Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

What’s wrong with ‘Avoid the Ghetto’?

Now here’s some good news to cheer you all up. Microsoft has applied for a patent for a Smartphone ‘app’ (I hate that word) called ‘Avoid the Ghetto’. Basically it just tells you the places to stay away from if you’re in an unfamiliar city. You can imagine the areas it tells you stay from.

Beyonce of many colours

Do you prefer the singer Beyonce when she is black or when she is white? Or could you not give a monkey’s either way? I think I prefer her, marginally, when she is white, although it’s a close call. If she were black and not singing, that would be pretty good. It would be better

How to ensure the Union ends with mourning

Those photographs of North Koreans wailing, weeping and gnashing their teeth in grief over the death of Kim Jong-il have suddenly become a little more explicable. Apparently people not observed to be extremely distraught faced six months in a labour camp. Perhaps we could introduce a similar stricture for when the Scotch people vote to

Is Worrall Thompson getting off lightly?

I see that the famous midget cook, Antony Worrall Thompson, has been cautioned for having nicked some wine and cheese from the Henley branch of Tesco. Indeed, it seems he was filmed tucking some Cathedral City Cheddar or something inside his bag on new fewer than five separate occasions. It’s been a tough few years

A very ethical Christmas

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

Rod Liddle

Abbott’s hypocrisy

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

Rod Liddle

Is it empowering for women to have their baps inflated?

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

Ed should listen to Lord Glasman

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’

You have to be very careful who you murder these days

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

The true meaning of Christmas

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

Ripped-off in a winter wonderland

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

Twinkle, twinkle little star

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

So long, Kim Jong-il

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

The Great Exams Rip-off

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

Rod Liddle

This year’s shortlist for the Ronnie Hutton Memorial Prize

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

The Tory right isn’t making sense

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

Why do I loathe London?

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

Rod Liddle

The Clarkson hunt

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,