Rod Liddle

It is a tragedy that some of us are born in the wrong times. According to that increasingly gobby conduit of right-on morality, the NSPCC, girls these days feel compelled to act like porn stars in order to ingratiate themselves with boys. I am not sure quite what, in day to day life, this involves. I only know that they made no similar attempts during my adolescence, or if they did I didn’t notice. I vaguely recall one young lady in my school class telling me, when I was 14, that she had engaged in sexual intercourse the previous night with a boy from a neighbouring town. ‘What was it like, Debs?’ I asked, wide-eyed. ‘Didn’t touch the fucking sides,’ Debs spat with all the contempt she could muster.

What a pleasure it is to see the Hollywood actor Sean Penn neck deep in PC ordure. The rodentine thespian was handing out an award at the Oscars to his friend the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu, for his film Birdman. ‘Who gave this sonofabitch a green card?’ Penn quipped about his mate — at which point the moronsphere went into overdrive. There was splenetic fury and deep sadness and heartfelt outrage and condemnations at this racism, online and beyond. Some demented loon called Stephen W. Thrasher, writing in the Guardian (natch), said: ‘Racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show.’ No kidding, Stevie. Far worse than slavery and the KKK and the Holocaust etc.

A minor point, I suppose, but one worth noting. It was stated on the BBC and in the liberal press that these three girls who have scuttled off to Syria for a spot of beheading and FGM had been 'groomed'  by radical Islamists. A word not used when it is young men who head off to fight for Isis. A word, which in its current – and terribly, terribly overused – meaning immediately confers victim status upon whoever it is who has been 'groomed'. This was pointed out to me by a chap called John Locke in a debate about the girls on a social media website, and it was a very accurate and prescient observation. I daresay that in the BBC’s next report they will not merely have been 'groomed', but will also have been 'vulnerable'.

I have had many proposals of marriage recently via the internet, most of them coming from young ladies in Nigeria, Ghana, the DRC and so on. Some of them haven’t even asked for my bank details. I assume that request will come later. Here’s the best one, though. And also the most mystifying. Hello Dear one, Hello,You have a wonderful and charming look of which every man that knows something good must appreciate the good creature of the Almighty. I must say that you are an epitome of natural beauty and I would like to know you better and I hope to be your very good friend. Since the first time I saw your face here on the face book I find it hard to erase it out of my mind.

One of the highlights of my week comes on a Saturday morning, when I make myself a cup of fair-trade coffee and settle down to read the letters page of the Guardian. My wife usually joins me — it’s a sort of date thing, romantic in its own way — and we sit there cackling, our cares and woes forgotten for a while. Sometimes it is the smug little commendations of some earnest article that has uncovered the suffering of an hitherto unreported minority of the population — that stuff is quite funny. But then all newspapers print letters from readers telling them how good they are.

Here's a preview of Rod Liddle's column from this week's Spectator, on the financial plight of The Guardian... One of the highlights of my week comes on a Saturday morning, when I make myself a cup of fair-trade coffee and settle down to read the letters page of the Guardian. My wife usually joins me — it’s a sort of date thing, romantic in its own way — and we sit there cackling, our cares and woes forgotten for a while. Sometimes it is the smug little commendations of some earnest article that has uncovered the suffering of an hitherto -unreported minority of the population — that stuff is quite funny. But then all newspapers print letters from readers telling them how good they are.

Look, let me take you away for Isis and jets crashing into Taiwan and Cameron and Miliband. Let me direct you toward the real issues facing this country. The (former?) actress Amanda Holden, now a judge on the brilliant TV show 'Britain’s Got Talent', has been criticised for appearing in public without a bra. Apparently one can see her nipples. Is this right? Should she be condemned and even vilified? As ever, I am progressive on this issue. Why shouldn’t women be photographed without their bras? Are we in the middle ages? Don’t listen to them, Amanda – walk proud, free and braless.

I suspect that you were as appalled as I by the plight of young mum, Marie Buchan, from Selly Oak in Birmingham. She has eight children – called stuff like Latoya and Tia – and currently claims a meagre £26,000 per year in benefits to feed them all. But now the government’s benefits cap has started to bite and Marie will see her income reduce to £23,000. She said: 'I am being forced into work. You're going to get similar cases as to what happened with the bedroom tax - people taking their own lives due to the financial pressures they are feeling. It will hit people that hard.' You and I can only guess at the trauma facing Marie and her lovely children. A choice between killing herself and being 'forced into work'.

How should we refer to non-white people, and foreigners in general, given that of course we do sometimes need to mention them, perhaps over dinner in White’s or when mulling over where to go on our holidays? This is an important question, because the approved terminologies seem to shift by the day, if not the minute, and we could find ourselves in a lot of trouble. I remember the late US politician George Wallace, when he was governor of Alabama, being ticked off for having used the word ‘negroes’. Quite unacceptable, he was admonished — the correct term is ‘blacks’, and there’s an end to it. ‘Sheesh,’ Wallace replied, ‘we jes’ got used to calling ’em negroes.