Such Details Are Beneath Her
Readers of this blog will, over the years, have marvelled at the outpourings of one Polly Toynbee, the Guardian’s foremost social commentator and hand-wringer in chief, a woman voted “the most influential commentator in the UK” and whose views regularly grace the programming of the BBC, for which she was formerly a newsroom social affairs editor. “Polly Toynbee’s influence is perceived to be huge in British public life,” wrote Julia Hobsbawm of the media analysts Editorial Intelligence. “Her columns resonate in Whitehall and beyond.”
From high atop those resonating columns, Ms Toynbee delivers her various pronouncements, including a conviction that “left-wing people are more intelligent and just generally better people,” i.e., better than thee and me, and a demand that taxes must be raised “to pay the state to become the best possible nanny to all babies.” There’s also her belief that “disruptive 16-year-old boys” should be taken out of class to spend a term being taught the finer points of dance, thereby resulting in a “transformation in the whole year group.” When not curing inner-city classroom delinquency with the thrill of modern tap, Polly tells her readers that obesity isn’t chiefly a matter of inactivity and overeating but instead has a more pernicious cause, i.e., a lack of socialism:
It is inequality and disrespect that makes people fat.
To bolster this radical insight Ms Toynbee made a number of further claims regarding economic inequality and expanded waistlines, each of which proved to be either misleading or untrue. And chunkier readers should note that waiting for a socialist revolution probably isn’t the best way to lose those extra pounds.
Our imperious champion of the poor has a famously intermittent relationship with facts, logic and mathematics, such that an entire website, Factchecking Pollyanna, was devoted to providing detailed corrections of each week’s errors and distortions. Sadly, this effort to bring factual accuracy to the finest Guardian journalism became dormant some years ago, its anonymous author possibly having collapsed under the weight of the endeavour.
Happily, however, Tim Worstall has now published the best of that legendary blog in book form, so that another generation may bathe in Ms Toynbee’s blunders and fumbling with numbers. Amid various examples of Polly inverting statistics and misreporting figures by several orders of magnitude, as when she inflated council tax benefit changes by a mere 5,100%, the volume includes such moments of high journalism as Ms Toynbee telling the world that 142% of people were dissatisfied with Tony Blair, and a 21-word sentence containing no fewer than five factual errors.
If you buy the book via this Amazon link, or via this one here for readers in the U.S., your host will receive a small fee at no extra cost to you.
It’s truly terrible.
As several people point out in the comments, it’s a feeble, overplayed joke and says more about the writer than the subject. But it ticks the boxes for a first-time Guardian column – it disdains with an air of snobbery something that lots of people like, there’s a token reference to colonialism, thereby signalling the author’s political conformity, and it has almost zero informational content about the ostensible subject. It’s jokey but unfunny and not terribly informed. He’ll fit right in.
David, yes.
Sorry about that. That was the start of a comment, not supposed to be posted till written in full.
What I was going to say was, that you summed it up perfectly.
says more about the writer than the subject.
And says more about the editorial line of the paper than the writer.
David, yes.
The author, Joel Golby, seems amused by the reaction to his debut. Which is to say, a near-unanimous trashing. Naturally, he chooses not to defend his article or engage with any of his critics. It’s like a postmodern trolling of his own readership. First, you write a weak and sneery article; then readers say it’s a weak and sneery article; and then you applaud yourself for having prompted readers to say you’ve written a weak and sneery article.
Journalism, that fine and noble trade.
Above all else, it’s the sneering that gets me.
Just to be full of the desire to sneer at so many people.
It never fails to astonish me.
How does one become like that?
It’s an odd phenomenon, this need to ‘problematize’ popular activities, thereby signalling one’s self-imagined superiority. For instance, when Laurie Penny declared her dislike of competitive sports, it wasn’t enough to say, “I’m not interested in competitive sports.” Which would be a fair, if unremarkable, statement – such that no-one would care one way or the other. And so she had to frame it as if there were something politically improper about competitive sports, all of them, and something wrong with the people who enjoy them. And so her lack of interest becomes, in her mind, a virtue, something to be applauded. Sort of, “I have decided not to like competitive sports (or be any good at them) for high-minded, political reasons. Because I’m so thoughtful and see what others don’t.”
Of course her posturing backfired, as it often does, and Laurie was forced to backpedal and squirm, and then claim that she was being “attacked” “viciously” with a “barrage of hate” for her views on tennis. Apparently she mustn’t be mocked for desperately signalling her leftist credentials at every opportunity, and for viewing everything in life through a narrow and tedious filter of leftist presumption. And for letting us know, constantly, just how non-conformist she is.
Left Wing activists engage in a calm and reasoned debate with one of their opponents. Just kidding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqrnqqk9tSU
How does one become like that?
Dunning Kruger.
I can’t believe nobody has linked to the legendary ‘you started it’ moment with Polly and Richard Littlejohn. I am not equipped to do it, but it should be seen.
I can’t believe nobody has linked to the legendary ‘you started it’ moment with Polly and Richard Littlejohn
This one here?
By the way, Bluntnose, your comments keep getting snagged in the spam filter. Not sure why. If it happens again, email me and I’ll shake them loose.
“It is inequality and disrespect that makes people fat”
As I am very much not equal to lefty-luvvies at the Graun or indeed anyone in the upper reaches of the Liebore party and I don’t respect any of them (and likewise they don’t respect me) I expect I should be as fat as an overblown blimp by now. The fact I am not must mean there is something wrong here.
The fact I am not must mean there is something wrong here.
I’m nowhere near as well-off as Ms Toynbee and I’m sure she’d disapprove of me, quite severely, and yet I too am graceful and svelte, like a ninja gazelle. Or an injured gazelle, as The Other Half puts it.
