Rod Liddle observes a beautiful microcosm of British society on Branscombe beach, as slavering chavs and media monkeys make the most of a shipwreck
Sidmouth, Devon
The plaque at the entrance to the sharply sloping banks of shingle reads ‘Bountiful Branscombe’ and, you have to say, they’re not kidding. The giant containers, their metal sides crushed or ripped open by the waves, lie haphazardly across the beach at the point where the shingle turns to sand.
Seen from a distance, they resemble pill-box defences constructed under the directions of a drunken idiot, all facing the wrong way and placed at jarring angles to one another. When you get closer, though, you hear the excited babble, you see the endless procession of people weighed down by five BMW windscreens strapped across their backs, or dragging huge camshafts across the stones, or passing bags of dog food to one another, or still desperately rummaging in the jagged maw of one of the containers. Just beyond them, illuminated by fierce klieg lights, are seven or eight identical little huddles of television people — soundman, cameraman, serious-looking reporter in a suit and with perfect hair — preparing to do their stuff for the evening news programmes.
More articles from: Rod Liddle | this section
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
Rod Liddle says that metropolitan liberal ideology is too deeply ingrained in local councils, social services and the judiciary to be overturned by one panic measure driven by Labour’s sudden fear of the BNP
Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme
The acclaimed web theorist, Mark Earls, says that the death of Michael Jackson unleashed the extremes of collective action: mass mourning and sick jokes
In the first of an occasional series of interviews over meals, Deborah Ross talks to Dominic West about The Wire and the challenge to an Old Etonian of playing an American cop
My defining memory of Michael Jackson — vulnerable, brilliant, otherworldly — is of watching him dance to the soundtrack of a movie.
Martin Bright says that the party labels its enemies as ‘mad’ for Freudian reasons: ‘projecting’ its own collective and individual mental disorders upon foes and rebels alike
Rod Liddle says that Harriet Harman’s notion of ‘structural pay discrimination’ is nonsense. It is women’s decision to have children that disrupts wage equality
It is, at present, almost impossible to open a garden magazine, or the gardening pages of a national newspaper, without coming across an article on how we are all now kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers; the theme is that the uncertain economic conditions have turned us back to our gardens, to grow comestibles and thereby ensure that we eat well, now that lack of the readies has reconnected us with our cookers.
This will be the Year of the Nosy Parker, says Catherine Blyth: researchers chasing dwindling custom desperate to find out what is going on inside our heads
Rod Liddle says that television news is intrinsically biased: it transforms what it reports.
In the case of the economy, ministers are right to counteract this with a dose of optimism
IF YOU ARE PLANNING A CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION and looking for some light entertainment, you can now hire London's busiest steel
BOSC LEBAT, SW France. Only 45 minutes from Toulouse Airport with daily flights from most provincial airports avoiding the horrors
PORTA METRONIA, ROME Standing high on the top of one of the seven hills of Rome- the Coelian- this unique
Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine
Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved