Journalists From England

"This gutless woman has downgraded her criticism to unconscious bias and admitted that the person who she claims to be the royal racist actually wasn't racist at all. I think there are many issues with this letter...she still wants to bring down the royal family...[but] she will be unsuccessful."

"To make it super simple for Dan: GB News is not "anti-establishment". It is a London telly channel owned by a hedge funder and an investment firm. The deputy chairman of the governing Conservative party is one of its presenters, as is a recently knighted former cabinet minister whose father was a long-serving editor of the Times."

"These past few days I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind."

"[T]his is the cover story of the Spectator magazine. We're back in the schoolyard – or is it the brothel? Again. I wouldn't usually bother spitting the words "Rod Liddle". It is like being angry at cows – tempting, but pointless."

"Men, too, have to give serious thought to what they want to be in this bewildering social landscape. Liddle says, "Men always want other women", and although I can't know what it is like to have one's entire being dominated by the twitches and spasms of uncontrollable manhood, is he content to be thus defined? Can such men comprehend the need to create a new masculinity and fatherhood where consistency and contentment matter more than lust?"

"A national newspaper edited by an iconoclast determined to challenge the tyranny of the liberal metropolitan elite would have been a real addition to the national conversation, not least because Liddle's challenge would have come from the left."

"I am not saying that we should do this, of course – it would be a horrible, psychopathic thing to do. I am merely hypothesising, in a slightly wistful kinda way."

"Then, later, after his father has died alone in a care home, notes that nearly no one attended the funeral. If our dreadful generation is to blame for the bored, fat kids of today, then why aren't the Liddles Snr responsible for their terribly unhappy son? Never mind the bombast, Liddle’s pessimism about the rest of us is actually pessimism about himself. His Golden Age is bleak, his best is blown, his future is death. A panic attack is mistaken for a heart attack. The grey in his hair can no longer be disguised by Grecian 2000. He longs to be 16 and rebellious again, but doesn't seem to have had a new idea for a decade. Now all he can do is rage, rage against the dyeing of the white."

"Rod Liddle might have given a new Independent impetus. Now, if Lebedev gets his prize, he should make every effort to retain [[w:Roger Alton|[Roger] Alton]]. He might start by expressing regret for permitting his representatives to advertise the prospect of a Liddle editorship before the deal was done. An apology should be offered to Liddle as well. He did not ruin his own chances of editing the Independent. That was done by the people behind a viciously intolerant campaign of liberal bigotry."

"[R]epulsive shagger ... Liddle, by the way, is the Michael Winner or Jeremy Clarkson of political journalism – all bluster and no balls. The idea of an articulate woman being in charge of the country for a whole seven days is enough to give chaps like him sleepless nights. What is the world coming to."

"Exciting news from Durham University, which is helping its students to become "sex workers". This noble institution is offering two courses in the various forms of harlotry. My only concern is that at present they do not actually offer an academic qualification in these subjects — at the very least an undergraduate degree in, say, Practical Whoring. Perhaps followed by an MA in Deconstructing the Topless Hand-Shandy1897-1913. Such courses would probably result in more lucrative career opportunities than many of the more traditional subjects which students pay through the nose to study. I am attending a dinner at Durham University next month and fervently hope that some of the ambitious young ladies on these courses will be in attendance."

"A small yield nuclear weapon, such as the American W89, dropped on Glastonbury in late June would immediately remove from our country almost everybody who is hugely annoying. You would see a marked reduction in the keffiyeh klan, for a start, and all those middle-class Extinction Rebellion protestors would find, in a nanosecond, that their rebellion was pointless, because extinction had arrived even more summarily than they expected. Go on, glue yourselves to that, Poppy and Oliver."

"Anjem [Choudary] and I fervently agree on one important issue, though. He has urged British Islamists to leave the country and blow themselves up. Me too. Actually, I don't really mind if they don't leave the country, so long as they blow themselves up — somewhere a decent distance from where the rest of us live. Tower Hamlets, for example."

