Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Farzana Iqbal was murdered by Muslims applying ‘sharia’. Why does the BBC not report these facts?

Farzana Iqbal, aged 25, was stoned to death by members of her family in broad daylight on the steps of a courthouse in Lahore, Pakistan, because she had married a man with whom she was in love. This was an “honour killing” and perpetrators use sharia law to justify their murders. Some 1,000 women are killed in this manner in Pakistan each year and an overwhelming majority of the population seems to be in favour of them. Some 91 per cent of honour killings worldwide are “Muslim on Muslim” crimes. In Pakistan, laws introduced in the 1970s, by Zia-ul-Haq, and based on punishments recommended in the Koran and Sunnah, mean that women have almost no recourse in law and the male members of the family can do with them as they will.

Rod Liddle

Labour has proved that it speaks for London – and nowhere else

So, now almost all the votes have been counted — except for those in the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets, where the vibrant and colourful political practices of Bangladesh continue to keep the returning officers entertained. Allegations of widespread intimidation of voters at polling booths, postal voting fraud and a huge number of mysteriously spoiled ballot papers; so much more fun than the usual dull, grey and mechanistic western electoral procedure. You wonder, looking at the exotic political fervour of Tower Hamlets, how on earth the British people could be so mean-spirited as to have developed this sudden animus against immigration. White British people now make up less than one third of this exciting, go-ahead borough; how they must love it there.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

I’ve had it with the insufferable London elite. Have you?

'I’ve had it with these people. They are so smug; they think they know everything and they know nothing. They want a good kick in the face.' So said a close friend of mine, more usually a Labour voter, before she went out to vote for Ukip earlier today. I think it was the Jasmine Lawrence thing which tipped her over the edge. Jasmine is, improbably enough, the boss of the BBC’s News Channel. She had 'tweeted' that Ukip was a sexist and racist party - yesterday. Of course, she should be sacked. Right now. The BBC’s News Channel is supposedly impartial – that’s what we pay for, an impartial service. Either that or the BBC should accept that all of its employees possess political views and there is no problem in having them aired.

Rod Liddle

I’d rather have a German next door too — and I have the figures to show why

Should we be worried about the vast numbers of German-born people living covertly in the United Kingdom? The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2011 some 297,000 Germans were resident here, the fifth largest non-British-born contingent (after Indians, Poles, Pakistanis and the Irish respectively). What the hell are they all up to? Sitting in smartly furnished homes, biding their time, and waiting, waiting. That’s what I suspect. A report in the Guardian a while back suggested that our German community tended to ‘stay under the radar’, an ability which mercifully eluded them 70 years ago.

Wednesday

Rod Liddle

Why Nigel Farage was right about those Romanians

Here is a preview of Rod Liddle's column from this week's Spectator magazine Should we be worried about the vast numbers of German-born people living covertly in the United Kingdom? The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2011 some 297,000 Germans were resident here, the fifth largest non-British-born contingent (after Indians, Poles, Pakistanis and the Irish respectively). What the hell are they all up to? Sitting in smartly furnished homes, biding their time, and waiting, waiting. That’s what I suspect. A report in the Guardian a while back suggested that our German community tended to ‘stay under the radar’, an ability which mercifully eluded them 70 years ago.

Monday

Rod Liddle

German or Romanian neighbour – which would you choose?

I would rather live next door to a German than a Romanian. I thought I’d just make that clear. I don’t mean I’d rather live next door to SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich than the humorously surreal dramatist Eugène Ionesco. I mean, in general, on average, given what I know about the people from both countries who have come here to live. Not all of them, obviously. Just as a generality, if you were to offer me the choice, without telling me any more about the respective merits of the people concerned, just here’s your choice, Rod – Germans or Romanians. I may be wrong, but I suspect most people in this country, if offered the same choice, would choose likewise.

Rod Liddle

Yorkshire village bans Nazis. Why didn’t Neville Chamberlain think of that?

