British Right-Wing Pundits

because it's part of the guardian group and because of the hutton/new labour era i still instinctively think of the observer as leftish but it really isn't -- if you look at its history the observer's leftish phase was a tiny blip.

Lesbian parents: Our sons don't need a dad
Anna Lloyd and Jane Harvey could be any middle-class mothers strolling with their sons in their local park. But behind their everyday appearance lies a story of a highly unconventional family - for they are lesbian partners.

well thats kinda what i was trying to get at before, theres a feeling that the british ones dont really believe what they are writing, other than in a kind of "pfft" middle aged white man 'its not even music' type feeling of being pecked at
-- 696, Friday, May 18, 2007 9:25 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Link

otm. i think they do what they do as a 'job' -- house style and all that -- not a mission.

melanie phillips is fucking insane thou

yeah i was saying elsewhere: she really does mean it. but that's ex-lefties for ya.

and i imagine boris johnson means it.

also remember the crazy ronhaldino bottle opener thread, the general upshot of which seemed to be "lol britishers don't understand racism", i was wondering if british right wing pundits can possibly get away with more dodgy racial stuff than americans can.

Conservatives appoint ex-tabloid editor

LONDON (Reuters) - Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who quit in the wake of a royal phone-tapping scandal, has been appointed the Conservatives' director of communications, the party announced on Thursday.

He stepped down from Rupert Murdoch's tabloid, Britain's biggest selling newspaper, after its royal affairs editor admitted having plotted to intercept phone messages left for royal aides.

The 39-year-old, who previously edited The Sun newspaper's Bizarre gossip column, will take up his new job as director of communications and planning on July 9. He said he was "delighted" to be joining David Cameron's team.

The party leader said: "Andy is a hugely experienced journalist. He will make a formidable contribution as a senior member of my team in building the most effective strategy and operation to win the next general election."

Coulson was regarded as a high-flier in Murdoch's newspaper empire before his resignation in January.

The former Royal Editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed for four months for listening to mobile voice mail messages left for the press secretary of Prince Charles and two officials who worked for Princes William and Harry.

Coulson was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Press Complaints Commission, which said neither he, nor anyone else at the paper, was aware of Goodman's illegal activities.

Coming soon

http://i2.digiguide.com/up//1184007600000-609038-TheWaronBritainsJews-1183392030569.jpg

The War on Britain's Jews?The War on Britain's Jews?
C4 Mon 9 July 2007, 8pm
Richard Littlejohn argues that antisemitism, once the preserve of the extreme right, now has a foothold among other sections of society.

haha -- i saw the trailer, and i was all 'welcome to 2002', and then it said PRESENTED BY RICHARD LITTLEJOHN!!! and i was all "DELETE CHANNEL 4".

Littlejohn:anti-semitism::K-Punk:class war

you couldn't make it up. i was so angry i put my foot through a yamulkah and sent the bill to ken livingstone.

Trust Littlejohn to take a stand against bigotry.

What if the Jew was also a prostitute though, huh? DILEMMA FOR LILJON

i wish i'd seen it, kind of.

Was he sporting any Spurs merch?

"women who worked as Jews, and also prostitutes"

For the first ten minutes all he said was "You've got an ology, you're a scientist!"

i saw it, it didn't seem too bad altho the biggest issue of where criticism of Israel becomes anti-semitism wasn't nailed (un-nailable perhaps).

the footage of the MPAC (or whatever they were called) dude goading the Labour woman after she lost her seat was extraordinary.

Hmmm, that might explain this...
http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/3837/34/

I watched a bit but really his tone is unbearable.

'non-violent Jihad' has made my day already.

Thing was itv had an indepth expose of SKINS PARTIES on at exactly the same time. Apprently teenagers are using "MYSPACES" to advertise house parties leading to "DRUG CRAZED VANDAL GATECRASHERS". The best thing was all teh reconstructions. Kinda like the trailers for Skins as reimagined by 999 Lifesavers.

Apropos of nothing, here's hoping James Delingpole gets clawed by a polar bear.

And also that's he's got Google Alerts set up for his name, and that he reads this, the silly troll.

ooh having been reading the Standard recently, smh @ matthew d'ancona, ffs @ sam leith and LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL @ sarah sands

liz jones II: quicksands of destiny

they're all ex telegraph xp

then there's bright and bubbly probably-quite-liberal new face of london journalism rosamund urwin, who went to westminster school and probably rode that for all it was worth to get a media career

loooool nah well done her, she's not the worst

sarah sands actually made me cry with laughter recently though. awesome levels of batshit.

does anyone pay attention to these dismal hacks anyway

srsly try using her name as yr display name for three weeks and it will be top 5 in her google results

it's the way dom passantino would have wanted it ;_;

i think i'll just mention sarah sands a lot on this thread. sarah sands is a hilarious chip-on-shoulder tory who can't construct an argument without coming across as laughable! sarah sands attempted to eke out her own edifice of influence upon the london print media and ended up discarded at the bottom of a thousand empty rail carriages! sarah sands!

James Delingpole cuts such a ridiculous figure that if I didn't know better I would assume he was a work of satire. Still, every time I see him I'm comfoted by the fact that even I could beat him up.

He's such a parody that he must have Chris Morris' hand up his bum.

Sands clings desperately to 'her' surname despite being married to Julian Sands for approximately five seconds. I don't think the shoulder-chip is Tory but it is still living in the '80s.

^^^at times like this, suzy proves her worth ;)

NOW DO D'ANCONA.

hahahahahahaha Sarah Sands reduced me to hysterics again last week

basically the old bat had withdrawn cash from an oxford st atm and then walked off without the cash, turned to see a woman fleeing into the crowd and the cash gone

ok at this point lol you got played

but then mad sands decides to play her ZING HAND - as the police hadn't been interested (lol) she has a proposal for whoever owns the CCTV footage (lolololol): give it to her and she'll put it on Youtube to *publicly shame* the opportunist

you heard that right, it'll be on youtube where everyone can point and laugh at the swift work of a passer-by, and take the side of a wronged batshit harridan. oh wait

OMG @ Delingpole on the Alex Jones show. Spoiler: his views on the NHS make Daniel Hannan sound sane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV3HW3lztKc

He's a proper "one world government" fruitloop, too.

Unless he's just on a wind-up, of course.

He's a proper "one world government" fruitloop, too.

did not realize he'd turned trot...

king wolfowitz in reverse

LOL Delingpole wot a legernd

Some of my best friends are gay — but now I can go one better than that: one of them is HIV positive. ‘But that’s brilliant news!’ I told my friend when he spilled the beans the other day. ‘Now I can go round claiming victim cred by association. And if anyone makes an Aids joke I can be, like, seriously offended and put on a solemn voice and say: “Actually, you know, if you had an HIV positive friend like I do...”.’ My friend agreed that being HIV positive was a very handy thing to be, in this respect. But on further consideration, we decided it would have carried more victim cred weight in the days before anti-retroviral drugs when a) it was a death sentence; and b) being gay won you many more oppressed-minority brownie points.

iirc delingpole is against the nhs? good luck obtaining anti-retroviral drugs without it (unless, of course, as delingpole's friend probably is, given delingpole's sub-wauvian nob-worship, and assuming he exists, you're rich).

Delingpole really does have a knack for making the red mist descend. His trolling lunacy aside, he's just a bad fucking writer and his attempts at humour are embarrassing. If he didn't peddle this epater-les-libtards bullshit he wouldn't get any work at all.

I kinda understand why Liz Jones is Liz Jones now

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-398998/How-feminism-destroyed-real-men.html

holy. freaking. shit.

All western women need to spend a few months living in the middle east or south America to see how well they have things in the west.

- Graham, London UK, 04/8/2006 12:37

The female orgasm is the natural mechanism by which men assert dominion over women: a man who appreciates this can negotiate whatever difficulties arise in his relationships with them.

Last Christmas, my wife threw me out after discovering I'd been cheating on her. On the night we got back together, I made strong, passionate love to her. Unfaithful as I'd been, I was not going to let her have me over a barrel for the rest of our marriage. I needed to keep a sense of self and not allow her to mire me in guilt and a desperate quest of forgiveness.

o_O to the max

Nice to see Penthouse are still publishing letters

ah I don't think it's group Liz w/the right-wing pundits, she's clearly far too schizophrenically demented to be closed down like that.

uh, fair to.

Amazing article... I'm forwarding it to my girlfriend right now.

- Jonathan, H-Town, USA, 3/8/2006 22:46

If anybody lives in H-Town could you run over to Jonathan's place and suggest that he not do this?

