Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
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Remarkable story about our top civil servants: they are all using the ‘private company’ loopholes to avoid paying the correct rate of tax, and have been doing so for some time. At least two thousand of the monkeys and that’s before you count the same level of management bureaucrats in the NHS and of course
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Hello, I would like to be awarded a knighthood, or something close to a knighthood, for my excellent and selfless work over the years as a journalist. Can you help me with this, and what do I need to pay? Many thanks Rod Liddle The reply to my email arrived within ten minutes. It would
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And now — the rather wonderful story of the bacon bap which bit Barry Sheerman. The veteran Labour MP bought one at London Victoria station and he did not like it, he was sorely vexed. Using that conduit for the self-obsessed and insane, Twitter, he pronounced it the worst he had ever eaten. And he
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Apparently, pensioners with the highest life expectancy live in the Somerset village of Hinton St George, while those with the lowest live in Bootle, Merseyside. Much fuss was made of this survey in the newspapers, and I daresay that hundreds of old folk in Bootle are now scurrying down the M6 on their mobility scooters before
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The problem with us men is that we are too trusting and, also, maybe, not particularly bright. Plus we compartmentalise parts of our lives, which we fondly believe is the rational thing to do. And we don’t always think things through. Take this excellent example from the newspapers this week. A Polish chap called Marek Olszewski
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I was in the back of a cab with Nadine Dorries once. It was after some event where politicians and the press meet up to propagate their unhealthy relationships with one another at someone else’s expense, probably yours. I can’t remember exactly what it was. All I remember is this apparently perpetually furious woman ranting
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Good stuff from the TV naturalist Chris Packham, who is usually sound on most issues. Firstly he disputes the reports of urban foxes attacking people in their homes. Don’t believe it, he says. No, me neither. We will be reading more of these crazed psychotic fox attack reports in our newspapers now that summer is
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Well, most of you lot should be all right if Anders Breivik gets out of prison and decides to recommence his killing spree here. Or at least I assume you will. I haven’t actually met you in the flesh, I’m just guessing. Apparently, Breivik decided against shooting one bloke on the island of Utoya because
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I would like to begin my article this week with a minute’s silence, please, which I would enjoin you to observe respectfully and without feeling the need to chant obscenities. This particular minute’s silence is in respect of the minute’s silence which was not observed appropriately by some football supporters last weekend. That minute’s silence,
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Excellent news arrives that Britain’s cats are going mental. Apparently, increasing numbers of them are being struck down by some contagion which renders them robot-like, stiff and deranged in the head. When I say ‘increasing numbers’ that could mean, of course, just two cats. According to the Daily Mail it’s actually ‘a staggering 21 cases’,
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Boris Johnson has set an excellent precedent. The mayor of London has banned an advert from appearing on London buses because it is both offensive to some people and its claims are of dubious provenance. The ad in question is the poster from a mentalist Christian group who believe people can be cured of homosexuality.
From our UK edition
There was a sort of interesting documentary on BBC4 last night about a genre of popular music called ‘Southern Rock’ — ie what we, back in the 1970s, called Southern Boogie — Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Bros, Charlie Daniels, and so on. It was interesting for mainly two reasons. First it reminded me of how
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‘Theoretical perspectives on contemporary cities, with a specific focus on the global nature of urban social and political change and development. The course will consider classic and recent theory and analysis emanating from ‘Northern’ academic and policy contexts, while also challenging western-centric views of the city… The course will equip students interested in urban change
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The idiotic Mehdi Hasan has just written a lengthy piece in The Guardian demanding that all Londoners vote for Ken Livingstone in the forthcoming mayoral election. After dismissing Livingstone’s tax avoidance in a few words (yeah, he probably shudda paid more tax), Hasan posits that people have to vote for Ken because if they’re not
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I see that the rightish writer John Derbyshire has been sacked by the US conservative magazine for which he wrote, National Review. This is because of a piece he wrote for a different conduit, Taki’s Mag — an online publication run by The Spectator’s own Taki Theodoracopulos. Mr Derbyshire’s article was a response to ‘The
From our UK edition
Apologies for my absence from this area: I took my two boys away for an uplifting week of cycling on a windswept and pretty Dutch island. I suppose they might have burned off a few more calories if I’d let them loose in the Rossebuurt for a few hours, but I’m getting respectable and middle
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Was the Home Secretary Theresa May half-cut when she started ranting about alcohol in the House of Commons last week? The haste and suddenness of her intervention had the whiff of addled self-disgust about it, the self-pitying fervour of the alcoholic who is determined to get clean. As if she had been bingeing all morning
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Interesting stuff on The Guardian’s front page about the newspapers which have made potentially illegal requests to private investigators to track down phone numbers and addresses of people they were stalking. The Daily Mail used a private investigator 1,728 times between 2000 and 2003, which is close to the total amount for every other newspaper
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Excellent blog by James Delingpole in the Torygraph on the vexed question What Has Happened To The Archers? Under the aegis of someone called Vanessa Whitburn, the long running Radio Four serial has been turned from an amiable soap about rural people and the gentle inconveniencies with which they battle, into a vision of the
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I suppose in time we will all come to terms with our grief over the removal of Dame Liz Forgan as boss of Arts Council England. Although, of course, it will be a great struggle. The Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt has said Dame Liz’s tenure will not be renewed because he wants the council ‘to
