Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Au contraire. Au contraire. I thought Hilary Benn’s speech was well delivered, but workmanlike in construction and told us nothing that we did not already know – and was vacuous and banal of the geopolitical consequences. I suspect it was adored by the media because it accorded with their point of view; bomb people –
We have been contemplating moving to the North, for a variety of unassailable reasons. One is the chance to gloat on a daily basis. I will immediately become the thinnest and richest man in the village, which will do my flagging middle-aged self-confidence no end of good. Indeed, on the weight issue I could cease
This is a relentlessly busy world, with so many people expressing so many different points of view. We become overwhelmed by it all, at times. So it is useful to have a few short-cuts at hand, when sieving the wheat from the chaff. Much as it is the case that we might ignore any commentator
Just back after a few weeks away in the north east – thought I’d share this with you. I wrote a piece for The Sunday Times arguing against bombing Syria for a host of reasons – I will list them all in another blog tomorrow. Suffice to say I don’t think it will do any
I am always open to spiritual guidance from any quarter, all the more so if that guidance is of practical import. So I was especially grateful to hear reports of a fatwa from the prominent Saudi Arabian cleric, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah. This fatwa apparently made it clear that it was perfectly permissible for me,
Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had acquired was every bit as authentic as the one they had jubilantly renounced. So a separate toilet is surely otiose. And not just that, but the suggestion that they might need a separate toilet for
Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column? Possibly wriggling little fibres, placed there by the government or by aliens? By aliens I don’t mean asylum seekers but proper aliens, quite probably creatures with bifurcated tongues and scaly lips from the Planet Zog.
I’m grateful to my friend Matthew Wilson for drawing my attention to this story which I had missed. It is taken from the following report. So, as we knew all along, chronic fatigue syndrome – or ME – is not a chronic illness at all. Attempts to relate it to some sort of virus were long
Hero of the week is undoubtedly the cleaner at the Museion Bozen-Bolzano in Italy. Faced with a horrible mess in the main gallery – fag ends, empty bottles, party streamers – she cleaned it all up, put it in black bags and chucked it out. Yes, of course – it was an ‘installation’ by the
Two reports on the BBC Ten O’Clock News this week, both unashamedly partisan. Yes, yes, I know they are not the only reports this week guilty of bias. There’s the same ol same ol refugee hugging every night and there was also a report on the fact that our population is about to rise by
Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You do not expect underdogs to be adept, do you? It doesn’t really matter how vile, otiose or absurd their beliefs are, either. So long as they are up against someone more powerful, a certain sentimental
Remarkable events in Portugal, no? A democratically elected government is denied the opportunity to govern because its policies challenge the European Union. The left wing coalition won more than fifty per cent of the vote; out of the single currency, an end to austerity, bollocks to the Lisbon Treaty etc. But Anibal Cavaco Silva, the
Sooner or later, in this trade, one runs out of television historians to antagonise. I am doggedly working my way through the pack — and I don’t think any of the really big ones are left. I began by annoying Mary Beard and then swiftly moved on to David Starkey. Some time passed but eventually I
John McDonnell has accused me of telling an untruth. Yes, I know, worse things have happened. But still. His accusation refers to the closure of the Redcar SSI steel plant. https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/654787633097240576 Mr McDonnell claimed that a visit to the area, where he met with tearful workers, prompted him to do a u-turn on supporting the
There was an interesting news item on the television the other day. A transgendered chap was hoping to become the world’s first dual-purpose father and mother to a baby. He had frozen his semen before the surgeons came along with their secateurs and staple gun. I turned to my wife and said: ‘One day the
Cadbury’s is searching for a new ‘man in black’ to spearhead its advertising campaign for the godawful Milk Tray chocolates range. However, a spokesman for the company has said that the macho-man stuff is old hat. ‘It will be as much about traits such as thoughtfulness. Leaping off a bridge on to a moving train
I have started salivating excessively at night. I wake each morning in a pillowed swamp of my own effluvium, a noisome pond which is — I suspect — redolent of rapidly approaching death. I have done the hypochondriac thing and googled the possible causes and there’s a whole bunch of stuff — pancreatitis, close exposure
The Goldsmith’s imbecile Bahar Mustafa has been arrested for tweeting something with a hashtag ‘kill all white men’. Obviously, she is a foul cretin. Obviously her previous moments in the limelight – organising fatuous protests from which straight white men were banned, for example – lead one to the position that any horrible fate
I suppose you can look at it two ways. Glastonbury, and rock festivals generally, were once patronised by music obsessives; largely male and probably some distance along the autistic spectrum, in many cases. People like me, in other words, when I was younger. Oh yes – and that’s another thing. Age. They used to be
Freedom of speech is a terribly precious thing, which we should all cherish. So let’s not waste it on people with whom we disagree. That seems to be the considered view of those assorted, privileged genii at Oxford University, whose student’s union banned from its Freshers Week a satirical magazine which it feared might cause
