Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Just back from covering the campaign in the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election – where, I suspect, the Lib Dems will not do quite so badly as many either hope or fear. It seems to be the Tory vote which is collapsing; odd, really, as the seat should be a three way marginal. One of
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A bizarre report on the Asian child abuse court case on the BBC last night, which spent most of its time attempting to exonerate the Pakistani community as a whole, including clips of Pakistanis saying “actually, we probably shouldn’t abuse kiddies” and a white child abuse campaigner saying hey, look, it’s not Pakistanis who are
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Last time I looked, my online petition was not generating the support I had expected. You can find it on Facebook and it is entitled ‘Everybody Should Be Sacked or Killed.’ Only 38 people have so far pledged their support for this laudable proposition, which is way short of the number that would enable my
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I hope you are looking forward to the tsunami of industrial effluent which is coming your way in the first quarter of the new year. You will not be able to avoid it, unless you are Helen Keller. One way or another, Wills and Kate are going to get you. Or, more properly, their agents
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Happy Christmas to you all. It may well be that, as the Muslim poster campaign in London has it, we will all require abortions as a consequence of seasonal revelry, and that the festival itself is evil. But at least, when the relatives arrive and Strictly Come Dancing with that fabulous jackanapes Vince Cable, we
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Thoroughly enjoying the feminists tying themselves in knots over the case of Julian Assange. I wrote in the Sunday Times a week ago that lefties were compromised over the chap: hero for embarrassing America, less of a hero for allegedly raping someone. Back then the very angry campaigning group Women Against Rape put out a
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It’s as John Updike once put it – they’re getting within the big fella’s range. Captain Beefheart died at the weekend, the latest in a long line of interesting people from the world of popular music to pop his clogs. In commemoration then, here is his somewhat uncompromising and not hugely tuneful “Dachau Blues”, from
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It’s jolly nice to be proved right about everything The most important, and comforting, thing to emerge from all that Wiki-Leaks business was that, by and large, we were right. All the things we suspected, or knew either instinctively or through common sense, were proved to be correct. Prince Andrew — arrogant, rude and with
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Apologies for the absence: hope you’re enjoying the weather. Thought I’d draw your attention to an article in the Daily Mail by a former colleague of mine, Barnie Choudhury. Barnie’s a Hindu, and his piece is pegged to that new report which suggests that Hindus and Sikhs are, more than ever, part of the bedrock
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The kids are all asleep, the wife is in bed reading feminist propaganda, from outside in the darkness I hear the shocked keewick of a Little Owl. Otherwise, all is silent and at rest. This is the time of evening when I make my way very quietly to my study with a glass of wine
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Have to say, I’m getting a little weary of watching Ken Clarke smirking at various bunches of skaghead offenders and telling them he wants them out of prison, pronto, so that they can stab your wife and crap on your living room carpet. The latest of Ken’s media events inside a nick involved him hearing
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You can’t trust traitors, any of them. And some of us have long memories. Mike Hancock was once a Labour MP but defected, along with a bunch of other opportunistic monkeys, to the SDP. He is now a Liberal Democrat. It is Mike who hired a young, leggy, blonde Russian babe as a parliamentary researcher,
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What colour are hobbits, do you suppose? When I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, as a child, I gathered that they were very short, hirsute, quite swarthy and fairly stupid — so probably Portuguese, or at a pinch Galician. They didn’t seem to be, from the descriptions of their behaviour and living arrangements, quite — you
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If that had been Millwall supporters fighting with police, invading the pitch and firing flares at the opposition fans, there would have been demands to have the ground closed, points deductions, fines, statements in parliament and the involvement of the UN and almost certainly the Equality and Human Rights Commission. But it wasn’t, it was
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Anyone got a shovel? We’re cut off from the world, here in north Kent, a foot and a half of snow in the garden, the lanes impassable and no sign of respite. The only answer is to get pissed, I suppose. That’s usually the answer. But sooner or later I will have to walk four
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1. Prince Andrew is an arrogant berk. 2. Vladimir Putin is an “alpha dog” 3. Medvedev is his puppet. 4. David Cameron is lightweight. 5. Prince Charles commands next to no respect. 6. Angela Merkel is the only strong European leader. 7. Berlusconi is feckless, vain and ineffective and likes parties. 8. That Argie babe,
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Just a quick word about our huge contribution to the bailout of Ireland, and the intimations from the government that this loan is a singularity because of our exceptional trading relations with Ireland. That word is “balls”. Ireland is only our fifth most important country for exports and our eighth most important country for imports.
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My problem with condoms was always a very different confusion from that which apparently afflicts the Pope. It was simply that I felt sure they would be far too large, like putting a tea cosy on a soft-boiled egg. And so I never used them, to spare the embarrassment. Also, I was never entirely certain
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Howard Flight was made a peer fairly recently, presumably because there is no place in parliament for someone who has a tendency to speak his mind. Back in 2005, whilst being Chief Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Arundel, he made the revolutionary suggestion that the Tory Party might, some day, a lot further
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I know most of you are very glad to see the back of him, but as we watch the EU crumble before our eyes, we all have reason to be grateful to Gordon Brown. Joining the Euro was Tony Blair’s supposed “big project” of his second term but he was thwarted at every step of
