There’s an hilarious report of Polly Toynbee’s appearance at the Edinburgh Book Show over at Total Politics. Though she pines “nostalgically for the good old days of Blair and Brown”, apparently the last government were only worthy of a six out of ten in her view. She apparently had some hard hitting criticisms of the New Labour machine. Not the debt, deficit, moral bankruptcy or rank corruption that the project racked up, rather their lack of spinning skills:

“Labour weren’t very good at blowing their own trumpet.” 

UPDATE: Polly’s declaration that “left-wing people are more intelligent, and just generally better people” has caused some splutters too…

Without a hint of irony Polly Toynbee said in her column this morning:

“Public perception of the shape of society has been so warped that most no longer know how others live, where they stand in relation to the rest, who earns what or why.”

Too true. Did you know the multi-millionairess, three-property-owning, Tuscany dwelling, bleeding-heart socialist gets paid £2,300 per week to write such drivel? Guido reckons you could fill a book with such hypocrisy. Now there’s a thought…

UPDATE: A co-conspirator emails; “When I was a glorified tea boy on the Andrew Marr show, Toynbee was the only person who ever made me remake her cup of tea. ‘What have you done? Far too much milk. Could you make me another please.’ Just what you want having been up since five on a Sunday morning.” Classy.

Something tells Guido that the campaign against Guardianista hypocrisy is getting to Polly:

@GuidoFawkes. Ignore his endlessly repeated stuff on GNM tax. Guardian replies :http://bit.ly/erpl7f. Join UKUncut to get the real dodgers.—
Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) March 25, 2011

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Motes and beams Polly, motes and beams…

This morning’s Guardian leader lambasted the violent rhetoric they claim is to blame for the tragic shootings in Tuscon. However true to form they haven’t always practiced what they preach. Take for example this picture of a hanging effigy of Nick Clegg taken outside the Guardian’s King Cross HQ. Did any Guardianista step up and slam that? No.

Nor did they have any problem with one of their own using shooting rhetoric during the election. Say Cameron had been shot or attacked, would the lefty twitterati have riled against Toynbee for suggesting the LibDems and Labour needed to “turn their guns on the real enemy”? No of course not. While having a debate about what is an acceptable way to describe your political opponents is one thing, doing so on the back of an attempt to politicise the actions of a deranged lunatic is a new low.

In February 2009 Guido’s co-conspirators held a tax justice demo outside the Guardian’s spanking new HQ. Shouting “Scott Was a Tax Evader” and “GMG Fat Cats Pay No Tax”. We didn’t manage to get any support from multi-millionaire, three home-owning, anti-poverty campaigner Polly Toynbee. We would have dragged her out if we could…

The Guardian Media Group is one of the shrewdest corporate avoiders of tax in Britain, in 2008 it made a £300 million profit and yet managed to pay no corporation tax, the following year in 2009 it still paid no corporation tax, it uses the offshore Caymans tax haven to own assets, it uses tax efficient trusts and deploys all manner of perfectly legal tax shelter strategies to avoid paying tax. Polly seems silent about this tax dodging…

See also: Guardian’s Tax Hypocrisy is Ridiculous, Tax Justice Protest Against Guardian Tax Dodging

Polly “final solution for the poor” Toynbee has been slapped down by the Press Complaints Commission for her remarks comparing the government cuts to the murder of six million Jews:

“The Commission understood that readers may have found the use of the phrase “final solution” in the context of an article about benefits cuts unnecessary and offensive.”

Nice to see Polly’s exit from reality has been officially noted.

In a rare move for the belligerent and hyperactive columnist, Polly Toynbee this morning apologised for the inflammatory language that Guido highlighted the other day, when she compared a slight tweak in government benefits policy to the slaughter of six million Jews. On her “final solution” comment she said:

“Yes, it was over the top, a slip of the pen, made worse by the fact that it was put in the headline. I regret it.”

Savour the moment, Guido doesn’t imagine we will get another half-apology any time soon…

Polly Toynbee is taking the end of welfare-for-life badly, it has clearly pushed her over the edge, she spitefully told a fellow Guardian journalist recently that her breast cancer was exacerbated, deservedly, because she had worked for the Murdoch press.

Yesterday she claimed “the Tories have a final solution for the poor”. Yes, Polly thinks capping benefits at £26,000 a year is comparable to the genocide of 6 million Jews.

Polly has finally lost it.

Polly is pushing her warped logic to the maximum in her column today suggesting that just because one department spends more money on boxes of paper, Whitehall needs more quangos to regulate costs and other such daft ideas. Quoting the National Audit Office, the Tuscan-typer is clearly still scathing about the scrapping if the Audit Commission and the subsequent loss of her husband’s job as their spinner.

Despite attacking Philip Green’s wife in the rant, yet again Polly feels no need to declare an interest that she is continuing to fight her husband’s lost battle. She does however manage to squeeze his name in eventually – in a plug for their new co-authored book at the bottom of the article.