Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Just back from Amsterdam, via the train, or two trains at least. The list of stations speeding by sounded like a drunken Scotsman’s tirade: Sloten, Dordrecht, Mechelen, Duffel, ya Delft bastard. I was there for the magazine, to write a piece about an increase in anti-Semitism in the country and especially in Amsterdam itself. The
Has anyone else had enough of John McTernan, appearing on a political discussion programme near you at this very moment? McTernan was Tony Blair’s political organiser, a backroom monkey who, since May this year has decided we should all be able to benefit from his incalculable wisdom. Thin eyed and smug he has been wrong
My favourite headline for many a month is in this morning’s Guardian: “Black Britons at more risk of jail than black Americans.” This suggests jail is a debilitating communicable disease, perhaps something like scarlet fever, which visits itself upon people entirely regardless of their behaviour. The headline accompanies an article based upon the latest report
David Davis is the ghost at the coalition’s feast And then, somewhere behind the arras, there is David Davis. Every Conservative party conference has an arras, and this year’s arras is a very pretty one, embroidered in sky blue and a pale yellow the shade of stale egg yolks, hardly yellow at all, depicting a
I assume you are au fait with the latest research on solar activity and its effects upon climate change, the research for which was undertaken at Imperial College, London. This latest stuff suggests that contrary to what had been expected, when solar activity increases it has a counter-intuitively depressing effect on the climate of the
A remarkable lack of nerve shown by the Conservative Party over the cuts to Child Benefit, don’t you think? It occurred to me, when the announcement was made, that this would be an almost uniformly popular measure. Those on the left like would it because it smacks of progressiveness, those on the right wouldn’t mind
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the left try to attack these changes to child benefit changes from the left. The truth is it is a far more “progressive” policy than Labour would have dared, or indeed did dare, throughout its thirteen years in power. I suppose it is easier for the Conservatives to get away with
I suppose the labour movement should be very happy that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were not led by BBC newsreaders. This week’s strike has been called off following the intervention of extremely high paid corporation stars such as Fiona Bruce and Huw Edwards urging their badly paid colleagues not to down tools. They were worried that
There is a view, prevalent among a sizeable minority of people in this country, and particularly within the angry, fat and drunk white underclass, that one day very soon the green flag of Islam will fly above Westminster and Britain will have become a Muslim country, by stealth. This is the snarled and yet resigned reaction
I am not sure why David Miliband is getting such an easy ride at the moment. Perhaps this is mean-spirited and insensitive of me, although I have nothing against the chap. But it does strike me that his likely decision not to stand for the shadow cabinet and instead to “leave front line politics”, perhaps
The difficult question for me is who were the 0.88 per cent of Labour MPs, and 2.5 per cent of Labour members, who thought that Diane Abbott was the best possible person to lead the Labour Party? Admittedly this is the sort of proportion of voters who at elections decide to select the candidate from
Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. Can I ask a small favour of you? Nothing too onerous, just something you might usefully store away at the back of your memory. It is this: if I am ever
My favourite contribution to the hilarious debate about the Commonwealth Games comes from a stunted loon called Amelia Gentleman in The Guardian. Amelia has been to India and met some of the people whose slum homes were cleared to make way for the athletes’ village. They’ve had a really horrible time and been relocated miles
What exactly was wrong with the Vince Cable’s address to the Lib Dem party conference? It seemed to me measured and enlightened. He suggested that the supposedly free market was often “irrational or rigged”, which is surely uncontentious. And that capitalism militated in favour of monopolies, abhorring free competition. Perfectly reasonable judgment again. And then
I wasn’t able to get to the Liberal Democrat party conference this year, which is a shame as it is probably the first time it’s been interesting since Jeremy Thorpe’s mate shot that dog. There is an irony in the fact that the least compelling Liberal leader of the last fifty years, and the one
What on earth should be done with Sally Bercow, the Labour-supporting wife of the Speaker and Tory MP, John Bercow? She keeps writing nasty things about the Conservatives on Twitter, calling them “mental” and “useless” and so on. Now some Tories have insisted that this uppity besom has “crossed the line” and her husband should
What exactly did Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican mean when he said that Britain was like “a third world country”? More specifically he said that “when you land at Heathrow” it’s like arriving in a Third World Country. Most people have cheerfully taken this to be a racist observation – ie, that there are
Another interregnum – apologies, from now on there will be no more. I’ve been in San Francisco interviewing Neil Young for the Sunday Times and returned jet-lagged and frazzled a day ago to a pile of letters from outraged cat-lovers. Is there something about owning a cat which obligates the owner to have his or
Things are speeded up these days, there is no time to wait. Everything is hurried along to fit our frenetic lives, our shorter attention span, our impatience with the world. You remember poor Jade Goody, the coarse-natured and half-witted ‘reality’ TV star who presented, as the medical people put it, during an episode of the
I know he is a maniac and we should have had him shot or poisoned years ago; I know that his son is a ghastly arriviste who, worse, is friends with Peter Mandelson. But there is still something about Colonel Gaddafi which gladdens the heart. I first decided I liked him a bit when he
