Rod Liddle

It was good to see parliamentary expenses back at the top of the news agenda over last weekend. I think we were all getting a little nonced out, so to speak. To judge from the number of lawsuits now filed against the BBC, and also the supposed list of people due to be picked up by the police, it would seem that almost everybody who works in television was guilty, at some time or another, of sexually abusing some innocent civilian. It is surely only a matter of time before we see the headline: ‘Police to interview Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and, of course, Grubb.

Anyone know a good method of trapping mice humanely? I’ve got lots of them scurrying around. I bought two humane traps and have so far caught ten of the creatures. But there’s a design flaw; the mice get trapped inside a narrow black box for far too long. The manufacturers say the mice shouldn’t be left inside for more than six hours – but of course they are caught at night, just after I’ve gone to bed, so they ALWAYS are left for more than six hours in the trap. Inside they are terrified and get way too hot. Of the ten I caught, one died and six or seven were in a pretty bad shape when, having walked the statutory two miles (so they can’t come back), I let them go.

And still it goes on and on. Apparently Jimmy Savile was banned from Children In Need because it was thought he was a bit creepy. Did he try to touch up Pudsey, or something? I think we are getting ourselves into a self-righteous frenzy here. Savile was unspeakably ghastly. He was unspeakably ghastly before these latest allegations and he’s – probably, almost certainly – even worse now. But are we really going to exact revenge on pop stars who may have fondled a fourteen year old girl forty years ago? Were there any of those glam rock stars – Gilbert O’Sullivan excepted – who didn’t fondle fourteen year old girls? How many of the girls, at the time, were discomfited by this?

And so the Savile stuff rumbles on with George Entwistle’s singularly unimpressive performance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. It still seems to me that the bosses are being evasive over the issue of pressure applied, or otherwise, to the Newsnight editor Peter Rippon. Someone is hiding something, I think. But this whole catastrophe need not have occurred. There is no great crime in a senior manager quizzing a programme editor about a controversial investigation. There is no crime at all in a programme editor deciding not to run a story because he has doubts about it.

  ‘(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he: (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting.’ —Section 5, Public Order Act 1986 Do you ever growl at dogs? It’s something I’ve been known to do while out and about. I like dogs in general, but some breeds are given to facial expressions which annoy me. Labradors, for example, always seem to me complacent and self-righteous, especially the yellow ones. I sometimes growl at them in order to disturb their evident self-satisfaction, or yap quietly to see how they react. Alsatians, too, always seem a bit too bloody sure of themselves for my liking.

Ah – so those miserable traders who everyone told to shut up were dead right, back in August. Britain received its smallest number of foreign tourists for almost a decade this summer, largely as a consequence of the Olympic Games, it is thought. The only recent year which saw fewer people visit our country was 2003 - the year we invaded Iraq, when everyone hated us and the Yanks. It may well be that foreigners refused to come this time because they were scared by reports of hordes of Brits dressed in purple tracksuits grinning manically at them at every tube and railway station and street corner. I think the tourists preferred it when we were just abusive or ignored them entirely, or gave them misdirections out of xenophobic spite.

A very good point made by Peter Hitchens in an interview with the Evening Standard yesterday. It was this: ‘A particular problem of the Left is that they believe their personal goodness is entangled with their opinions. Therefore, it is hard for them to have friendships with — or even like — conservative people. It’s not just that they disagree with them; it’s that they feel superior to them and they feel these people are morally bad. I enjoy the company of the people I disagree with, probably rather more than the people I agree with, but I don’t think people are bad because I disagree with them. I just think they’re wrong.