Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Why does everyone think that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is so clever? Is it just the beard? Maybe if you nailed a beard onto Wayne Rooney people would start saying he was clever too, rather than thinking him a truculent potato-headed troll with learning difficulties. Beards are a mask, a diversionary tactic. If
What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID. What, to your mind, constitutes a ‘hate crime’? I’ve been wondering about this since reading the comments of Paul Marshall, of the Cumbria CID. Paul had been expressing his great satisfaction
Lord Carlile has attacked unelected Strasbourg judges for making too narrow an interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights and thus coming into conflict with the British parliament. His main area of concern has been the way in which the Euro judges prevent us from chucking out illegal asylum seekers, foreign criminals and potential
The right-wing historian Niall Ferguson is very handsome, isn’t he? If I were a woman, or a homosexual, I would certainly set my cap at him; I would let him order for me in restaurants and handle me brusquely in the bedroom as he revealed to me the full tumescent glory of his ‘killer app’,
Sad to hear of the death of Sidney Lumet, whose films, for the most part, I enjoyed. His most famous – 12 Angry Men – was certainly compelling, claustrophobic and actorly; a little like a very early version of the wonderful Glengarry Glen Ross, in its reliance upon dialogue and nuance. Hardly a surprise that
Are women to blame for almost everything, as the Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, seems to think? I would not lightly discount the possibility; they can, after all, be terribly trying. They are certainly to blame for most of the bad things which have happened in my life, if you discount
The Guardian’s political editor, Michael White, has been writing about the possibility of there being a British version of the American’s Tea Party. He says: “Potential leaders? Motormouth red-top columnists such as Jon Gaunt, Rod Liddle and Richard Littlejohn are routinely touted……..” Are we? Excellent. I think I’d make a wonderful leader of a British
Here’s a game I often play on a Sunday afternoon. Look through the weekend’s papers and pick out people you would never ever want to meet, under any circumstances. The “Weekenders” slot in The Guardian is usually good for this. But there are plenty of gems hidden away elsewhere, such as this, from the Sunday
Apparently the black writer of good natured doggerel, Benjamin Zephaniah, was airbrushed out of leaflets distributed by the pro-AV lobby and Baldrick photo-shopped in, instead. This was for leaflets which were distributed outside London; the ones in London showed Zephaniah alongside a bunch of similarly minded pseudo slebs. The implication is that people outside London
‘When I’m rushing on my run, And I feel just like Jesus’ son And I guess but I just don’t know, And I guess but I just don’t know.’ Lou Reed Would we be happier, do you think, if we all took large quantities of heroin? It would take the edge off some of the
Ah, first The Arab League and now The Guardian. There was a piece by Jonathan Freedland earlier this week about why the military action against Gaddafi has recently exceeded its original remit and – sadly, for the world – he could no longer support it. During the article, he danced on the head of a
At last I have managed to get my five year old daughter to like Coca Cola. Previously she drank only still water, milk or apple juice. I think she found the fizziness of cola disconcerting – but at last commonsense has prevailed, helped by a little peer pressure from her brothers. Now she loves the
A woman on a British Airways flight who was seven months pregnant was told to give up her more spacious seat because of overbooking. A whole bunch of other passengers were instructed likewise. It was a two leg flight, as I understand it, and for the duration of the first leg all the spacious seats
Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen some string in my time. The problem is, they were all of different lengths, these bits of string, some long, some shorter. I suppose the mean length of string I’ve come across would be about nine inches,
Great news for the nuclear industry and indeed for the world: George Monbiot has “altered” his stance on nuclear power and is now in favour of it, rather than being non-committal. In a magnificently self-regarding piece for the Grauniad yesterday he pointed out what most of the rest of us have been arguing for years
I thought it would take at least three days for these new allies – France, UK, US – to lose the support of the Arab League, upon whose agreement this latest fatuous adventure was predicated. But it took rather less than that; about five minutes after the first Tomahawk had been fired, in fact. Tomorrow,
Is this the end for the British National Party? I know that sentence reads like one of those headlines in the Daily Mail to which the answer is always no, like ‘Do tramps give you cancer?’ But things are nonetheless looking a little grim for that doughty and loveable band of white supremacists who, the
An interesting case, the issue of Midsomer Murders and the producer (and creator) of the show, Brian True-May, who has been suspended for saying he deliberately kept ethnic minorities out of it to preserve its sense of “Englishness”. I wonder if the real reason he kept them out is that the point of the programme
Any suggestions as to what I can do about my mother-in-law? She’s an “End-Time” Christian and with the advent of 24 hour news and social networking sites telling us stuff we would never have heard about before or not got too worked up about – shoals of dead fish in Alabama, frogs raining from the
I hope the Japanese authorities are telling the truth about the nuclear reactor building which exploded as a consequence of the earthquake. We are told that while the outer shell at the Fukushima plant did indeed explode (as seen on YouTube), the inner core, within its steel cradle, remained apparently unimpaired. In which case, why
