The let them eat cake award

Bocephus

So much for heartless Tory Toffs!

Laughing Larry

Deport her to Tuscany....

Tom Burroughes

No, but remember that Polly Toynbee is very much an advocate of the public sector workforce, which has swelled mightily under this government. I must say though that her comments are shocking and I hope you guys store that paragraph to be used against this ghastly woman over and over again. Shameful.

I don't recall the likes of Ms Toynbee making such remarks back when Mrs Thatcher was in power and unemployment went over 3m.

Fairminded Fred

Well, Lamont said that unemployment was a price worth paying to reduce inflation. Both Lawson and Eddie George said something similar at different times, but forget the exact wording (perhaps Lawson was talking about the miners' strike?). Depends if you regard them as serious commentators or not.

Rob Atkins

Sheer incompetence of the highest order ! Is she back supporting Brown again, or has she gone off him again, or is she a Brown supporter again ...?

zs

how about andrew lansley?

Paul B

I wonder what the price of Tuscan Villas is these days. I think the girl will need to skidaddle off there pretty quickly with the flack that will be rightly heading her way after that jawdroppingly arrogant and thoughtless remark. It proves the girl doesn`t have a clue. Looking forward to Littlejohns reaction, lets hope he gives her both barrels.

Nick Kaplan

I wonder what Polly had to say about 3 million unemployed under Thatcher... I don't suppose it was anything like that.

F W

.UN.BELIEVE.ABLE.

Daniel

Unbelievable glibness even by Pollyanna's standards.

CS

***Can any Coffee Houser remember any serious commentator dismissing...***

Serious commentator? I thought we were talking about Polly Toynbee.

expatinsingapore

Meanwhile in Singapore, the government- which has announced a stimulus plan based on subsidies for increasing training by the labor force- which will be paid for by tapping into the surpluses run up during the fat years- announced today a reduction in the pay of top civil servants and politicians to reflect the economic downturn. Basically when the economy is hot, they get higher pay and bonuses, when it's not, they get lower pay.

Read it and weep.

http://www.straitstimes.com:80/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_306495.html

Why can't the UK do this?

Nicholas

3 million unemployed are only of concern to socialists when the government is Conservative and then they never let us forget it.

Hypocrisy is one of the main pillars of socialist ideology. They all subscribe to an attitude that goes something like "I may point out your faults but don't you dare attempt to point out mine!"

The sooner the country wakes up to their nonsense and is rid of them all the better.

Andy Leeds

Let us all hope she is one of the first to lose her job. Oh and her house etc. She will then know how it feels.

Bruce, UK

"Crisis? What crisis?"

Tradebot

This Polly article is a real pearl. I found this line extraordinary : "Top 10% consumed nearly a third of national earnings and 54% of personal wealth"

Consumed??? So generating wealth and earning now is a BAD thing... you are "consuming" national income...

Long economic illiteracy.
Short sanctimonious Guardian columnists.

TrevorsDen

Pathetic old crone - though not as big a pompous ass as the bilious baroness wotsername on Sky last night.

In fact of course the numbers on the scrap heap are already far higher. Various other benefits pass for unemployment payouts these days.

Prodicus

I have another nominee: Lansley. Cameron should sack him right now, and that fatuous liability Teresa May can go along with him. Anyone with even a wisp of Nasty about them should be OUT. No messing.

Albert, son of a gypsy

I just happen to believe that she was fed this statement by Brown...he knows what is going to happen...and is preparing his stance and seeing how this fares with his guardian reading disciples!

Jon

Far from 'dismissing the prospect of mass unemployment' Polly Toynbee is pointing out that since 90% of people will not be seriously affected by the recession, money should be directed towards those who will really suffer - the exact opposite of saying 'let them eat cake'.

mac

Ah, the enduringly hypocritical Polly Toynbee.

Glad to find that you don't share Fraser's strange opinion that Ms Toynbee is "superb", James.

Invariably, Toynbee's Guardian polemics are long on bluster at the expense of convincing facts and her ability to mash statistics to support which ever drum she's beating is second only to G. Brown's.