D-Day would have been effected with far less trouble if, at the time, we had insisted on the same rules that pertain in Haworth’s annual commemoration of the event. The Yorkshire village holds what is now called a “1940s Weekend” – don’t mention the war – and people who wear Nazi uniforms, or the SS insignia, have been told that they are not welcome. This is because the uniforms “give offence”. Previously, people turned up dressed as Nazi soldiers and others as allied soldiers – much as actually happened the first time the event was staged, on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. But some people complained about the uniforms and so signs have gone up all around the town telling them they’re not welcome.

Saturday

Rod Liddle

My verdict on Newsnight’s new face? Pretty — and awful

I hope you enjoyed the new post-Paxman Newsnight last night, if you still watch the programme. It was bad on a whole new level of badness (watch it here). Presented by an Afghan-Australian woman called Yalda Hakim, of whom I had never heard. Yalda was hampered in her presentational debut by being unable to string a sentence together; nor did she have the knowledge or acuity to ask interesting questions of her guests. On one cringing occasion, the reporter William Dalrymple asked questions on her behalf (of a supporter of the triumphant Indian politician Narendra Modi, who, of course, Newsnight REALLY loathes), because she was unable to.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

If only Austin Mitchell had called Pfizer ‘racists’

I see the veteran Labour MP Austin Mitchell is in trouble for having used the word rape in a 'deeply offensive' context. He had castigated the government for having failed to prevent Pfizer’s attempted acquisition of AstraZeneca, and added: 'Roll up rapists.' The woman who described Mitchell’s use of the word as 'deeply offensive' was the Wimmin’s Minister, Nicky Morgan. Presumably one can use the word rape only about the sexual violation, by force, of a woman. And that further, all such violations are equally abhorrent. All other uses for the word, which you will find in your dictionary – such as 'pillage' or 'plunder' are henceforth banned.

Rod Liddle

My application to be chairman of the BBC

To: Karen Moran, HR Director, BBC Dear Ms Moran, I have decided to give up on the gardening this year, after a number of dispiriting setbacks. Last year I invested a fairly large amount of money, and about four hours per week, in trying to grow vegetables. But despite the fence and the pellets and the presence of a large plastic falcon called ‘Mr Roberts’, almost all of my crop was eaten by wild things. Woodpigeons, rabbits, caterpillars, slugs etc. I once saw a woodpigeon eating some of my kale while perched on Mr Roberts’s head, a terrible indignity for such a proud and fierce bird. In the end I had about 20 courgettes, and nobody in my family is fond of courgettes. So henceforth I will go to Morrisons for my vegetables, like I used to do.

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Eurovision: It was the beard wot won it

I enjoyed Fraser’s preview of the Eurovision Song Contest; I had not known that he was such a fan. You work with someone for years, oblivious to their dark secrets, their strange peccadilloes. It was typically brave of him to come out, in public. I watched the thing, again. I thought the entry from The Netherlands was the best song I have ever heard at a Eurovision Song Contest, and by some margin. But that may be because Europop makes me feel ill, and their song definitely wasn’t Europop. It’s the first time I’ve heard a pedal steel in this competition. That being said, the Dutch have form as purveyors of catchy, country-lite, soft rock – anyone remember “Mississippi” by Pussycat?

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Jenny Willott is right about PMQs. It is dreadful

Oh dear, I don’t suppose I’ll get much support in these parts for what follows. But I’m sorta with Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat MP and Business Minister. She has stated that she hates Prime Minister’s Question Time “with a passion” and goes out of her way to avoid attending it. Her implication is that it is “too male”, and I make her right on this too – or, at least, PMQs epitomises the very worst traits of men. It is an objectionable, points-scoring charade of no value or meaning to anyone, simply testosterone-fuelled name-calling and bullying. So well said, Ms Willott. Obviously, the woman’s wrong about almost everything else in which she believes, I assume.

Rod Liddle

Without Paxman, the BBC will have just one interrogator: John Humphrys

In a double blow for the beleaguered BBC, the corporation has lost three of its most compelling attractions in little more than a month: the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, and Susanna Reid’s legs. Paxman has said he has had enough and announced his retirement from the thinly viewed current affairs programme. Susanna Reid’s legs have made their way over to ITV for its even more thinly viewed breakfast show called ‘Phwoar, Wake Up and Have a Look At This’ or whatever. The legs have attracted criticism for spending a substantial proportion of the show hidden from view under a desk while the rest of Susanna Reid jabbered about something with a slight smirk on her face in full view of the camera.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Was William Henwood’s comment about Lenny Henry racist?

