[A reopening of a water fountain in London, Wimbledon] I was there because the fountain was erected in 1868 in memory of my great-great-grandfather, … - Polly Toynbee
" "[A reopening of a water fountain in London, Wimbledon] I was there because the fountain was erected in 1868 in memory of my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Toynbee, otologist and ear-syringer to Queen Victoria: he died young in his laboratory experimenting on himself with chloroform for tinnitus. He was a radical local campaigner who fought to save Wimbledon Common from the rapacious Earl Spencer's attempt to privatise and enclose it. He set up the Wimbledon Village Club, a working men's institute for edification, entertainment, refreshments and a library, in much community use now. Family history records that his rigorous selflessness included dragging his nine children across Wimbledon Common on Christmas Day to make them donate their Christmas dinner to a Travellers' encampment. The plaque on the fountain says that working men of Wimbledon and those "interested in the public good" paid for this memorial.
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About Polly Toynbee
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. Toynbee previously worked as social affairs editor for the BBC (1988–1995) and also for The Independent newspaper. Before joining the BBC, she had written for The Observer and The Guardian. She is vice-president of Humanists UK, having previously served as its president between 2007 and 2012. She was also named Columnist of the Year at the 2007 British Press Awards. She became a patron of right to die organization My Death, My Decision in 2021. She was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 general election. She now broadly supports the Labour Party.
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Alternative Names:
Mary Louisa Toynbee
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Additional quotes by Polly Toynbee
Research published this month into OECD countries shows the poor gamble away a larger proportion of their income than the better off. Inevitably the temptations are greater when a £4,000 jackpot feels life-changing to someone on the minimum wage. So countries with more poor people - like the UK - are likely to gamble more. Britain is already the fifth highest gambler among developed nations.
This is where the housing pressure-cooker explodes. This is Manchester's civil court, like others all across England, where people are made homeless, hundreds every day. Those unable to pay rocketing mortgages have houses repossessed here. Tenants unable to cope with stagnant incomes lose their homes here when budgets no longer cover rising rents. From here, court bailiffs are sent to remove them.
The great scandal is the spiralling number of tenants evicted on "no-fault" section 21 orders: these allow a landlord to turn someone out even if they have always paid their rent on time, however many years they have been there, however well-behaved they have been.
If the Divis Complex in Belfast isn't the vilest housing estate in Britain, I am willing to accept nominations for the award.
Catholic West Belfast is a wedge-shaped slice of the city, and the Divis Complex is perched on the tip of the triangle, its 13 battered blocks nudging up against the check points of the city centre. Built only ten years ago, the flats have degenerated into a festering heap, crushed by the weight of their human density ...
The troubles have contributed to the plight of the estate, but wherever it had been thrown up, it would have sunk under its own architectural and design faults, the cheapness of the materials used, the lack of repairs and amenities. ...
The patches of ground between the flats are muddy heaps, scattered withy rubbish, with the stumps of old playground furnishings, bare ends of wires protruding where lamp posts once stood, and large rat holes everywhere. Rats have taken a grip on the place according to a recent estimate, the rat population was about 17,000 and out of control. ... There are no lights in the complex. Vandals knocked some out, and soldiers smashed the rest with their rifle butts, needing the cover of darkness for their patrols. The army has an observation tower at the top of the tower block, and patrols, running and covering one another chase up and down the balconies. One lunchtime when I was there, the soldiers had been into the estate five times that day. They had been knocking on doors and questioning people. Sometimes at night they knock front doors down. The flats stand on the front line next to the Shankill Protestant area, and there have been countless murders. ...
The stairways are pitch dark even in the daytime — so dark that everyone counts the stairs as they go, remembering which flights have seven and which have ten steps. Some stairs have large chunks of concrete missing, so a stranger might well break a leg. ...
It all takes its toll. With so many children in such a place, I didn't see much kindness. Brutalisation is inevitable. A mother wanted to show me her crippled child couldn't walk. "Come on Patrick show the lady how you move about," she urged him, but he shook his head. "Come on," she shouted, cuffing him.
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