And she is an arch-flip-flopper, of course - anyone know whether Gordon is wonderful or the pits this month in Polly-la-la land? Still, her reputation as a socialist sage is no mystery given that she inhabits the same bubble-space as such 'progressive' luminaries as T. Benn, J Prescott, La Harman, and milords Giddens, Hattersley and Kinnock (to name but a few), let alone the Guardian's tribe of myopic Labourites.

For a revealing portrait of Pollyanna read this Telegraph piece:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/11/26/do2608.xml

Billy Sitch

It hurts to write this, but the Doyenne of Daft is right this time. The recession hurts those it hurts. Those who lose their jobs and businesses. For everybody who remians in a job, journalists, say, or columnists, it's really a spectator sport, so to speak.
If it is to be combined this time with falling prices (which I don't really believe in, except for petrol) then some of us are going to be better off. We'll be sympathetic, of course, but that makes no difference to the victims. So, let 'em eat cake or let's buy them cake, it doesn't matter except for appearances' sake.

occasional ranter

Jon - let's not let the truth get in the way of a good old rant against Polly. Heaven forbid that we should actually have to read the full article and t-h-i-n-k about it. Far better just to lap up some out of context soundbite and react like we're programmed to !

Come on Spectator - must try harder.

The Bellman

If unemployment reaches 3m, who is to say whose jobs are 'secure'? Perception is reality: there is no omniscient figure surveying the economy and judging that 'X must go, but Y is secure' - at least, not in a form likely to be accepted as an assurance by my bank manager. If I see my colleagues being laid off, I'm hardly likely to feel secure, whether Polly thinks I should or not. That goes extra for anyone with the responsibility of employing people.

As for 'not being seriously affected by the recession': maybe not - but I and my children will surely be affected by this odious and incompetent maladministration's hocking of our country.

Still, not to worry, as long as Polly and her social democrat chums can feel better about themselves.

Ronnie

It seems that the author and most of those who have commented so far missed or have forgotten the Thatcher years. At that time half the cabinet and many 'serious' commentators said exactly the same thing about actual unemployment figures similar to if not worse than those now predicted.

I'm not sure what is more ridiculous, Toynbee writing such drivel in the first place or you lot expressing your outrage in the Spectator.

The older I get the stranger the world becomes.

mac

Your usual olympian lecture, Ronnie. I recall the Thatcher years and much before them, too. Just why should that stop me expressing a view about Ms Toynbee's contemporary opinion?

C Powell

Ronnie: indeed - and at the time Polly (and many others on the Left) criticised the Tories for their heartlessness and indifference to the plight of those who were affected. But now, when it is a Labour government presiding over the same mass unemployment, she is indifferent, largely I suppose because it will be the middle classes who will suffer so they don't somehow count. We're criticising her for her hypocrisy not saying that it is acceptable to appear so haughtily indifferent to those who suffer. I criticised the Tories at the time and will criticise Pol - when I get time to go over to CiF.

What's more only the Tories have come up with any sort of proposal to help the unemployed by trying to incentivise employers to hire them. It may not be adequate but at least they're trying to address the issues and the perception that they didn't care, when they were in Government, which was so damaging to them.

Hereford

Ronnie, first prize for hitting the nail on the head. If we were currently governed by a Conservative Government, Toynbee would be screaming to the rooftops about such unemployment. But then they would be Tory unemployed wouldn't they? That's different.

Straight Abandon

That we're heading for 3m unemployed is pretty much on the cards.
Beyond that, Toynbee's appraisal of the effects of such levels, is a welcome piece of blunt reporting.

teledu

3 million unemployed. Is that being "tough on the causes of crime"?

John Miller

Will everybody stop ranting about this daft old lady.

We all know what she is and there is no point in discussing what she writes. Its pure fiction, and debating its content is like asking whether Professor Moriaty was really as bad as Holmes made him out to be.

ernest witney

polly tells the truth not fiction but the fact is the tories reads dickie littlejohn in the daily liar.