By the way, I note that this article is from 2006 and the couple broke up again a year later. For good? What is this guy up to now? Oh, this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1298569/Britain-need-make-apology-India-Empire-.html

"All that is best about India - its tolerance, freedom and engagement with the world - has flourished due to the structures and ideas it inherited from British rule."

He is a source of much amusement.
Honesty puts my ex-wife in a league of her own

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100055666/ed-miliband-hasnt-married-his-pregnant-partner-does-he-have-commitment-phobia/

almost needs her own thread, really

I deplore the decline in morals that allows a man liike this to be potential Prime Minister. Fifty years ago a scandal like this would have ruined him - and rightly so.

This is one more indication of the way this country has descended into the gutter.

Oh god.

Possibly that one was a parody, much LOLs to be had by commenters noting Odone's Good Divorce Guide makes her just a peach of a commenter on this subject.

Godwin's law in action:

I'm sorry but I don't understand how people think this is not a matter of issue.

For me everything stems from a person's beliefs and their commitment to them - ideas underpin all actions.

To take an extreme position: do we think Hitler's internal thoughts about the Jews were broadly rosy or dark and sinister? The industrial death camps were imagined somewhere and the nihilistic morality which justified it was the product West European professors.

Our country is on a destructive spiral downwards because the fundamental beliefs of the people are steadily declining. People are less wholesome, less moral, less humble and less - for want of a better word- spiritual.

I think there is a blatant link between increasing dissatisfaction with our own lives and our country with ideas and beliefs which are ever increasingly: impure, selfish, proud and material.

So how a person behaves, the choices they make - is a product of their fundamental beliefs and morality.

So for me a guy who denigrates by his actions marriage or thinks its ok to get women pregnant and offer them little more than hope is not a man I would consider moral or trustworthy and by extrapolation worthy of high office!

I’d rather people strived to be good and fail occasionally than not even bother in the first place.

xp yeah although one of them goes on to boldly say

Just another example of how awful women can be and why feminism and lesbian feminism have been among the most [self-] destructive movements in recent decades.

My internal thoughts about Cristina Odone are dark and sinister. Soz.

Above commenter showing Godwin's Law in action is obviously Roger Scruton.

I spend so much time getting agitated about Guardian commenters that I forget how vicious and loopy the Telegraph ones can be. There's a rump constituency of immigrant-hating, climate-change-denying, Miliband-is-a-Marxist wingnuts on there, and a lot of the talking points are coming from the US right. It actually makes me miss the clueless Colonel Bufton-Tuftons of old.

didn't read the whole thing but the kiss-off is really something

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/

Tags: Bilderberg, global cooling, new world order, Nuremberg

RIP telegraph

srsly

wow

Re: Global warming Nuremburg

I hear book burnings are quite good for this.

But that post can't be egregious bollocks, because as the heading to his blog says "James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything."

:D

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jan/24/james-delingpole-tv-interview

I don't believe many of his views are sincerely held, or that he has thought deeply about AGW or 'working-class comedy' (harking back to this morning’s nonsense on R4).

Uh, working class comedy?

the mail on sunday was manufacturing outrage over a bbc controller saying they should have more shows in working class settings. allo, allo creator blamed that for his latest not getting commissioned.

lol @ this linked in the comments:

http://globalwarmingsuperheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/james-delingpole.jpg

allo, allo creator blamed that for his latest not getting commissioned

... surely not Jeremy Lloyd!

It was a discussion on Today about whether BBC comedy was too middle class. Delingpole had no useful opinions and just took the opportunity to witter on about the license fee and Hampstead liberal elites as per fucking usual.

xp afraid so: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1349704/BBC-controller-Danny-Cohen-wants-blue-collar-comedy-How-patronising.html

Lollingpole, , advocating setting the people free by not only headquartering businesses in low-tax countries, forcing employees to drop their union memberships and ordering staff to take unreasonable paycuts, but by providing a shitty service and ignoring competition and advertising laws:

One of the greatest advances for personal freedom in the last twenty years was the rise of the low cost airline. Suddenly, thanks to Ryanair, Easyjet and their many imitators, European travel was transformed from the rare luxury of the few into something almost everyone could enjoy, often two or three times a year.

[...]

One of the key tenets of Conservatism is a desire to set people free: free of the shackles of the state, free to forge their own destiny, free to spend their money on as many exciting new opportunities as a burgeoning market is prepared to offer them.

The ideological rot that is destroying English conservatism

otm pash

N IS FOR… NIGGER

Perfectly acceptable, nay, compulsory if you are a rapper; no longer so if you are Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters (when the 1955 film is shown now, his faithful black dog’s unfortunate name is often bleeped out). Nor even if you are Huckleberry Finn: in a new version of his Adventures, the offending word – used in Mark Twain’s 1884 classic 217 times – was replaced by “slave”.

(when the 1955 film is shown now, his faithful black dog’s unfortunate name is often bleeped out)

probably no surprise to anyone that this isn't true

wish we could put delingpole in a sack and throw him in a river...d is for 'drowning'

Blogs

Damian Thompson
Benedict Brogan
Norman Tebbit
Toby Young
James Delingpole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jfyy_qMg2o

Y IS FOR… YOOFS
Who, thanks to our failing education system's "all shall have prizes" ethos, believe that the world owes them not only a living but also three taxpayer-subsidised years of rutting and drug-taking at university. Tell them it is unaffordable, and they riot around the Cenotaph. This is the generation whose parents were too caring to say "no".

Poor James Delingpole, denied so many opportunities, told "no" so often by his parents :(

It is now many years since I last thought meanly of myself for not having been elected a member of the Buller. But looking at those pictures in the papers this week of Dave Cameron, Boris Johnson and the rest of the '87 gang preening and pouting in full Buller rig did bring it all flooding back to me: the shame, the humiliation and the abject misery I felt the day I realised that I would never be smart, rich, titled, decadent or popular enough to be elected a member of the world's best university's smartest dining society.

Quite.

It is now many years MILLISECONDS since I last thought meanly of myself for not having been elected a member of the Buller. But looking at those pictures in the papers this week of Dave Cameron, Boris Johnson and the rest of the '87 gang preening and pouting in full Buller rig did bring it all flooding back to me: the shame, the humiliation and the abject misery I felt the day I realised that I would never be smart, rich, titled, decadent or popular enough to be elected a member of the world's best university's smartest dining society.

Fixed.

take it to TMI please people

Amazing insight from the Adam Smith Institute:

In most coffee shops these days, you'll find that the small, medium, and large coffee cups all use the same size lid now, whereas even five years ago they used to have different size lids for the different cups. That small change in the geometry of the cups means that somebody can save a little time in setting up the coffee shop, preparing the cups, getting your coffee, and getting out. Millions of little discoveries like that, combined with some very big discoveries, like the electric motor and antibiotics, have made the quality of life for people today dramatically higher than it was 100 years ago.

And it's people being paid a good living wage to notice and write about these little changes that keeps the world turning...

and, of course, an indenture in the head of the person who designed the cups in the first place for not thinking of it from the off.

That A-Z of Political Correctness and the comments that follow is just beyond belief. Thing is, the people who bang on about PC the most are the rightwingers - lefties really don't give that much of a monkeys about it.

And it doesn’t just happen on this issue but on so many others too. Consider how, for example, the left-liberal bully mob exploited the story about the snogging gay couple turned away from a London pub, or the one about the other gay couple who – quite by accident I’m sure – booked themselves into a Cornish hotel run by ardent Christians who insisted rooms should be shared by married couples only. In both those cases important issues of genuine concern to the wellbeing of our country – how far should minority “rights” be allowed to trump property rights and freedom of choice, for example? – were drowned in a sea of Twitterish name-calling. Anyone who tried putting the counterargument – even someone like me with almost as many gay friends as straight ones – was blithely written off as a homophobe.

This is the kind of moral and intellectual decadence that is leading once free and prosperous nations like Britain and the US into decline and ultimately towards ruination. And what’s really depressing is just how few people are aware of it, let alone fighting it. For example, I noticed several self-described conservatives in the comments below parading just how offended they too were by the NoW’s underhand techniques. Well, yes. Duh! Everyone was, you blithering idiots (except maybe the tabloid hacks and private investigators who were doing of it).

But here’s the thing, while the liberal-left (and its useful idiots on the alleged right, I fear) are busy demonstrating to the world how caring and nice they are, really bad dangerous things are being done in the name of caringness and niceness. I think of the environmental and economic damage which is being done behind a cloak of ecological virtue. [For myriad examples see my new book Watermelons] I think of the suicidal deficit which is being stoked for fear of offending public service workers (who, as we know, are so much more caring and nice and altruistic than anyone in the productive sector of the economy). I think of the freedoms which are being taken away and the unfairnesses codified and the further suicide bombings being invited in the name of being nice and caring to various minorities. I think of the jobs that are being lost and the recovery delayed by a government too scared to lower the tax rate lest it be thought insufficiently caring and nice towards the deserving poor.