Abacad said: ‘Labour campaign 2020: “You know we called you all stupid after the last election? Well, about that. Can we forget about it please? Pretty please? Can we not let that affect your judgement this time around? Clean slate, eh?”‘
I would summarise this as being: “We have nobly forgiven ourselves. Haven’t you yet?”
seeking to improve onscreen diversity
‘The BBC is seeking a potential new weather presenter who does not need to have any qualifications – but does need to be disabled.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11635180/Wanted-by-the-BBC-a-new-weather-presenter-who-must-be-disabled.html
Militant Whitewash at BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32913465
Militant Whitewash at BBC
Dr Peter North claims, disingenuously, that Militant were harshly treated, before saying, again disingenuously, “My view is that political parties that have a variety of attitudes within them are more democratic and healthy.” Which carefully ignores the totalitarian premise of the group in question – the overthrow of parliamentary democracy and the creation of a Marxoid dictatorship – and its plans to prevent a “variety of attitudes” once sufficient power had been seized.
and its plans to prevent a “variety of attitudes” once sufficient power had been seized.
But we’ve so much to learn from totalitarian nutjobs. 🙂
who does not need to have any qualifications – but does need to be disabled.’
Hmm…granted it’s a somewhat obvious question though quite gauche. Honestly asking for a friend who’s real curious as to how disabled? I, I mean he, went to the BBC website and downloaded the attachment but it doesn’t specify. I, uh we, presume dyslexia is an insufficient disability, but perhaps a speech impediment? Missing part of a finger? To which knuckle? Or how many fingers? Would a missing thumb count more than a finger? Is there a disability that goes too far? ALS should be OK since, you know, Stephen Hawking. Who would turn him down? Though surely being in a persistent vegetative state is a bit much. Perhaps given the reaction at the BBC to y’alls latest election results, perhaps simply being a Tory would suffice. But that’s just crazy talk.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2565164?utm_content=bufferea13e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Statue of man and woman taking is sexist to those witch-finders of sexism in homoeopathic quantities.
Statue of man and woman talking is sexist
You’d think the umbrage-takers, being so clever, might consider that a sculptor sometimes positions figures for aesthetic effect (or structural stability) rather than to bolster the All-Powerful Yet Invisible Patriarchal Nexus.
Honestly asking for a friend who’s real curious as to how disabled?
Slightly at a tangent, I’m reminded of a scene in A Taxing Woman’s Return. One set of characters are Yakuza, the sorts of fellows who slice off fingers one joint at a time as a form of apology. One such is trying to pressure someone into moving out of an apartment. He sticks out a hand and announces to the apartment dweller that if the apartment dweller agrees to move, that the Yakuza will give him This number of thousands of yen. The apartment dweller looks intrigued, and reaching out to the hand, starts counting.
One, two, three, four, four and a half.
Brewed up a nice pot of evil colonialism and…wait, what were we talking about again?
”My view is that political parties that have a variety of attitudes within them are more democratic and healthy”.
The Labour Party’s own constitution bars membership of another political party (such as ‘Militant’), and also states that backing another political party in an election is grounds for expulsion. Granted, the rules have been less than rigorously applied in recent years (see Ken Livingston, for example), but they’re there in black and white.
Once we examine tea, once we put that central tenet of British culture under the microscope…
Hahahaha.
Hahaha.
Execrable.
I wonder what the equivalent poo-pooing would be for us Kiwis. Perhaps Afghan biscuits, because racism. Or something.
And of course if you take your tea with a nice slice of toast liberally smeared with pre-2002 Robertson’s marmalade – oh! oh my God! oh, the humanity!!
wtp, the speech impediment idea has already been done. Victor Lewis-Smith pranked the BBC pretending to be someone with Tourette’s applying for a job as a continuity announcer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwYuwV0XlyU
I was winding myself up at a bout of conspicuous compassion for those on benefits, those who hit the 24k benefits cap, recent immigrants and so on by some public school Christian leftists yesterday (shame there’s not the same “compassion” for the working poor). It reminded me, heathen scum that I am, of a bible passage from my dim and distant youth of enforced High CoE-ism. So I updated Luke 18:10-14 for our times:
10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Guardianista, and the other a white van man.
11 The Guardianista stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, tax avoiders, insufficiently socially-just, sexists, or even as this white van man.
12 I eat vegetarian twice in the week, I gladly pay my taxes. I read the Grauniad. I vote Labour.
13 And the white van man, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a #WorkingClassTory.
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Ms. Toynbee wrote “disruptive 16-year-old boys” should be taken out of class to spend a term being taught the finer points of dance…
I wonder how that would square with Oakland CA public schools’ new policy of no suspensions for “willful defiance”, i.e. swearing/yelling at teachers, refusing direct orders, texting, and storming out of class. The policy was adopted because the old policy had racial “disparate impact”. I suspect Ms. Toynbee’s policy would too. And her head would explode.
Ah, Mr. Rostrum, I think you are confused by the use of the language by people like PT. The phrase “disruptive 16-year-old boys” in PT’s mind is the full noun itself. All 16-year-old-boys are disruptive by their very nature. By punishing all you are discriminating by sex, not behavior. The behavior being endemic to the sex, discrimination against that sex being permitted and even encouraged, is all A-OK.
Today’s Toynbeeism: “Ed Miliband’s policies will be popular with voters. They just don’t know it yet.”
Well, there is one form of inequality that makes people fat: eating more than others. But I don’t think that’s what Polly had in mind.
Latest Polly Toynbee correction:
“This article was amended to change the deficit percentage figure from 80% to 5%”
https://twitter.com/thomasknox/status/609140917346410497