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born 1946 England
Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998.
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The underlying reason for remorseless social disadvantage remains a silent subject in Blair politics.
Here comes the coronation in a few weeks, not much changed since I was waving at the last one, pleading in vain for a Dinky Toy gold coach.
As for Boris Johnson, I look back with a morbid incredulity at what that baby grew up to be. It’s a not particularly good joke to surprise people with the fact that I am one of the many women to have seen him naked.
The trouble with the monarchy is not that it is too powerful but that it is utterly useless. So much is spent on ceremonial trappings to disguise its inner nothingness.
No-one is suggesting banning gambling or casinos, any more than I would ban pornography, or drugs or all manner of things that might do people harm. But there is an important social difference between freedom to do what adults please if they deliberately seek out those things from regulated places - and aggressively thrusting them at everyone in everyday life.
By instinct, I like the French revolutionary tradition commanding absolute secularism in schools and state institutions. But French secularism tends to cause less social harmony, not more, used as an easy pretext for far-right anti-Muslim attacks. Humanists defend people's right to private beliefs and religious practices, as long as they impose on no one else.
[On the Bruges Group, informally a thinktank for the Conservatives] They spread Europhobia through their party until all candidates had to test positive for Brexit.
Yet, as ever, he will sound considerably tougher on crime than on its causes because that is where his true feelings lie. The toughness comes easy but the underlying social justice theme comes but once a year at party conference.
That baby on the bath mat, who so decisively put me off the idea of teen motherhood, grew up to be the most disgraced prime minister under his ludicrously changed name of Boris: he looks much the same.
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