Those minorities with their crazy “rights”.

"some of my best friends are of the homosexual persuasion"

[For myriad examples see my new book Watermelons, self-published via Amazon's Kindle because no fucker will publish a whole book of my badly-written anti-science bullshit]

Usually a sounds like a smug troll trying to wind up the left but here he sounds like a bona fide, frothing, Glenn Beckian maniac.

Some full-on one-world-government craziness here:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100095817/un-reveals-its-master-plan-for-destruction-of-global-economy/

Tags: Kuznets curve, Limits to growth, more dangerous than Al Qaeda, new world order, rationing, Rob Vos, United Nations, Watermelons, World Economic and Social Survey 2011

All this talk of watermelons is making me feel hungry!

'raaaacist'

^^ ok so this is some sub taking the piss out of dely p, right?

I worry about him - as DL says he seems to be moving into real crazy territory. He's even having a go at his supporters in the first one.

worry about him in the sense that maybe he won't die in the next 6 months?

the one about the other gay couple who – quite by accident I’m sure – booked themselves into a Cornish hotel run by ardent Christians who insisted rooms should be shared by married couples only

is this sarcastic? really? like there is a dastardly plot in which of course they interrogated the capacity for bigotry of the hoteliers before they set-off?

There was actually a very balanced doc on Radio 4 a few months ago interviewing both the couple and the owners and discovering what happened and clearly it was an accident. But why check facts when you can insert parenthetical smears?

i just didn't know that there was even an assumption that this was obviously or presumably a gay plot, you know.

right wing nutbars = everything's a plot

= easy way to make a living.

"Twitterish name-calling"

Delingpole now has blood on his hands:

Although Breivik’s conspiracy theories are insane, they are in line with mainstream opinion among American conservatives. He cites Christopher Monckton’s speech before the Minnesota Free Market Institute in 2009, accusing President Obama of trying to cede United States sovereignty to the United Nations through climate treaties. Monckton — a rabid conspiracy theorist who claims his opponents are Nazis — was a Republican witness before Congress on global warming in 2010.

Breivik also believed that the “Climategate” hacking incident “revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change.”

One of his sources for this delusional claim is right-wing climate conspiracy theorist James Delingpole, who regularly appears on Fox News, including Glenn Beck‘s now defunct show. The Norwegian terrorist also cited climate conspiracy blogger Steve McIntyre, who appeared in a one-hour Fox News special on global warming in 2009. McIntyre’s conspiracy theories have been promoted by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Dozens of Republican members of Congress have endorsed the Climategate conspiracy theory.

well, not really. unless, like, herbert marcuse is to be held responsible for andreas baader.

lets dig up marcuses corpse and hold a synod!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2025490/Somalia-famine-makes-mockery-world-I-come-from.html

"a pathetic attempt at pride"

just kidding old girl, you did good, just try to curb that ditzy matrician schtick once a bloody paragraph, you're not talking about nirpal now

Could hardly bring myself to read past "This woman did what she had to do. If she allowed herself that ultimate Western accessory depression, then she would just lie down in the sand and die."

That's actually worse than the parody twitter account suggested it might be.

And at least that had the grace to turn out to be a charity stunt.

The knives are out for Herman Cain, as of course they would be. He's personable, he's clever, he's funny, he has a proven business track record, he's small government, he has original ideas, he's post-political, he'd make a way better US president than either Perry or Romney (let alone Obama). But most damningly of all, he's black.

But the real loathing and resentment will come from the other side. Remember, it was the GOP which campaigned to end the slave trade, not the Democrats.

Delingpole: the Voice of 1865

"original ideas" such as insane tax reforms.

I'm sure it's quite possible that the allegations are true. Likely, even. As we know, politics attracts men who are addicted to power; power is aphrodisiacal. Cain would hardly be the first type A individual to make a flagrant pass at an attractive woman. Sure these things must be a huge pain to put up with if you're female. But the idea that such wearisomely routine alpha male behaviour ought to render a man unsuitable for high political office is naive in the extreme: Palmerston? Lloyd George? Bill Clinton?

pick-up/men's rights lingo getting mainstreamed is one of the hidden stories of the last few years imo

this man's slow-but-painful death cannot come quickly enuff imho

The fact that 21st century Telegraph bloggers are allowed to tag their posts with "uppity negro" for SEO purposes says something about the whole enterprise, although I'm not quite sure what.

The Telegraph: your top news source for all your uppity negro news.

lol that's the only article with that tag

‘Farage has only got one ball.’ The last time I made reference to the Ukip leader’s monotesticular status, I got a rocket from an outraged reader. But the reader had missed the point entirely. Nigel Farage’s handicap is a strength, not a weakness. He’s open about it, he’s unembarrassed by it and he’s a better man for it. Yes, Farage may have lost a bollock to cancer, but by God he’s got more cojones than almost any Conservative you could name.

Our Nigel is a Conservative himself, of course. Just one who has been temporarily dispossessed by the mainstream party. When you talk to Farage he’s perfectly upfront about what he considers to be Ukip’s role: to act as the Tory party’s conscience. The moment the Conservatives start behaving like proper Conservatives again — Eurosceptical, small government, low tax, etc — that’ll be it. Most of the 7 per cent of voters who are currently Ukip’s will be straight back into the Tory fold and we’ll have a proper, Thatcherite government again doing the Lord’s work.

Seven per cent! That figure — from the latest YouGov poll — is pretty amazing, isn’t it? It puts Ukip only one point away from the ailing Lib Dems, meaning it’s on track to become Britain’s third largest political party. Yet you’d scarcely be aware of this development, the way it has been ignored by most of our mainstream media.

Sensible policies for a better Britain.

We really need a James Delingpole slam thread but he is pretty much #1* on my list of terrible people who are likely to Google their own name and start posting.

*Johann Hari RIP.

The moment the Conservatives start behaving like proper Conservatives again — Eurosceptical, small government, low tax, etc — that’ll be it. Most of the 7 per cent of voters who are currently Ukip’s will be straight back into the Tory fold and we’ll have a proper, Thatcherite government again doing the Lord’s work.

fuck me, where does one begin with this? proper Conservatives = Thatcherite? The current gov is not ultra-Thatcherite? Thatcherite government was small? Low taxes = poll tax?

it's like he makes up everything on the spot without giving it any thought whatsoever!

Low taxes = poll tax?

When these guys say low taxes they only mean low taxes for themselves and their friends and family, and if you can come with a tax that is massively unfair to people poorer than them then all the better!

Rod Liddle had been officially cited for contempt of court after a piece in the Spectator describing the current Lawrence trial as a 'vindictive charade'.

Judge has referred it to the AG.

yes, the "vindictive charade" of wishing to prosecute those who stand accused of a racist murder. PC gorn mad etc. etc.

http://i.imgur.com/2QaIO.jpg

Rod Liddle is being "fearless" again I see.

he writes what others are AFRAID to write (for fear of sounding like an idiot)

Writes what others afraid to read morelikeamirite?

he makes Littlejohn read like Swift.

"Liddle is a member of the Labour Party"

I don't think that prevents him from being right wing.

it's compulsory iirc

"rod liddle is visibly drinking himself to death"

Must fancy a job at Forbes:

Does this mean, then, that Americans are conservative fuddy-duddies while we Brits are bold stylistic adventurers forever at the bleeding edge of trendiness? Up to a point. But the truth is, to paraphrase Stephen Fry, whatever sweeping generalisation you care to make about America, you’ll find the opposite is also true. For example, there’s no doubt that America was glacially slow to pick up on music’s most important development in the past 25 years: dance. In Britain – thanks to acid house and Balearic beats, which soon mutated into warehouse rave and so on – dance music was well under way by 1987. In America, it wasn’t till the mid-Nineties that repetitive beats had begun to penetrate the mainstream.

Part of America’s problem, perhaps, was grunge. The US felt so incredibly chuffed, apparently, to have invented Nirvana (and Pearl Jam and the rest) that it seemed determined to rest on its laurels and go on churning out bouncy, grinding guitar rock for all eternity. The fickle British music scene has never permitted such complacency, not least because of the intense competition between our cities. From Bristol came the dub-heavy trip-hop scene and drum and bass; from Manchester came the dance-rock crossover called Baggy, as well as Oasis; from London, we’ve had everything from the chirpy mockney of Britpop to dubstep. We invent more genres in a decade that the US has managed in its entire musical history.

