Rod Liddle

From which of the actors engaged in the thoroughly entertaining case of Edward Snowden has come the biggest spewing-out of cant, do you reckon? Edward himself? The Guardian? Or the Yanks or -Chinese? Edward was a fairly low-level CIA technical contractor in Hawaii when he released to the world details of his government’s clandestine electronic surveillance programme (Prism) and also some stuff about our own much-loved GCHQ in Cheltenham. Apparently shocked to the core to discover that the security services were secretly spying on people, Edward was gripped by a spasm of narcissistic outrage and said: ‘I don’t want to live in a society which does these sorts of things.

I see that they have gone for Jane Austen as the face of the new ten pound note, after a long and bitter row. I find it incredible that they decided not to take the chance to show a true commitment to multicultural diversity and have instead chosen some boring dead white woman.  I wrote to the authorities demanding that the fiery Islamic organiser Anjem Choudary have his face on the note. After all, as taxpayers we give him enough of the stuff every year. But this was rejected out of hand, sadly. Choudary has backed a new organisation, called Islamic Emergency Defence.

Something very odd is going to happen in your newspapers and on your television screens, perhaps this week, perhaps not. Soon, anyway. It looks likely that poor old Nelson Mandela is on his last legs and will very soon expire. As soon as he does, just you watch. You will hear of nothing else for days. Your morning newspaper, if you still get one, will have a vast pull-out commemorating the man’s life and achievements (all of which you know about). There will be think pieces, stuff by his friends, stuff by his enemies, stuff by people he patted on the head while visiting Brixton.

A scientific study has revealed that the faces of Lego characters are no longer so mindlessly happy as they once were. This is an important thing to know. ‘Put the cancer cure stuff on hold for a while, will you - I’m deeply interested in the facial expressions of plastic toys.’ Anyway, once upon a time Lego men and women had the sort of smug, deluded, grins that one immediately associates with the gullible Danes who manufacture them. Denmark regularly tops the table of the countries with the most stupidly self-satisfied citizenry, a consequence of them stuffing themselves with pastries and bien pensant opinions day in and out.

There’s an Islamic school in Birmingham which is very highly regarded. It’s called Darul Uloom — the same name as the school in Chislehurst which was recently the subject of an arson attack. In fact, that’s how I stumbled across it. Anyway, Darul Uloom in Birmingham is a good school not only academically, but also for the emphasis it puts upon neighbourliness, integration, and decent and friendly dealings with non-Muslims. In short it is a model school of its kind; it will surely not turn out furious jihadis, will it? The school encourages multi-faith dialogue, it urges upon its pupils the need to treat all members of the community with respect. Why does it do this? The school explains by means of a quotation on its website.

Well done to the BBC Today programme’s Sarah Montague for not screaming abuse at Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League leader, when she interviewed him this morning. It seems that many wanted her simply to shriek abuse at the man - and now she is being criticised for having been too lax. Being aggressive with interviewees simply because you don’t like their opinions never really works; getting a bit arsey with them when they obfuscate or hide the truth, however, does work. But it makes no sense, having taken a decision to interview the clown, to then subject him to an intemperate tirade of bien pensant outrage. This is the thing about the London Left: there are some opinions they simply cannot bear to hear, and they mustn’t be contested so much as obliterated.

So, who is it then? Please speculate in the privacy of your own homes rather than within the comments section below, as our lawyers would – like the rest of us – prefer a quiet Sunday. From the Mail on Sunday we know that it is two 'middle-aged' people – an odd description as, by definition, almost everyone working in politics is middle aged. Neither are in the Cabinet. The affair is now over. From elsewhere – reputable and less reputable sources – I gather it’s a man and a woman (which is an unusual twist, no?)  All very intriguing. I don’t understand why the affair would be 'dynamite' and would 'blow the political agenda out of the water.' Unless it’s just the Mail talking rubbish.

Good luck to all the animal rights activists setting off this weekend to harass the members of the Game and Wildlife “Conservancy” Trust shooting blameless badgers. The cull, which could stretch to 100,000 of the poor bloody animals, makes no more sense than our determination to get involved in Syria’s civil war. The government department DEFRA has been in the pockets of the gamekeepers and farmers since – oddly enough – May 2010; conservation is out and a brutal supposed utilitarianism is in. Expect more in the way of culling – it’ll be magpies and assorted corvines next, on the pretext that they endanger our songbirds (which common sense tells you that they don’t).

I was slightly puzzled by the early media reports of the appalling murder in Woolwich and particularly the wrangling over whether or not this could be called 'a terrorist attack'. Does it make much difference? Two savages hacked a man to death while shouting Allahu Akbar; that’s really all you need to know, isn’t it? In a sense calling it an act of terrorism somehow dignifies the barbarism. The media will now go into crowd-control mode and tell us how all Muslims are as shocked by this attack as are the rest of us and how Islam is a peaceable religion. No, it isn’t.

Having given the matter careful consideration, I have decided that I do not agree with councillor Colin Brewer’s suggestion that disabled children should be ‘put down’ after birth, perhaps in the manner of a farmer smashing a deformed newly born lamb against a wall, as he helpfully put it. ‘You can’t have lambs wandering around with two heads or five legs, can you?’ Colin asked, presumably rhetorically. Colin is a councillor in Wadebridge East, Cornwall, and does not come across as the fullest pasty in the lunchbox. It would not surprise me if some wag has already made the rather bad-taste point to him that if his proposal were adopted, the Cornish population would disappear very quickly.