Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
Much as I hate to provoke, you have to say it’s been a very good couple of weeks for both the Prime Minister and the Labour Party. It is probably true that Labour SHOULD have won the by-election in Glasgow North East, but that is not what tends to happen with extremely unpopular governments these
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
There’s been a rather wonderful debate bubbling along at the Guardian, about the French minister Pierre Lellouche’s use of the word ‘autistic’ to describe the English Tories. Well, in fact that’s not quite what the debate has been about; everyone is agreed that Lellouche is beyond the pale. The debate has been about whether or
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
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.
From our UK edition
Did you know that February in our schools has been designated Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (sic) History Month? I’d get with it, if I were you, and send your 11-year-old child to school in a gimp mask, with some lube. Good parents make sure their kid is ahead of the curve. You can bet
From our UK edition
We are apparently incapable of fighting a war, these days, unless a quick and bloodless victory is pre-ordained. Labour (and especially John Reid) deserves some criticism for having pretended, initially, that Afghanistan would be so. But the fact that it has not been so is not the government’s fault, nor the fault of the troops,
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
You have to admire the magnificent, brazen, blank-faced nerve of Jacqui Smith – the former Home Secretary who could not be entirely sure where her home was. Appearing on Question Time on Thursday, her demeanour flitted between confected contrition and self-righteous indignation – always, at the end of every sentence, coming to rest on the
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
But don’t worry, says Rod Liddle, they’re not going to. The bee holocaust myth is just another example of our strange yearning for catastrophe The world is going to end in 2012, apparently — hopefully just before the start of the Olympic Games. Armageddon may come about as a consequence of those monkeys firing up the
From our UK edition
A few notes and observations on the English Defence League, which has gained a bit of prominence recently and is mentioned in Mel’s latest article in The Spectator. This is the organisation which turns up to Muslim demonstrations and does a bit of vigorous counter-demonstrating for itself; they then are in turn picketed by the
From our UK edition
There’s no need for Jan Moir to apologise for speculating about the death of the boy-band singer Stephen Gately says Rod Liddle. Why have we become so censorious and hysterical? I have to say that I don’t particularly like newspaper and magazine columnists, as people. Smug, not terribly bright, usually cowardly, lazy, always self-obsessed, self-important
From our UK edition
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
From our UK edition
Malcolm X, the black liberationist hero from that wonderful decade, the 1960s, was apparently bi-sexual – a fact never mentioned to the kiddies during Black History Month, according to the campaigner Peter Tatchell. This is because, in general, blacks are much more homophobic than whites (although the excellent Tatchell does not put it quite as
From our UK edition
It’s not just death and taxes you can depend upon – you can also be absolutely certain that the Labour Party will, at every opportunity, take precisely the wrong decision about the BNP. You may have seen Fraser’s blog about Labour MPs voting not to allow democratically elected BNP MEPs into the House of Commons.
From our UK edition
How will you be celebrating the birth of Guru Nanak this year? I thought we might get together for a party, bring a bottle, play a few games. The founder of the Sikh religion’s birthday is celebrated in November, although he was actually born in April: that’s just one of the mystifying things about religion,
