Rod Liddle

Here’s a story from today’s Daily Mail, with a cut-out-keep picture, of Somali Muslim savages stoning to a twenty year old woman for the crime of adultery. Last year they killed a thirteen year old girl in a similar fashion; seven Muslim states stone women to death for adultery, and they will even provide the stones for you, which is thoughtful. Eleven will chop your head off if you renounce the Muslim faith. The overwhelming majority of Islamic states will either kill you, send you to work in a labour camp, put you in prison or fine you if you are gay. Bugger someone adulterously in Somalia while calling a Mohammed a gimp and you’re REALLY in trouble, I suppose. I know you know all this, but it is worth reminding ourselves of it from time to time.

There’s a piece by my friend Dominic Lawson in the Independent yesterday, eulogizing the comedian Michael MacIntyre. At last, Dominic suggests, here is a comic who is not afraid to be middle class and nor is he coarse or cruel. Perhaps; but he is not terribly funny, either, whatever class he belongs to. You sometimes smile in recognition of his observations – as Dominic puts it – “of the everyday domestic engagements of bourgeois life.” But you are rarely arrested by what he has to say; pulled up short, gasping with incredulity at the sharpness of the observation, of what it uncovers and what it says about us. And still less are you offered the release of a belly-laugh.

The former Tory whip, Tristan Garel-Jones, now Lord Garel-Jones, was searching for a cashpoint while in his car recently. He found one but there were no parking spaces available, so he approached a traffic warden by the side of the road and with some trepidation asked if he might double park for just a few seconds while he withdrew some money. The warden replied: “Yes of course, sir. I’ll keep an eye on your car while you use the cash machine.” That was in Spain. Can you imagine such a thing happening in England? Can you imagine even asking the traffic warden in England? How did we end up so officious?

Never meet your enemies; you might end up liking them. I’ve just got back from The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards and the buggers had sat me next to James Purnell, about whom I was a bit snippy in print not so long ago. It was the usual measured, level-headed stuff about him being an agent of Satan, whore of the anti-christ etc. The problem I have with Purnell is not just his Blairite politics, but his former incarnation as a wonk for John Birt at the BBC, working in the fabulously hopeless corporate centre. I think I may have spewed all this out a while back in the mag; certainly I remember feeling that I might have made a wrong call when he resigned his office in an annoyingly dignified and selfless manner.

Just returned from Cambourne, in Cambridgeshire – a town you may have heard of on account of its extraordinary (if you believe the press) birthrate, which is 100 times the national average, or something. It’s a new town, part of the government’s strategy to pave over all of western Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and those remaining bits of Essex which aren’t paved over already. There is the air of David Lynch about Cambourne, or even John Wyndham; pristine, desolate and soulless. Almost no local shops, just a giant Morrisons and a petrol station, one or two blank-faced pubs. Almost everybody in it is roughly the same age and enjoys roughly the same income level (which explains the birthrate); there is a stillness and vapidity about the place.

Celtic supporters sung Irish “rebel” songs during the one minute’s Remembrance Day silence before the kick off of their game at Falkirk. Even more Celtic fans waited outside the turnstiles so that they would not have to take part in the commemoration. What an unspeakably foul club it is, bigoted and filled with sectarian hatred. And yet the only Glasgow club which ever gets punished for fuelling sectarian hatred is its rival, Rangers. It is not so long ago that FIFA decided that Rangers supporters were racist bigots for singing their fatuous, hate-filled tales about the Battle of the Boyne etc, while Celtic’s supporters were merely reveling in a noble folk song tradition while singing their fatuous hate filled tales about how good the IRA are.

A judge has decided that belief in climate change is precisely the same as a belief in religion; a conviction impervious to the “present state of information available”. Mr Justice Michael Burton was adjudicating in the case of a hugely irritating chap called Tim Nicholson, who wishes to have his case that he was discriminated against because of his beliefs heard at an employment tribunal. You can read the full story here. This is good and bad, of course.

A fine piece by Fiona Millar in The Guardian about parents cheating the system in order to get their kids into supposedly better comprehensive schools. The key paragraph, I think, is this: 'Successive governments have preferred to present schools as a market, dressed them up as a hierarchy and then urged parents to ‘do the best for their child’ and not give a stuff about anyone else’s.' Well, quite – but whose fault is that? Who was it that referred to “bog standard” comprehensives? Her husband, Alastair Campbell, I think it was. Instead of telling us now, couldn’t you have told him at the time? Maybe she did, maybe she did. The mantra of consumer choice was co-opted by New Labour and applied to all sorts of perfectly unsuitable things.

Here’s where your money goes. Read it and seethe. Or maybe just sigh a little and fix yourself a stiff drink. I suppose you might hope that things will change, now that Devon is under the control of the Conservative Party. But if you think that you’ve probably had one stiff drink too many; this stuff is so ingrained, irremovable and yet so loathed by the majority of voters. Oh, I dunno. Maybe it’s a bit unfair to take it out on Jeanie, who seems such a cheerful and well-meaning soul. That’s the problem, of course – most of them are well-meaning and full of the milk of human kindness.

Try to take your child to a public playground in Watford and you will be denied entry on the grounds that you may well be a kiddie-fiddler. I don’t know why you’d want to take your child to a playground in Watford, even if you live there - but that’s another issue, I suppose. Parents aren’t allowed to supervise their children in Watford playgrounds unless they have been CRB checked; instead a bunch of “play rangers” supervise the kids. Play rangers? Who’d want a job as a play ranger? They might have been checked by the police but I still suspect they’re wrong ‘uns, underneath. It’s time to take militant action against these fucking local council idiots, although I’m not quite sure what exactly we should do.

Ah, hell, it’s the curse of Liddle. No sooner have I sat down and written a stirring defence of the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir, who had been vilified for suggesting there was something “sleazy” about the death of Stephen Gateley, than the bloody woman apologises. Or, at least, sort of apologises. I don’t see why she should have even genuflected in the general direction of an apology; her article was not homophobic. I suppose she could have watched her back by putting in some qualifying adjectives here or there – but then, hell, I’m hardly one to lecture on that issue. Anyway, my piece is in this week’s Spectator.