Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Fancy a bit of crowdfunding? My wife has insisted that I buy myself a new suit, as I lost weight and none of my suits fit me and the newest one is five years old, in any case. I had intended to go to Mr Byrite, if it still exists, or perhaps Millets. But now
So who is poisoning all the doggies, then? I assumed, when the first horrible reports came through from Crufts, that it was either the Russians or the Muslims. Russians seem unable to go more than a few days without feeling the need to bump somebody off. Perhaps they’d run out of businessmen to kill and thought,
I read that Jeremy Clarkson had been suspended by the BBC for ‘a fracas’ with a producer. We don’t know what happened yet – but that hasn’t stopped my phone ringing with requests for interviews from Channel Four News (natch) and, yes, the BBC – the producers beside themselves with glee. And already one witless
It is a tragedy that some of us are born in the wrong times. According to that increasingly gobby conduit of right-on morality, the NSPCC, girls these days feel compelled to act like porn stars in order to ingratiate themselves with boys. I am not sure quite what, in day to day life, this involves.
Two party election policies, two failures to think things through. Or, at least, to engage with realities. First, Labour announces a cut in university tuition fees to a maximum of £6,000. Why? The sum itself isn’t important. For a potential student, £6,000 and £9,000 – or £18,000 and £27,000 – are much of a muchness.
What a pleasure it is to see the Hollywood actor Sean Penn neck deep in PC ordure. The rodentine thespian was handing out an award at the Oscars to his friend the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu, for his film Birdman. ‘Who gave this sonofabitch a green card?’ Penn quipped about his mate — at
A minor point, I suppose, but one worth noting. It was stated on the BBC and in the liberal press that these three girls who have scuttled off to Syria for a spot of beheading and FGM had been ‘groomed’ by radical Islamists. A word not used when it is young men who head off
Are you terribly worried about those three London ‘schoolgirls’ who have gone off to fight for the Islamic State in Syria? I must admit I haven’t lost an awful lot of sleep over it. The BBC ran the story at interminable length on Sunday night, the implication seeming to be that we should strain every sinew to
I have had many proposals of marriage recently via the internet, most of them coming from young ladies in Nigeria, Ghana, the DRC and so on. Some of them haven’t even asked for my bank details. I assume that request will come later. Here’s the best one, though. And also the most mystifying. Hello Dear
Have you seen the prices for houses in Israel? Astronomical, mate. You wouldn’t believe it. An arid and perpetually embattled country which everyone has recently decided to hate, and with a bloody great big wall topped with razor wire running through the middle of it — I’d have expected the cost of a nice four-bed
One of the highlights of my week comes on a Saturday morning, when I make myself a cup of fair-trade coffee and settle down to read the letters page of the Guardian. My wife usually joins me — it’s a sort of date thing, romantic in its own way — and we sit there cackling,
Here’s a preview of Rod Liddle’s column from this week’s Spectator, on the financial plight of The Guardian… One of the highlights of my week comes on a Saturday morning, when I make myself a cup of fair-trade coffee and settle down to read the letters page of the Guardian. My wife usually joins me
Odd though it may seem, I think I’m with Stephen Fry on the issue of the Baftas. The grand old poof – I mean that in an affectionate, rather than a disparaging or a prejudiced sense – has been criticised for his performance as compere at this fatuous awards ceremony. Too many expletives. Off colour
Shocking news belatedly reaches me that the Labour MP Margaret Hodge has pulled out of the race to become the next Mayor of London. I am not sure how London will cope without this colossus, but there we are. She said: ‘I actually think the time is right for us to have a non-white mayor.’
Look, let me take you away for Isis and jets crashing into Taiwan and Cameron and Miliband. Let me direct you toward the real issues facing this country. The (former?) actress Amanda Holden, now a judge on the brilliant TV show ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, has been criticised for appearing in public without a bra. Apparently one
Was the burning alive of an enemy combatant by the Islamic State a ‘deviant’ act – as the moderate Muslim political party, al-Qa’eda, insists? It is difficult to know why burning a single human being alive is more ‘deviant’ than burning several hundred alive, in al-Qa’eda’s greatest hit, the destruction of the World Trade Centre,
Isn’t it about time the English language got itself a gender-neutral pronoun? This was the clarion call from the Guardian last week — and when that particular clarion sounds, we must all stand to attention and cut out the sniggering. I assume the writer of the piece was moved to action having seen photographs of members
Should we pardon all homosexuals who, in the past, were convicted under laws prohibiting sodomy or indecency or soliciting? The gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell thinks we should: ‘Pardon all convicted gay men, not just (Alan) Turing’ is the headline of his latest press statement. It certainly makes more sense than simply pardoning Turing, retrospectively,
I suspect that you were as appalled as I by the plight of young mum, Marie Buchan, from Selly Oak in Birmingham. She has eight children – called stuff like Latoya and Tia – and currently claims a meagre £26,000 per year in benefits to feed them all. But now the government’s benefits cap has
How should we refer to non-white people, and foreigners in general, given that of course we do sometimes need to mention them, perhaps over dinner in White’s or when mulling over where to go on our holidays? This is an important question, because the approved terminologies seem to shift by the day, if not the
