Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
So, why the great shock? Why the hand-wringing? It’s not as if they weren’t warned. Why all those metropolitan journos disembarking at Barnsley station on the 11.47 from King’s Cross and gingerly approaching the local Untermensch with a sort of disgusted awe: what is it about this ghastly place that resulted in 17 per cent
Which of the many MPs accused of defrauding the taxpayer by fiddling their expenses is the worst offender, do you think? We need some clarity on this issue. In the public mind I have a feeling that they are all beginning to merge as one composite beast drawn from ancient mythology — a hydra-headed pig
Rod Liddle takes issue with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and otherdoom-mongers: Kim Jong-il’s nukes are quaintly amateurish Apparently it’s now five minutes to midnight. I am referring not to the actual time, but to the figurative clock of the apocalypse which tells us how long it will be until we are all annihilated.
Rod Liddle says that Sarah Teather, the righteous young Lib Dem MP who refused to claim for a second home, proves that it wasn’t mandatory for MPs to fleece us The worst case of expenses fraud I ever encountered as a journalist came when I worked for the BBC and a foreign correspondent claimed a
Rod Liddle wants to know why the taxpayer has to pay for Douglas Hogg’s moat and Phil Woolas’s groceries, but nobody will subsidise his own extravagant needs — and is offended by MPs’ attempts to posture as the victims of an impersonal ‘system’ The thing that puzzles me is why did Phil Woolas, the immigration
Rod Liddle says that the insane therapeutic methods used by Haringey Social Services typify the ideological determination of these ‘experts’ to accentuate the ‘positive’ and ignore social reality The Baby P case is still howling around us all, another gale of reproof hammering at the shutters of our liberal indulgence and at our fathomless respect
Rod Liddle says that Harriet Harman’s notion of ‘structural pay discrimination’ is nonsense. It is women’s decision to have children that disrupts wage equality One government proposal which seems to have gone largely unnoticed as a consequence of the credit crunch, Susan Boyle’s triumph on Britain’s Got Talent and flying Mexican pigs spreading their lethal
‘I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel, in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel, watched by
There’s a UK-based internet site called Urban Dictionary and I’m lucky enough to warrant an entry on it. The text reads as follows: ‘Rod Liddle — an odious, untalented, bigoted, low-level Sunday Times journalist who engages in buggery with Nazis such as Nick Griffin.’ Or at least that’s some of it. Incredible, don’t you think?
What did you give up for Lent? I gave up chives again. Forty-five days of deprivation. According to the ecclesiastical calendar I am allowed my first chive on Saturday — but do you know what? I’m going to say no. My willpower has become a marvel to myself; I’m saying no to chives all the way
The Jacqui Smith case and the grotesque sight of her husband apologising for watching porn films at the taxpayer’s expense are just the latest symptoms of a well-advanced political disease, says Rod Liddle. They take the voters for a bunch of mugs At last the politicians have done the decent thing and called in the
It was a badly timed death, a departure which, ironically, scorned the important press deadlines. The best time to die, if you are a celebrity, is at three o’clock in the afternoon of a weekday — in time for the early evening news bulletins and the next morning’s papers. This, however, was a Saturday into
Rod Liddle is appalled by Sir Liam Donaldson’s deployment of statistics in the hope of making it harder to have a drink. A surrealist would struggle to keep up with such campaigns against our human pleasures Iatrogenesis accounts for the deaths of an estimated 72,000 British people every year — or slightly more than the
This family’s very public angst is all about making cash, says Rod Liddle. And the parents were not showing ‘tough love’ when they kicked out their son, but washing their hands of a problem Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime juice minus gin, Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born
Rod Liddle recalls his own childhood fumblings and says that the case of Alfie Patten proves nothing much has changed. If Britain is ‘broken’, it always was I still sometimes wonder what would have happened if Julie’s parents had somehow stumbled in. Or mine, for that matter. They would have had to peer pretty hard,
Rod Liddle parodies the nonsense that is the government’s approach to foreign visitors with unpleasant messages. It makes no sense to ban a critic of Islam but let in every homophobe with a passport Perhaps we should not let anyone into our lovely country, for fear of the mischief they might cause. Almost all foreigners
The reality TV überchav remained in the public eye because of her unerring ability to court catastrophe, says Rod Liddle — and the television-friendly speed at which her grotesque rise and demise have taken place You can still buy Jade Goody’s fragrance, Jade Goody’s Controversial!, online or indeed in your nearest department store. For £19.99
It’s lovely to see the former geographical entity Lindsey back in the headlines, a fleeting visit from a ghost from the past. Lindsey was one of the three subdivisions of the great county of Lincolnshire, if you remember, along with landlocked Kesteven and dank, flat, blustery Holland. It was abolished in 1974, simply swept away
The Corporation has performed admirably during the conflict, says Rod Liddle. It is to Mark Thompson’s credit that he did not cave in to pressure on all sides to air the charity appeal Forgive me for turning into Dr Pangloss all of a sudden, but doesn’t the furore created over the BBC’s decision not to
Rod Liddle says that television news is intrinsically biased: it transforms what it reports. In the case of the economy, ministers are right to counteract this with a dose of optimism Excuse me for a moment; it’s all become a little too much for me and I need to sit down somewhere quiet, take a