Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Did the government pay money for the release of the poor Chandlers, that elderly couple who decided to do a spot of yachting off the coast of Somalia? Indirectly, without question. What passes for a government over there, the Somali Federal Republic, has confirmed that some of the £30m aid we bunged the country recently
The Yasmin Alibhai-Brown business is quite remarkable, isn’t it? She takes herself on to Radio Five Live to make her usual sententious and ill-thought out views on the stoning of Muslim women. Western politicians are not morally qualified to condemn such stonings, she said, because they’ve killed lots of Muslim women with bombs etc. Now,
I suppose I am past the point in life where, as Gore Vidal put it, litigation takes the place of sex. I have consulted lawyers at least 12 times so far this year, which easily exceeds the amount of times I have engaged in mutual sexual activity. Even on my birthday I rang a lawyer
If you fancy a laugh, and have the time to spare, check out the website for REVOLUTION, aka Permanent Revolution, the Trot group some of whose members smashed up Conservative Central Office this week. You might also check out Workers’ Power, the Trot group from which REVOLUTION split a year or two back for the
Of course China is not the only country in the world to which we apply duplicitous standards when it comes to human rights. Saudi Arabia springs to mind, for example. And then there is Pakistan. Yesterday in Lahore a 45 year old Christian mother of five was sentenced to death for the supposed crime of
At last the Labour Party is reconnecting with its core working class vote, and this time in an engagingly direct manner. Paul Farrelly, the MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme punched a newspaper seller in the sports and social club of the House of Commons, leaving him with blood pouring down his face. They also grappled on the
It is time we started a campaign to free the Meedhuffushi One, a victim of government persecution. Hussein Didi was arrested and faces prosecution for the crime of having officiated at a hotel ‘wedding’ ceremony on the tiny island of Meedhuffushi in the Maldives. You may have read about his unorthodox benediction to the Swiss
Sorry – been away, up in Middlesbrough working on a feature and haven’t had time for the usual bloggin’, scurrying between dole office and lovely North York Moors. A brief return to last week’s story about Harman and the gingers. Nonvexatious, in the thread below, insists that there have been no reported cases of red
Has Harman not fallen foul of her own legislation, the Equality Act 2010 which this government cravenly enacted almost in full? She has disparaged a colleague on account of his appearance and parentage. This certainly contravenes the section of her fabulously fatuous legislation which outlaws discrimination against colleagues through “association or perception”. Danny Alexander is
Harriet Harman has been forced to apologise for having called Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent”. Her “quip” came as the highlight of a speech to the Scottish Labour Party Conference; we in Labour are conservationists, we love the red squirrel, but there’s one ginger rodent we never want to see in Scotland and that’s Danny
Should northerners, with their interminable pies and poverty, be allowed on to the BBC political discussion programme, Question Time? The corporation is being accused of “bias” because last week’s show came from Middlesbrough, a town with high unemployment and a large proportion of public sector jobs due for the axe. The Transport Minister, Philip Hammond,
The guitarist Keith Richards is perhaps most famous for having constructed a short and very simple rhythmic musical phrase, over the top of which his colleague Mick Jagger expressed an increasing irritation at being unable to acquire, in both general and specific terms, any kind of ‘satisfaction’ — despite, as he proceeded to explain, repeatedly
I just wondered if, henceforth, there should be a parental advisory label at the top of this blog, so that incredibly angry and maybe homicidal Welsh people whose names are almost devoid of vowels can follow it only if they have their parents with them to help. Or better, maybe, I could underscore stuff which
I hope you are as delighted as me at the fact that our financial commitment to overseas aid will increase by more than 30 percent over the next few years. I suspect they’re all leaping up and down with delight in Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Stoke, Cardiff and so on, too, as the dole queues grow longer.
I see that the BBC has been told there will be no increase in its license fee plus it must look after the World Service and S4C. Good. It should increase the funding to the World Service, which is one of the few things foreigners like about Britain and which pitches its journalism on a
Delingpole Redux. James has responded to my post in his blog to all those true and fervent non-believers at the Telegraph. The headline reads “Rod Liddle Knows Less About Climate Change Than I know About Millwall”. And there, just about, we have it – as I said, the political correctness of the right, mirroring the
What’s happened to James Delingpole’s sense of humour? He is one of the funniest writers in the country, acute and truthful and unworried by the constant spite and derision of the faux left libtard bien pensant arseholes who swarm around the internet like sea lice around a sewage outlet pipe. He is also, I ought
Amsterdam Be careful if you are planning to attack a Jew in Amsterdam. What you see is not always what you get. Throw a rock or spit at some bloke with long curly sidelocks and a yarmulke and before you know it you might end up handcuffed in the back of a police van. What
Just back from Amsterdam, via the train, or two trains at least. The list of stations speeding by sounded like a drunken Scotsman’s tirade: Sloten, Dordrecht, Mechelen, Duffel, ya Delft bastard. I was there for the magazine, to write a piece about an increase in anti-Semitism in the country and especially in Amsterdam itself. The
Has anyone else had enough of John McTernan, appearing on a political discussion programme near you at this very moment? McTernan was Tony Blair’s political organiser, a backroom monkey who, since May this year has decided we should all be able to benefit from his incalculable wisdom. Thin eyed and smug he has been wrong