Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Keep those excellent observations flowing in, please. Here’s one I found in the introduction to the Labour Manifesto, published yesterday. Gordon Brown wrote it, apparently: ‘This is a Manifesto about the greater progressive change we need because of the tougher times we are living through. There are no big new spending commitments, but there is
Does anybody understand the Labour cancer leaflets story? I’ve listened to be about five BBC News reports and am no better off as a consequence. Labour apparently sent 250,000 cards out to women voters warning them that the Tories would renege upon Labour government promises for cancer tests. The question comes down to how those
Alien life-forms have been cutting holes in sheep in Shropshire with highly powered lasers and strange glowing balls of light. According to a local farmer, reported by an oddly credulous chap from the Daily Telegraph, there is a ‘corridor’ of 50 miles stretching from Shrewsbury towards the Powys border where UFOs arrive quite regularly and
You will be hearing a good deal of mind-numbingly stupid, meaningless or plainly inaccurate quotes from politicians over the next four weeks. So instead of buying a pump action rifle and crouching in combat gear at the end of your local high street out of frustration and fury, send the worst ones to me here:
A few more points about the PCC adjudication; apologies if you’re getting bored. The first is indisputable: if I had blogged on a website of my own, rather than here, then they would have not got involved. So the upshot is that blogs associated with newspapers will end up not being like blogs at all
I dunno how this passed me by, just missed the news I suppose. But apparently Alex Chilton died a week or two back – which is no great surprise, in one way, but sort of shocking in another. He was one of two or three heroes of mine in that limited but enlivening medium, rock
There’s a revolt growing in the Surrey East Conservative Association about the candidate imposed upon them by David Cameron – a black businessman called Sam Gyimah. Some locals insist that Sam’s business ventures have been rather, you know, iffy and they were not terribly happy to have “selected” him from a shortlist which contained no
Rod Liddle fears he may be doomed — although the modern Church of Englandis reluctant to admit that anyone at all suffers eternal damnation Not so long ago, when I was making a film about some aspect of Christianity for Channel 4, I asked a Church of England bishop about the concept of heaven, what
Did you like the Guardian’s April Fool spoof of the latest Gordon Brown campaign, which featured the Prime Minister trading on his reputation for being a bully? It was quite funny, but I don’t suppose many people were taken in – which is, after all, the point of the April Fool spoof, to take people
The PCC adjudication seems to me bizarre and incoherent. The statement of mine which provoked the complaint was that an “overwhelming majority” of gun crime, knife crime, street crime robbery, sexual violence were committed by young black males. Let me add the point – which I made in both my blog and on other blogs
Tomorrow, I’ll blog the first of a couple of pieces in response to the Press Complaints Commission’s bizarre adjudication (and indeed its self-important breast-beating). All those figures in full. Right now I’m thinking of taking the Press Complaints Commission to the Press Complaints Commission for a decision which they were unable to support with hard
Stephen Byers either pimped himself out to big business and betrayed the electorate, or he didn’t, in which case he made fraudulent claims, says Rod Liddle. Either way, the public won’t tolerate this level of corruption I once fell into conversation with a whore, up on Streatham Hill in south London. A long time ago
Hey, look – this is what your kids learn in school these days. Those of you who are big fans of the Juche regime of Kim Jong il in North Korea will enjoy this from the MP Diane Abbott’s website. Poor little mites, having this sort of grotesque propaganda rammed down their throats. I dunno,
Apologies for having been absent, but I’ve not been well; immobilized for a few days to the degree that even a slight movement caused severe pain and a pitiful whining noise to be emitted, in the direction of my wife, who has a rather put-upon expression right now. Serves you right, you might be thinking,
Disgraced politicians should not be relentlessly persecuted, says Rod Liddle. We should address the problem of MPs’ expenses by raising their salaries instead I felt a little ashamed watching the Westminster Three — Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and David Chaytor — herded into a magistrates court to face charges of defrauding the taxpayer with their
I hate to say this, but there is a very good article in The G***d**n, which you can see online here. It’s by Dr Tony Sewell, a sociologist who runs charities for young black kids, and who is almost always a fount of plain speaking and common sense. He suggests that the educational under-achievement of
My old mate Andrew Gilligan lacerates the BBC in this week’s magazine, for having allowed a member of the Islamic Forum of Europe onto Radio Four’s usually genteel “Any Questions”, and indeed having allowed the East London Mosque (which is run by the “extremist” IFE) to host the programme. At first sight, it is a
It’s unlikely that birds of prey have anything to do with the decline in garden songbirds, says Rod Liddle, and anyway, what right have we got to play God with wildlife? But oh! The crewel sparrer’hawk E spies im in is snuggery, E sharpens up is bleedin’ claws An rips im aht by thuggery anon,
There’s a lot to commend in the Lord Adonis proposal for a high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Trains, it is said, will cover the distance in 49 minutes, at speeds of up to 225mph. The opposition cavils that Labour would be better off spending money improving existing, dilapidated, commuter line seem to
It’s a pretty thin and overrated medium, rock music, and too much energy is expended lauding its practitioners. But Mark Linkous, who is dead having shot himself, was one of a small handful with genuine talent which sometimes, just sometimes, teetered into real brilliance. Few people have used the medium better, or understood better how
