Rod Liddle

I hope you are as delighted as me at the fact that our financial commitment to overseas aid will increase by more than 30 percent over the next few years. I suspect they’re all leaping up and down with delight in Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Stoke, Cardiff and so on, too, as the dole queues grow longer. I know we don’t have hypothecated taxes, but I like to think that the money I pay will go straight towards the Indian space programme. I’m very interested in space exploration and, as we can’t afford a space programme of our own, it cheers me up to know that we’re helping to fund someone else’s. Last year we gave £300m to India.

I see that the BBC has been told there will be no increase in its license fee plus it must look after the World Service and S4C. Good.  It should increase the funding to the World Service, which is one of the few things foreigners like about Britain and which pitches its journalism on a comparatively high intellectual level. What to do about S4C, meanwhile, is simple: close it down. Virtually nobody watches it – well, actually, LITERALLY nobody watches it. A recent survey showed that almost 200 of its programmes had zero viewers. What an epic waste of money just to assuage the sensibilities of some of those miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill tribes who are perpetually bitter about having England as a next door neighbour.

My favourite headline for many a month is in this morning’s Guardian: “Black Britons at more risk of jail than black Americans.” This suggests jail is a debilitating communicable disease, perhaps something like scarlet fever, which visits itself upon people entirely regardless of their behaviour. The headline accompanies an article based upon the latest report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Apparently the proportion of people of African-Carribean and African descent incarcerated in Britain is seven times greater than their share of the population. The mysterious reference to American blacks is that the proportion incarcerated over there is only four times their share of the population. Yo! Well done America! Well done Black Americans!

I assume you are au fait with the latest research on solar activity and its effects upon climate change, the research for which was undertaken at Imperial College, London. This latest stuff suggests that contrary to what had been expected, when solar activity increases it has a counter-intuitively depressing effect on the climate of the earth. And, as a corollary, when solar activity decreases, the earth gets warmer. None of the scientists expected this. It is important because climate change monkeys, who know everything about everything, and will not allow you to take part in a debate about climate change because not only do you know nothing but you are also, if you question anything about climate change – the methodology, the motives, the results - a DENIER, a DENIER!

A remarkable lack of nerve shown by the Conservative Party over the cuts to Child Benefit, don’t you think? It occurred to me, when the announcement was made, that this would be an almost uniformly popular measure. Those on the left like would it because it smacks of progressiveness, those on the right wouldn’t mind it because it is a trimming of our benefits system which is de facto a good thing. And, from an admittedly limited sample space, this seemed to be borne out by your replies to my blog on the issue. And yet somehow Conservative Central office seemed gripped by panic, not least as a consequence of squalls of protest emanating from something called Mumsnet.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the left try to attack these changes to child benefit changes from the left. The truth is it is a far more “progressive” policy than Labour would have dared, or indeed did dare, throughout its thirteen years in power. I suppose it is easier for the Conservatives to get away with it without being called vindictive class warriors, mind. On Newsnight, Polly Toynbee attempted to make out it was the Conservative Party’s policy to kill all children, or something, insisting that its proposed cuts had so far borne the imprimatur of King Herod, but she made herself look very silly indeed. But what about some of you people, out there on the right?

There is a view, prevalent among a sizeable minority of people in this country, and particularly within the angry, fat and drunk white underclass, that one day very soon the green flag of Islam will fly above Westminster and Britain will have become a Muslim country, by stealth. This is the snarled and yet resigned reaction to every inflammatory news story printed in the popular press about Muslim-only swimming nights at local leisure centres, or councils banning Christmas, or teachers upbraided for talking about Jesus Christ in school and so on.

Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. It is this: if I am ever found dead, padlocked inside a sports hold-all and dumped in the bath and the police — having investigated events ineffectually for a week or more — tell you I did it all myself as part of an auto-erotic experiment which went horribly wrong, don’t believe them. However fervent the rozzers might seem in their belief, no matter what contortionist, escapologist or magician they employ to prove that it can be done, please trust me on this: I did not do it, someone else did it to me.

What exactly was wrong with the Vince Cable’s address to the Lib Dem party conference? It seemed to me measured and enlightened. He suggested that the supposedly free market was often “irrational or rigged”, which is surely uncontentious. And that capitalism militated in favour of monopolies, abhorring free competition. Perfectly reasonable judgment again. And then that the pay of various people in the city, and those bonuses, seemed out of proportion to their talents or the work which they had done. What is wrong with any of that? Business leaders have reacted patronisingly by saying that Vince shouldn’t talk this sort of stuff, it’s ok if you are some Lib Dem opposition spokesman but beyond the pale for a government minister.