Nothing more cutting edge than Britpop.

it was lol when Delingpole was namechecking RJD2 in his column a while back

We invent more genres in a decade that the US has managed in its entire musical history.

Of course, because the only genres the US has invented are Dixieland and grunge.

On similar note in today's Telegraph (the printed version, not the website they let Delingpole drool all over):

Eager to endear himself to young voters, Gordon Brown professed himself to be an unlikely fan of the Arctic Monkeys. David Cameron is, however, unlikely to provoke any cruel titters with his more believable choice: Whiskey in the Jar by Thin Lizzy.

“It has one of the best guitar riffs in the history of rock music,” the Prime Minister says, demonstrating some knowledge of the music in question. “I have it on i-tunes or play it when needing a lift.”

Proving that he is a genuinely groovy guy, Cameron is backing Rock the House, a parliamentary music competition founded by my old friend Mike Weatherley.

Jeez, I thought that Gordon Brown being an Arctic Monkeys fan was debunked a long time ago. Still it's best not to let the facts get in the way.

“We live in an increasingly godless society, where Christians are marginalised, sacked and even prosecuted for upholding their beliefs, yet we are urged to ‘Pray 4 Muamba’” sighed Richard Littlejohn of The Daily Mail. “With a dwindling number of people attending church, millions have taken to worshipping footballers and celebrities instead. In the words of G. K. Chesterton: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.’”

otm, man. otm.

pray 4 muamba not pray 2 muamba, surely?

God I'm sick of that Chesterton quote.

i believe he added 2+2 together, not an uncommon littlejohn trait- tho i understand that it's quite unusual for him not to get 5

The Daily Mail, well known for its lofty disdain for footballers and celebrities.

hang on is Littlejohn claiming to be a christian? cos i have questions

shoot

piers morgan claims to be a christian too so i guess anything is possible

if christ were alive today he would smite young black millionaires too, i guess, i dunno

He'd put a stop to all this 'compassionate lefty' business, fako!

God I'm sick of that Chesterton quote.

Have it in my head it's a fake or messed-up one? Could be wrong, cba checking – it does have that authentic Chesterton "a-ha" quality that gets up my nose, esp when he does it four times in a paragraph.

believing in 'anything' isn't qualitatively different from believing in god, at least some of the 'anything' might be true

well said, Fizzles -- the Chesterton line, real or not, is an irritating smug thing that people say but that is not apparently true.

I have never believed in a god, and I don't believe in 'anything' either, supposing that 'anything' here might mean, say (as I think it does when people spout that line): mysticism, tarot, astrology, alternative medicine and other 'superstitions', or even supposing it means (eg) worshipping the royal family or celebrities.

and the same probably goes for most atheists.

ts: "I believe in nothing" vs "I don't believe in nothing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSpCXUhp2uA

Wikiquote agrees with you: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Misattributed

That Littlejohn quote is nuts - as Stevie says, it's praying FOR Muamba, not TO him. I mean, I have problems with the fact that people are suggesting prayers instead of, you know, trained medical assistance, but FFS Littlejohn, you are an ass.

xposts - and yes, the falsely attributed quote is stupid anyway, it's not even attempting to make its conclusion follow logically on from its premises, it's just a piece of dogma.

xps (ty emil.y)

turns out i could be arsed. Not Chesterton, but a critic's paraphrase of this from one of his Father Brown stories:

‘It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot, and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling Bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: ‘He was made Man’.’

Less snappy that.

‘He was made Man’.’

http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/wp-content/uploads/joe_pesci-237x300.jpg

no, he was not made man, that was problem

It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are

amazing, tbh

what a daft, virtually incomprehensible quotation

the lameness and falsehood of it curiously seems to undermine the 'believe in anything' BS even more than I thought it had already been undermined.

d-Mac correct also.

not to be Cap'n Save-a-Chesterton but i wonder to what extent the outspoken antichristians of his era were on a theosophical tip, you could argue he's tilting at the New Age tendency of redirected faith rather than yr cold hard logical atheists. either way polytheism is way more fun and fulfilling than monotheism, obv

not believing in one thing != being willing to believe in anything. Even Littlejohn should be able to understand that. It's like he doesn't actually believe what he writes, and simply does it for the large wads of cash and to provoke a reaction.

re. Chesterton, he was a fervent Cathlic wasn't he. I would suspect he'd have had problems with any non-Catholic forms of Christianity, let alone Theosophy etc.

Chesterton was a convert iirc which is worse, even. but the Father Brown doesn't feel aimed at atheism in toto

The Man Who Was Thursday is not too keen on "anarchists", and can allegedly be seen as a Christian allegory. As much about the politics of the Edwardian age as religion, though.

The Man Who Was Thursday was pre-conversion iirc? And the Father Brown stories, esp the first two volumes are really good. I'm a fan! I ever quite like his Apologetic book on converting to Catholicism, Orthodoxy. But that 'a-ha!' quality woof mentioned is f'ing annoying - esp. in his journalistic essays, where it's almost a tic.

yeah i like Chesterton's work which is why it feels unfair comparing him to Littlejohn because i'm pretty sure GKC was, at the least, sincere.

it's one thing banging out outrageous opinions for money but if Liljon has read literally anything at all about this and concluded that 'pray 4 Muamba' means that people are treating him as some sort of deity then I can't even

xpost - And yes, NV otm about the tilting at redirected faith against theosophical and New Age stuff, or, say, faith in lie-detecting machines or that violent books make children violent - he's a good defender of the metaphysical against obtuse materialism.

xps

yeah, he came quite a long way round. Think the family was unitarian, so v familiar with a rational sort of christianity, off the rails for a while then Anglican for a long time, then rome.

in the story he's talking to a young 'heathen humanitarian', & just preceeding the bit quoted there's a line about 'It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' So I think he thinks spiritualism/theosophy – 'arbitrary without being authoritative' to quote the story again – is a necessary consequence of unCatholicism/rationalism?

modern right-wing pundits - suspect Damian Thompson's attacks on pseudo-science something like a modern equivalent to this?

sorry 'spiritualism/theosophy & superstition generally'

Hanging is too good for him IMO
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18350615

pretty sure I'll experience acute and genuine pleasure when Rod Liddle dies just fyi

Next-level:

http://melaniephillips.com/america-goes-into-the-darkness

Iran can now be sure that it will be able to complete its infernal construction of a genocide bomb to use against the Jews and the west

A GENOCIDE BOMB

The World Turned Upside Down
By Melanie Phillips.
Now in paperback with a new foreword by David Mamet

do not want

It was Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that gave us our concepts of reason, progress and an orderly world

(citation needed)

I read that whole thing in the voice of Geoff Workman.

tbf to Melanie it was Christians who destroyed the library at Alexandria so she may not have heard of classical Greece

i'll admit i'm down with the great blood-letting, not metaphorically tho

if the blood-letting involves those who take the Dacre shilling, I'm all for it too.

jfc liddle

bad form to drop my mask on ilx but jfc liddle

He's vile

What rodent would you say he most resembles physically

I don't feel all that strongly about most rodents and he's far too fatfaced and smug looking to pass for a rat so idk

What mask? Always been a confirmed omnisceptic - a thoroughly defensible position

only if you knew my backstory tbh but this is about the breathtaking rod liddle

link

sorry I was scoring goals ffs

today's Sunday times he outlines why he's supporting Netherlands by don't of insulting all the other countries in his own inimitable way

by dint predictive text is a terrible man

i took a look in that freebie of the Sun that they put out last week

the editorial said some guff about "loving your country used to be thought of as racist but not any more"

then every other page was full of snide little digs at other countries including a whole column of Liddle doing his "jungle starts at Calais" shtick

fuck every last one of them imo

There was some p. amazing trolling in that free Sun column, like a bit in the middle about "oh hey I'm just gonna use the words Britain and England interchangeably because that's what Britain is all about to me" just dropped in all casual-like

also a bit about how terrible it would be to live in Belgium, which distracted me from the rest of the article because I was too busy thinking "sounds p. good to me apart from the unpronounceable language"

anyway I was embarrassed that this got shoved through the doors of all the flats in this block as half of my neighbours are, y'know, not English

Dutch is closely related to English, or do you mean French?

I wonder if they bothered to deliver their garbage a mile down the road from me where the racial presence is about 90% non-white? The usual Ron Liddle bile + unrealistic jingoist crap about crap england team. No doubt most of that worthless shit was being used to line cat-litter trays within minutes.

https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/nick-cohen-is-in-your-house/

Why is it so many British Right Wing Pundits used to be Trotskyists?

great piece

it's not a question of their ex politics so much as their upbringing I suspect

I feel kind of sad about Dale Winton's unexpected heel turn. or had he shown inclinations of this sort on previous occasions, and they'd passed me by?

http://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/dale-winton-donald-trump-is-he-hero-or-villain/

I'm guessing a celeb of Winton's stature hasn't lived in the real world for a very very long time.

