Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
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
It is a matter of great comfort to me, as a football fan, that all the allegations made against the various Fifa delegates have been shown to be utter fabrications. I had been a little worried. We know now, though, that they are utter fabrications because the boss of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, a man of
I took the Caledonian sleeper train from London Euston to Glasgow on Sunday night. This is what the train did: it left Euston at 2330 and made its way to just south of Watford Junction, where it waited for twenty minutes. Then it went back south, on a different line, to just north of Kings
At last we crusaders for truth can reveal exactly what happened when a famous footballer who is married met the former Big Brother contestant, Imogen Thomas. I suppose you could guess what happened, but it’s better to know for sure, isn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll use phrases like ‘asked her to perform a sex act’
I suppose it’s wrong to lock people up for crimes they didn’t commit. But nonetheless, if George Davis had served his full sentence for an armed robbery which he probably didn’t commit in 1975, then he wouldn’t have been able to take part in the armed robbery on the Bank of Cyprus two years later,
Tired of the BBC’s bias over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? So too is The Guardian, and a new book More Bad News from Israel by Greg Philo and Mike Berry. However, their weariness is with what they see as the BBC’s pro-Israeli bias. Berry and Philo, according to The Guardian, “find that the Israeli explanation of
I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne, is not motivated by revenge in writing a book about her ex-husband and dobbing him in to the police. I think we’re all very relieved that Vicky Pryce, the estranged wife of the Cabinet minister Chris Huhne,
I had rather high hopes when I learned that there was to be a “Slut Walk” through London in a couple of weeks. However, it transpires that they are not proper honest to God sluts at all, but very angry women in dungarees who will most likely not be up for it, so to speak.
Well, knock me down with a Ferrari, who’d have thought it? Jemima Khan and Jeremy Clarkson! The fragrant, pouting Mima — epitome of well-bred, bankrolled, metro liberal hand-wringing faux angst — getting it on with the dishevelled reactionary so far to the right-of-centre-he’s-almost-in-the-median-strip petrolhead Jeremy. Well, knock me down with a Ferrari, who’d have thought
Children’s literature is sexist, has too many male heroes and represents the “symbolic annihilation of women”, according to a deranged woman writing in the latest edition of my favourite journal, “Gender And Society”. Janice McCabe singles out poor Winnie-the-Pooh for particular scorn, although she also has a go at that misogynistic bastard, Peter Rabbit. But
I know that Wills married Kate last weekend because I saw it with my own eyes. I didn’t have much choice in the matter because my wife was camped out in front of the TV for 12 hours being catty about Victoria Beckham’s Croydon facelift and stupid hat and generously summoning me in whenever Lady
I voted no to AV (postal vote) for a bunch of reasons; the first, and probably most important, is that nobody really wants it. The British public has not been clamouring for constitutional change; as we know, the vote is simply a device to facilitate the coalition. The Lib Dems don’t really want it –
There was a very funny joke told by the slightly weird American comedian Emo Philips a dozen or so years ago. He was talking about his German girlfriend, and how she loved being in New York. What she loved best, he said, were those New York bagels, she couldn’t get enough of them. “And you
After a top secret operation costing a lot of money and carried out by myself, I can reveal that I have at last killed Adolf Hitler, the man responsible for the second world war. Only hours after the American government told a jubilant world that its special forces had killed the evil Muslim murderer, Osama
An interesting piece, a week or so back, from Matthew Parris in the magazine – sorry I haven’t got around to it before now. There are columns I read immediately in The Spectator and others which I lay down like a fine wine to mellow for a while, perhaps for months or even years, always
