Carnival Of The Polly-Kicking

A new twice-weekly Carnival in which we round up the diverse bloggers desperately trying to beat some common sense into the thick skull of that useless fucking cunt whom we all know as Polly Toynbee. Or Shitface. Your choice. feel free to submit some more Polly-kickng links in the comments.

The poor little greek boy feels that he cannot be bothered to punch her in the face again over childcare (and who can blame him; he's already done so at least once this month and a very good piece it was too).

In fact, he was looking at the disastrous SureStart Report which Polly seems to think is so much pie in the sky. Apparently she knows rather better than those doing the study (ain't that always the way).

Even Timmy seems to be going through the motions today, although he does counter Polly's assertions about the efficacy of the US Head Start programme.

Let’s look at some other US research shall we? From Freakonomics, we get the results of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. One factor that made no difference to the test scores of children was whether they had attended Head Start or not.

Yup, it made not a jot or tittle of difference to how well they did in school.

This is therefore something we’re supposed to spend 2% of GDP on?

Quite so. But Polly fatigue does seem to be kicking in slightly; what a good thing that the ever-prodigious Ranting Guttersnipe is here to dole out the kicking that the silly bitch deserves.

Polly’s Back today with a brand new load of bollocks about childcare and how voting Tory will probably mean that your children will all die of typhoid. Today she's bigging up the government waste of space that has been the SureStart programme. Clearly she's taken up residence in Narnia with Blair and Blears.
...

Remember, before Labour there was no childcare, no nursery education and no Sure Start to help young families.

She’s lost the plot hasn’t she? What the feck is she thinking? Are we really expected to believe this? We’ve had nanny services, childcare and children’s education since the Norman Conquest.
At best the Parliamentary Labour Party has been here since 1906. Before that we were turning out polite children who could read, didn’t smash up society and went onto become doctors, lawyers, builders, military commanders, journalists and MPs.

Actually, yes, I think that she has lost the plot. Otherwise that nice, middle-class Ms Toynbee is hoping to end the year wearing ermine.

Yes, bribery! That must be it. I simply cannot conceive how someone can be so stupid as to keep on supporting this government; seriously, Polly, how fucking stupid are you. Oh, I forgot, you were stupid enough to fail the 11+, the easiest exam ever invented: half of it was logic problems for fuck's sake.

Which I think explains a lot about Polly's writing.

Dark forces were unleashed by the disastrous first evaluation of Sure Start, Labour's flagship programme for saving children from early damage. The research has just been republished in the British Medical Journal, creating another round of bad-news stories from the same recycled material.

After all, confronted with bad reports about the efficacy of SureStart, most people would conclude that it isn't working; but not Polly, oh no! Not for her the simplest leap of fucking logic.

To further bolster the impression that a sack of swedes (of the vegetable type rather than the Scandinavian that she so desires admires) is possessed of a higher critical faculty than the minute ganglion—of which even a dinosaur would be unenvious—that passes for Polly's brain, everyone's favourite female NuLabour apologist contradicts herself (as usual).

Seeing is believing. Those who know local projects come away bowled over by them. I was with the education secretary, Alan Johnson, visiting a brand new children's centre in Coventry this week as he listened to mothers rescued from isolation and depression starting new lives.

This is what we call "anecdotal evidence", Polly; have you taken that in?

Now, watch the cloth very quickly as I whip it off the table to reveal...

David Cameron, no doubt on the lookout for potential cuts, said last week he had visited Wythenshawe where one woman told him Sure Start "is a complete and utter waste of 3m quid". (Will all his policies be based on convenient anecdotage?)

I don't know, Polly: will NuLabour's policy be based on your "convenient anecdotage". Surely the contraction "dotage" is applicable to you, my dear, because you seem to have lost your fucking mind!

Oh, and by the way...