Some BRWPs and their Twitter clout

Milo Yiannopoulos: 234k (this has rocketed up from 60k or so within the last year but I get the impression he does go in for fake follower shenans)
-
Louise Mensch: 97k
Dan Hodges: 65.5k
Toby Young: 51.2k
-
James Delingpole: 28.3k
Melanie Philips: 23.7k
David Vance: 22k
Jon Gaunt: 19.8k
Sarah Vine: 13k (has duly quit Twitter)

Are there any BRWPs who make their point with class and elegance? Apart from NRQ obv

Oborne? Is he still alive?

Yiannopoulos is US-centric these days? That might explain why he's 10 times more popular than, er, Melanie Phillips.

Oborne came out strongly against Goldsmith recently.

Parris is one of the more sensible ones, though presumably considered a bit wet, and Hitchens seems to be winning friends on both sides atm.

Hitchens was on R4 last night, talking about his SWP days and his path to enlightenment.

oh it's true, Oborne has written some fairly decent things in vague memory. i'm sure he's also said some horrid things too but that's the nature of it

he seems to cleave to a sort of Peter Mannion-esque old-fashioned-Tory-decency shtick

Extremely Mannionesque.

Hitchens seems to be winning friends on both sides atm.

He's insane though. I'm assuming he is not on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah
28.7k followers

Had to check who David Vance was, he's some piece of work that guy.

Lotta ironical lols when you GIS him though.

Had Peter Hitchens in my place of work earlier, very polite and decent fellow, on first impressions.

He's the absolute worst.

just clicked that link to Hitchens' twitter feed, and saw this interchange (under his pinned tweet), ice cold:

Philip Redbrooke ‏@PK_Roe Jul 7
@ClarkeMicah hello sir, I am a young (ish) Tory activist in Herts. Would like to talk with you about Social Conservatism at a conv time. Ta

Peter Hitchens ‏@ClarkeMicah Jul 8
@PK_Roe I debate with readers on my archived, indexed blog.

Peter Hitchens ‏@ClarkeMicah Jul 8
@PK_Roe But if you are an activist in the Blairite Tory Party the only thing I have to say to you is 'resign now'

He's the absolute worst.

You'd think so, but he was very pleasant to deal with. Kwasi Kwarteng came in later, now he is a dick.

Hitchens is not the worst, Delingpole is https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/05/james-delingpole-article-calling-ocean-acidification-alarmism-cleared-by-press-watchdog?CMP=twt_gu

can't get over this photo of Peter Hitchens from 1969

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6f/55/6c/6f556cd56570db6384477dbc9e5a4226--interesting-history-peter-otoole.jpg

His campaign for real Conservatism, the crusade against cannabis and for the restoration of the death penalty. They were just little acorns of thought in his mind at this point.

He makes me lol so much when refers to Blair as a Marxist. I mean you'd think someone who used to dress like that would know a Marxist when he sees one!

I could imagine a grizzled + ageing (i.e. looking past getting ID'ed) Owen Jones being more right wing than Hitchens in the future.

Long hair and sideburns, but still looks like an arrogant twat who knows what's good for you.

Having that smug type of countenance that silently says "your'e wrong and I'm right you fucking pleb!" is probably quite a burden! Or is it something you just naturally grow into?

I listen to Radio 3, and occasionally they get this cunt on to talk. Here's your smug patrician countenance:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Author%20photos/Simon_Heffer1-xlarge.png

As if Anne McElvoy on Free Thinking wasn't bad enough.

I am ashamed to admit I was once in a lift with that cunt and didn't stab him. Not that I had a knife on me at the time.

that's truly a horrible old england face

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Author%20photos/Simon_Heffer1-xlarge.pnghttps://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/4/26/1366993851778/Sir-John-Houblon-pictured-011.jpg

unngh

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/03/24/article-0-1AB6DBCE00000578-814_634x326.jpg

Think I've come around to Peter Hitchens a little in so much as I still think he's wrong about almost everything, but is at least operating from what appears to be sincerely held beliefs and is at least courteous (if not respectful) to his opponents (which seems to be basically everyone)

On the other hand my dislike of Matthew Parris, who seems to be treated as one of the good uns, knows no bounds.

Man alive...

A few more of the guests we've got coming up on #AftertheNews - join us from Monday after the @itvnews at Ten pic.twitter.com/19OuQco0B6

— After The News (@AfterTheNewsITV) October 5, 2017

Beyond The Facts

I am not sure JRM is especially conservative. https://t.co/qVNsEvCETC

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) October 7, 2017

As you must be aware, true conservatism is now the counter culture, so you and Rees-Mogg are slowly gaining rockstar status here in the US

— ReaIity Kid (@ReaIityKid) October 7, 2017

This Paperchase pearl-clutching is all very amusing

Day 1 of the RW Columnist Paperchase anti boycott boycott. Rod Liddle has had to burn all of his tropical fruit scented pens. His hair smells of molten plastic & mango. Tim Montgomerie is suspected of owning a cactus print A5 academic year planner & is hung as a witch.

— Then he went 'eurgh it's me really' & stabbed me (@Scriblit) November 21, 2017

Quite an amusing New Statesman article yesterday pointing out that Paperchase presumably know their customers and in any case *this is how the free market they usually love so much is supposed to work*. But I suspect most of this is primal fear of more advertisers following suit and their columns/paycheques disappearing.

the hypocrisy would be breathtaking if I hadn't lived with it for 40 years

I'd find this all more amusing if I didn't know its all going to kill the conversational vibe at family Xmas dinner this year.

when you reveal your wrapping paper was from Paperchase?

when you reveal your wrapping paper is the Daily Mail?

when you reveal your rapping granny is chasing paper?

when you reveal paper granny wrapping frozen elsa pregnant spider man?

there it is

fped you all FYI

with sellotape and knives

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/british-journalism-awards-2017-nick-ferrari-is-journalist-of-the-year-full-list-of-winners/

British journalism is in a healthy state I see.

the envy of the world

Coren counts as a right-wing pundit, no? literally can't imagine a less appealing front page splash than this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQ1ogyRXkAE6uHR.jpg

Jfc. Coren's insufferable.

Another one of those "writers" making money over their baby's back.

*dad's

aye

yeah he's the one thing that puts me off marrying Victoria

He's a troll. That's all he is. On some level he must know it, and I hope it causes him deep, profound and insurmountable displeasure.

ha, I always thought he came across as oddly thin-skinned and hurt by criticism for someone whose whole schtick is trolling? I sometimes get the impression that he is someone who genuinely has these thoughts and opinions that he knows are considered beyond the pale and is troubled by this, so he tries to exorcise the anxiety by expressing the thoughts/opinions in a faux-trolly way, but his heart is not really in it - imo Coren doesn't actually enjoys riling Libs a la Rod Liddle or Toby Young, he wants to be liked too much.

giles coren is so london

every generation gets the samuel pepys it deserves

giles coren is so london

this is slanderous upon London imo

manchester offers ample scope for a reprisal tbf

"giles coren is so london" is so manchester

nowadays I suppose Samuel Pepys would be regarded as sexual harassment in our politically correct Airstrip One

lol at the idea that London isn't Ground Zero for this particular type of cunt tho

tru

North London tbf

where else could forge a giles coren

xp very, very tru :D

enjoy wembley btw ;_____;

where else could forge a giles coren

Oxford, where he studied?

i'd never have imagined such a paragon of london-awfulness might have gone to oxford

Not to be confused with Giles Corey, a defendant at the Salem Witch Trials.

The British media is so London. In fact, the UK is so London.

More too London than so London.

'Was I an absolute prince,' he would say, pulling up his breeches with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, 'I would appoint able judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of every fool's business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer's sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal settlements.

According to the law at the time, a person who refused to plead could not be tried. To avoid persons cheating justice, the legal remedy for refusing to plead was "peine forte et dure". In this process the prisoner is stripped naked, with a heavy board laid on his body. Then rocks or boulders are laid on the plank of wood. This was the process of being pressed:[10]

...remanded to the prison from whence he came and put into a low dark chamber, and there be laid on his back on the bare floor, naked, unless when decency forbids; that there be placed upon his body as great a weight as he could bear, and more, that he hath no sustenance, save only on the first day, three morsels of the worst bread, and the second day three draughts of standing water, that should be alternately his daily diet till he died, or, till he answered.

