Polly Toynbee, UK Guardian columnist and champagne socialist (house in fashionable Clapham and villa in Tuscany) has been rightly described by Boris Johnson as the living embodiment of “all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess “ of the liberal left.

Smug, hypocritical and humourless she epitomises the arrogant self righteousness of the BBC/Guardianista cabal that spearheads the ruling cultural establishment – a self perpetuating elite whose dominance has only been threatened once, by the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.

Speaking today at the Edinburgh Book Festival she finally laid her cards on the table

left-wing people are more intelligent, and just generally better people

The joke is – she wasn’t joking. Read The Guardian, The New York Times, watch the BBC and US networks – it’s the built in assumption that threads through every narrative.

And most people on the right, after struggling against the inertia of the left wing cultural elite eventually advocate compromise. What they fail to grasp is that the Toynbees of the world can never be defeated by coup or blitzkrieg. It’s a war af attrition, best summed up by the Duke of Wellington fighting against Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo.

Hard pounding this, gentlemen; let’s see who will pound longest.

Bill Nighy, wooden, crinkled and oozing bus pass angst, meets up with earnest young woman (Rachel Weisz, born 1970!). Nighy, as per usual, autocues his lines in a monotone to nobody in particular, is hardly ever out of his overcoat and sacrifices his career and pension to flag up the evil Americans.

You’ve guessed it – “Page Eight” (BBC2 28/08/11) another glossy drama of beautiful people in NW1 (and weekend rural retreats) pumping out a subliminal version of the eternal and unchanging BBC philippic against capitalism, America (pre Obama, of course) and those vicious, conniving Je…whoops….Israelis.

Written by Richard Curtis David Hare, the storyline is as predictable as a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 boss hands Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 agent (Nighy) a file fingering UK PM as the The Evil One Covering Up US Rendition. Said agent discovers his next door neighbour had a boy friend killed by Israeli soldiers while innocently protecting defenceless Hamas protestors. This has also been covered up by the same UK PM.

Usual ending of any Nighy drama….he forces UK PM to publish the truth about the evil Israelis in return for remaining schtum about rendition. Nighy then heads off into the sunset until the next BBC drama.

Production values – AAA+
Characterisation – pure unadulterated cardboard
Message – BBC Goebbels TV at its most blatant

Martin Kettle, an associate editor of The Guardian, is deeply saddened by the fact that in the UK we align politicians with car salesmen and estate agents as the least trustworthy of all professions.

He blames – the satirists.

Today’s satire is deeply cynical, depicting British politics as a nest of fools. It may make us laugh, but its impact is not funny

Moreover he fingers the two faces who, he claims, are most to blame for this sorry state of affairs, “Private Eye” editor and HIGNFY panelist Ian Hislop and political blogger Guido Fawkes.

Without them, no doubt, we would be seeing our politicians in a different light – even on a par with doctors who are perceived as the most trusted of professionals ,regarded as truthful and public spirited.

Yeah, right…..naturally Kettle, as a journalist, makes the assumption that Joe and Jane Public are too dim to draw conclusions from their own observation and experience so they must have someone else to tell them what to think.

What is truly fascinating, however, are the names he did not include – Mark Thomas, Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle et al. Hear these and any other TV or radio comedy with a political edge and you soon discover that to a man or woman they are left wing, pseudo marxist, rainbow and unicorn preachers of political correctness. They were weaned on Thatcher hatred and transferred their bile towards Blair because he recognised that Labour could only gain power by suppressing the student union leftism that drives their “comedy”. Luckily for them their views were and are shared by those in the upper reaches of BBC programming – hence the absence of any right wing comedy on mainstream TV/radio.

Hislop and Guido are great mockers of Cameron, Osborne and the Tories, just like Thomas and co. But – and here is the key to Guardianista Kettle’s discomfort – they also mercilessly lampoon the left wing media/political/cultural elite. What is more, they regularly shine a light onto the cant, hypocrisy and mendacity displayed by many editors and journalists in the smug, self satisfied world of the media……Martin Kettle’s world. For what he forgets to tell us is that our regard for journalists is as low as our view of politicians and estate agents….

Crocodile tears, Mr Kettle, crocodile tears…..

The New York Times, the house journal of the Obama administration, has obviously been given the nod from the White House to convey an important message to UK Prime Minister David Cameron from the Presidential golf course.

