archives

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.