As a result of his refusal to plead, on September 17, Sheriff George Corwin led Corey to a pit in the open field beside the jail and in accordance with the above process, before the Court and witnesses, stripped Giles of his clothing, laid him on the ground in the pit, and placed boards on his chest. Six men then lifted heavy stones, placing them one by one, on his stomach and chest. Giles Corey did not cry out, let alone make a plea.

After two days, Giles was asked three times to plead innocent or guilty to witchcraft. Each time he replied, "More weight." More and more rocks were piled on him, and the Sheriff from time to time would stand on the boulders staring down at Corey's bulging eyes. Robert Calef, who was a witness along with other townsfolk, later said, "In the pressing, Giles Corey's tongue was pressed out of his mouth; the Sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again."[11]

Three mouthfuls of bread and water were fed to the old man during his many hours of pain. Finally, Giles Corey cried out "More weight!" and died. Supposedly, just before his death, he cursed Sheriff Corwin and the entire town of Salem.[12] He was 81.

The realest of England

gonna give that one to the USA tbf

't Was British North America iirc but fair

Coren isn't a troll per se, just yet another dude with nothing worthwhile to say* (except perhaps about restaurants) who has nevertheless decided to make a living from opinion journalism.

*Or at least an opinion about everything and insight into nothing.

who has nevertheless decided to make a living from opinion journalismassholism.

worthwhile comments about restaurants sounds like a category mistake.

I dunno it's good to know which McDonalds's are clean

i mean say what u like about yelp reviewers but at least they never throw their toys out of the prank because a sub-editor ruined their terrible joke about blowjobs

er, out of the pram obv

Was not aware of Liddle's poetry before.

Philip Larkin's mouldering poetic corpse discovered in rancid bin-bag of Rod Liddle's mind, pic.twitter.com/2ptyS6spIw

— david wheatley (@nemoloris) December 15, 2017

https://hoaxteadresearch.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/hh_vogonpoetry.jpg

Am I a bad person for wanting to backhand Isabel Oakeshott while wearing some rusty wire-wool gloves?

A-hole meets K-hole.

Katie Hopkins is an anesthetic mostly used in veterinarian procedures. She is often referred to as a “horse tranquilizer”

Katie should never be taken recreationally as she can induce psychological effects such as psychedelic distortion, psychosis, confusion and even brain death pic.twitter.com/RW80uxssd7

— G H Neale (@GHNeale) February 4, 2018

Ketie Hopkins

Where's my 10%? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2018/feb/08/a-hole-in-a-k-hole-katie-hopkins-ketamine-adventures

A man who looks like Bob Geldof after eating 10 packets of lard claims he doesn't find succesful women attractive, more news as we get it:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/theres-a-reason-women-sell-roof-tiles-in-hotpants/

kudos on that URL though

is the spectator just basically Nuts magazine now?

he makes his edgelord shtick look so effortful

they can't all be toby young.

I was thinking wasn't he one of them regular bores on Grumpy Old Men but wiki says:

"Regular contributors include Jeremy Clarkson, Bob Geldof, John Humphrys, A. A. Gill, Nigel Havers, Tony Hawks, Simon Hoggart, John O'Farrell, Rory McGrath, Bill Nighy, Matthew Parris, John Peel, Will Self, Arthur Smith, Tim Rice, Rick Stein, Tony Slattery, Rick Wakeman, Lemn Sissay, Don Warrington, Des Lynam, Robert Wyllie, Pete Buckley, Gerry Robinson and Kevin I'anson. The narrator is Geoffrey Palmer."

could do with a few more RIP's from that list.

Leave Geoffrey Palmer alone, though.

Robert Wyllie, Pete Buckley

momentarily read this as Pete Wylie and didn't really question it

And who are they anyway?

top google result for robert wyllie is chief of medical operations at a clinic in cleveland, ohio and the top result for pete buckley is an expert in 'financing, leasing, sales and complex structured transactions involving aircraft (fixed wing and rotary), vessels and other transportation assets'

so either the net for grumpy old men was cast much wider than i'd have expected or we may never know who the trv wyllie and buckley were

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Robert_Crichton_Wyllie.jpg

Robert Crichton Wyllie (October 13, 1798 – October 19, 1865) was a Scottish physician and businessman. He also served two decades as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

counts as an old man for sure, looks pretty chipper tho

this was around the time that Ian McCulloch used to appear as a panelist on The Wright Stuff, so Pete Wylie doesn't seem that implausible

I don't think even the producers of Grumpy Old Men knew wtf Robert Wyllie was

When you type "Pete Buckley grumpy..." into GS, "cat" is the first word that comes. So wtf he is, he didn't quite make his bones with that show.

classy

(1) With the Spectator publishing an article about how great the Wehrmacht were on D-Day, what else have they been up to ? pic.twitter.com/6zuxRniqIJ

— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) May 17, 2018

how is taki still alive

blood of virgins, 6 bottles of vintage champagne a day

taki was ahead of the alt-right curve by a good decade tbfttl

aye, Werhmacht were a cracking bunch of lads - just don't mention all the civilian massacres and those lovely Stalags they built so captured Red Army could get a sun tan or freeze to death whilst they cannibalised each other!

Taki made A A Gill look like a lefty at The Sunday Times in the 90's.

For my sins I can remember his columns were a mixture of obnoxious macho bravado and name dropping upper class elite ppl, a class act for sure!

The Wehrmacht had the advantage of plenty of time to construct all the defenses they could think of against an amphibious assault, which is considered the most difficult of all military operations to execute. And they failed.

some of the brickies working on the Atlantic Wall were getting paid more than doctors and brain surgeons in the Reich, that was probably the only bit of Socialism in NS!

taki was ahead of the alt-right curve by a good decade tbfttl

― imago, Thursday, May 17, 2018 7:42 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the cover of Taki's 1991 prison memoir (three months in HM Prison Pentonville for cocaine possession) is like some horrifying prophecy of Milo Yiannopoulos two decades ahead of time

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TI63K6OuL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2016/05/20/20-drill.w190.h190.2x.jpg

Even by Spectator standards, Taki is massively racist.

I can half remember some quote where he is referring to Puerto Ricans as "dusky, squat and ugly" and this was before the brexit-era Times got their special circumstances racist card, this was in the 90's!

xxp lol uncanny!

taki was ahead of the alt-right curve by a good decade tbfttl

He's an old-school capital-F Fascist but his magazine was hugely important in laying a lot of the foundations for the McInnes / Spencer alt-right stuff.

Obviously, being rich and eccentric means he gets a pass as a 'character' in the British press.

Hugo Rifkind says online 'outrage engine' makes papers swerve difficult subjects to 'avoid enraging parts of their readership'https://t.co/NjlLMMI33c pic.twitter.com/dkoSOpRljw

— Press Gazette (@pressgazette) November 22, 2018

This is a good expose on our old friends at Spiked: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation

It's pretty sad that they're not even Trots manqué curdled to misanthropy but just old-fashioned posho somethings-in-the-media grubbing for PR work for Monty fucking Burns

[mark can correct whichever corner of post-Leninism they actually grew out of here]

Monbiot does nice work in exposing their um "selective" reading of Trotsky

I like that he seems to have these mealy-mouthed fuckers squirming

Brendan O'Neill looks like a lovechild Frasier would deny

That photo of Frank Furedi in the Guardian article, I lived just off that corridor for a year. It's pretty fucking weird to see it crop up nearly two decades later in an article about an international right-wing conspiracy.

There's a lot more detail here: https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/12/04/spiked-lm-dark-money-koch-brothers

I'd heard of Claire Fox but not Fiana Fox OBE.

Fiona

that map of the LM network seems to be missing some much loved ILM indie-rockers:P

LEAVE GAZ ALONE

I think Gaz might to need to look at more lucrative options than becoming a regular Spiked contributor, my cousin has a shit hot wedding band company called Rock My Reception!