"If you have a student son or daughter who's thinking of voting, shove some high grade skunk under their bedroom door the day before the poll. You can lace the skunk with horse tranquilisers if you wish — do anything, just stop them voting. Pay them not to vote, or organise a rave with bangin' choons for polling day. It is your duty — and the kids will thank you for it in about ten years' time, when a semblance of sentience has established itself inside their heads."

"My own choice of election date would be a day when universities are closed and Muslims are forbidden to do anything on pain of hell, or something. There must be at least one day like that in the Muslim calendar, surely? That would deliver at least 40 seats to the Tories, I reckon."

"The liberals believe this is another pitch from Boris [Johnson] to the right wing of the Conservative party and that the Islamophobia within the Conservative party is every bit as corrosive as the anti-Semitism within Labour. My own view is that there is not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory party."

"We will rue the day we all decided bullying was a bad thing. The consequence is that the inept, the imbecilic and the perpetually frit will hang on to their jobs and we will become a much less efficient country. By bullying I do not mean physically beating someone up and stealing their lunch money, which is what it used to mean when it had a proper meaning. I mean telling someone they're useless and deserve to be sacked, which is what bullying means today."

"According to her allies, Priti Patel is about to "go off like a shotgun", which should keep us all entertained a while longer, as long as the shotgun is this time pointed in the right direction, rather than at her own head. Someone tell the woman: turn the gun around; those two holes you’re staring at are where the pellets come out. Pull the trigger now and you'll be a far less Priti Patel. I suppose, pointed in the right direction, a shotgun might do a bit of good. Theresa May's government resembles a dog with a broken back, dragging its tail in the sea; you shield your eyes from watching its dying spasms, block your ears from the pitiful whining, yearning that it might soon be put out of its misery."

"As it happens, I disagree with Boris. Postboxes are bright red and bank robbers traditionally wear tights over their faces. I think they look more like Darth Vader. If you are an unpleasant person who enjoys rather macabre entertainment, wander down to Mile End and watch the women in the full burka trying to cross the A11. That's always good for a laugh. Almost as good is watching them take selfies. I mean, what's the point?"

"I seriously contemplated being a teacher once upon a time, when I was lot younger. ... I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I'd be right in there, on day one. We're talking secondary school level here, by the way — and even then I don’t think I'd have dabbled much below year ten, as it is now called. I just thought we ought to clear that up early on."

"The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who is 5ft 6in tall, has been accused of using bullying behaviour with regard to her civil servants. Nowhere near enough bullying behaviour in my book."

"But for sure, what Mr Forrest did was wrong. I suspect — and it is only a guess — that thousands of teachers up and down the land conduct sexual relationships with their older charges and that in most cases no harm comes of it."

"[On an exclusive organisation for Swingers based in South-East England] Believe me, [[w:Dougie Smith|[Dougie] Smith]] and his fellow Fever workers are not remotely embarrassed by their line of employment. They are positively evangelistic about it – and not simply for financial reasons. A couple who choose to attend a Fever Party will dissolve the sexual tension and emotional jealousy which bedevils and destroys so many relationships. That insane craving for sexual différence ... can be a most malign force: it breaks up families, it costs the Exchequer lots of money, it causes havoc. Why not have it rigorously assuaged in a pleasant, controlled environment with other, like-minded people?"

"We had this row and we were shouting at each other. I said, "Well, phone the police", and she said she would. I thought she was only joking. She didn't talk to them, just hung up. An hour later the coppers got here. She begged them to go away, but they wouldn't."

"No matter how vile we may consider the sexual predilections of paedophiles, we should not be in the business of putting people in prison for simply looking at things. The law should be above the blind, howling, rage of Rebekah Wade's moronic vigilantes. But there is the whiff of Salem about it all."

"Nothing terrifies or disgusts us more than paedophilia. It is fashionable to argue that the reason there seems to be so much of it about is that, actually, we're simply more aware of the problem than we used to be. Partly, this is true. But there may be more of it about anyway. The more profound the taboo, the greater will be the drive among some to transgress."

