activities involving Anna Ford, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Susan Greenfield and a large amount of fresh fruit prepared by Delia Smith, Lord Attenborough to film the proceedings. Script by Richard Curtis. Choreography by Trevor Nunn.

Nationalising Children

Stuart Wavell in the Sunday Times reports on the annual Sure Start conference, chaired by Polly 'the nanny state is the good state' Toynbee.

He quotes Patricia Morgan

.. there is no doubt that a 1960s agenda is in play. “There is a feminist drive to get every woman in the workforce full-time and get equal outcomes between men and women, irrespective of what people want.”

She goes one stage further than Kirby by suggesting that the government’s policies are consistent with the eradication of marriage. “Women must be self-sufficient, with a huge subsidy, independent of men. Attention is given to the parent-child relationship rather than the relationship between the adults. The belief is that you can have what is called ‘peripatetic partnering’, where people move in and out of partnerships but the parental relationship stays the same and the children are largely reared by the state.”

I think that's correct, but Jill Kirby of the Centre For Policy Studies makes an important point.

Kirby believes that the government’s underlying concern is with getting dependent lone parents back to work and letting the state raise their children. Its assertion that everyone needs parenting help is aimed at catching these problem families, Kirby maintains.

I put this point to Hodge, quoting the words of Stephen Ladyman, the under-secretary for community, who told the conference how important it was to identify excluded families and “drag them in and make them feel included”.

The anti-family movement, whose most prominent representatives are three wealthy upper-middle class women, Jowell, Harman (bad luck, Harriet, you nearly got him jailed) and Hodge, see in Britain's underclass the perfect recruits for state rearing. After all, many underclass parents don't 'raise' their children in any meaningful sense anyway - so no one will object if the State takes on the task.

As Polly says "As for the moral panickers, if they want to avoid future generations of scary youth, they should urge higher taxes to pay the state to become the best possible nanny to all babies."

Everybody's happy. Chav parents get the child benefits and the free accommodation without even having to pretend to raise their offspring, the State and the social-workers get lots of tinies to try out their theories on. And Joe Public gets to pay for the whole thing.

How To Grow An Underclass

A wonderful Today report (RealAudio link) on the failure of the latest 'alternative to prison' scheme. Apparently the results are worse then with 'standard' community sentences (which themselves are useless). Listen and marvel.

Just a few highlights.

The remark that 'Youth Justice workers' don't see eye to eye with 'the community' (aka the victims) over non-custodial sentences.

And an interview with an inarticulate chavette which you couldn't make up.

How an old assault charge 'caught up with her'. Those pesky assault charges, chasing people about the streets.

How the presssure of having to keep three appointments a day drove her back to her anti-social ways - and how she was given another chance.

And the happy ending - she's 'getting a flat' and she's four months pregnant. She's sixteen years old.

Conspicuous by their absence - mentions of her victims, of the people who'll pay for her flat and child support or of the idea that she's in any way responsible for her own life decisions.

A wonderful piece because it illustrates both the current dire state of the Criminal Justice system, and the reflex pro-criminal liberalism of the BBC.


UPDATE - this old Polly Toynbee interview sheds a little inadvertant light on the liberal view of crime.

Journalistically, she says, her experiences also highlighted how little interest the modern media has in poverty. "Just look what happens if television ever makes a documentary about the poor - they invariably choose grotesque cases, people with real social or criminal problems, because that makes good telly. The reality is that the biggest single group of poor people are actually in work."

Here Polly makes the distinction between 'people in work' and people with 'criminal problems' in a way that makes it plain that by people with 'criminal problems' she actually means the people who commit crime.

I would suggest that in any poor area the people with the real 'criminal problems' are likely to be the law-abiding, including those who go out to work for a (poorly-paid) living and who Polly claims to care so much about.

Another little sidelight here.

"I've been incredibly lucky," she says of a career that has taken her from there to the Guardian, then the BBC, Independent and back to the Guardian again. "I've never had to work for anyone I haven't liked.

Polly Toynbee ....

Defends parental rights in the great smacking debate.

"How dare the state force them? How dare anyone judge them?"

Oops - sorry. She's not talking about the right to smack children.

She's talking about the right to kill them.

Wicked Stepfathers

Polly Toynbee lets something slip as she pursues her campaign for the nationalisation of children. "An Englishman's home is a castle where his children are his to chastise. Never mind the complication that these days it's often stepfathers - with horrendous implications."

Horrendous implications ? Stepfathers ? Hang on a minute. I thought any arrangement of mum, significant other(s) and kids constituted a family these days. And children, as everyone knows, are far better off if their unhappy mum and dad split, rather than witnessing the rows and domestic abuse inseparable from the patriarchal unit of Mummy and Daddy. Surely only obscure Christian fundamentalists care about marriage or being brought up by your biological parents. After all, look at what a good job the state can do.

Back in the non-liberal world, of course, the evidence that children are best brought up by married parents is overwhelming. On every indicator they do best even after adjusting for income and social class.

I had a quick look at the Home Office's latest Domestic Violence research the other day. It's full of feminist fatuity (abuse can, for example consist of 'not getting your fair share of the household money'. A quick show of hands in my house revealed that husband, wife and four children all considered they were being abused on this definition) and I still haven't been able to work out whether their definition of rape includes having sex when you'd really rather not, but I'm presuming the figures are uncooked, if the presentation isn't.

Table 5.13 is the one - Prevalence of IPV (inter personal violence - doesn't include the household money) by marital status.

2% of married women experienced violence in the last year (so, interestingly, did 1.8% of married men)
Widowed 1.3%
Cohabiting 6.2%
Divorced 6.8%
Single 6.9%
Separated 14.5%

Now assume, as the survey does, that a large proportion (say half) of the 'Separated' figure consists of angry exes. You're still looking at a rate for singles/cohabitees three times that of the dull straights.

And a quick look at the single mums (of whom my mother was one) shows us an even grimmer picture. The rate for a single mother with children is up there at 14.9%, topping even the 'separateds'.

Stop Domestic Violence - Defend Bourgeois Marriage !

A Taxi Driver Writes

Polly Toynbee, 56, of Hampstead

Had the entire population of Deal in the back the other night. If you ask me they don't deserve a Labour Government. Ungrateful lot of scroungers. Complaining about their benefits with £16K in the bank ! Sheer pig-headed ignorance, nastiness, mean-spiritedness and rudeness in my opinion.

They should be made to vote Labour. And if they don't - lock 'em up - and throw away the key !