Which is more lucrative, writing puff pieces for Nazi businessmen or coming third in the Mercury Music Prize every other year?

they're a mid-70s offshoot of IS (which underwent many splits at that time: what was left evolved into the swp): the revolutionary communist party then split from the revolutionary communist group* over tactics relating to anti-apartheid (ribald voice from the back: "yes, furedi was pro! etc etc haw haw") -- its organ "living marxism" (so-called bcz everyone else's was declared dead) was active until the mid-90s, when a journalist they libelled during the yugoslav civil war sued it to extinction. they were rebooting at this time as radical libtertarian cyberlefties anyway -- they ran and made a lot of cash from the early internet cafe cyberia -- and (presumably cynically) adapted to harmonise with the tech flavour of libertarianism instead. even in the early 90s the other trot orgs mocked them as a yuppie party

*according to wikipedia, the RCG's paper fight racism! fight imperialism! is still running for nearly 40 years, tho it's a LOOOOONG time since i've seen a copy on sale. rumours that Spiked! is abt to be renamed don't fight racism! don't fight imperialism! are too funny to ignore

a couple of them (as students) wrote for me at the wire! but both seem -- via the magick of goggle -- to have evolved into entirely ordinary leftish academics no longer tangled in such garbage

Glad somebody had a happy ending

most of that is in monbiot's article now i read it -- this line ("In 1974, the International Socialists split after a dispute over arithmetic in Volume 3 of Das Kapital") is amusing but misleading. all spilts in the IS were abt personality clashes among the leadership, and every single splinter-sect coalesced round a different egomaniac

here's the section on the IS/RCG/RCP split in john sullivan's classic 1988 essay on fissiparous UK trots (very dated, the whole thing is still worth reading)*:
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/pub-7rcgrcp.html

*no one was rightwing at this point, tho there were likely a great many mutual accusations to this effect all the same

It's no Fools and Horses

Brendan O'Neill looks like a lovechild Frasier would deny

Looool perfect.

I feel like this sort of forensic takedown of what Spiked are about and how they function (which I know Monbiot has been doing for a while now) is a better way to deal with them than the approach I see from a lot of leftist commentators on Twitter, where it always seems to be 'Oh no, look at this new horrible thing Brendan O'Neill has written' with 50 retweets - which just gives them what they want I think?

Of course it does, like when fuckwits kept giving Katie Hopkins the attention she craved

This whole thing is so transparent, the endless feedback loop of wankers DESTROYING other wankers. I notice I haven't seen many of my Canary-following friends bigging up Jonathan Pieface lately, but it was obvious from day one what an unfunny useless arsehole he was

I heard this typically unfunny cunt on R4 last week called Geoff Norcott. His unique schtick was that he's a comedian and a Tory voter like as if ho ho ho what an absolute enigma, a comedian whose politics absolutely suck shit.

I feel like this sort of forensic takedown of what Spiked are about and how they function (which I know Monbiot has been doing for a while now) is a better way to deal with them than the approach I see from a lot of leftist commentators on Twitter, where it always seems to be 'Oh no, look at this new horrible thing Brendan O'Neill has written' with 50 retweets - which just gives them what they want I think?

I'm not sure they need retweets when one of them is on national TV or radio almost literally every day.

Can't believe Merrick would be so let down by her favourite feminist PM pic.twitter.com/LrgGwIgRjm

— Sam ✌️ (@samisam147) December 12, 2018

🙃

These takes are so mad considering there was a fuss about May being Home Sec/Minister for Equalities & Women despite having opposed gay marriage in the past and endorsing splitting up families and detaining people in hellish immigration centres. Not to mention austerity notably hitting women harder. Still, those shoes, eh?

Nb: I have always thought her shoes are terrible.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p06sbrpd/jonathan-pies-american-pie

This mocku-docu-mentary is Louis Theroux meets Alan Partridge meets the Koch brothers.

happy xmas noodle vague

Rebecca Nicholson in the Guardian is not a fan of the Jonathan Pie special

Partridge is funny because he is pathetic and human; Pie just has a sneering superiority complex. Theroux offers insight because he listens to people; Pie has too many scores to settle to offer an impartial ear.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/dec/13/tv-review-jonathan-pie-american-pie

Are you still struggling to justify voting for Jeremy Corbyn? This should help. Destitute, self-pitying, public school pervert, Toby Young says that a Corbyn government will mean he has to sell his house! pic.twitter.com/Yy9VIEK9Wy

— John Spiers (@squeezyjohn) December 13, 2018

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DuTW1OqX4AAhKwL.jpg

beautiful.

Stick that on posters the length and breadth of the land - Young's face on the left, this text on the right - Labour landslide.

I knew he was butthurt about losing the education post when he was presenting a R4 program about Character and repeatedly kept mentioning how he was hounded out of a job by the twitter mob. But didn't realise he'd managed to poison all the other wells he was drinking from, apart from the fucking Spectator of course!

I'll say a prayer for Toby (that he ends up homeless and dies on the streets).

God I hate Jimmy Bollix SO MUCH.

Stepping in to defend journalists at the Mail & Sun:

This is predictably getting piled-on (the irony of complaining about abuse and its dangers when you cause frequent abusive pile-ons aside) – but: plenty of journalists who do great, public interest work holding power to account started at newspapers OJ and co don't approve of. https://t.co/nERSyRcy5t

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) January 14, 2019

Personally I'm referring to people who directly write articles whipping up hatred against minorities and women.

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) January 14, 2019

OJ offers the above as clarification AND THEN:

Other reasons people can find themselves at such outlets: people’s politics change, people grow up with Tory parents, people come from local news and get offered a secondment to a National their group owns that you’d be mad to then down, etc

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) January 14, 2019

People may then change their view (none of which wd excuse writing the hateful stuff, but as has been noted, many don’t). Or not change their view but do we really hold someone doing casual sports shifts equal to Rod Liddle? And if our bar is that high aren’t readers on the hook?

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) January 14, 2019

He’s such an awful cunt, how does he even have a job?!

who wouldn't jump at the chance to earn a living inciting hatred if it meant secondment to a thriving national newspaper?

Am I being oversimplistic or are all the people scolding other writers for being choosy about which outlets they write for, straight and white?

I don’t think JB is?

I’m on a fair few FB groups for journalists/freelancers and many of the members write for Sun/Mail etc and of those, most of them HATE Owen Jones (I think they would all sell their grannies for his profile TBH but I’m sick of them saying he wouldn’t last a week in a newsroom blah blah blah).

Yeah that doesn’t surprise me given how openly contemptuous a lot of the higher profile ones are on twitter. And definitely part jealousy but also the politics.

Journo groups: GO HADLEY GO, BODY HIM
Twitter: Fuck off, Hadley, you’re a TERF

Poor old @CampbellClaret, hero of the Iraq War, still can’t cope with the fact that he can no longer tell the BBC what they can and cannot broadcast. The rest of us (and the people of bombable nations) are relieved. Go for a run, Al, you’ve done enough harm. https://t.co/VmnSX4z70S

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) February 7, 2019

good retort imo.

Fuck them both.

yep, they'd both probably argue to the death they have nothing in common but Hitch is just a 1914 time-travel version of the same type of odious twat.

I made the mistake of checking his "satirical" account and it's even worse than I feared

...he says, while saying what he wants (and plugging his book) in a national newspaper pic.twitter.com/qfhdC8wI1B

— Emma Hughes (@emmahdhughes) March 7, 2019

it's quite shrill and witless and I would actually laugh if it was funny. Melts and conservatives need to develop some self-awareness before attempting satire.

(Right thread this time)
Isn’t he one of those Sp1k3d cunts?

it's too scattershot, like it's trying to simultaneously parody FBPE liberals and die-hard I-stand-with-Chris-Williamson Corbynistas and pop-intersectionalists when these are all fairly distinct groups?

they're all snowflakes tbf

"The genius of Titania McGrath | The Spectator"

talk about easily impressed, they must be the types that shit their pants with laughter at dominic holland.

I mean they pay Taki to praise the Wehrmacht and Rod Liddle to write about black people, so this is evidently the height of wit for that crowd.

where's that Prison Paul "conservatives are getting good at comedy and liberals are scared" meme when you need it

Just spent 10 mins reading the Titania McGrath Twitter feed. There is plenty to be parodied on woke Twitter, yet it never seems to hit the mark, obviously because this guy doesn't want to get it, and neither do his audience.

have there been any actually-funny British right wing pundits since Auberon Waugh died?

it's notable how the Spectator manages to have so many 'funny' columnists who are never actually funny (Tanya Gold is funny, but she doesn't seem particularly right wing?)

one big difference between Waugh and Rod Liddle/Toby Young/James Delingpole etc is that the latter rhetorically position themselves as being on the side of the masses against the sneering elites where Waugh proudly identified with the sneering elite, I don't think there's a space for someone like Waugh today, that old conservative elite contempt and revulsion for for fast food and pop music and TV etc maybe doesn't exist anymore?

JRM though?

his schtick is more of a cutesy affectation of being baffled by pop culture though, I don't think he expresses disgust for it in same way that the old-school types did

Always preferred Peter Simple (Michael Wharton) to Auberon Waugh myself, some of Wharton's stuff was staggeringly funny. Their writing careers more or less overlapped and indeed Waugh took over the Peter Simple column after Wharton retired. But yes, Wharton was another sneering conservative elite type.

