Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
When I was ten years old my junior school decamped from its old site and moved to a brand new building which, surprisingly for us, had no classrooms. I remember a bunch of us talking to the headmaster about it. “Where do we have lessons?” “Ah, you won’t be having ‘lessons’, as such.” “What!” “No,
Should David Starkey be made homeless by his local council for his recent “inflammatory” comments about the riots which have so entertained us recently? I do not know who runs Mr Starkey’s local council and I suppose that he is an owner-occupier, rather than living in accommodation subsidised by the rest of us. But clearly,
So appalled and incensed am I at the killing of gentle, loving family man Mark Duggan last Thursday that I feel only the immediate illegal acquisition of an expensive consumer durable, preferably a top end watch, will assuage my righteous wrath and lessen my grief. A Rolex should do the job, or at least something
The Chilcot inquiry is too early to really savage Tony Blair Apparently Sir John Chilcot is likely to be ‘critical’ of Tony Blair in his long-awaited report into the Iraq war. We know this, or think we know it, because the Mail on Sunday has told us as much, in some detail. How does the
So is Anders Breivik mad, or just right-wing? His lawyer has decided to go with the former, presumably on the basis that the Norwegian courts will look more kindly upon someone who is doolally than on someone who is a shade to the right of centre. He is probably right about this. There is a
At time of writing I do not know the name of the lumpen oaf who tried to rub an ersatz custard pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face during his testimony to the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. At time of writing I do not know the name of the lumpen oaf who tried to rub
I’d like the art therapists to be next, if at all possible. I’d like the art therapists to be next, if at all possible. I mean, next in line for the national outpouring of bile and contumely. My closest friend is an art therapist and his smugness is beginning to get my goat, especially coming
Tony Little, the headmaster of Eton, recently told me that he thought teacher training colleges tended to make people worse teachers rather than better. As the head of an independent school, Mr Little is allowed to appoint who he wants to his teaching staff, and regularly appoints those who have not been through the vacuous
Do you remember the vicious debates back in the middle of the 1990s about whether or not we should join the single European currency? We don’t have that argument much any more; even the Liberal Democrats keep their traps shut about it these days and try to change the subject when any one mentions it.
I realise that in most cases, the following is not something which concerns you terribly. Further, the point I’m making has been made over and over again this last decade or so. But this year it’s a sort of parody of a parody itself. Consider; top of the bill the witless showbiz caterwauling of Beyonce,
I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. Every day, a new piece of information, which I will make up, about tumours and property values and perhaps how these two phenomena are unexpectedly
It is henceforth illegal for schools to ban certain haircuts because they believe them to be evidence of gang membership. A High Court Judge, Justice Collins, has deemed it to be a form of indirect racial discrimination. A school in Harrow had banned the braided “cornrow” hairstyle because they feared it was worn as a
What do you suppose the chances are of this being the coldest June since records began, or maybe the dampest June since records began? My guess is that it will almost certainly be the most dramatic of some climatic variation since records began; paradoxically, every other month is. Every season is. Every year is. Every
This post is primarily for the nigger-obsessed idiot Mike99, who kindly contributed to a previous thread and bandied the offensive word around like George Wallace on amphetamines. But hopefully others will join in the debate too. Dambusters, then, and Stephen Fry’s remake of the famous film in which Guy Gibson’s dog will be renamed “Digger”,
The received wisdom seems to be that while the government is, as Charles Clarke put it, utterly incoherent and inept, devoid of strategy and consistency of policy, Cameron is getting away with it because he has held office for only a year, ie he is still “new”. However, the same magnanimity of received wisdom has
The problem with AC Grayling’s new super university is that stigma will attach to it similar to that which has attached itself to, say, the University of Central Neasden. In that it is possessed of pretensions which its graduate body will not be able to match. Its clients will be drawn from the ranks of
Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men thinking they might be ‘sluts’. Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men
Do we agree with the overseas development minister, Andrew Mitchell, that we should take as much pride in our massive overseas aid budget as we do in the Queen and the Armed Forces? Mitchell has announced that he intends to make Britain a “world superpower” of development money. I’m not sure quite what this means.
Should we be as worked up as the Mail on Sunday about a BBC Radio Four panellist implying the word “cunt” in a show broadcast at six thirty in the evening? The paper has got itself into a right old lather. Apparently, Sandi Toksvig made the typically hilarious “quip”, that “The Tories have put the
I don’t know if any of you were watching that England game. Maybe like me you did so half reluctantly, disliking the players because they are in the main ignorant, overpaid, under-achieving and consumed with hubris. But if you did you will have felt that familiar despond; it was a game the Swiss deserved to
