Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
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.
Is it only the mentally ill who are allowed guns in the USA, or is it only the mentally ill ones that we hear about? Aaron Alexis, responsible for shooting dead 12 people within a military base in Washington DC, had a bunch of exciting guns with him, including an AR 15 semi-automatic rifle, which
Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to this country are ‘just like’ British people who have second homes in France, according to the government’s Crime Prevention minister, Jeremy Browne. He is absolutely right, except for a small number of really quite insignificant differences. One being that the Romanians and Bulgarians don’t own homes here. The second being
The Syrian rebels who liberated the mountain village of Maaloula apparently immediately set about converting the predominantly Christian population to Islam, using the gently persuasive techniques we have come to associate with this dynamic and expanding religion. ‘Allahu Akbar! Either you will convert to Islam or you will be beheaded,’ rebels allegedly told some villagers.
I see the new Newsnight editor, Ian Katz, is in trouble for having ‘tweeted’ about the performance of one of the programme’s guests in an ungallant manner. He described the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, as being ‘boring snoring’ during her interview with Paxo. The Labour Party has demanded an apology and
An Aussie rules footballer was apparently in trouble for having set fire to a dwarf who had been booked to entertain the team at an end of season party. Clinton Jones saw the diminutive Blake Johnston capering around and, being a half-wit, couldn’t resist applying a gas lighter to his backside. Whooooof, went the dwarf.
The Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather has decided to stand down at the next election. I realise that this will not be a popular view on here, but I think that’s a great shame. She has been an unflinchingly principled, honest and always thoughtful MP; in essence it is the nature of the coalition which
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.
Apologies for the prolonged absence. This was due to a holiday in which I stayed away from all forms of communication for two and a half weeks. I cannot recommend this policy too highly. During my break, incidentally, I discovered another reason to physically assault the hawkers who festoon the central square in Marrakech, the
Do you share the very real pain of the disability lobby groups about George Galloway MP referring to someone with whom he was arguing as a window-licker? Maybe you do. I have never heard the term used except as a mild admonition to someone who had just done or said something stupid. For others, it
Listen, this story is moving so quickly stuff will almost certainly have happened in between me writing it and you reading it. I hate the idea that you might be left behind the curve, but I just don’t know how to get around that. An outrage occurs and of course we try faithfully to report
Let’s hear it for Nigeria, which has just joined the space race. The country plans to launch a rocket by 2028, although nobody has explained where the rocket will be heading. It is a legal requirement, I suspect, for all countries which receive vast amounts of aid from Britain to start pinging rockets around the
Hell, it’s been tough, but I think I’ve pulled through. I went out this morning to buy some cigarettes and there were plenty of people about, doing stuff — so the world has not changed beyond recognition these last couple of days. Everyone else seems to have made it. I hope you made it OK,
Peter Hain, I see, has suggested that we come to a negotiated settlement with the Spanish government over Gibraltar, in order to stop them being spiteful by taxing those who move in and out of the territory, and harassing the locals. The remarkable thing about Hain is that he is wrong about almost everything; the
The British embassy in Yemen is to be closed for a couple of days because the Americans have got wind of a terrorist threat. The Foreign Office has gone so far as to urge all Britons to leave the fractious, arid, maniac-bedevilled wasteland right now. I think they should stay where they are. Any Britons
I watched this thinking it would be hilariously bad, but ended up quite liking it; especially the line, near the end, ‘it’s not British, it’s brutish’. Ok it ain’t T S Eliot. But then the wizened old chap would sit oddly at the Guardian. (‘In the room the women come and go, talking of George Monbiot’).