You have got it so wrong on the causes of those riots.

Mr. Cameron…..has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.

That is so naive.

It’s about being POOR, man. The rioting and looting was a cry for help from the blackberries of the penniless, starving hordes of England’s shanty towns as well as a political protest against Cameron’s savage budget cuts.

What’s that? These are scheduled cuts for 2012-2015? Spending for 2011 is still much the same as previous years?

Irrelevant.

It’s the perception,stupid…..the masses trust only the BBC and the BBC has, since May 2010, been constantly warning them about THE CUTS.

That is why the “protesters” (as the BBC preferred to call them) needed all those flat screen TVs. They were to be used as COMMUNITY SCREENS so that the downtrodden could bypass government propaganda and hear the truth from the BBC.

Fortunately President Obama from his years of executive experience in Chicago can redirect Mr Cameron back onto the path of righteousness.

You don’t solve these problems with “draconian punishments” and “excessive sentences”

Britain’s urban wastelands need constructive attention from the Cameron government, not just punishment. His government’s wrongheaded austerity policies have meant fewer public sector jobs and social services……..What Britain’s sputtering economy really needs is short-term stimulus, not more budget cutting.

That is how it was done in Chicago by Obama – and it is now, presumably, one of the safest cities in the western world.

So there you have it, Mr Cameron. The NYT is telling you to spend more money and ignore the debt and those scaremongers at the credit rating agencies. I am sure they could put you in touch with the Chinese bankers who have been so helpful to President Obama.

On the other hand…..perhaps you could just tell the NYT to STFU……

The BBC’s Jonny Dymond has been sounding out some of the usual suspects from the US liberal left over their reaction to the News of the World phone hacking affair.

The top brass at the Beeb have obviously got the nod from their friends at the New York Times (“the Democratic Party at prayer”) that the Obama machine is very interested in the possibility of slipping a knife between Murdoch’s ribs and defenestrating Fox News. Dymond, therefore, was temporarily withdrawn from the Tea Party=militias=KKK =racism desk at AgitProp HQ and ordered to link up with the planners at Operation Fox Hunter.

Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond reports on whether any “bad habits have slipped over to the Atlantic”

Jonny isn’t talking about his own bad habits of slipping things across borders… Lithuanian customs officers still have him on file. Nor was he talking about CNN’s Piers Morgan’s habits because, so far, the BBC doesn’t appear to be too interested in a left wing tabloid not owned by Murdoch.

No – we are now reaching what I predicted was the most important item on the agenda…..the preparation of a full frontal attack on Fox News.

Others with noses closer to the DC beltway have also been sniffing the air, particularly the UK Telegraph’s Toby Harnden. He tried for ages to get a feel on the Murdoch/USA issue from Obama apparatchiks in Congress and the White House but kept on getting blanked.

They were all waiting for Valerie Jarrett to tell Obama what his decision would be.

It was a go.

Straight away Sen Jay Rockefeller had new batteries inserted and was wheeled out to transmit the official party line.

SEIU is almost certainly being fed more Soros money to add to it’s taxpayer funded coffers in order to organise “spontaneous” demonstrations of anger outside Fox properties. “Independent” op-ed scribblers at NYT and WaPo have received templates for their thoughtful “fairness” pieces.

I called this Dan Rather’s revenge not because it was Fox that pulled that neat little trick. Fox is too timid to operate behind enemy lines like the right blogosphere. Fox’s importance is to act, like the UK’s Mail and Sun, as a counter balance to the distortion of the news as it is passed through the left wing filters of the establishment media. The right blogosphere’s role is to dig up the evidence for the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of the left’s mouthpieces in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere.

Unlike Chappaquidick and the NYT/Guardian Wikileaks campaign nobody has been killed as a result of News of the World phone hacking. Yes it was unsavoury and seedy – but that is the nature of journalism. It’s a competitive dog eat dog world where you are only as good as your last story – just like Hollywood, politics and drug dealing. So the key to fighting the forthcoming onslaught is not to excuse the activities that took place several years ago under the Blair/Brown Labour government that refused to take action because at the time they were supported by the Murdoch press.

The line to take is to condemn all dirty tricks then follow up with just a representative sample of nefarious activities undertaken by the Democrats and their surrogates over the last ten years….you’ll be spoiled for choice.

