Polly: I don't know why anyone takes any notice of what the Taxpayers' Alliance say. They're funded by the Tory Party and all their staff used to work for the Tories.Listen to the exchange HERE - scroll in about 1 hour 10 mins.
Mark Wallace: Untrue. I'm not a Conservative. We receive no funding from the Tories and only one of our staff has ever worked for them
Readers may remember that in November Polly said on Sky that I too, as a Conservative blogger, am paid by the Tories. She seems to have developed a fixation about a vast right wing conspiracy.
36 comments:
The words "ignorant" and "bint" come to mind whenever I think of Polly Toynbee. I know it is beneath me, dreadfully politically incorrect, too, but then that's the effect Ms Toynbee has on me and perhaps other people like me.
I am not a member of the Conservative Party but unless Ms Toynbee shuts up, I may feel myself forced to join.
She's a spent force. Whatever authority she once had as a commentator has left her; she's become a comedy figure, derided by readers of the Guardian and the Telegraph alike, just an empty husk.
I do wonder for how much longer she'll retain her Guardian column, and as daytime TV invites increase and Question Time and Newsnight ones dry up perhaps she'll move to the supermarket pops magazines.
Her diatribes no longer have the power to disturb, and they've become just a slightly irritating background sussuration, with nothing new to say and no new ways to say it, but affording some innocent pleasure to correspondents on CiF who enjoy pulling her views to pieces.
I suggested in a piece some time ago that she would now be happier running a donkey sanctuary in Wales, or a charity rescuing Tuscan cats.
raedweld@ '---she would now be happier running a donkey sanctuary in Wales, or a charity rescuing Tuscan cats'.
well only if she could get some super little east european to do the mucking out
Iain, O/T I'm afraid, but much as I like witnessing the antics of Princess Pollytwaddle and her increasingly erratic grasp on reality, this is rather too chilling to ignore...
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3434476/why-are-our-stateowned-banks-asking-customers-about-their-politicial-affiliations.thtml
Toynbee should be supporting the TPA, seeing as SHE is funded by a tax-avoiding organisation!
Polly is a stranger to reason.
I've come across this tactic hundreds of times when engaging with prohibitionists.
If they are losing the argument (ie most of the time), they simply dismiss the opposition as having been 'paid' by the other side. That way, they don't need to bother debating the point.
I've been accused of it myself on occasion. I take it as a compliment, it means I've wound them up and they haven't an answer.
Well done TPA, you've got right under the daft bat's skin.
Iain, you should have demanded a retraction from the stupid cow.
Why do people listen to her? Champagne Socialist. And to think Cameron was buttering her up- God Forbid.
Raedwald is right she is a spent force and all her best days, and in more than one case!, is well and truly behind her!
You may not be paid by the Tories, Iain, but you are funded by Tories.
I think calling someone a conspirasist and implying paranoia is a little over-defensive, Iain, and intellectually moribund.
Don't you, Iain?
I expect its borne of a guilty conscience. Everything that Labour do has to be funded by the taxpayer!
She`s just barking.....absolutely barking
Ofcourse, this is the woman that boasted to a group of journalism students in a London college to urge them not to make 'big noise journalism' and what is she doing? Making big noises about the Tory Party.
A Page of Writing, This blog is funded by me. No one else. I am a Tory. So in that sense you are right I suppose.
@Iain Dale
"Why is that Polly Toynbee thinks that anyone who disagrees with her is funded by the Conservative Party?"
It's not just her, they're all at it. It's called a "smear".
Dolly also dismisses criticism and/or ridicule by saying that those saying it are "right wingers", despite the fact many are left wingers, indepedents, Labour or Lib Dem supporters (me).
It's lame, but it often works. It's a smear that falls under the "well you can't listen to them because they would say that wouldn't they" argument.
Transparent to anyone with a brain, but it still works, sadly.
Actually I think her best days are yet to come.
The demise of labour, the hand wringing of how could this happen.The sadness at the resignation of 'very ill' Gordon Brown. The completely wrong decisions about the right thing to do next. Essays about the wrong lessons that have to learned. The Labour party leadership contest, the infighting, the union splits, the courting of the lib dems,
the evil evil Tories with their tax rises and public sector debts. Being free to blame all the usual everyday occurrences like knife crime and second home fiddles on the real enemy. Pro pro EU flag waving in the face of Tories lukewarm enthusiasm for the project.
Polly has years and years of writing nonsense, leaping to conclusions,blaming others and moral hectoring and moralising from the sidelines to come.
