Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
I daresay you’ve seen the ranking for British Prime Ministers since the second world war which, rightly, shows our Clem at the top and that jackanapes Eden at the bottom. Although I suppose if Eden had won in Suez then we might have been spared the misery of the first and second Gulf War, and
The manufacturer of slow, naff, French cars, Renault, has infuriated residents of a village in Lancashire by comparing it unfavourably with a village in France, in an advertising campaign which it thinks will win over British customers. People in the lovely Ribble Valley village of Gisburn were appalled to see their home mocked in comparison
Swathed in ermine, carried into the Chilcott Inquiry on a giant litter borne aloft by naked research assistants, and chewing a Lion Bar, Lord Prescott told the world he’d always been a bit, uh, nervous about the invasion of Iraq. Nice of you to share that with us now, John, many thanks. And also the
There is a letter in the latest edition of the magazine scolding my good friend James Delingpole for being rude about Prince Charles. The letter concludes like so: “The wording is intemperate and cowardly and shames The Spectator.” As I remember, James, with a certain flair, had simply pointed out that Prince Charles was a
The moment on the video that really hurts, that really digs in — if you are a human being, rather than an ape — is when Marian runs to the prone and inert body of her grandfather and, bending down, distraught, implores him to move, pawing at his body with her hands. She is so
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so vile, so sickening, so inhumane as the killing of the pensioner Ekram Haque in front of his little grand-daughter, Marian. It happened in Tooting, south-west London. You can watch what happened on CCTV (above) although you’ll need a strong stomach. It seems to have been a racist
The Prime Minister has decided that Turkey should be a member of the EU in order to form some sort of bridge with the rest of the Muslim world. He has also made the same mistake that the last government – and most apologists on the left made about Islam. He said of those people
I accept that this thread follows a little uncomfortably from my previous thread – I mean, if ever there was a happy challenge to the stereotype then this is it. Peter Tatchell has just received an honorary doctorate from Sussex University, for his services to human rights etc. Good, so he should, few deserve the
Homosexuals are tired of being portrayed on television as sexually obsessed, hilariously narcissistic, outrageously dressed queens each carrying a boxed set of Abba CDs – ie, Clary, Norton, Carr and so on. They want a bit more realism, believing that this sort of stereotypical depiction is hardly better than the Black and White Minstrels, or
All too late in the day, I have come to worry about the stuff I put out in my waste bins. It is not the recycling issue that bothers me, but what council officials, poring over my detritus with rubber gloves in some sanitised hell in Maidstone, might find out about me, and what they
A powerful editorial in New Scientist about Muir Russell’s report into those emails leaked from East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. It does not quite call Russell’s publication a whitewash, but comes fairly close. Its main point of contention is that there have been three inquiries into the Climategate farrago and “incredibly, none looked at the
A couple of weeks back I wrote a piece for the magazine about the debate over the Schonrocks, a family living in south London who allowed their two children – aged five and eight years – to cycle to school unaccompanied. The school had told them to desist from this practice because it was dangerous.
Must admit I’m thoroughly enjoying the government’s fury that decent, white, Christian, blind people keep getting chucked off buses because Muslims object to them. Apparently there is something in the Koran warning that if you brush up against a blind person, or get his saliva on your hand, it is haram – which means no
Some new public conveniences at a shopping centre in Rochdale will include two hole-in-the-ground squat toilets in order to make the area’s Asian population feel more at home. These innovations are apparently known as “Nile pans”, although I must say I have never heard them called this. I’ve heard them called “holes in the ground”,
This link was sent to me by my friend Belette. I am not sure if it makes it more or even less appropriate that one of the dancers is a survivor of Auschwitz. More, I suppose. Though I’ll bet it wasn’t his idea. Anyway, apologies if it causes offence; my own view is that it
What on earth is the government going to do about all these deranged northerners running amok shooting people? The more callous among you might well argue that it doesn’t really matter, as these madmen are only shooting other northerners, and so it is therefore none of our business. Perhaps. But there is no guarantee that
Just a quick one: who do you think is the more truly fucking stupid, the legions of thick Geordies who have signed the Facebook campaign claiming that Raoul Moat was a “legend”, or the outgoing chair of Ofsted Zenna Atkins, who said that it was good for schools to have incompetent or useless teachers because
I was largely behind Charles Moore’s rebellion against the BBC license fee. Partly for aesthetic reasons – I don’t like Jonathan Ross, and the truth is I wouldn’t like him much better if he were paid only £6 per year, rather than £6m. Partly too for a reason of which I expect Charles himself would
I’d hate to come across as a snob, but is the seaside town of Blackpool really worthy of UNESCO world heritage status, as is currently being suggested? Does it, you know, punch its weight alongside the Great Wall of China and the Acropolis? I thought it was just somewhere for Glaswegians to vomit. I’ve been
Louise Bagshaw, one of the new intake of Conservative MPs perhaps unkindly called Tory Totty because they are not, actually, terrifyingly ugly, has put her head above the parapet on the subject of rape. She is opposing plans to give men charged with rape anonymity in court. Women who accuse a man of rape are