My colleague Hugo Rifkind has been bien-pensanting around the issue of racism, to interesting effect. His thesis, in last week’s mag, seems to be that Ukip is a racist party because it says it isn’t a racist party. I suspect Hugo could show you racism in a handful dust. He also refers to the case of Ukip party candidate William Henwood, who according to Hugo 'declared that Lenny Henry should "emigrate to a black country" and "does not have to live with whites."' On the BBC’s Question Time, meanwhile, Yvette Cooper (14.00) alleged that Henwood had said that Lenny Henry should emigrate to Africa because of the colour of his skin.

Friday

Rod Liddle

Is Nigel Farage trying to distract us?

On location for The Sunday Times in the exciting by-election town of Newark-upon-Trent, I asked a nice local woman about her voting intentions. What way do you think you’ll be voting, I asked. This is what she said. “Um, yes, the poll. Well, I will turn right out of my house and walk down the road and then there’s usually a what-do-you-call-it, poll thing, in St Leonard’s Church, on the corner. I think that’s right..” I just thought I’d share that response with you. It is interesting that the leader of UKIP.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

The Dickin Medal is a morally dubious piece of nonsense

Apparently, mice think that women are useless. I don’t mean that they think women mice are useless — they’re keen enough on them, all right. I mean women women, like Rachel Reeves, the shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, and the R&B singer Rihanna, and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, Baroness Ashton. And so on. All women, everywhere. Some scientists in Canada carried out a study about what mice think of women, and this is what emerged.

Monday

Rod Liddle

HS1 was a godsend. Bring on HS2

It used to take one hour and forty five minutes to get by train from where I live in Canterbury to central London. Now, as a consequence of HS1 and the rather annoyingly named “Javelin”, it takes a little over fifty minutes. There is not the remotest doubt that the new service has greatly improved the prosperity of the area, and made life more pleasant for the likes of me. An entire swathe of south-eastern England has been suddenly rendered commutable as a consequence – a good thing, seeing the cost of housing in London. (I don’t commute, as it happens, I ought to add.) The trains are frequent, reliable and jam-packed.

Rod Liddle

Save our Royals from Australian paws

How can we stop Australian politicians from touching up members of our Royal Family, in the manner of a libidinous BBC Radio disc jockey? If you remember, the former Prime Minister Paul Keating once groped the Queen, without even having first invited her out for a drink. Now the current PM, a man called Tony Abbott, has draped his meaty arm around the Duke of Cambridge, probably while making some over-familiar or even vulgar aside about his wife. “Punched above your weight there, you sly old bugger,” or something similarly grotesque. Obviously the Royals will need to visit the Antipodes from time to time, to let them know that we still care. But shouldn’t we in future send less senior figures who will mind less the predatory pawing.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Premiership football is repulsive in every respect

Praise where it’s due. This opening to Russell Brand’s Guardian column about David Moyes is very good: “(His) face has now experienced the fate for which it looks like it was designed. The deep grooves of grief in his brow, his sunken, woeful eyes and dry parched lips, a perspicacious sculpture carved in anticipation of this slap of indignity.” Very nice. I’ve written about the Moyes business this week for the magazine. I do think it is hilarious the speed with which all the football writers have moved from describing the bloke as the best young manager this country has ever seen to “disastrous” and “not up to the job” and so on. Clearly, he should have been given more time in the post, insofar as anyone cares.

Rod Liddle

David Moyes was a victim of the pomposity of Manchester United

I took my youngest son to a football match on Easter Monday. It used to be something I wryly called a ‘treat’ when the kids were younger, but we usually lost in such depressing circumstances each time that I would then feel the need to give them another treat immediately afterwards, to alleviate the misery. Bowling or pizza or something. Not any more. They are old enough to know what they’re likely to be in for and conscious that their allegiance to the team, Millwall, is inescapable and probably genetic, like ginger hair or a susceptibility to Parkinson’s Disease. Actually, I say inescapable — the older one escaped by insisting that he had revision to do for his GCSEs.