Rod Liddle

The Guardian has retracted one of the allegations it made about me in its strangely humour-free Pass Notes section on Monday. They said that I had described a footballer as a 'spearchucking African', whereas I was quoting what had allegedly been said about the footballer by somebody else and using that quote to justify the black footballer's consequent aggressive reaction. So, they put in a retraction today, although devoid of an apology. I might work through the rest of the Pass Notes and get them to retract most of the rest.

People sometimes ask me, about the stuff I write: 'Do you ever think that you get it wrong?' The answer of course is a fervent 'Yes!' And even when I don't actually KNOW that I've got something wrong, I'm always plagued with doubt about it. One thing I got wrong recently was the riots. Or more properly, my take on what happened to the people prosecuted for their parts in the riots. I think I remember being gung-ho for long sentences, sentences out of all proportion to the crimes actually committed, bang 'em up, ne’er do well trash. I suppose, like a lot of people, I was swallowed by a recriminatory mood occasioned by the anger the riots provoked in me. But it was bad call, a wrong call.

The Sepp Blatter business is interesting, an example of a very modern, very 'now' process. That is, the comeuppance arriving for the wrong reason, but the politically correct reason. The most obvious example in the last ten years or so was the shooting of Jean Charles De Menenez on the tube at Stockwell station. The Met Police were criminally incompetent, and there were many claims that they lied after the event to the press. What they got done for in the end, though – surreally – was an infraction of health and safety procedure. And so we have Sepp Blatter, presiding over a corrupt cabal of delegates. Authoritarian and undemocratic – his recent re-election would have made Brezhnev blush.

I see the poor bloke who organised the rugby club firework display near the M5 is being pilloried. The Daily Mail, in particular, was anxious to fling the blame at someone for the appalling pile-up on the motorway which left seven people dead. It immediately alighted upon the fact that there had been a firework display nearby and that perhaps smoke had drifted onto the road. Just wait until next October, and the same paper will be doing the usual why-oh-why pieces about how "elf n safety lunatics" have forced people to cancel their firework displays; you couldn't make it up, we're heading to hell in a handcart guv. The motorway crash was both shocking and terrifying and makes me glad I don't drive.

I see that the UK Border Agency has "lost" 124,000 asylum seekers and immigrants. It has done this in exactly the same way in which I deal with begging letters from Cancer Research and that charity that wants you to help the little foreign girl with no lips. Unwilling, out of embarrassment and shame, to just put them straight in the bin, I "file" them in a small tray at the back of my office from where, six months later, my wife puts them in the bin. This is exactly what the UK Border people do. They call it a "controlled archive", a place where all these cases are kept for six months and then thrown in the bin.

Good to see Jonathan King winning his battle with the Stalinist BBC. The corporation had edited him out of a rerun of a 1970s Top of the Pops show, as if he had never existed. As those of us of a certain age know all too well, Mr King was an extremely regular performer on the show during that time, either as himself or under a number of disagreeable disguises: the Piglets and Sakkarin to name but two. Indeed, when King was sentenced to seven years in prison for sex crimes I wrote to him sympathising with the harshness of the tariff and the unfairness of the court case, but added that I thought he deserved at least seven years for 'Una Paloma Blanca'. I got a remarkably cheerful letter back from his cell which vaguely agreed on the last point.

In order to commemorate the death of Colonel Gaddafi properly, here’s a quiz about various deceased (with one exception) murderous megalomaniacs. No googling, or I’ll boil you in a vat for supper. Answers later today. 1. Which Muslim headcases wrote the following novels: a) Escape To Hellb) Begone Demons! 2. According to a popular conspiracy theory, from whose frozen semen was German Chancellor Angela Merkel created? 3. Who ordered The Night of the Murdered Poets? 4. Which friend of ol’Muammar may well have served up his other friend, Giscard D’Estaing, with poached loin of human being at a presidential dinner? 5.

Here’s a conversation I had with an elderly Afrikaaner lady (EAL) in the main street of the whites-only town, Orania, in South Africa. Me: Hello, do you live here? EAL: No, but I am thinking of moving here. Me: Why would you want to do that? EAL: There is no crime here, it is secure. The people are friendly and welcoming, and the shops are good. Me: There’s also a complete and utter absence of black people. EAL (jabbing her finger into my chest): Yis! And lit me tell you. That is the best thing of all! That is the best thing in the world! More snapshots from this neck of the woods when the film is finished. It is a peculiar and complex issue. And made so by a potent combination of political correctness, paranoia and racism.