"This is just a guess, but maybe you are reading this as you wait on a station platform for a train that is 30 minutes late ... And you may, therefore - understandably - have forgotten why you voted Labour in 1997. But then you catch a glimpse of the forces supporting the Countryside Alliance: the public schools that laid on coaches; the fusty, belch-filled dining rooms of the London clubs that opened their doors, for the first time, to the protesters; the Prince of Wales and, of course, Camilla ... and suddenly, rather gloriously, it might be that you remember once again."

"I'm so furious and upset about it [...] If I'd had enough spine I would have said no to the caution. They couldn't have charged me."

"I found the reaction shocking. And then I suppose I came to the conclusion - gradually - that I must have got it wrong. [...] I thought for a long time that in the context of The Spectator it was fine and that people who read The Spectator would know it was a joke and that there was a point behind the joke as well."

"What on earth is the government going to do about all these deranged northerners running amok shooting people? The more callous among you might well argue that it doesn't really matter, as these madmen are only shooting other northerners, and so it is therefore none of our business. Perhaps. But there is no guarantee that the next deranged northerner will not get on a train, if he can afford it, and start shooting at us, instead. This is the thing; you simply cannot tell with nutters, there is no logic to their mayhem."

"To tell you the truth I thought the "Auschwitz Experience" had been devalued by the people who run it to the point where I think it deserves taking the p*** out of ... it's set up as a politically correct tourist attraction, sort of Hitlerworld."

"I went a year or so back. F***ing outrageous that you can't smoke in Auschwitz. I had to sneak round the back of the gas chambers for a crafty snout."

"So — Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober. The alcohol is sloshing around inside your brain, you’ve enjoyed a post-pub doner kebab together and maybe some grilled halloumi (a woman’s right to cheese) and she suggests, as you stand inside the frowsy minicab office: fancy going south, big boy? (I don’t know for sure that she’d use the term ‘big boy’; this is largely hypothetical stuff, you understand.)"

"Her only policy, her only raison d'être, is a particularly vacuous feminism dating from a sixth-form common room in about 1973. Were this a serious commitment and grounded in reality, one might respect her for it and even agree. But it never is grounded in reality. It is the perpetual shrieking of an idiot."

"[George Galloway's comments on the alleged rape victims of Julian Assange in August 2012] [T]hose women were not "raped", he says of the accusations against Assange; calling that sort of thing rape diminishes the concept of rape — it was just "bad sexual etiquette"."

"As it happens, I think Galloway has a point. ... Meanwhile the ambassador who went a bit mental, Craig Murray, decided to go on Newsnight and actually NAME one of the women accusing Assange. What a radical act. He was of course slapped down by presenter Gavin Esler."

"The Big Lie is not the first big lie to come from the Corbynites and it won’t be the last. On social media, #ItWasAScam is the hashtag that usefully links them together. I’ve long been intrigued by one of defining characteristics of the Corbybnites, which is often thought too rude to state plainly. They are, like their leader, very stupid. Nothing better illustrates this than a film intended to show how Labour’s antisemitism scandal wasn’t real, which deals obsessively with how Jews control British politics. See what I mean?"

"'Oh Jeremy Corbyn' refers, of course, to the Glastonbury chanting in 2017. Nostalgia has its uses, but when it serves only to highlight your utter irrelevance six years on, it's not so great an idea. All those three words serve to illustrate is how far the world has left the cult behind. In 2023, far from singing along, Glastonbury has pulled the film. Those poor Corbynites; they don’t even have a field in Somerset any more."

"[Stuart] Jeffries is genuinely criticising a documentary about a massacre on the grounds that including the victims' stories means the film is slanted towards sympathy with the victims. It isn’t so much immoral as amoral – unable to deal with evil as evil, always seeking to relativise, and thus diminish, it."

