Polly Toynbee

Here's a random selection of quotes about the Labour party that I recently took from a group of low-paid careworkers I was interviewing in North London. Thought I'd just publish them for the hell of it. I asked women in this group what they thought of Labour, and if they felt that the party had been helpful to them (this was as part of a number of interviews I've been doing for another article).

Here are a few of their responses (I've got plenty of others - this is just a nice little sample to be going on with):

'They're taking our bread and butter. The thing is - it is Labour, the ten pence in the pound... you tell them that we won't be supporting them in the next election. Nobody is voting for them next time. We have been treated very badly.'
North London careworker Maria Woods.

'Labour has been getting rid of the childcare centres and the nurseries... they're supposed to be saving money with all of these cuts. Well, we have never seen a penny of it.'
North London careworker Joyce Owusu-Ansah.

'They are supposed to be supporting the workers - they are supposed to be working for the lower class. But I will never vote for them now.' North London careworker Jackie Mitchell.

People - Labour is NEVER going to win the next election. Is there any other way to see this? I wouldn't mind seeing it another way, but absolutely everyone I ask says they will not be voting Labour at the next election.

Tis all very simple, really.

May I also make the point that Polly Toynbee is now 100% deluded and must be stopped from suggesting that Labour still has the potential to come from behind. I used to respect her ability, but Jesus, she is a tragic pair of old knickers now.

There is a marvellous line early on in the great Peter Carey novel Illywhacker where the aged protagonist - who is more than one hundred years old, and, if memory serves, growing breasts, extra toenails and hair where nobody expects or can trim it, etc - says that one of the reasons he likes staying alive is that he can't wait to see what perversions his hoary old body comes up with next.

I feel a similar depraved sense of anticipation when I approach a Polly Toynbee article these days: what scrambled take on New Labour will she pull the sheet back on today?

Well, today it's this mortifying ode to the restorative powers of David Miliband, which may yet take the prize for old journalism's most cretinous and pointed insult to voter intelligence and concerns.  

And anyone remotely interested decent written journalism, btw. 'Suddenly everything changed,' comes Polly this morning, romantically. '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.'

My personal feeling is that the chance of escape everyone is waiting for is the next general election, but let's not linger on that for the moment.

Let's linger instead on the various insults and agonies that this government (regardless who has been leading it) has visited on the people who need a Labour government most - ie, the majority of us. Doubtless, you'll have your own list, but here's mine: the 10p tax rate. Your choice of failed PFIs. City academies. ALMOs. Rabid privatisation of public services. A hatred of unions. A hatred of immigrants. A credit crisis. A housing crisis. An education crisis. Tube bombings. War.

I'll end this short work by inviting Polly and David and all other dazzled optimists to Barnet this Thursday, where the staff who work in Fremantle Trust homes will walk out again in protest at the rotten terms, conditions and salaries that privatisation has delivered in their area of work. They've been in dispute with the Fremantle Trust for nearly two years. Perhaps Poll could spend a few hours wiping butts, rather than kissing them? 

Anything to stop her writing. What a ridiculous journalist she's become.

This is a report from a public debate on Tory cuts to voluntary sector funding in Hammersmith and Fulham. The debate was organised by the Hammersmith Community Law Centre, which lost 60% of its funding in recent voluntary sector cuts. The debaters were Hammersmith and Fulham Councillor Harry Phibbs, Polly Toynbee, Labour MP Andrew Slaughter, Nick Seddon and John Fitzpatrick. It was chaired by Clive Coleman.

Another majestically windy summer evening in London, and a tall, roly-poly white man by name of Councillor Harry Phibbs takes the stage at the Irish Centre in Hammersmith's Blacks Road, to talk awesome neocon garbage about funding voluntary and public services. To wit: 'Of course you could [fund more voluntary organisations] if you increased the total budget, but we all realise that there's a problem there... do you put the council tax up?'

'We could put yours up,' says someone in the audience.

'What about the money that went to your pay rise?' say several others.

'What about those ludicrous [street] cleaning machines,' wails an irate member of the audience called Mark Mitchell. 'They cost thousands of pounds. They do [nothing]. They go throughout the day, especially when people are walking along the streets. It's spending on the wrong things.'

Harry Phibbs is a Tory councillor at Hammersmith and Fulham Council. That makes Harry part of the Conservative administration that is trying to snuff out the left-leaning lawyers who run the Hammersmith Community Law Centre by cutting over £100,000 from the centre's annual council grant.

...more interviews with Hammersmith Law Centre clients as we speak.

News in the meantime: on 18 June at 7.30pm, Polly Toynbee and others will be taking part in a debate in Hammersmith on the issue of funding in the voluntary sector. The event is being organised by the Hammersmith Law Centre, who, as readers of this site will know, are having 60% of their own funding removed from them by those charming Tories at Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

The debate will be held at the Irish Centre is on Blacks Road, Hammersmith. Twill be a public meeting, all, so get yourselves along.

You can read more about the Hammersmith and Fulham Voluntary Sector Funding Campaign here.