Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
There was a very good piece by my colleague Martin Ivens in last week’s Sunday Times which asked how the BBC had come to estrange politicians of every party, along with most of the country. Ever willing to help, the BBC provided a partial explanation last week with two decisions of particular stupidity and crassness.
I would like Britain to keep its independent nuclear deterrent, largely because I don’t trust the French. I would also like the USA to have a very large amount of brand new and extremely efficient nuclear weapons – those really big ones that can destroy the earth – and China, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran
We need to guard against childish gloating when we read about the arrest of Patricia Hewitt’s son for possessing cocaine, says Rod Liddle. But first, a quick recap of her record There is something rotten with this country when people can take such base, spiteful pleasure from the arrest of a young lad simply because
So, where the hell is Loloahi Tapui, the Tongan maid hired illegally by our Attorney General? She seems to have gone to ground – perhaps she has found alternative employment with one of the Milibands, or is secreted away in one of Jacqui Smith s homes, maybe with her feet up watching a porno dvd.
So, that’s it for petting farms, then. In today’s Daily Mail it is reported that some of the parents of the kids who became ill having contracted E.coli from (presumably) Godstone petting farm intend to sue for negligence. Whether they win or lose – and you have no idea how much I hope they lose
I remember being required to attend a meeting a decade or so back at the BBC, a meeting of “The News and Current Affairs Cigarette Working Party” (NCACWP). I asked in advance if cigarettes were provided or should we bring our own, but the organizers of the thing – Human Resources, natch – weren’t amused.
Rod Liddle says that celebrity adoption has become an unsavoury game of Top Trumps, and that the Ukraine would be right to turn down Elton John’s bid for a baby The world may indeed be shrinking and its people becoming an undifferentiated morass, but east of the Oder-Neisse line they are not quite the same
Much though I like and respect the chap, isn’t Jonathan Freedland slightly overstating the case? The headline to his Guardian article read: “If Obama can’t defeat the Republican headbangers our planet is doomed.” Later in the piece, Jonny admitted that some might see this assertion as “hyperbolic” or “deranged”. Maybe. My definition of it is
Fucking Jews! A Foreign and Commonwealth civil servant has appeared before Westminster magistrates accused of inciting racial and religious hatred. Rowan Laxton, who reportedly earns £70,000 per year at the FCO, was allegedly heard to shout “fucking Israelis………..fucking Jews” in a gym while watching a Sky news report of Israeli military action in Gaza. Confronted
The headlines in this morning’s newspapers, and indeed on the BBC last night, were: “Israel found guilty of war-crimes”. This followed the publication of Richard Goldstone’s 600-page report which, forgive me, I haven’t read yet. I wonder, though, if those reporting the findings are not guilty of a little unconscious racism. Goldstone found both Israel
So, spite, then: is there anybody in Britain with a more exalted opinion of themselves than George Monbiot? His entire column in today’s Guardian deals exclusively with the one subject which has obsessed the man for many years, and bored the rest of us: himself. In particular, he is outraged that the scientist Ian Plimer
I’ve become obsessed with a woman. I think she is going to crop up in this blog quite often because I can’t get her out of my mind. She is the last thing I think about before I sleep at night. I wake with her name on my lips. I feel shivery and bereft when
I’ve always rather liked the idea of blogging, as it seems – from the available evidence – to be motivated by two qualities I have a lot of time for: narcissism and spite. So I hope that this new blog of mine comes, in time, to be the very apogee and spitefulness and narcissism, on
I haven’t seen much of my wife this week — she’s been camped out on the sofa, filling her boots with 9/11 porn. She loves it, can’t get enough of it, gagging for it. Sits there with a glass of pinot noir, shaking her head, knees tucked up into her chest. People falling from the
Rod Liddle reflects on a recent poll which says that Russians are the world’s worst holidaymakers. Brits are just as bad, he says, leaving a trail of blood and vomit from Biarritz to Dolman Who are the worst people in the world, do you suppose, based upon your first-person contact with them? I always assumed
Rod Liddle says the al-Megrahi affair has shown no one in a good light. American outrage is astonishingly hypocritical given their support of the IRA, and our own government is worryingly supplicant to Gaddafi’s truly evil regime What exactly was the point of the letter from our Prime Minister to the Brotherly Leader and Guide
Rod Liddle takes issue with Wilbur’s grieving owners who want a change in the law to impose restrictions upon creatures such as snakes. What we really need is a new citizen’s right to defend ourselves against the feline menace It’s been a grim summer for news, all things considered, what with Afghanistan and flying pig
Labour’s deputy leader is tipped to succeed Gordon Brown, says Rod Liddle. But her vacuous feminism, her reflex loathing of men, her lack of interest in real statistics and her worrying links with trade unions would spell disaster for the party So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously,
Not so long ago, the National Consumer Council decided that some shops on railway stations were selling chocolate bars too cheaply and that the public should, for its own protection, pay more for them. This occurred at about the same time as the RSPB mulled over the possibility that it might start shooting or gassing
Rod Liddle says that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has been well led by Trevor Phillips — all the more reason to play straight with figures about the treatment of immigrant applicants for housing There was a report out recently which said that men who marry much younger women tend to live rather longer