Polly parroting.

Devils Kitchen is always a good read but rarely more so than when he's fisking Polly Toynbee. I think he takes a twisted delight in dissecting her champagne socialist ramblings without the use of anaesthesia, so he must have been hugging himself at the chance to rip apart her plea for us all to save the dead tree press, including of course the self important hypocritical wank generator that is her own employer, the Guardian Media Group.

It is, of course, the usual load of insufferable bollocks, but it is rather lovely to see Polly hoist by her own petard

But the cover price accounts for only 10% of costs and GMG says advertising revenue has "fallen off a cliff".

You see, Polly has been bitching and moaning about mega-rich companies—many of whom prop up these newspapers by, y'know, buying advertising (mainly because they are the only ones that can afford the rates)—and the damage that they are doing to society. She has whined about the high pay of executives, and the increasing wealth gap, and corporate tax avoidance...

... and now the corporates are avoiding spending their money with GMG. Now, I know that Polly is not tremendously au fait with the oh-so-complicated concept of cause and effect, but do you think it just slightly possible that her attitude, and that of her fellow commentators, might possibly have led to these companies feeling—during these turbulent times, when costs need to be cut—that GMG, whose employees constantly attack said companies, can just fucking whistle for their business?

But newspapers are in trouble, and what is Polly's solution? Can you guess, children?

To protect share prices the depth of this disaster must not be admitted.

So real progress may only be possible when many of them go undeniably bust. In truth, while some local papers are excellent, some are dross, not worth saving with a penny of public money.

Public money? Not a fucking single one of them is worth pouring public money into, Polly, you disgusting, rent-seeking harpy. That is our money and if we do not wish to spend it on your fucking rags—which, quite patently—people do not, then why the fuck should you be able to tear the fruit of people's labour from them, by force?

It's gold, it really is, even though it's kind of like taking the piss out of the mentally disabled. We have here a journalist who thinks that the loss of newspapers is a disaster the scale of which must not be admitted, and who then writes a fucking newspaper column about it in which she both admits the scale of the disaster and says it must not be admitted. Not the clearest thinker in the world, and possibly not the clearest thinker in the Guardian though nobody stopped this circuitous crap from being printed. Ripping that kind of thinking apart is almost cruel, but also deserved. I'd have some sympathy for her if she wasn't such a hypocrite. And she looks like a hillbilly drag act but I don't want to get personal.

H/T Mr Eugenides.