Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

British families deserve a tax break

issue 30 March 2024

I am delighted to report that some £800,000 of taxpayers’ money is to be spent ‘remediating’ the works of Robert Louis Stevenson to show what a racist bastard he was.

70 per cent of Irish mums say they would stay at home to look after their kids if given the opportunity

I assume the decision was taken because, as a nation, we are absolutely awash with cash at the moment and need somewhere to dispense of it. This project, funded by the quango UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will be carried out at Edinburgh University. I hope that, aside from clobbering Stevenson for having been born during a different time period, they also have a go at him for his stereotypical portrayal of the disabled – and indeed pirates. Ever since reading Treasure Island I have viewed one-legged people with grave suspicion and will not voluntarily engage them in conversation. If they try to speak to me, I mumble something unintelligible and quickly walk away, immediately checking my pockets to see if my wallet has been stolen. I cannot abide them, you see – and this is primarily the fault of Stevenson and his odious creation Long John Silver. I have been told that not all amputees are violent criminals, even if they have parrots on their shoulders, but it has done me no good. I still fear and loathe them, much as I do blind people – again, a result of having been introduced to the appalling Pew.

‘The online speculation is going to be wild.’

I also hope UKRI manages to find people to carry out this important and expensive bit of smearing. It may well be that they will have to rely upon imported Chadians, or Mauritanians, given that according to the Lancet nobody in Britain is having babies any more and soon we will have to import our workforce from sub-Saharan Africa, where they are having more babies than anyone else, anywhere.

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