Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Something for which to thank the government, at last. It is much, much more fun buying cigarettes these days. It was quite good fun when they stopped having the fags on display and you had to play a kind of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game with the woman behind the counter. A bit like that section in Play
Now that post-Marxian vacuous liberalism is over, it is surely about time that we revived the vigorous writings of Thomas Carlyle and made him fashionable once again. He is too little read and admired these days, perhaps partly on account of his arguably controversial treatise ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’ (1849) — which, while
-What was your favourite response from the liberals to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election? Actress Emma Watson handing out copies of a Maya Angelou book to bewildered commuters in New York? Cher announcing that she wasn’t simply leaving the USA, ‘but Planet Earth too’ — a move some of us assumed she
Racists, homophobes and bigots decided the result of the US presidential election. Racists, homophobes and bigots are not democratic, and therefore the result of the election is not valid. Therefore I would enjoin you all to demand a second US election, this time where the votes of racists, homophobes and bigots are not counted. Also
The deplorables are rather wonderful people, aren’t they? Both here and in the United States. The people’s revolution continues apace, defying the odds each time, defying the pollsters, defying the elite. I cannot tell you how pleasurable it was to scamper downstairs on Wednesday morning to check out the reaction on the Guardian’s website. It
If Trump wins, I wonder if the BBC will be as exultant as it was in 2008, when Obama won? Here’s a small bet – it won’t be. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s almost worth him winning for that alone. Oh, and for the Guardian’s tears. I don’t like Trump. There
There was a comedy programme about Nigel Farage on the BBC this week, entitled Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back. Purporting to be a Swiftian satire about how Ukip’s former leader would cope with life beyond the political fray, it was, as usual, a case of the corporation sneering at a man who has a
So RIP Pete Burns, transgendered Scouse popstar. His indescribably awful song ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’ — clever allusion, no? — reached number one in 1985 and, as part of the band Dead Or Alive, he had a couple of minor follow-up hits. When David Bowie died in January of this year, a
I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a Geiger counter and iodine tablets, or emigrate to New Zealand. Call me frit, but I don’t like the way things are heading. Probably the second option is easier: Armageddon outta here, etc. I can re-enact
I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a Geiger counter and iodine tablets, or emigrate to New Zealand. Call me frit, but I don’t like the way things are heading. Probably the second option is easier: Armageddon outta here, etc. I can re-enact
I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer to life, the universe and everything. I have no great animus against the number — it does its job, filling that yawning gap between 41 and 43. But I had never thought it actually-special until
I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer to life, the universe and everything. I have no great animus against the number — it does its job, filling that yawning gap between 41 and 43. But I had never thought it actually-special until
Congratulations to Shami – sorry Baroness! – Chakrabarti for joining the exciting, ever-growing pantheon of ultra-left wing metropolitan Labour hypocrites. Her dameship was appearing on the Godawful Peston on Sunday show. Asked why she opposed selection and grammar schools while at the same time sending her brat to the selective, £18,000 per year, Dulwich College, she
The good people of Hungary went to the polls on Sunday and voted by more than 98 per cent against accepting even a few hundred migrants, as per the European Union’s insistence. That poll result must have been gravid with nostalgia for Magyars over the age of about 35. They will remember that sort of
Hallelujah, everybody. The Archbishop of Canterbury has been pontificating again. Justin Welby says we must try to understand radical Islam a little better. He explained last week, with great patience, that the jihadis think they’re in an end-time war against Christians and Jews, so killing them is exactly what they expect to happen. It sort
A year ago there was a confirmed sighting, and even film, of a wild wolf in the Netherlands for the first time in perhaps 150 years. It was hanging out near a farm, a few kilometres from the German border in the north-east of the country, looking bored. A couple of years previously a dead
Still enveloped in their bubble of iridescent adolescent phlegm, the Labour Party now stands at 26 per cent in the latest opinion polls. Below the figure achieved under Michael Foot’s leadership in the 1983 general election, usually regarded as the lowest of all low points for the party. And Foot was battling against a Prime
I was awoken late on Monday night by a horrible nightmare, one of those dreams where you cannot be entirely sure if you are asleep or not. I dreamed I was lying exactly where I was, in my bed, and this torpedo-shaped, phantasmagorical thing was zipping about around the bedroom, diving behind the wardrobe, reappearing
A lecturer at a reasonably well-respected northern plate-glass university was somewhat perplexed by a student who complained about her poor marks for an essay. She had a statement of Special Educational Needs. She insisted that this had not been taken into account in the marking of her paper. My acquaintance was hauled before the university
I had been wondering where Gorgeous George Galloway might pop up next. Defenestrated from his seat in Bradford West, humiliated in the London mayoral elections — where he received 1.4 per cent of the vote — and no longer apparently an attractive proposition to the reality TV producers, his public life seemed sadly to be