I bet she can't wait.
What a vile creature.
It's a bit like saying that because she writes for a paper that is sympathetic to the government, she must be funded by the Labour party
"she writes for a paper that is sympathetic to the government"
That's putting it mildly. More accurate would be to point out that her and her paper are more adept at constructing Labour Party press releases.
It's a classic argument ad hominem and a non sequitur - weapons of choice for the conspiracy theorist or anyone else with a threadbare position to which they are emotionally attached - both increasingly popular liberal leftie rhetorical devices.
"I've come across this tactic hundreds of times when engaging with prohibitionists."
Exactly the same is done by the AGW lobby, accusing anyone who dares to question their faith of being in the pay of Big Oil. Well, I'm yet to see those Exxon dollars in my bank account...
There's a word for Polly - liar.
Well, that's one of the nicer words I can think of.
Bill Quango MP has it absolutely right.
Word Verification: achymp
As in: achymp with a calculator could identify government waste and cut it.
Toynbee is, simply, a liar - and a stupid liar at that.
She's dead right about 'a great right wing conspiracy' - it's conspiring to bring back liberty and free thought and personal responsibility and the fairness of markets, in fact all the stuff that Polly does not need.
I rather suspect it is all because she is unable to tackle anyone else on an intellectual level, so playground insults is the best ammunition that she has. Oh well, at least she's not a millionaire like so many of the people she despises. Oh no, wait, hang on!
A Page of Writing:
If I claimed Polly was covertly being "funded" by a third party to write her Guarniad columns, I think her response would be considerably stronger. And I wouldn't blame her, because such practices in the MSM are ethically dubious if not outright corrupt.
Isn't it extra-ordinary the number of neo-logisms that British journalists have lent our language?
We have, first and foremost, fisking, after Robert Fisk.
Then we have "doing a Montague", after Sarah Montague of the Today programme. She is quite possibly the stupidest presenter in modern British media. To "do a Montague" is to find one's self in over one's head and to flail about pointlessly, becoming ever more shrill and ridiculous, in order to cover the fact that one is talking out of one's bottom.
And then there is, of course, the Toynbee Conundrum: is one's interlocutor mendacious or merely stupid?
With Ms. Toynbee one never can tell...
Hate to break up this Toynbee hate-in: but back to the original point which was about the TPA.
Perhaps someone could let me know who does fund the TPA and so disprove PT's point?
As far as I can tell from its (deliberately?) vague website it's mostly funded by big business - whether that is a synonym for the Tory Party others can argue.
This thread has such sensitive, charming, tolerent and coherent posters I'm sure they can enlighten me.
PhilC: Please stick to the point.
As I think I mentioned at 4:34pm, this is a clever, and oft-used ploy,by those who are struggling, to avoid the subject matter and deny debate.
Polly decided not to bother answering the question, and instead advanced irrelevant and unproven ad homs about TPA funding.
You are doing the very same. It matters not how they get their money if their argument is a good one.
Knock down the argument first, then we can talk about who is paying later
but back to the original point which was about the TPA.
No, it wasn't. The original point was why Polly couldn't answer the question without resorting to fudging with irrelevance.
Perhaps someone could let me know who does fund the TPA and so disprove PT's point?
Why? Iain was pointing out Polly's predilection for confusing things with irrelevance.
That is the originalpoint of this article.
How off topic do you want to get? At the moment, I'd say you're a couple of miles away.
Of course, the easiest way to rebut Polly Toynbee's allegation would be for the Taxpayers Alliance to publish where they get their funding from instead of keeping it secret. Why refuse to do so if they have nothing to embarrassed about?
Toynbee is just a moron who works for a failed newspaper that is propped up by the tax payer.
John: The Guardian is funded by the state via the thousands of public sector leftie jobs.
But Iain, I only started blogging because of the offer of £3,000 a month from the Conservative Central Office secret fund.... {/sarcasm}
@Blogger Doctor Syn said...
//
Isn't it extra-ordinary the number of neo-logisms that British journalists have lent our language?
We have, first and foremost, fisking, after Robert Fisk.
//
First to the line was, I think, "pilgering" after the venerable John Pilger
http://www.order-order.com/2009/03/draper-passing-round-hat-for-money.html
"What many people won't know from today's tabloid revelations is that Derek has borrowed heavily from (some now former) friends, political figures and even journalists"
Errrmmm....
Stolli and Bolli. Polly and Dolly.
Hey Ho for a husband.
(that's a quote from Shakespeare, Iain)
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