Instead, they should listen to Moran tell how it has transformed the community in Luton, where Bangladeshi mothers, for the first time, are joining in, taking jobs as support workers - many moving on to train as teachers in an area with high infant mortality and dozens of different languages. She says, "There has never been anything that reached so many mothers and changed so many lives. They are the least likely to speak out themselves - so we should be telling the story everywhere about Sure Start's brilliance."

I thought that SureStart was supposed to help the kids not the mothers. I am glad that it is helping the mothers, naturally, although one would hesitate to draw any parallels between the religion of most Bangladeshis, i.e. Islam, and the women being "least likely to speak out themselves". And I certainly would not in anyway suggest that they are least likely to speak out because they will probably be beaten up given a talking to by their owners husbands.

Still, Polly is back to the subject of Cameron.

His diatribe called Sure Start "a microcosm of government failure", promising more use of private nurseries instead. But how is his attack to be refuted, when the prime minister himself has undermined the defence? Remember, before Labour there was no childcare, no nursery education and no Sure Start to help young families.

This is a stunning assertion, and can only imply one—or possibly more than one—of these conclusions:

1. Polly has, actually, gone bat-shit mad. She's insane.


2. Or, as I have posited, she is simply very, very stupid. Very, very, very stupid.


3. Perhaps she has been brainwashed by NuLabour apparachiks?


4. Or maybe Polly is dribbling between the legs but Gordon has promised to withhold "the goods", Lysistrata-like, unless she keeps coming out with this drivel.

I mean, seriously, this is supposed to be one of The Guardian's top columnists; what the fuck are they thinking?

Anyway, labouring onwards...

So why has Labour failed to make this the great emblem for all that it stands for?

Well... let me think. Oh, yes, it's because it's crap, expensive and doesn't work. Although I would say that it a perfect NuLabour emblem, I am guessing that the government ministers think that they are better than that. Or, even if they don't, they are hardly going to admit that a vast waste of money is precisely what NuLabour stands for are they?

Childcare was the project of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman: the Treasury says the chancellor remains passionately committed.

I might having fucking known it. Wherever you can find a useless waste of resources, the Chancellor is usually behind it. The one-eyed cock of doom, that he is.

If so, children's centres need twice the cash they have now.

Oh, what a fucking surprise.

They need to offer free places to unemployed families.

Why? Why do you people insist on penalising people who work? Look, Polly, there are far more jobs advertised at any one time than there are people unemployed; it is just that some people consider certain jobs to be below them. Which is why we keep importing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to do them.

So, some people are electing not to work. Some uncharitable souls might claim that many people are choosing not to work. In addition to ludicrously low rents (in accommodation paid for by those who work), derisory Council Tax charges (subsidised by those who work), free money (paid for by those who work), free "help to find work" (paid for bt those who work) and free healthcare (subsidised by those who work), you want to give these people free childcare too?

Why? Where is the moral argument there? Why should everyone else subsidise those who don't work so that they can afford to have more children? Many of us would like children, Polly, but we feel that we should be in a financially secure position first. And the more that we are taxed to pay for the feckless and lazy, the longer that is going to take to happen.

All that you do is to increase the store of children who are unaware of the concept of work and who hang around bus-stops abusing people in suits (who work). The well-educated and the conscientious meanwhile, have to pay for non-woking families to produce yet more under-age menaces who are, quite frankly, not wanted.

New research from the University of East Anglia shows that daycare for the poorest yields £837 more than each place costs, as families find work. But it needs money up front.

Or, of course, your Cyclopean fuck-buddy could stop taxing the poor so that those who work can afford the childcare. There's an option, eh, Polly, you great sack of shit.

Half measures will produce weak results, so a future government could kill off Labour's best success.

Hmmm. Look, Pol, I'll leave you with this thought; this may well be NuLabour's best success but only because everything else that they have touched has been an even more colossal fuck-up.

God, you really are dense. I was going to invite you to dinner but, having thought about it, I'm off down to the vegetable patch to go and dig up some more intelligent company...