Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
The general public seems split in two over who to blame for England’s latest abject failure at the world cup and our consequent exit. People who support one of the big six or seven teams in the Premier League blame the England manager, Fabio Capello. The rest of us blame the players. The division reinforces
Years ago I used to spend one evening a month in some dank and frowzy local authority hall attempting to prevent crazed and scary lesbians from becoming my local MP or councillor. This was during my time as a Labour party activist in south London — and attendance at the staggeringly dull ward meetings was
I’m not quite sure where I stand on the subject of Chris Huhne and his new weird-looking quasi-lesbo missus, Carina Trimingham. I don’t entirely understand why Huhne has copped so much flak for having left his wife, divorce – as I know – being a sort of occupational hazard of the modern middle classes. Huhne
“Comrades of the North Korean Democratic Republic – extraordinary news! Against all the odds your heroic socialist representatives at the western junket known as The World Cup have vanquished one of the most filthy running dog imperial powers, Portugal. With the Great Leader as their inspiration, and Juche in their hearts, they set about the
How quickly they’ve all turned, the supposed football experts who, three months ago, were proclaiming Fabio Capello as the greatest manager since Sir Alf. Praising the discipline he imposed upon his team, praising his “flexible” 4-4-2 formation. Two adverse results against crap teams is all it took. Now he was wrong to have been strict
The comedian Stephen Fry has apparently “outraged” millions of people by describing Dr Who as a “kid’s show”. What do these outraged people think it is, then? Wittgenstein’s bleedin’ Tractatus? I suppose there should be no law against adults wallowing in such cheery sub-teen confections (Fry was slightly wrong – it’s a YOUNG kids show.
Even the French know the game is up, says Rod Liddle. What’s the point in us teaching their language when, in the end, it will be as obsolete as Cornish It’s a strange thing. Once they have been relieved of office, they start talking a modicum of sense. First we have Ed Balls suggesting that
There is something weak and craven in the statements from the half- apologists for the Bloody Sunday killings. In the assertion from Sir Michael Rose that it was British soldiers who brought peace in Northern Ireland, not Tony Blair. In the right wing press showing photographs of British soldiers serving in Afghanistan and insisting look,
I suppose it’s a good job we don’t have capital punishment. Having spent the last two days speculating upon ways of executing England’s goalkeeper, Robert Green, I’ve now conceded that it really wasn’t his fault. Every goalkeeper is having trouble holding the ball; invariably shots are spilled and gathered at the second attempt. It is
Here’s a game to play this evening with your wife or your catamite. It is an incredibly boring game, but it will help you understand the world better than a bunch of Nobel prize-winners and more than 100 mathematical geniuses, who we will come to in good time. Take three cards — an ace and
I can understand why one might not want to be associated with these comments. I can also understand why, for the same reasons, one would wish to condemn them, with great fervour, to the press. All for pragmatic reasons, of course. But has anyone yet been able to argue against these comments from a position
When she’s not breaking into her constituents homes and biting their children in the dead of night, Diane Abbott has been busy stabbing her fellow left wing Labour MP, John McDonnell, in the back. It was Abbott who brought to the world’s slightly nonplussed attention the “quip” made by McDonnell about wishing to assassinate Margaret
I wonder what sort of animal it was that attacked the twin baby daughters of Nick and Pauline Koupparis in Hackney, East London? The Koupparis’s are insistent that it was a fox, but its behaviour sounds more like a wolf or even, perhaps, a basilisk, although there are no previous reports of basilisks in that
Have to admit I’m increasingly at a loss over the reaction to the resignation of David Laws by people with whom I usually agree. Matthew Parris, Simon Hoggart, Hugo Rifkind and so on. I can accept that it is sad for Mr Laws, that he is an undoubtedly talented man and so on. Also –
Rod Liddle wouldn’t risk more than a tenner on the team getting beyond the group stage in the football World Cup. The truth is, we usually perform more or less exactly as well as might be expected given the size of the country Nobody outside of this country thinks that England stands a cat’s chance
Just an idle thought, really – but didn’t it take the police an awfully long time to catch up with that Cumbrian nutter, and by which time he was dead? Derrick Bird was able to continue shooting people for a good three hours, entirely unhindered. According to press reports, the tv news seemed to be
Is there anything Israel could do which would discomfort my colleague, Melanie Phillips (I mean other than behave peaceably towards Palestinians)? She has been defending, without giving so much as an inch, Israel’s attack upon the, uh, “peace flotilla”; all perfectly justifiable, the convoy was actually an Islamist terrorist attack, and so on and so
As you are no doubt aware, I am an intensely private person, and for this reason I hope that you can understand my decision not to have declared a very large amount of income tax to the Inland Revenue over the last seven years. This was money I earned writing for publications which I would
I became a monarchist in the late afternoon of 19 November 2009; a dark and chilly day, damp brown leaves blowing balefully along the gutters, the smell in the air of a hard winter to come. This ended more than 30 years of what I considered principled soft-leftish republicanism; the notion that however practically effective
So, three weeks in and Vince Cable has resigned his position of deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats – ostensibly because he will be “too busy” to undertake the non-duties demanded by the post. Do you swallow that? I’m not sure that I do. Meanwhile, David Davis has emerged with guns blazing over the proposed
