Rod Liddle

Still in denial, then. The liberal left, having first tried to ignore the massed sex attacks in Cologne (and in many other places across Europe), in the hope that the rest of us might not have noticed, are now attempting to explain it away. Prize for the most stupid contribution so far goes to the reliable Deborah Orr: “how could anyone possibly imagine that among a million people from anywhere there wouldn’t be some proportion of nasty, sleazy misogynists? A British legal history that includes the withholding of all manner of basic rights from women suggests that there’s nothing racially or religiously inherent in chauvinism.

The Saudis have got the new year off to a busy start, haven’t they? The authorities executed 47 people, including a rather grim-looking Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr — leading Shia cleric and children’s party balloon sculptor (giraffes a speciality). OK, I made that last bit up. He was just a heavily bearded religious agitator and probably not much fun at parties. He’s dead now. In time I will overcome my grief and rebuild. As a consequence, Shia Iran has severed diplomatic links with the Sunni House of Saud and the usual furious and violent massed protests — which characterise both branches of the Religion of Peace™ — have taken place in Tehran. Screaming hordes waving placards saying stuff like ‘Down With Britain!

Happy New Year. Sorry about my absence. I’ve been away for a couple of weeks and then, when I returned, there was no internet access and those hardworking people from BT spent ten days mulling over the problem before they tried to put it right. What a wonderful organisation. So, anyway, well done Lutz Bachmann – a German politician from the Pegida party. He tweeted that all those Germans who had said 'refugees welcome here' should make their way down to Munich station – closed on New Year’s Eve because of bomb threats. https://twitter.

Why are liberals morons? I’m sure that this question has rattled around your mind before, perhaps when watching one of those fair and balanced debates between three ill-dressed but very liberal women that Newsnight puts on every evening, hosted by Kirsty Wark. You hear them tiptoeing through the -nether regions of some important political issue, carefully sidestepping the nub of the matter, obfuscating, denying the patently obvious even when it is staring them right in their smug faces, jabbering ineffectually about nothing in essence. How can these silly mares be this way, you may have asked yourself. How can they navigate their way through life on such slender mental resources?

We have been contemplating moving to the North, for a variety of unassailable reasons. One is the chance to gloat on a daily basis. I will immediately become the thinnest and richest man in the village, which will do my flagging middle-aged self-confidence no end of good. Indeed, on the weight issue I could cease worrying completely and really pile on the pounds, simply moving another 100 miles north every time I reach the average weight of the indigenous population. Begin at 14 stone in, say, Coventry. When I reach 16 stone, move to Sheffield — and immediately become the thinnest man around once again. By the time my gut is so large I need a crane to drag me to McDonald’s and back I’ll be living somewhere near Paisley, or perhaps Oban.

Just back after a few weeks away in the north east - thought I’d share this with you. I wrote a piece for The Sunday Times arguing against bombing Syria for a host of reasons – I will list them all in another blog tomorrow. Suffice to say I don’t think it will do any good, even if it might cheer us up. I also suggested that given the threat to us is largely internal, ie from domiciled Muslims who have been (weary sigh) 'radicalised' - we would be as well off bombing Luton as Syria. BBC Three Counties Radio took exception. They sent some poor sap of a reporter onto the streets of Luton to ask people if they thought it was right that Luton should be bombed (the ones who they reported as answering all said 'no, probably not, on balance').

Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had acquired was every bit as authentic as the one they had jubilantly renounced. So a separate toilet is surely otiose. And not just that, but the suggestion that they might need a separate toilet for micturition through their surgically emended private parts is surely offensive. The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, may be in trouble, then, for announcing his intention to install these mysterious receptacles throughout the Palace of Westminster to service the hordes of transgendered workers wandering around with extravagant beehive hairdos and outsize stiletto heels.

Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column? Possibly wriggling little fibres, placed there by the government or by aliens? By aliens I don’t mean asylum seekers but proper aliens, quite probably creatures with bifurcated tongues and scaly lips from the Planet Zog. If so, you may well consider yourself to be suffering from ‘Morgellons’. This unfortunate condition had its heyday at the turn of the century, with hundreds of thousands of people reporting to their GPs and clinics in the USA and here, pleading to have these little fibres sorted out somehow.

I’m grateful to my friend Matthew Wilson for drawing my attention to this story which I had missed. It is taken from the following report. So, as we knew all along, chronic fatigue syndrome - or ME - is not a chronic illness at all. Attempts to relate it to some sort of virus were long since debunked by research in the USA. The Oxford study suggests that what people suffering from ME need to do is quite simple: get out for a nice walk once in a while and maybe see a shrink. But I suppose the ME lobby will now turn its bizarre loathing on the university. Nothing will stop them believing it’s a virus, or caused by pollution, or a conspiracy on the part of the government and health professionals.

Hero of the week is undoubtedly the cleaner at the Museion Bozen-Bolzano in Italy. Faced with a horrible mess in the main gallery – fag ends, empty bottles, party streamers - she cleaned it all up, put it in black bags and chucked it out. Yes, of course – it was an 'installation' by the artists Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari. As the Italian art critic Vittorio Sgarbi put it, 'If she thought it was rubbish, it means it was. Art should be understood by everyone — including cleaners.' Quite – and you’d think that would be an end to it. But no, the Guardian’s art critic said instead that the cleaner’s peremptory actions were 'proof of the enduring vitality' of modern art. Proof of your enduring delusion, mate.

Two reports on the BBC Ten O'Clock News this week, both unashamedly partisan. Yes, yes, I know they are not the only reports this week guilty of bias. There’s the same ol same ol refugee hugging every night and there was also a report on the fact that our population is about to rise by ten million without even the faintest suggestion that this might not be a bloody good thing. But I mean two specific reports. One, by Reeta Chakrabarti about protests outside abortion clinics. This was the most egregiously biased piece of reporting I have seen for a long while. It took, as a statement of unalterable fact, that these protests were vile. There was not a single voice raised in defence of the protests, or against abortion. It was propaganda, pure and simple.

Everyone loves an underdog. It doesn’t matter how incompetent they might be — indeed, incompetence works in their favour. You do not expect underdogs to be adept, do you? It doesn’t really matter how vile, otiose or absurd their beliefs are, either. So long as they are up against someone more powerful, a certain sentimental section of the population will be rooting for them. Look at the Palestinians, for example. And look at Jeremy Bloody Corbyn. My wife — a Tory — said to me the other day: ‘You lot want to watch it. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the bloke. The sympathy votes will be stacking up.

Sooner or later, in this trade, one runs out of television historians to antagonise. I am doggedly working my way through the pack — and I don’t think any of the really big ones are left. I began by annoying Mary Beard and then swiftly moved on to David Starkey. Some time passed but eventually I found an opportunity to irritate Simon Schama, on BBC’s Question Time last week. He got very angry and his hands started waving all over the place. Someone on a social media site said he looked like a Thunder-birds puppet controlled by a person with Parkinson’s disease, which is a little cruel, I suppose. Simon ended a splenetic diatribe by calling me ‘suburban’, which raised a few eyebrows and indeed the accusation of snobbery.