Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
It is a shame that we will be losing Jack Straw at the next election. He has just announced his attention to stand down from a seat he has occupied for more than 30 years. I always rather liked him. He seemed – you know – sort of human, and his instincts were usually right,
How should we describe the people who allegedly abducted that little girl in Greece, after a neighbour claimed that they actually paid £850 for her to a passing Bulgarian? It is a minefield we are entering now, having asked this question. Clearly the terms which hitherto some of us may have employed, not always affectionately
What a pleasure it is to bring you a good news story this morning, something uplifting. On Saturday afternoon, West Ham entertained Manchester City, but a substantial number of City’s ticket allocation was not taken up. So the West Ham board, which includes the lovely Karen Brady, decided to give the spare tickets, free of
Apparently our MPs declined the opportunity to stand up and give the heavily pregnant minister Jo Swinson a seat during PMQs. So she stood. She has made no fuss at all. My suspicion is the MPs would have happily stood for her but were worried that they’d later be castigated as sexist for having done
Trying to get good, healthy, nutritious food down the ungrateful throats of the lower orders, especially northerners, has become a serious national problem. At the moment these awful people eat nothing but fat coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried in engine oil, and so as a consequence they are gargantuan, slobbering masses of compacted lard, so
Greetings from the 2013 Radio Festival, in Salford. I’m here to take part in a debate about whether or not radio reflects the opinions and concerns of a broad enough tranche of the public. It certainly does a better job of this than TV; Radio Five (especially Nicky Campbell) and some of the local stations
There was a line in Randy Newman’s very funny song ‘Short People’ that I couldn’t quite work out, so I looked up the lyrics online. There were some observations about the song posted below the lyrics – I thought I’d share a selection with you. ‘This song is just really f****d up… freedom of speech
The Guardian seems to be hurt that larger selling Fleet Street newspapers (ie almost all of them) have not rallied to its side since Andrew Parker, the boss of MI5, stuck the boot in. Parker eviscerated the North London local paper for publishing material stolen by Edward Snowden, which he said had given a ‘gift’
It is a peculiar alliance, when you think of it, which wishes to bring to an end 300 years of press freedom in this country. The handsome actor Hugh Grant would rather the press didn’t find out about him being ‘noshed’, as I believe the term has it, by a prostitute on some Los Angeles freeway.
This might, on the face of it, seem an outrageous thing to say, but I think it’s a shame that Diane Abbott has been booted out of her role as Shadow Health Minister by Miliband II. Much though she can rile with all that whining victim business, not to mention the occasional spurt of hilarious
I had never really understood the acronym ROTFLMAO properly until I read about the wretched Mehdi Hasan and his hypocritical denunciation of the Daily Mail, after having applied with cringing desperation to the same paper for a job. (Dacre told him to get lost, which is to his credit). My colleague Nick Cohen has filed
Has there been a more emetic sight than Alastair Campbell touring the radio and TV studios lecturing the world on moral probity? I can’t think of one, offhand. The BBC, an institution he once tried to destroy, if you recall, is more than happy to shove him on air whensoever he feels like it. I
Ring, ring goes the telephone every minute God sends. Sometimes I pick it up and say hello, sometimes I don’t. I know who is calling, anyway. It is one or another media representative from the bien-pensant absolutist liberal left, and they are all in a dither about a man called Ralph Miliband, of whom they
It doesn’t matter how much Ed Miliband’s lip quivers, his dad was, as The Daily Mail suggested, a far left wing intellectual whose gratitude to the country which took him in extended only to wishing it might be dismantled, root and branch. That Ralph Miliband was also an urbane north London émigré does not alter,
I’m not sure where I stand on the tax-breaks for married couples, announced with great hoo-ha by the government and derided by the opposition. On the one hand, as a god-fearing authoritarian bigot, I approve of people who choose to live as Jesus Christ himself wished us to. On the other hand, I do not
There is a little vignette in the first volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries that makes it abundantly clear that, at the time, we were being governed by people who were mentally ill. It is yet another furious, bitter, gut-churning row involving Campbell, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and concludes with Mandelson stamping his little feet
Freedom of speech is alive and well in Scotland, then. Pastor Josh Williamson took the Christian gospel to the streets of Perth last week, before he was arrested by the old bill for a ‘breach of the peace’. Asked why he was being arrested, Plod No 1 said because you’re too loud, pointing to the
Trouble is, I suppose, there’s so much space to fill these days, in the papers and on cyberspace, on your TV screens and on the wireless. And not filled with the same old stuff, but filled with something different. And so if you’re a columnist the pressure’s really on: what the hell is there that’s
What strategy should we adopt to cope with the British Medical Association? Its members kill more people each year than President Assad — 72,000 is the latest estimate, from the House of Commons health select committee. Perhaps it is at last time to sit down and negotiate with them, much though this will stick in
Ah, this all started out so well, and with such good intentions. This attempt of mine to write seriously and informatively about wine. Well, to write about wine, full stop, really. There was always going to be a problem with someone who rather likes retsina, I suppose. My chief criteria for judging wine is quantity.