Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
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
Apologies for the interregnum – I’ve been away in Austria, where there are mountains and you can smoke in hotel lifts. It’s a beautiful country. While there I read Michael Burleigh’s superb book, Moral Combat, which is about why we were totally right in World War Two. It was an enormous pleasure to have it
Well, thank the Lord there were no cctv cameras around when I caught Mr Tibbles in my garden a few weeks back, before the whole furore began. Luckily, I read about Mary Bale and surreptitiously took down the mini-gibbet and buried the remains in a small trench behind the pond, before the Facebook maniacs had
Rod Liddle says that the battle over the Islamic cultural centre mirrors the tortuous debate we’ve all endured for nearly a decade Like you, I suspect, I am hugely enjoying the debate as to whether or not a huge Islamic cultural centre and prayer room should be built 100 yards or so from Ground Zero
Under guidelines introduced by the last government, dis-abled people are now allowed to decide the kind of services they want from local authorities. This is called ‘empowerment’ and ‘devolving services to people in the front line’, and it is a good thing, apparently. But it has had certain unexpected consequences. Bizarrely, it seems that in
Is the hip hop artist Wyclef Jean the right sort of person to run Haiti? He has announced that he will run for the country’s presidential election as the candidate of the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) party. Wyclef is wanted in the United States, where he made his fortune, on tax avoidance issues. The IRS
Terrific piece by Douglas Murray in the latest edition of the magazine. He explains how he was reported to the Press Complaints Commission for having repeated an Irish joke made by a councillor (who was forced to apologise for it) and called for readers to send in more Irish jokes by way of protest. One
This follows very neatly on from the previous thread. If there is one industry where the staff are suffused with an endless sense of self importance and a determination to (literally in some cases) bugger the public, then it is the airline industry. Since 9/11 trolly dollies and whatever name is given to their gay
There’s a story in the Mail on Sunday today about MPs who have been either warned about their conduct towards House of Commons expenses staff, or issued with “yellow cards” which they do not know about. Among the MPs, er, named and shamed, are Theresa May, Bob Ainsworth and Denis MacShane. A lot of the
On his vast salary, Peter Salmon could buy Wigan, says Rod Liddle. But he and the rest of the corporation’s managerial elite will not be abandoning their cosy London lives any time soon Do any senior BBC executives wish to move to Salford, as is being urged upon the corporation’s exponentially less well paid staff,
The “Most Irritating Politician” stuff was meant to be a bit a laugh, and I think most people took it as such. I think the appalling Harman (who has actually done quite well as stand-in leader,) was a fairly deserving winner, even if I thought you lot were rather too doctrinaire in your voting. But
Well, I’ve done the totting up and the results won’t terribly surprise you. The winner, or loser, by a mile is Harriet Harman, followed by Peter Mandelson, and with three scumbags running neck and neck behind him: Galloway, Blair and Brown. After that comes Mr Balls. A surprising number of you really hate Simon Hughes,
I daresay you’ve seen the ranking for British Prime Ministers since the second world war which, rightly, shows our Clem at the top and that jackanapes Eden at the bottom. Although I suppose if Eden had won in Suez then we might have been spared the misery of the first and second Gulf War, and
The manufacturer of slow, naff, French cars, Renault, has infuriated residents of a village in Lancashire by comparing it unfavourably with a village in France, in an advertising campaign which it thinks will win over British customers. People in the lovely Ribble Valley village of Gisburn were appalled to see their home mocked in comparison
Swathed in ermine, carried into the Chilcott Inquiry on a giant litter borne aloft by naked research assistants, and chewing a Lion Bar, Lord Prescott told the world he’d always been a bit, uh, nervous about the invasion of Iraq. Nice of you to share that with us now, John, many thanks. And also the
There is a letter in the latest edition of the magazine scolding my good friend James Delingpole for being rude about Prince Charles. The letter concludes like so: “The wording is intemperate and cowardly and shames The Spectator.” As I remember, James, with a certain flair, had simply pointed out that Prince Charles was a
The moment on the video that really hurts, that really digs in — if you are a human being, rather than an ape — is when Marian runs to the prone and inert body of her grandfather and, bending down, distraught, implores him to move, pawing at his body with her hands. She is so