Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
A friend’s seven-year-old daughter was asked by her school to write something about the NHS. Her only experience of it had been sitting for four hours in A&E while her father, in some pain, waited to be treated for a cricket injury. So she wrote about that. Her teacher deemed it ‘inappropriate’ and told her
The BBC PM programme today led on Boris Johnson’s discomfort when confronted by members of the public while out on press calls. A legitimate subject: Boris is neither nimble nor terribly empathetic. The story was tied to his confrontation today with a man in a hospital. The presenter, Evan Davis, played an audio clip of
The BBC featured a gay wedding on Songs of Praise recently. Of course it did. The thinking was, I assume: ‘We hate this programme and wish we could get rid of it, but there would be the usual moaning from the near-dead reactionaries. So let’s rub their noses in it, instead.’ The broadcast attracted 1,200
It is all beginning to feel like the closing scenes of the 1980 spoof comedy film Airplane! In particular the bit where, as the stricken jet is coming in to land, someone in the control tower suggests putting on the runway lights to help a little. ‘No,’ says Captain Rex Kramer, ‘that’s just what they’ll
Grade: B+ Get the razor blades out, Ms Misery is back. Only the truly affluent can immerse themselves in such morose and earnest introspection. Listen to the music of Africa’s most benighted countries and, on the whole, you will hear very cheerful fellows. Not so with the USA. Lana, a middle-class New Yorker of some
I suppose it is overstating the case to suggest that dyslexia is simply a term coined to assuage the disappointment of middle-class parents faced with offspring who are considerably thicker than they fondly imagined them to be. There was an interesting report a few years ago by Professor Joe Elliott of Durham University. He wrote:
Much as the appalling Shami Chakrabarti has insisted, I stand ‘in solidarity’ with Owen Jones and hope he makes a swift recovery. The question, though, is whether Owen Jones stands in solidarity with Owen Jones. By which I mean, does he agree that assaulting people because they have different political opinions to you is always
I wonder what Jacques Derrida would have made of the new leader of the UK Independence party? In the philosopher’s typically readable and sensible tract On the Name, Derrida muses: ‘The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gives a name? What
The epiphany came when I was standing in the oxymoron of a speedy boarding queue at Gatwick, waiting to have my ticket checked by Eva Braun, mewling middle-class brats squabbling beneath my feet, all of us en route to somewhere in the EU which is both searingly hot and supported by British taxpayer subsidies (for
Grade: B- So a queen dies as her giant baby is being born. The baby grows very big indeed and soon everything in the universe is inside his necessarily large head. One day he sacrifices himself to save his subjects from a deluge of snow. The townspeople cut off his head and preserve it in
Alastair Campbell has written a longish ‘open’ letter to Jeremy Corbyn, helpfully explaining why he has decided not to contest his expulsion from the Labour party. The remarkable thing is that Alastair believes there is anyone of importance in the party, or indeed outside of it, who gives a monkey’s one way or the other.
Gisborough Priory was founded in 1119, although the gothic chunks which remain of it today — including the grimly magnificent east end — date largely from the 13th century. A fire had destroyed much of the original building. It has great antiquity, then, nestled on the northern edge of the North York Moors in the
I don’t blame Harvey Proctor for having scant sympathy for his ludicrous accuser, Carl Beech. I think it’s entirely right that Beech be sent to prison – or some other secure institution – for a while. But eighteen years? It’s more than most murderers get. Isn’t it the case that while Beech without doubt deserves
I never believed Carl Beech’s allegations that he had suffered multiple depravities, including sexual abuse, at the hands of various very prominent members of the old conservative establishment. As a young journalist during the 1980s, I came into contact with many of the people named in Beech’s supposed evidence and on not a single occasion
The following tweet comes from a very talented US author: ‘The irony that in T***p Dark Age with its public expressions of hatred, bigotry, & cruelty literary publishers hire “sensitivity readers” to peruse upcoming books for “insensitivity.”’ That’s Joyce Carol Oates. A great writer. A great writer who does not know the meaning of the
I’m glad the Foreign Secretary thinks it ‘unacceptable’ of Iran to have seized a British-flagged oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. But wouldn’t it have been a decent idea to give any British-flagged ships sailing through that tiny strait a naval escort? The risk was always there, ever since we seized an Iranian tanker
I suppose it was a bit naive to wander on to Newsnight having been booked to talk about Brexit and my new book and expect to talk about Brexit and my new book. I should have expected instead to be shrieked at about ‘racism’ by a fishwife on acid, which is what happened. In the
A perfectly sensible observation from Matthew Parris has incurred the wrath of his colleagues on the Times. Speaking of Trump’s “racist” comments, Parris writes: “I don’t like his attacks but I think they will strike a chord among millions who should not be called racists. It’s just futile to suppose that arrivals from another country,
For those of you who were not watching, if you have the time, take a look at the interview I did on Newsnight with Emily Maitlis about my book. And tell me if you think that it was an even-handed, unbiased, rational discussion. The complaints are piling up at the BBC: here’s one from a
Just received this update from the Brexit Party: ‘Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage threw down a challenge to Tory leader-elect Boris Johnson: “Boris says he wants to put me back in my box. If he wants a fight – hold my jacket!”’ To which Boris will undoubtedly reply: ‘Jog on, you mug. I’ll rip you a new