Then, as was once suggested by a certain Chicago Light Bringer, get in their faces.

The big question is – what will the GOP political/media”leadership” do over this? Surely it won’t bolt for cover and hide under the table with its thumb in its mouth while the mob is baying outside the door….will it?

Surely there will be someone who will run to the fight – with a smile and a rapier….

In the old Soviet Union one tool Kremlinologists used to forecast shifts in the political climate was to peruse the inside pages of Pravda and spot the apparently insignificant article that they could identify as a marker for any forthcoming reconfiguration.

The articles were placed as signposts for mid level Communist Party members to prepare for changes in direction in their party “work” which, for the CPSU, as with any other totalitarian party, was almost exclusively agitprop –agitation and propaganda.

The BBC in very many ways can be seen as an agitprop arm of the British liberal/left cultural elite, a group which usually manages to direct the UK’s political and social agenda even though much of it (EU membership, unrestricted immigration, political correctness etc etc)is deeply unpopular with the majority of the population.

Moreover, with the globalisation of information media ,the lack of any patriotic affinity in the mindset of this elite allows it to integrate seamlessly with its equivalents in the USA and elsewhere

So the appearance of this article by Tom Geoghegan on the BBC website “Rupert Murdoch:Could his US empire be affected?” should be ringing alarm bells for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. For this is not really about the rather shady ethics of a few phone hacking tabloid journalists. Indeed, while the story only appeared to involve celebrities and politicians it never really gained traction. Moreover, because the hacking took place several years ago under a Blair/Brown Labour government that at the time was very cosy with Rupert Murdoch and his tabloids meant that it remained low key with Milliband, Balls and co. Besides News of the World staff had been jailed and the editor at the time had resigned so heads had rolled.

But what has given it legs in New York and London is the revelation that the paper’s staff had hacked into a murder victim’s mobile phone. This has, quite rightly, created immense public anger – and given the liberal/left media elite, so often out of tune with popular opinion, a golden opportunity to spearhead a lynch mob.

It’s not about Murdoch and his papers – after all the dead tree press as a vehicle for news is a dinosaur on its way to extinction. The real target is Murdoch the TV baron with Fox News in the USA and Sky News in Britain. Note how Geoghan slips “right wing” into the mix. It’s a standard adjective that is permanently attached to any comment about Fox News in the UK and, it must be admitted, a brilliant example of the effectiveness of well organised agitprop. The fact that every other US network/cable news platform is imbued as deeply as the BBC in the liberal/left metro mindset is always studiously ignored.

It is no accident that the long buried phone hacking story was disinterred by the New York Times last autumn and quickly picked up in Britain by the Guardian and the BBC just as Murdoch’s bid for the whole of Sky. the BBC’s only meaningful TV competitor was about to go under public scrutiny. All three have a keen interest in undermining Murdoch and emasculating Fox because they know that Murdoch is the only player in the game who threatens the dominant position of the liberal/left cultural elite in the UK and the USA.

A perceptive piece in The Commentator reads the runes with chilling accuracy. This is not about journalistic ethics. It’s a fight to protect the authority of the great and the good against the upstarts of the new media – and, at the moment, the right wing establishment is doing what it does best….running for cover.

It’s the revenge of Dan Rather.

Now this is interesting.

Remember what I said?

I wouldn’t put too much store by this bit of mischief making from lefty hack Nicholas Watt at the UK Guardian

It would appear that the reasons go deeper than Thatcher’s frail health. Her allies believe that Palin is a frivolous figure who is unworthy of an audience with the Iron Lady. This is what one ally tells me:
“Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”

Well, one lady was so aggrieved she wrote to the Thatcher Foundation.

Gateway Pundit has the reply.

A taster

Read the rest here. A classic put down of a lefty hack – a textbook example of how to (metaphorically, of course) slide a rapier into a mountebank’s kidneys with elegance and finesse ….

Wow – the Archbishop of Canterbury keeps his beard but discards his sandals for Doc Martens and gives Cameron a good kicking.

Naturally the BBC has an orgasm.

The tone and strength of language used in Dr Williams’ attack on the coalition has taken ministers by surprise.
Accusing the government of being committed to “radical, long-term policies for which no-one voted” is an overtly political statement and one Downing Street has quickly rebuffed.
But they can’t ignore the broad sweep of criticism or questioning of their mandate to govern.