Roger Scruton is often old-fashioned-elitist conservative, but is never funny. For example

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34801885

jonathan meades is the name you're all kind of searching for, not that he's a pundit, or conservative in any manner that's in vogue

he's not a conservative, small or large C, in any sense

there's an argument that he is sort of an anti-authoritarian small-c conservative insofar as skeptical classic humanism is a conservative position

he had a really disappointingly run of the mill dad moan about thicko footballers and their tats in his last tv work. And the jibe about Cage provoked silence.

Nuke Twitter.

Never heard of this but, yes, there seems to be a Spiked connection.

I like this Meades article about Kenneth Clark's Civilisation

The root of the series’s appeal as a continuing model is obvious. To a certain cast of plodding mind, art remains a necessarily important thing, something intrinsically good, improving. And it is even better when rendered popularly “accessible” with stirring music, doting cinematography and big ideas that are easy to follow. Yet, for all its lavish grandiloquence, television of this sort is humble: it knows its place and pays due deference to acknowledged masterpieces in media to which it believes itself to be a subservient upstart. It is essentially reportorial and does not attempt to create its own reality.

https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/03/series-clark-television

Craig Brown, perhaps?

peter hitchens is v occasionally funny in a remote elite way, mostly accidentally

in the sort of manner when you are deep into hard drugs and your dad accuses you of being a glue sniffer.

sorry to post two articles to this thread in a single day but this is another doozy
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/would-any-publisher-dare-to-print-lolita-now/

A million-plus-selling literary novelist of my acquaintance — fêted for penetrating the labile recesses of the female heart — was warned that he should not attempt to write his next novel, set in the first half of the last century, in the voice of a woman.

Got to be Amis or Jacobson right?

To answer my own question I started — as you do — by typing ‘Lolita’ into Google. An alert flashed up, which said, ‘Warning: child pornography is illegal’.

*Narrator: No alert flashed up*

fêted for penetrating the labile recesses of the female heart

good grief

spectator.co.uk/2019/08/hitler-should-never-have-been-allowed-to-write-socialist-doctrines-in-prison

Posting my thoughts about Christchurch & the media mainstreaming hate here so as not to drag the thread off topic.

Just to single out some of the hypocrites on the UK side here:

Matthew “book eater” Goodwin primly criticising Andrew Adonis for a clumsy Julius Caesar reference. MG chaired a debate entitled “is rising ethnic diversity a threat to the west?” and for affronted when challenged on it. All his research seems to come to the conclusion that immigration is bad.

David Aaronovitch attended the above debate and wrote an article last year called “it’s not racist to criticise Islam”, and has a LOT of previous on this. He is tweeting his regret today.

I’m sure the Times will have opinion pieces shared on this soon enough. The Times has a complaint upheld by the press regulator over its story about a girl being adopted by a Muslim foster family - the story was almost entirely false. They publish Melanie Phillips, who was quoted in Anders Brevik’s manifesto.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2018/09/the-times-muslim-christian-child-foster-care-tower-hamlets-court-ruling-ipso

It would be good if any of these people thought about which views are being legitimised, or how many incidents like this will need to happen for them to reconsider.

Yeah, like that's going to happen. Aaronovitch, what a dick.

With some of these people, and their editors, it's part of the fetishisation of "debate" above all other issues, the idea that these ideas SHOULD be in the mainstream press so they can be interrogated and wilt under the glare of rational argument and forensic knowledge. Some of the others are just racists or click-hungry in search of a quick buck.

Now, obviously there's an existential question for the former group there, because if hatred and bigotry CAN'T be defeated through enlightened rational debate then what is the point of newspaper columnists existing?

Fanny Dinklesrtein also on the board of a blatantly Islamophopic foundation and gets VERY het up when challenged about it online.

They all get annoyed when they're challenged with any of their crap opinions. They think they can just say what they like and everyone will agree because they've thought so long and hard about their wise words, it's like they've never even been on ILX.

It's also like they've never been to a comprehensive school or anywhere else where their brand of shot rolls downhill to

*Shit.

One positive that might, with caution, be drawn from the anti-Zionism/antisemitism/Labour debacle and now the NZ shooting is like, better awareness about how one (not explicitly or intentionally racist and violent) discourse leads into or enables another (which is) unless some careful conditions are built in. I've been reading the Hirsh article Mordy linked to and it makes the case well. The cultivation of certain atmospheres. Or maybe the sort of RW pundits this thread is about won't learn but will come to seem behind the curve on this.

The Aussie police keep saying how there is no immediate threat of terrorism, without mentioning the continuous and highly public torrent of undisguised racist shit from our own right-wing commentariat. Fuck the lot of them. I’m going to try an avoid whatever Andrew bolt writes about this because it will assuredly provoke me to violence.

Call me cynical but I think if there was going to be a teachable moment, either for right-wing pundits or society at large, it would probably have been when 77 mostly-white children got shot by a guy explicitly saying he was inspired by the British press’ take on race and Islam. The problem is that these are not niche views. Almost everyone will reject terrorism, but the idea of ‘white replacement’ and the incompatibility of Muslims with European society is absolutely mainstream. In he U.K., I don’t think Melanie Philips, Douglas Murray, Rod Liddell, etc are in the majority but the minority is sizeable enough to be financially rewarding for them and the people who employ them in perpetuity. Even if it wasn’t, there are enough people like the Gatestone Institute willing to fund it.

Newsnight actually gave Generation Identity a platform last night, what the fuck?

Additionally, even if it wasn’t financially viable for the Gatestone Institute, you can still rely on the BBC.

Something has plainly gone very wrong at @BBCNewsnight. This evening—on the day of the racist murder of Muslims in #Christchurch—they gave a platform to racist hate organisation Generation Identity. Would you explain your decision @esmewren? I’ll be making a formal complaint. pic.twitter.com/RdQcfxAeF1

— Tom Kibasi (@TomKibasi) March 15, 2019

Xp! Snap.

Is it just a ratings thing?

The most charitable reading

Newsnight has a bigger audience on significant news days so I’m minded to say they could do with being more responsible on those broadcasts. It costs them nothing and I can’t see how it’s worth it, publicity-wise, to wind up people who have a problem with normalising the fash. The GI creeps are at Speaker’s Corner most days rubbing up against nutters of all stripes. How difficult is it for production staff to just leave them there?

most nights newsnight struggles to post up a representative voice for the UK’s official opposition... so howtf have they got on a representative for thenppl who advocate the systematic ethnic cleansing of BAME people

and on the same day as christchurch too wth

has there been any good writing on how the emergent global far right could look to exploit the upcoming european parliamentary elections? this piece was a little unsettling - and I'm thinking about things like bannon touring europe pressing the flesh w various RW figures here, farage's visit to salvini last week etc. it seems like they're getting pretty organised. I'd be interested in reading any pieces that draw historical parallels with, uh, the 1930s too : /
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-facebook-elections

and - hopefully not being too parochial about this - but this wider trend is actually one of the reasons I'm v concerned about the way the 'resolution' to brexit is handled. thankfully I think our politicians do understand that if it is not dealt with sensitively and in a fashion which respects democratic principles, the far right feeds on 'betrayal'

My feeling is that the far right says they’re betrayed whatever the rest of us do or don’t do. I advocate calling out their entitlement issues whenever possible.

This is what the Spectator has published following a massacre of Muslims by a far-right terrorist #notshockinganymore pic.twitter.com/FdTuVfAS7h

— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 15, 2019

The Spectator still on their Islamophobia isn’t real tip.

Let us be very clear, what happened today was a diabolical and methodical ordering of words into a readable structure conveying a messages. it is most certainly not a sentence

wrt Newsnight, I don’t think there is a single cause. Esme Wren came in as Editor after thirteen years at Sky and seems to have intensified it but a lot of this stuff was present when Ian Katz (ex Guardian) was in charge, and probably before that too.

Ratings are one factor, the infamous dedication to faux ‘balance’ another. I think there are definitely people at the BBC who see Nick Griffin’s demolition on Question Time as a pivotal moment in contemporary politics (ignoring the fact it was probably Marmite that did for the BNP in the end) - without taking into account how the far-right has adapted and become more agile.

I don’t think you get to where we are now without a deep hostility to the left, though. Both in the sense of tying the rise of the far-right and Soc Dem politics into a false narrative about extremism, to which the Sensible Centre is a panacea, and in the Nagle-style ‘too much id-pol makes people fascist’ .

I don't understand how the Newsnight/BNP story came to be that way it is. I remember the BNP getting a boost, and indeed they got their highest ever proportion of the vote in the election after the broadcast.

Sunlight IS the best disinfectant. Doesn't stop it also being the best amplifier

I think it's mostly about making what they consider to be sexy, exciting television, if that helps the ratings that is obviously a good thing but I think it's primarily exciting for the programme makers, more exciting than talking to David Gauke again, for example.