Rod Liddle

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.

What exactly did Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican mean when he said that Britain was like “a third world country”? More specifically he said that “when you land at Heathrow” it’s like arriving in a Third World Country. Most people have cheerfully taken this to be a racist observation – ie, that there are all too many black and Asian people milling around, unlike in Cardinal Kasper’s home town of Stuttgart where by law everybody has to be white. But it may be that he was simply observing hell of Heathrow Airport in general where you receive the sort of service which you might expect in a third world country with a none-too benign dictatorship. Haiti, say, or Burma.

Another interregnum – apologies, from now on there will be no more. I’ve been in San Francisco interviewing Neil Young for the Sunday Times and returned jet-lagged and frazzled a day ago to a pile of letters from outraged cat-lovers. Is there something about owning a cat which obligates the owner to have his or her brain sucked out by a straw? As someone who dislikes “domestic” cats, or more properly the people who own them, I would like to think that this is true – that cats are at the nexus of all manner of stupidities, that they convey a certain unfathomable imbecility upon their owners.

I know he is a maniac and we should have had him shot or poisoned years ago; I know that his son is a ghastly arriviste who, worse, is friends with Peter Mandelson. But there is still something about Colonel Gaddafi which gladdens the heart. I first decided I liked him a bit when he insisted that out greatest literary figure was actually an Arab called Sheikh Spear. And his plan to extort billions and billions of pounds from the EU in order to stop African emigration here has a terrific very un-PC chutzpah about it. Here’s what he said: 'Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration, it could turn into Africa. 'We need support from the European Union to stop this army trying to get across from Libya, which is their entry point.

Apologies for the interregnum – I’ve been away in Austria, where there are mountains and you can smoke in hotel lifts. It’s a beautiful country. While there I read Michael Burleigh’s superb book, Moral Combat, which is about why we were totally right in World War Two. It was an enormous pleasure to have it propped up on the breakfast table as the Austrian waiters scurried hither and thither. I wonder if Sir Liam Donaldson has ever gone to Austria and if so, what he took to read there. Austrians have the highest smoking rate of any country in western Europe. They also have a fantastically unhealthy diet; not a single thing on any menu I saw for two weeks would be allowed into a child’s lunch box over here.

Rod Liddle says that the battle over the Islamic cultural centre mirrors the tortuous debate we’ve all endured for nearly a decade Like you, I suspect, I am hugely enjoying the debate as to whether or not a huge Islamic cultural centre and prayer room should be built 100 yards or so from Ground Zero in New York — where, fittingly, Islam made perhaps its most iconic and vibrant cultural statement of the present century. For many of those who lost husbands, wives, friends and colleagues in the 9/11 attacks, the plan for a mosque seems to be — you know — just pushing it a little bit: a little test to the old tolerance and patience.

Under guidelines introduced by the last government, dis-abled people are now allowed to decide the kind of services they want from local authorities. This is called ‘empowerment’ and ‘devolving services to people in the front line’, and it is a good thing, apparently. But it has had certain unexpected consequences. Bizarrely, it seems that in many cases dis-abled people do not want to sit in a frowsy community centre which smells of stale flatus making raffia baskets for begonias, fortified by the occasional cup of tea and a pat on the shoulder and so on, as was previously assumed. What they actually want, it transpires, is a bloody good seeing to. With a congenial and well-lubricated whore. Preferably somewhere abroad.

This follows very neatly on from the previous thread. If there is one industry where the staff are suffused with an endless sense of self importance and a determination to (literally in some cases) bugger the public, then it is the airline industry. Since 9/11 trolly dollies and whatever name is given to their gay male counterparts seem to believe they are provisional members of the police force, allowed to hector, bully and punish passengers in the name of “security” when, most of the time, it is just about them feeling better about themselves. Like airport staff they are invariably thick and vindictive.

Well, I’ve done the totting up and the results won’t terribly surprise you. The winner, or loser, by a mile is Harriet Harman, followed by Peter Mandelson, and with three scumbags running neck and neck behind him: Galloway, Blair and Brown. After that comes Mr Balls. A surprising number of you really hate Simon Hughes, a surprising number of you don’t hate Ted Heath. Tony Benn scored highly and so did Prezza.

The manufacturer of slow, naff, French cars, Renault, has infuriated residents of a village in Lancashire by comparing it unfavourably with a village in France, in an advertising campaign which it thinks will win over British customers. People in the lovely Ribble Valley village of Gisburn were appalled to see their home mocked in comparison to the mincing polo-shirted deck-shoed town of Menton, which lies on the fabled and greatly overrated Côte d'Azur. Menton was once part of Italy, and also the Genoese empire, and also Vichy France. In other words it has capitulated more times even than Marshall Petain. I suspect four OAPS from Gisburn could probably annexe Menton for the Crown inside about two hours; all they'd have to do is turn up and sneer nastily.