Rod Liddle

I’ve often thought that British football needed a good dose of fascism — and now at last it has exactly this, in the form of the combative and somewhat eccentric Italian chap Paolo Di Canio. He has been installed as the manager of Sunderland, and all hell has broken loose. Di Canio has described himself as a fascist — but definitely not a racist, which shows that he is at least au fait with the current dictum that there is but one crime and one crime alone that matters. He has a couple of fascisty tatts on his muscular shoulders, one of which seems to be invoking the late, controversial politician Benito Mussolini, whom Paolo has previously described as ‘much misunderstood’.

A rather charming and typically self-deprecating Easter sermon from Archbishop Justin at Canterbury Cathedral; I’m beginning to like him. His subject was the inevitability of disillusion with things like governments and councils and ‘regulatory bodies’ and indeed Archbishops of Canterbury who are all bound, in the end, to be fucking useless (although this was not how he put it). I was seated in one of the pleb pews and rather hoped he might have taken a leaf out of that Argentine left-footer’s book and wandered over and washed my feet. They’ve become unaccountably scaly of late and for some reason now resemble the claws of a Galapagos tortoise; a bit of ecumenical bathing might have done them some good. Never mind.

Enormous thanks to OGT for alerting us all to the brilliant article from the Independent – published on Monday March 20th, 2000. Here’s the first bit of it: 'Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east.

Very good report from Channel Four/Telegraph reporter Alex Thomson in Syria. This is about the use of 'chemical weapons' by one side in the civil war. Except, it seems, there are not simply two sides in the civil war any more. First the Brit journos stopped calling it an 'Arab Spring', given that the rebels in all these Arab countries have been doing unSpringlike things. And now, it seems, there is a brave and noble rebel force – and also something different called 'Jihadis'. 'Finger points at Jihadis over chemical attack' was the Telegraph headline. Who they, ed?

Just as a follow up to what I was talking about below. Here’s the government’s chief scientific advisor, Sir John Beddington: 'Professor Sir John Beddington said that time lags in the climate system meant that accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now will determine the weather we experience for the next 25 years. 'Climate change is already manifesting itself in huge variations in the weather, clearly illustrated by the way Britain experienced both drought and extreme rainfall last year, he said.' That’s from today’s Torygraph. I’m sorry, I just don’t swallow it. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that man-made climate change is a reality. But to tie it to what was, last year, perfectly normal weather is facile and deceiving.

How can we stop weather hyperbole? I am so staggeringly bored of waking up each morning to headlines which insist we’re all going to be killed – on the roads, or through freezing to death, or in a flood. There have been four weather hyperboles already so far this year; warmest January, or warmest day in January ever, wettest February, coldest March. There are so many criteria for awarding a hyperbole sticker that almost every day of the year could qualify. So, snow in March? An unheard of experience? Nope, it happens every other year, more or less – and that’s in the south of the country. Last year at this time we were just entering a very mild and rather pleasant phase – warmest April on record! Global warming! We’re all going to die!

Economic growth for the next year is predicted to be lower than 1.0%. I can’t think, offhand, or a more obvious indication that the Chancellor is gripped by some sort of weird paralysis which will result, for the rest of us, in continually declining standards of living. I have no great objection to many of the cuts he has made; and believe, à la Dr Fox, that he could be still more stringent. However, he should also be investing heavily in stuff which will see our economy grow – science, engineering, what used to be called 'public works'. Simply cutting spending will not promote growth. Simply investing in the productive parts of the economy will not clear our debt. We need to do both, no?

Scottish people are more generous than English people, contrary to the widely held belief that the Jocks are comically tight-fisted. A new study suggests that they are more likely to give money to charity than English people. I suppose it would only cause unnecessary offence if I suggested that the money they’re so happy to give to charity is, actually, ours. Anyway, this survey was published to mark  Red Nose Day, when every BBC light entertainer not yet arrested by Operation Yewtree was deputed to personally groom you to hand over your dosh in a series of, I daresay, hilarious and wacky stunts. As a mark of the relentless vaulting ambition of this fascistic celebrity smugfest, a red nose has been sent into space by the BBC, (along with a proportion of your licence fee.

It is surely too early to demand a pogrom against Roman Catholics, as some now wish, simply because the church now has an Argie pope. It is true that Pope Frankie is committed to the “return” of the Falkland Islands to his homeland and has spoken in the manner of a banana republic dictator about the war against the British: 'We come to pray for all who have fallen, sons of the homeland who went out to defend their mother, the homeland, and to reclaim what is theirs, that is of the homeland, and it was usurped.

Members of the World’s Most Rational and Peaceable Religion © have been going berserk in the lovely Bangladeshi town of Cox’s Bazar. Some bloke put a photo of a burned Koran on his Facebook page and the Muslims have been rioting, taking out their infantile fury on the minority Buddhist population. Setting them on fire and stuff. Usually Buddhists don’t need any help setting themselves on fire, but that’s another story. As social networking sites establish themselves in third world countries full of furious mentals, this sort of thing is going to happen more and more often, isn’t it? The end of the world will come not with a bang or a whimper, but with a tweet.

I was seated at a rather stiff and formal BBC dinner a dozen or so years back, one of those ghastly occasions upon which the boss class attempt, painfully, to commune with the corporation untermenschen over noisette of chicken, or something similar. There were perhaps 15 of us, drawn from various levels of the BBC strata, with the then head of news — and now director-general — Tony Hall seated somewhere democratically in the middle. Along from me was a lowly but attractive female production assistant whose dining was interrupted by an unwelcome hand snaking along her inner thigh. The errant hand belonged to the well-lubricated reporter on her immediate left.

Apologies for my absence – had a week’s holiday, somewhere distant from thunderstorms and snow. Coming back last night on an Oman Airlines flight, in cattle class, the air stewardess trolley babe asked me which of the two set hot meals of stewed shit I would prefer. I told her that I didn’t really fancy either, please could I just have some cheese and crackers? She replied, and I quote: ‘There is cheese and biscuits in the first class and business class sections, but not for people like you.’ So, Eastleigh, then – and what an appalling showing by Labour, if the polls are to be believed.