Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Disgraced politicians should not be relentlessly persecuted, says Rod Liddle. We should address the problem of MPs’ expenses by raising their salaries instead I felt a little ashamed watching the Westminster Three — Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and David Chaytor — herded into a magistrates court to face charges of defrauding the taxpayer with their
I hate to say this, but there is a very good article in The G***d**n, which you can see online here. It’s by Dr Tony Sewell, a sociologist who runs charities for young black kids, and who is almost always a fount of plain speaking and common sense. He suggests that the educational under-achievement of
My old mate Andrew Gilligan lacerates the BBC in this week’s magazine, for having allowed a member of the Islamic Forum of Europe onto Radio Four’s usually genteel “Any Questions”, and indeed having allowed the East London Mosque (which is run by the “extremist” IFE) to host the programme. At first sight, it is a
It’s unlikely that birds of prey have anything to do with the decline in garden songbirds, says Rod Liddle, and anyway, what right have we got to play God with wildlife? But oh! The crewel sparrer’hawk E spies im in is snuggery, E sharpens up is bleedin’ claws An rips im aht by thuggery anon,
There’s a lot to commend in the Lord Adonis proposal for a high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Trains, it is said, will cover the distance in 49 minutes, at speeds of up to 225mph. The opposition cavils that Labour would be better off spending money improving existing, dilapidated, commuter line seem to
It’s a pretty thin and overrated medium, rock music, and too much energy is expended lauding its practitioners. But Mark Linkous, who is dead having shot himself, was one of a small handful with genuine talent which sometimes, just sometimes, teetered into real brilliance. Few people have used the medium better, or understood better how
This is Sarah Pirie, a ballet teacher and television actress, who is accused of abducting a fifteen year old boy and having sex with him at various hotels in Lancashire. How desperately awful it must have been for the lad, who was allegedly subjected to three months of this sort of treatment. I can only
There was a loony on my train the other day. He sat quietly for most of the journey, but when we pulled into a station he began barking like a dog; that’s how I knew he was a loony, the barking bit, not the sitting quietly bit. Every station, his head went back and he
This, from Roger Alton in this week’s Spectator Sport: “Manchester United and Aston Villa players are moaning about the state of the Wembley pitch for last Sunday’s Carling Cup Final. Give over, lads. Football’s not billiards. A harsh winter’s just a fact of life, and your skills have been flattered by manicured surfaces for too
By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap. You will all have had your epiphanies long before me, I suspect, reading the smug drivel of la Toynbee and Gary Younge and Monbiot, or
I assume there is something more to this story than meets the eye, because otherwise it seems to me inexplicable and outrageous. A fireman, on his way to attend an emergency, has been arrested and charged with manslaughter because it is alleged that the sirens on his engine “spooked” a herd of cows which consequently
So now we know the full extent of the Prime Ministerial bullying. Did he whip, flay or pummel his staff? Did he pick on them relentlessly, or spit at them or try to force them to have sexual intercourse with him while he growled about having saved the world? Did he swear at them in
Of course it’s bad to persecute people, says Rod Liddle. But bullying has now become the latest politically correct public sector growth industry My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines ‘bullying’ in the following terms: ‘to persecute or oppress by force or threats’. The charity at the centre of this latest furore about the Prime Minister, the
I saw the BBC’s Crimewatch programme last night and was, as ever, sickened by its inherent racism. It has reached a point where something really ought to be done: perhaps, like my colleague Charles Moore, I should withhold my license fee until they get with the programme, as the Americans like to say. As usual
Some more nasty opinion poll news for David Cameron, with an ICM poll showing the Tory lead down to seven per cent. “Hung Parliament Looms as Tory Support Crumbles” was the splash in The Guardian, which you might have predicted. You might have predicted Michael Heseltine wading in to the debate too, suggesting that the
The Channel Four television programme Tower Block of Commons, which concluded last night, may have been a stupid and opportunistic idea, but it may too have one beneficial outcome. No matter how reviled and loathed are our politicians, set alongside some of the untermensch featured in this show they appeared paragons, saints, beacons of decency.
Just a thought, but isn’t the National Bullying Helpline guilty of bullying the Prime Minister? I think I will ring its freephone number claiming to be Gordon Brown and explain that I am currently being bullied by a prominent anti-bullying charity, can they suggest a course of action. Quite clearly what the aptly-named Pratts, the
Look, I know a good many of you lot would clutch at anything if it helped defeat Gordon Brown at the next election, and I understand and respect that point of view. But come on, be honest – bullying? Accusing the Prime Minister of bullying? I suppose the best that one could argue, from a
David Wright, the Labour MP for Telford, should get out more, he should be more inclusive. I have attended many Conservative party conferences and mingled late at night with the delegates, and I have to say it always seemed to me that the party was composed almost exclusively of scum-sucking pigs. Sometimes I would go
I don’t suppose that anyone is about to build a community centre in commemoration of Waad al-Baghdadi, but maybe they should. There’s one for Stephen Lawrence, constructed as a token of our disgust at what Sir William Macpherson called the ‘institutional racism’ of the Metropolitan Police. Lawrence’s murder was not competently investigated by the Old