"Still more insidious is the hidden bias of the BBC. Most of it is subtle, and all the more dangerous for that. Take the use of the word terrorist. Both the US state department and the UK government, along with the rest of the EU, classify Hamas and Islamic Jihad as "terrorist organisations". Even Palestinians have used the term "terror" to describe attacks on Israeli civilians: on the BBC World Service on December 4 2001, Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Authority security service, referred to the attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa as "terror attacks"; on Newsnight the same day, Nabil Abourdeneh, an adviser to Yasser Arafat, referred to Palestinian militants as "terrorist groups". But not the BBC's correspondents themselves. When they refer to Hamas and Islamic Jihad they call them not "terrorists" but "militants", "hard liners" and "radicals"."

"The Big Lie was first used by Hitler in Mein Kampf, to describe what he called the use by Jews of a lie so huge that no one would believe someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". He was referring to what he said was Jews blaming German general Erich Ludendorff for defeat in World War One - a lie designed to remove "the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland [the Jews] to Justice." The phrase was subsequently widely used to describe the Nazis' propaganda technique to poison Germany against "international Jewry", the real holders of power in the world. In other words, the title 'The Big Lie' reminds people that the Corbynites share with the Nazis an obsession with Jews."

"People expect to be able to use wi-fi on a train in the same way they would use a toilet."

"They killed many civilians, let's not underestimate that, but by and large the IRA tactic was not to deliberately kill civilians - although many civilians, I hasten to add, were killed by the IRA."

"There were 600,000 dead, 14,000,000 driven from their homes 100,000 young girls kidnapped by both sides, forcibly converted or sold on the auction block ... One convoy of Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab was 74 miles long, and raiders (Muslim mobs) who attack it constantly en route did not need to watch for it: they could smell its coming, for it was riddled with cholera and other foul diseases ... there took place murder, looting, burning and raping such as the world had not seen since the days of Chengiz Khan."

"Other foes made their intentions clear by denunciations of one’s family or religion, and by ravaging the countryside and plundering the towns. The British, generally so restrained in their language and so disciplined in the field, were very different. They could make hostility look like friendship and conquest like a favor. It was difficult to rally support against such tactics."

"[[Tony Blair|[Tony] Blair]] dedicated himself to cultivating the right wing press. I was really shocked. [...] I would be invited quite often into Downing Street just to speak to the prime minister. Why was he not governing the country, rather than talking to a pipsqueak like me? I just didn’t get it."

"My impression is that [[Keir Starmer|[Keir] Starmer]] does not have this slavish fascination, and this desire to groom the press generally, whereas it was a core feature of Blair."

"Yet the case against [[w:Andy Coulson|[Andy] Coulson]] today is considerably graver than the case against Campbell. As deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World, he was presiding over what can only be described as a flourishing criminal concern. Cameron has privately remarked of Coulson that everyone deserves a second chance. Yet it is surely unwise to treat high political office as a version of a community rehabilitation scheme. Cameron may well win next month's election. He will be making an extremely worrying statement about the type of government he plans to lead if he allows Coulson anywhere near Downing Street."

"The phone hacking affair has displayed the Prime Minister [David Cameron] at his worst – a shallow, amoral, conniving careerist, determined to secure high office at any cost."

"Oscar Wilde once wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose two looked like carelessness. For the Tories to lose two prime ministers in the space of three months shows, more than carelessness, that they are out of control. The government is already on its fourth finance minister this year; one of them, Kwasi Kwarteng, crashed the pound and ruined the party’s reputation for good financial management. Like the Republicans in the United States, the Conservatives are detached from reality. In a generation, they have become a party of monomaniacs, incompetents and ideologues. Like a thoroughbred that has run one race too many, it needs putting out to grass. After a decade or two in the wilderness, perhaps the party can recover — though let’s not rule out the possibility it is finished once and for all. That’s still a way off. In the wake of Ms. Truss’s resignation, the party announced plans to hold another leadership election, its second in three months. As with the contests that anointed Boris Johnson and Ms. Truss as prime minister, the choice will be made jointly by Tory lawmakers and party members. Even if, by some fluke, a half decent candidate won, it would not help their fortunes. The party is so riven by internal feuds, personal hatred and ideological disagreements that it has become ungovernable."