Rod Liddle

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 scampered away for cover. It was a Common Lizard, I think; too small and right-wing looking to be a Sand Lizard. Later in the day I read up a bit more about lizards in the Guardian’s “Specieswatch” column, which I always enjoy because it is usually free of the bien pensant whining which afflicts most of the rest of the paper. Usually, but not on this occasion.

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BBC films, provoking a bunch of nursing academics to write to the BBC Chairman Lord Patten insisting that the films be withdrawn It is certainly true that Nightingale is no longer revered in the same way as when I was at school. Readers of this blog will be all too familiar with Nightingale’s rival, Mary Seacole, a woman who also helped out in the Crimean War but has the distinct advantage of being about the only black person in Britain at the time.

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 studies into the condition. As a gift to medical science I thought we should compile a list of things – a compendium, if you like – which are definitely illnesses or diseases and things which aren’t, so as to help the doctors.

Oh dear: looks like poor ol’ Boris has got to do one of his famous apologies again. The not terribly good American singer Kelis claimed she was racially abused at Heathrow Airport, when, in the manner of primped up little divas, she jumped a queue. Someone in the queue called her a “slave”, allegedly, and “kunte kinte” (although she may have misheard this, I suppose). Nobody stood up for her and an immigration official merely smiled and shook his head, she complained – and added that Britain was an incredibly backward country. The Mayor of London, doing a passable imitation of an albino Martin Luther King, said he was appalled and wrote a stern letter of admonition to Heathrow.

At some media whore shindig early in the summer I bumped into Michael Gove and asked, politely, if he would mind very much making me the boss of Ofsted. After all, I had once employed him as a reporter – it seemed the least that he could do. He was sadly non-committal; I have waited for a letter of appointment, none has come. However, I like to think he absorbed some of my drunken rant that evening, because this week he has castigated Ofsted for giving hundreds of schools an “outstanding” when actually, as we all know, they’re utterly bloody useless. Schools often get very high marks from Ofsted if the average intake has the IQ of a bowl of tomato soup and they emerge five years later without having killed anyone.

The Spectator debate next week is about whether or not we should leave the European Union. Luckily, this is one of the very few issues upon which I am undecided and not possessed of an arrogant and fatuous opinion. Luckily, because I am moderating the debate and therefore am required to be neutral. My objection to the European Union was always largely racist, rather than economic or political. Had Britain been asked to join a union consisting largely of what Hitler would describe as Greater Germany, plus the official Scandies and their arriviste cousins in Latvia, I would have had us sign up without demurral. My objection was to having people like the Spanish and Greeks and southern Italians having anything to do with the running of my life.

A Welsh bloke who snorted half of Bolivia up his nostrils has been told he can carry on his chosen profession – that of a teacher. Huw Davies, who is also a Conservative councillor – which one assumes is how he acquired his stash of gak – was sacked by Brynteg Comprehensive School after being convicted of possession of cocaine, but the General Teaching Council has said he is free to work in any other school. The GTC has struck off precisely 20 teachers in the last 12 years; I think, to incur their wrath, a teacher would need to strangle the children and feed them into a woodchipper, cackling madly.

On one of those phone-in quiz shows, as reported by Private Eye, a contestant, when asked to name the capital of Poland, replied with great confidence: “Auschwitz”. I don’t know exactly what proportion of the British public would subscribe to this notion, but I would guess that it is largish. The ignorance compounded, of course, by referring to the place by its German, rather than Polish, name. The problem is we do not know enough about the Poles now working in our country; despite having their exiled government here during the last world war, and plenty of Poles zipping over to the continent in Spitfires, we still do not know the name of their capital city or what to call them in an insulting manner when they displease us.

Things are looking a little ticklish for Muammar Gaddafi. It would seem that the maniacal and disorganised coalition of rebels, which occasionally breaks off from fighting the tyrant to murder its own leaders, is poised for a famous victory. A consequence, one supposes, of the heavy ordinance expended by the various western allies. Had ol’ Muammar been able to hold out for a while longer the resolve of the west would have collapsed altogether; already the French were whining about their involvement and were thinking about running away again.

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, it’s all open-plan, there will be no more lessons. If you want to learn some maths, you’ll wander over to the maths area. If you want to learn English, exactly the same.” We thought about this for a second or two. “What if we never want to do any maths or English? What if we just want to play football for a year?” “Well, that’s up to you.