Thus warbled Jo Coburn, alleged to be BBC Political Correspondent.

Well, Jo, one effective strategy might well be to ignore it. After all Williams has form on this and his attachment to the Guardian/BBC zeitgeist is as established a fact as Polly Toynbee’s property portfolio in Tuscany. Nobody outside the NW1/Oxbridge media/academic elite gives a fig for what he thinks. He is head of a religious structure that is as empty a husk as the official cult of Rome in the early years of the first millennium. If you want fervour and commitment you go to the evangelicals or other faiths. Williams and his ilk have done more to secularise our culture than any humanist league of bores – so why give him any more oxygen?

The other option, however, is to rip into him tooth and claw, ignoring any screeches from the great and the good. Like Prince Charles Williams believes he has a pass to step up and pontificate from a richly endowed soapbox and hector and lecture us without fear of response except from elements of the tabloid press. Maybe it’s time those soapboxes were kicked away from under their feet.

Tim Montgomerie has already entered the fray with a blistering exposure of the Archbishop’s hypocrisy over social issues. What irritates me is the prelate’s claim that he articulates the concerns of Mr & Mrs Public.

At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context,” he said.
In a wide-ranging attack, he accused the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of creating “anxiety and anger” in the country by introducing reforms without sufficient debate.
………
“Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around questions such as these at present,” he said.

What he means, of course, is the “anxiety and anger and fear” being expressed by the cartels and special interest groups that feed at the trough currently overflowing with taxpayer’s money, particularly in the field of education, the law, health and social services.

If he really wished to articulate the fears of the silent majority in this country, the people who try to obey the law, pay their own way without incurring massive debt and accept the fact that they have responsibilities as well as rights he would be following a different path by

Asking why it is that so much of our daily life is now decided by faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats from Brussels

Voicing the concerns of the poorest elements in our society worried by the apparent inability of successive governments to confront the issue of unrestricted immigration.

Condemning those who use taxpayer’s money without regard to transparency, fiscal rectitude and effective and meaningful outcomes.
But then he wouldn’t get the great and good seal of approval from James Naughtie, Simon Jenkins and Polly Toynbee – and that would never do…..

I wouldn’t put too much store by this bit of mischief making from lefty hack Nicholas Watt at the UK Guardian

It would appear that the reasons go deeper than Thatcher’s frail health. Her allies believe that Palin is a frivolous figure who is unworthy of an audience with the Iron Lady. This is what one ally tells me:
“Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”

Exhibit A: The Guardianistas have always loathed Thatcher so beware of an item which implies left wing praise for anything said in her name

Exhibit B: Their positions on US politics will always reflect the latest brain numbing outpourings of liberal/left WaPo hack E. J. Dionne

Exhibit C: Ergo their attitude towards Palin will mirror those of Daily Kos mountebank Markos Moulitsas – in other words imagine trying to get any sense from an earwig on speed

Exhibit D: Note that the anonymous “source” is alleged to be an “ally” of Thatcher – journalese for a friend of the cousin of the man who services her dentist’s lawnmower

Exhibit E:No professional staffer of Lady Thatcher’s would employ the word “nuts” but you will frequently hear it at Guardian get togethers while the coke is being pushed along the glass table top

Exhibit F:Lady Thatcher is so frail she might not be able to receive any visitor with whom she is unfamiliar therefore the cunning Mr Watt can always perform his nudge nudge wink wink routine and claim he knows the real reason and by the way he happens to know that Buckingham Palace is up for sale and would you like to buy, discount for cash…

Then, of course, we might ask which ally sent this invitation to Palin a few months ago?

In other words this little Guardian anecdote is probably about as truthful as Weiner’s first press conference.

Clement Attlee was the the leader of the British Labour Party 1935-55, served as Winston Churchill’s deputy in the WW2 Coalition and led the Labour government of 1945-51. A lawyer, he volunteered for the British army immediately war broke out in 1914 and saw action in Turkey, Iraq and France.

He was a man of few words and had little time for the media.

Just before the 1951 election he was badgered by a radio interviewer as he was on his way to a meeting

…and he walked away.

If only modern politicians were as terse – and honest….

Exit question – is Sarah Palin is doing a Clem Attlee on the US media but from a different side of the field?