Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has at last spoken on the issue of the great St Paul’s Cathedral controversy, which has so far seen the departure of both the Dean of the cathedral and its canon. Dr Williams lamented the loss to the church of both men but added that the ‘issues’ raised by
Wow — two pieces in the mag this week from journalists whining about people being beastly to them on social networking sites. The first, from James Delingpole, correctly identifies Twitter as being characterised by “suppurating vileness”. Yes, that would be right. So why do it? James is a good mate and while we have certain
What is the appropriate sort of language, do you suppose, for the captain of the England football team to use in respect of his colleagues? This is an important issue and I, for one, will not sleep until a sort of resolution — a closure, if you will — has been arrived at. Because we
I think my favourite story of the day concerned the theatre-goers at Stratford-upon-Avon who were outraged that the play they had just seen contained considerable amounts of sex, violence and depravity. The play was Marat/Sade. You’d think the “Sade” bit might have given them a bit of a clue, wouldn’t you? It’s a bit like
Good to see Jonathan King winning his battle with the Stalinist BBC. The corporation had edited him out of a rerun of a 1970s Top of the Pops show, as if he had never existed. As those of us of a certain age know all too well, Mr King was an extremely regular performer on
In order to commemorate the death of Colonel Gaddafi properly, here’s a quiz about various deceased (with one exception) murderous megalomaniacs. No googling, or I’ll boil you in a vat for supper. Answers later today. 1. Which Muslim headcases wrote the following novels: a) Escape To Hellb) Begone Demons! 2. According to a popular conspiracy theory, from whose frozen
Here’s a conversation I had with an elderly Afrikaaner lady (EAL) in the main street of the whites-only town, Orania, in South Africa. Me: Hello, do you live here? EAL: No, but I am thinking of moving here. Me: Why would you want to do that? EAL: There is no crime here, it is secure.
Greetings from South Africa, where I am in the township of Orania making a film (hence my radio silence for a few days). Orania is a somewhat right-of-centre Afrikaans-only settlement; more about it in the future. One of the interesting wild animals out here in the Karoo is the Bat-Eared Fox, which is – suitably
Do you have any idea what a decision support analyst actually does for a living? This is a controversial topic because the chief operating officer of the BBC, a woman called Caroline Thomson, was unable to answer the question as to what her own decision support analysts did while they were at work. Truth be
I don’t know what source you use for your news from the US. Some will trust the BBC or Fox, two sides of the same coin. The more achingly modern will go for blogs and stuff. I trust none of it and rely entirely upon No Name Gene, who I met in a bar in
Good point made by Charlie Brooker in today’s Guardian. If the BBC wishes to save a bit of money without affecting quality of output —indeed, by improving it — the corporation should stop making vastly expensive trailers for its forthcoming programmes. Brooker says it “turns him silver with rage” when he sees these specially shot
A slightly belated happy birthday to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was 80 years old on Friday. I can’t think of many prominent figures from Africa to whom one would gladly wish a long and peaceful life, but Tutu is surely one. It is a moot point as to whether he is more of an irritant
Here’s a tip for nowt: if you’re thinking of travelling to Italy, don’t keep a dildo in your washbag. Here’s a tip for nowt: if you’re thinking of travelling to Italy, don’t keep a dildo in your washbag. Put it somewhere that intimates to the authorities a certain discretion and reserve. You don’t want to
An odd definition of what it is to be a Conservative from the Prime Minister in Manchester yesterday: “We’re consulting on legalising gay marriage. To anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it’s also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when
I’m sorry, this isn’t a proper post. I’ll do one of those later. It’s just that this bit of one of the posts on the Dr Liddle’s Casebook thread made me laugh so much I can’t type straight. “Also should have contacted Moorfields Eye Hospital on the different reasons for having to wear glasses.”
I saw a lizard on Monday, by my backdoor, in the pile of mouldering leaves which I’ve left untouched because the young frogs and toads seem to like it so much. I lifted up a log to see how these creatures were getting on, in the manner of a benevolent deity, and a tiny lizard
Was Florence Nightingale, the lady with the lamp, really a mean-tempered and manipulative old hag who killed huge numbers of British soldiers through crass ignorance? And was she, furthermore, “sexually neurotic”? This is the view that has been portrayed of the woman by a number of recent BBC films, provoking a bunch of nursing academics
There is something attractive about Harriet Harman’s proposal that the leader of the Labour party must, by law, be a lesbian. It is only in the last couple of years that I have been able to accept that lesbians exist at all, so it will be doubly exciting for me to watch this sort of
I got an email from the Fibromyalgia Society this week, urging me to write something about this distressing disease. I did a modicum of research and discovered that it is another one of those imaginary afflictions claimed by malingering mentals. I may be wrong about this, I’m simply reading between the lines of the various
So, like squeezing blood from a stone, Labour has at last admitted that unconstrained immigration from what was once called Eastern Europe made life a lot harder for many British people. Ed Miliband said the following: “What I think people were worried about, in relation to Polish immigration in particular, was that they were seeing
