Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Here’s another one, part of an occasional series in these parts, of people from the newspapers who are, for often undefinable reasons, really, really annoying. Not always undefinable, mind. This is from a feature in the Guardian’s weekend magazine about what people got their kids for Christmas. First they speak to the parent, then to
I would have more sympathy for Diane Abbott if she hadn’t used precisely such ‘racist’ indiscretions against other people in the past. Not least me, frankly. I hope she might begin to see how absurd the whole business is. But I have the horrible feeling she will think herself an innocent who has been wrongly
I wonder what explanation will be found for the mysterious discovery of a woman’s body tucked behind a hedge on the royal estate of Sandringham? The obvious answer — that she was murdered and partially eaten by a senior member of the royal family, or perhaps a number of royal family members operating as a
A happy new year to all of you; I hope it is more pleasant than 2011. My resolution is to kick anyone who uses the word ‘chill’ to me in any context other than that referring directly to inclement weather or a touch of ague. Anyone who uses ‘chill’ in combination with the suffix ‘pill’
So, another year closes and, with it, the window of opportunity for murdering transgendered people. Henceforth it will simply not be worth the effort. Hitherto you could have murdered one of these sorts of person and have been out of prison in rather less than a decade. Now, though, thanks to the Justice Secretary Kenneth
Christmas is all about enjoying the look on the face of a loved one as he or she opens something which you know will fill them with great emotion. And so Christmas day came a couple of days early for me as I watched my wife open the Oftsed report on our daughter’s school and
Usually at this time of year my family decamps for a weekend to some lovely city in what used to be called eastern Europe — Bratislava, Krakow, Vienna or, best of all, Budapest — for the Christmas fairs. The air tickets to these places are dead cheap, usually about twenty quid, and the hotels good
I think this is my favourite seasonal story so far, aside from that Korean bloke popping his clogs. Toddlers at a playgroup in York have been banned from doing the hand motions to a nursery rhyme in case it inadvertently offends any deaf people who might, or might not, be watching. The rhyme in question
Christmas is a particularly horrible time of the year to lose a loved one, so our sympathies go out to the people of North Korea who have lost their beloved leader, Kim Jong-il. Apparently he had a heart attack on a train. As Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has already commented, Kim was a ‘comrade’ in the
So, not only are school examinations so easy these days that they could be passed with some comfort by a plate of processed cheese, but the exam board people give the kids the answers as well. This is but one reason why our school leavers are, in the main, pig ignorant. When the Education Secretary
Usually at this time of the year I’m busy at home compiling entrants for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize, a prestigious award which goes to whatever police force has made the most fatuous arrest under the new and superfluous ‘race hate’ legislation. You may not remember, but Ronnie Hutton was the Scottish motorist who, several
I do not entirely understand why the Tory right is demanding a referendum over the latest plans to allow Germany to dictate the economic policies of all countries within the eurozone. I can see why we should have had a referendum over the EU ‘Constitution’ — which did fundamentally change our relationship with the EU
I’ve always found it a little hard to put into words why I don’t like London. It’s an inchoate thing, really, and something which is difficult to express. But I don’t like the place and resent having to go there every so often. I suppose, at root, it’s because there are very few people like
So, Jeremy Clarkson then – or Jimmy Carr Redux. In that thread below quite a few of you fair-minded folk came to the supposedly sensible conclusion that Carr should be allowed to make his jokes and the lobbyists castigate him for it. Well, yes, but that’s to miss the point. If it were simple castigation,
Is it important to know your next-door neighbour’s name if you’re about to send him death threats, hate mail or just post unpleasant allegations about him on a social networking site? My guess is that your campaign of vilification will carry more weight if you can actually give the victim’s full name, rather than just
Your views, please, on the government’s new-found interest in Boris Johnson’s stupid idea of a huge new airport built on the Isle of Grain, in Kent. Johnson, with his recently acquired catamite, Sir Norman Foster, has been agitating for a new airport to be built for half a decade or more. The favoured scheme right
Ah, so this time Jimmy Carr has fallen foul of the increasingly vociferous Down’s Syndrome lobby. A few weeks back it was Gervais, who used the word ‘mong’, provoking fury among the god-awful bien pensant and the pressure groups. Now Carr has told a joke about those Variety Club Sunshine Coaches used to take Down’s
This week I thought I would offer advice on the sort of things one can and cannot say in public without fear of censure. I realise that I may not be the most obvious person, at this moment in time, to offer such a service. Maybe even the last person. But one has to plough
The Guardian has retracted one of the allegations it made about me in its strangely humour-free Pass Notes section on Monday. They said that I had described a footballer as a ‘spearchucking African’, whereas I was quoting what had allegedly been said about the footballer by somebody else and using that quote to justify the
People sometimes ask me, about the stuff I write: ‘Do you ever think that you get it wrong?’ The answer of course is a fervent ‘Yes!’ And even when I don’t actually KNOW that I’ve got something wrong, I’m always plagued with doubt about it. One thing I got wrong recently was the riots. Or
