Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Je suis Charlie indeed. This is the problem with placards — there is rarely enough room to fit in the caveats, the qualifying clauses and the necessary evasions. I suppose you could write them on the back of the placard, one after the other, in biro. Or write in brackets and in much smaller letters, directly
There is the distinct suspicion that at last some more usually bien-pensant commentators are getting it. I mean getting the threat posed to us by irritated Muslim people. First, unexpectedly, David Aaronovitch talked a degree of sense in the Times last Thursday. Yay, David, way to go. Something else you’ve been wrong about for ten years –
I don’t always agree with Peter Hitchens but this is by far the best piece I’ve seen on the political reaction to the Paris attacks. As far as Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are concerned, we must all sign up to these shibboleths: The attack was nothing to do with Islam. Almost all Muslims, here and
Utterly brilliant piece by Brendan O’Neill at Spiked on what would have happened if Charlie Hebdo had been published in Britain, rather than in France. It does not strike me as being terribly far-fetched. Meanwhile, the BBC, yet again, has misjudged the story in its news coverage, wringing its hands over the treatment of French
A new name to help us welcome in the new year: Jean Hatchet. A name which is almost certainly too good to be true for a perpetually infuriated radical feminist — much as, say, Roz Termagant or Betty Hitler would be. It is a pseudonym, apparently. Ms Hatchet — I assume that is the title she would
A glittering cast list, delicious food and spectacular entertainment — I just wish you could have been there. But tickets were at a premium for The Spectator’s prestigious Utter Arse of the Year awards ceremony held, as ever, in the council chamber at Tower Hamlets. The meal, prepared by the exciting left-wing lesbian cook Jack Monroe,
Did you enjoy the BBC Today programme this morning, guest edited by the, uh, comedian Lenny Henry and featuring interviewees and journos who were exclusively from ethnic minority backgrounds? I meant to, but some weird narcosis kept me in bed and stopped me turning the radio on. So I can’t judge the content. There have
More excellent news for Team UK. Apparently we are now the second fattest people in Europe – and are rapidly catching up on the humongous, goulash-obsessed Hungarians, who currently hold the coveted number one spot. However – the news gets better. The survey was undertaken before Christmas Day: the morbidly obese Magyars tend to eat
Should enormously fat women be allowed into nightclubs? The obvious answer is ‘no, of course not, are you out of your f****** mind?’ But door policies which discriminate against the morbidly obese can undoubtedly be hurtful. Amy Pitcher and an un-named friend were denied entry to a club in Ashford, Kent; the bouncer didn’t actually
I’ve been away in Oslo. Not the world’s most exciting destination, I have to say. And the locals really do talk and smile exactly like Frances McDormand does in Fargo. Anyway, as there’s still a few days left before Christmas I thought I’d mention a couple of my favourite books of the year, just in
Were you aware that the famous actor Andy Garcia was born with a foetus growing out of his left shoulder? It was removed from him when he was a toddler. I had not known this and I am unhappy that some sort of conspiracy, some wall of silence, was constructed to keep this news from
It’s a good name, Roger Bird, isn’t it? The story, or non-story, develops apace. Read Steerpike here for the details of the text messages sent by Natasha Bolter to Mr Bird and which suggest to me a degree of, um, complicity, y’know? Newsnight carried it as their second story last night: Yoda was wreathed in
The Natasha Bolter story is a little peculiar, no? Ms Bolter, formerly of the Labour Party and more latterly a rising star in Ukip, has been telling the press how she was ‘sexually harassed’ by the party’s general secretary, Roger Bird. This seems to have amounted to Mr Bird asking her out a couple of
The latest half-witted United Nations official to stick the boot into the United Kingdom is one Francois Crepeau, UN ‘Special Rapperteur’ (nope, sorry, don’t recognise the term), on the Rights of Human Migrants. Crepeau, who comes from the useless part of Canada, said that British fears about immigration were ‘utter bullshit’. He added that if
Thoroughly cheering news emerged this week that left-handed people are likely to earn between 10 and 12 per cent less than their right-handed colleagues. (So 11 per cent less, then). Good. I have never cared for left-handed people, considering them arrogant and possessed of unsavoury personal habits — and were I an employer I would not
Would you find it difficult to remain friends with someone if he or she suddenly revealed that they intended to vote Ukip in the next election? Or perhaps it is the case that you yourself have told friends that you intend to vote Ukip and have seen those dinner-party invitations drying up, or have been
I wonder how long it will be before we actually crawl back into the womb? The average mental age of our population stands at about four. A decade or so back it was surely higher — maybe six or seven, I would guess. But we have regressed with great rapidity, as if we were characters in
The news is always grim, isn’t it? Doom and gloom everywhere. And even the news which appears to be good has a dark cloud hovering behind it. For example, we frequently hear reports of British-born jihadis being killed in Syria, either by blowing themselves up in the familiar, traditional manner or being bombed by the
So – the Rochester and Strood by-election next Thursday. Who will win? I’ve been there a few times recently and my guess, from a feeling in my water, is that it will be Ukip by about ten thou. Good, I suppose. That will shake them all up a bit more, no? Last night, I watched the
The latest instalment of what is becoming a regular feature: admiring the work of academics at places which, these days, we must call universities. This week let’s hear it for Professor Eric ‘Gumby’ Anderson, who lectures in Sports Sociology at the King Alfred Teacher Training College, or Winchester University as it is now known. One
