Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Some more nasty opinion poll news for David Cameron, with an ICM poll showing the Tory lead down to seven per cent. “Hung Parliament Looms as Tory Support Crumbles” was the splash in The Guardian, which you might have predicted. You might have predicted Michael Heseltine wading in to the debate too, suggesting that the
The Channel Four television programme Tower Block of Commons, which concluded last night, may have been a stupid and opportunistic idea, but it may too have one beneficial outcome. No matter how reviled and loathed are our politicians, set alongside some of the untermensch featured in this show they appeared paragons, saints, beacons of decency.
Just a thought, but isn’t the National Bullying Helpline guilty of bullying the Prime Minister? I think I will ring its freephone number claiming to be Gordon Brown and explain that I am currently being bullied by a prominent anti-bullying charity, can they suggest a course of action. Quite clearly what the aptly-named Pratts, the
Look, I know a good many of you lot would clutch at anything if it helped defeat Gordon Brown at the next election, and I understand and respect that point of view. But come on, be honest – bullying? Accusing the Prime Minister of bullying? I suppose the best that one could argue, from a
David Wright, the Labour MP for Telford, should get out more, he should be more inclusive. I have attended many Conservative party conferences and mingled late at night with the delegates, and I have to say it always seemed to me that the party was composed almost exclusively of scum-sucking pigs. Sometimes I would go
I don’t suppose that anyone is about to build a community centre in commemoration of Waad al-Baghdadi, but maybe they should. There’s one for Stephen Lawrence, constructed as a token of our disgust at what Sir William Macpherson called the ‘institutional racism’ of the Metropolitan Police. Lawrence’s murder was not competently investigated by the Old
When the Pope arrives here for his state visit, should he not be arrested for his views about buggery? Or at the least be interviewed by the old bill? The Pope has called homosexuality a “moral evil” and that saving mankind from sodomy is as important as saving the rainforests. Further, homosexuality could lead to
I’m not an enormous fan of “giving money to charity”; I prefer to spend my spare cash on holidays, consumer durables and alcohol. But somehow, for the last five years, I’ve been paying a monthly stipend to Amnesty International. I really don’t know how that can have happened. Obviously, it should now stop, seeing that
Rod Liddle says that the outrage directed at a taxi firm for advertising ‘English spoken here’ serves only to strengthen white working-class resentment — and the BNP ‘Rraaaaaaaacissst!’ — that Pavlovian whine of complaint, almost always from a white person, an idle and meaningless howl of outrage where once, when uttered by a black or
This has been an appalling couple of months for the climate change lobby and now there’s been another, sickening, blow – which some of you, undecided in the debate, may well feel is the clincher. Prince Charles has waded into the issue, eviscerating climate change sceptics. “Please be in no doubt that the evidence of
David Cameron has said that “burglars leave their human rights at the doorstep” when they break into a house. He added that he wishes to see “fewer” prosecutions of homeowners who defend themselves or their property from intruders. He has not spelled out precisely how far we can go with burglars, whether or not we
Rod Liddle says it’s difficult to ignore the fact that the worst violations of human rights happen in countries dominated by an Islamic ideology A young girl in Bangladesh has been sentenced to 101 lashes for having become pregnant as a consequence of being raped. Her father will also have to pay a fine to
An interesting piece by the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, in the magazine this week on the government apparently backtracking on the issue of the Muslim Council of Britain, and talking to it once again. The MCB was removed from the officially designated category of Good Islam a while back and placed in
This following is definitely in bad taste, isn’t it? I don’t always have a working moral compass when it comes to black humour, but I think this is just the wrong side of the line. Although I’m not sure. A disc jockey from Revolution Radio, in Manchester, played the song ‘Jump’, by Van Halen, as
There are two big chunks of child-related outrage in our newspapers today (and tomorrow, I’d guess). The first is the story of a woman with learning difficulties who fled the country with her baby daughter because the local social services department argued that, effectively, she was too thick to bring the kid up. She has
There’s a few Early Day Motions in the House of Commons, one of which demands that I should not be made editor of the Independent newspaper, based upon a Guardian story that I was about to be. There are two signatories – the self-publicising, hypocritical pantomime dame Diane Abbott, with whom I have crossed swords
I see that UKIP thinks it a good idea to ban Muslim women from wearing the veil in the public. The burka and “other face covering veils” should be outlawed, Farage pronounced today. His reasons given are that full veils are socially divisive and symbolic of the subordination of women. What a low and filthy
Rod Liddle says that Northern Ireland’s First Minister and his wife held religious beliefs that made ordinary life — and marriage — impossible Help me out here — we need a wholesale supplier, and quickly. If we are to save the soul of Iris Robinson, we need huge vats of the blood of Christ, in
The conviction of seven Muslim protestors for shouting nasty things at returning British soldiers was a grave and dangerous assault upon freedom of speech. I don’t care how foul the men are, or how provocative their beards might be, nor how smug they appeared on the court steps after the verdict – it was still
This, from Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the Climatic Research Centre at the University of East Anglia: “Within a few years winter snowfall in Britain will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” March, 2000. Ah, the joy of knowing the difference between
