James Delingpole's Blog, page 68

I watched, helpless, as a vicious Staffie ripped up my children's guinea pigs

I'm sorry to have to break the news so brutally but there's no other way: Pickles Deathclaw and Lily Scampers are no more. They are ex-guinea pigs. They have ceased to exist. And all because of one of those bastard, evil dogs you see everywhere these days attached to the arms — or, more worryingly, not attached to the arms — of the nation's hooded underclass yoof. We were sitting in the kitchen having lunch when it happened. 'What's that noise?' I said. Already I was on my feet and heading...

There's nothing 'Fantastic' about Mister Fox's PETA-style politics

Fantastic Mister Fox is the most poisonous and insidious piece of misanthropic, animal rights propaganda PETA never wrote. Its politics more closely resemble that of a rabidly townie, leftist vegetarian who believes that property is theft, meat production a vile perversion and pest control a form of racist genocide, than of some lovably eccentric children's author. So if Roald Dahl is turning in his grave at the very weird things Wes Anderson has done to his classic book, then part of me is k...

Nazis: the gift that goes on giving

Tomorrow – today if you're reading this on Wednesday 14 October – I'll be giving a lunchtime talk with fellow author and World War II junkie Guy Walters at Cheltenham literature festival.

Guy might slip in a brief mention of his fascinating and brilliant new book on fugitive Nazi war criminals Hunting Evil (in which he reveals, inter alia, that 95 per cent of the extravagant claims made by supposed Nazi-hunting kingpin Simon Wiesenthal were a figment of the old fraud's imagination). I'll...

Dizzee Rascal speaks up for the City. Probably.

Dizzee Rascal demands tighter regulation of City bonuses. Or so we are to understand from this analysis in the Telegraph's finance pages of the lyrics to Dizzee's latest hit Dirtee Cash.

Certainly his critique of Brownian deficit spending is worthy of the great Jeremy Warner:

People act shameless
Tryna live like entertainers,
Want a fat crib with the acres,
So they spend money that they ain't made yet,
Got a benz on tik that they ain't paid yet,
Spend their pay cheque
In the west end on the weekend

Inconvenient kids tell the eco-fascists where they can stick it

My heroes of the week are Kouros (7) and Roxanna (6) from Blackheath, photographed protesting outside the Climate Camp on their doorstep in the summer.

Their proud father tells me the trustafarian crusties inside the wire thought the placards were jolly sweet  – till they read what they actually said.

Go with the Qlo like Dizzee Rascal

I have just discovered the Holy Grail of men's shopping. And it's called Uniqlo. That's right, Uniqlo - the Japanese place with a name like washing powder or some complicated new word-puzzle game.

It first opened in Britain eight years ago without much success, but after a revamp and some tweaks to its styling (more European-friendly sizing; closer attention to the needs of the more fashion-aware UK market), its UK sales have risen from £19.3 million in 2007 to £37.3 million in 2008.

Walk into ...

Government's £6 million 'Bedtime Story' climate change ad: most pernicious waste of taxpayers' money ever?

The government has spent £6 million on a hard-hitting commercial warning children of the perils of failing to check under their beds and in their cupboards before they go to sleep.

The advert – "Watch Out – Or The Bogeyman Will Get You!" – has been rushed out by Ed Miliband's Department of Ignorance And Fear Promotion (formerly Dept of Energy and Climate Change)  in response to  "worrying" statistics showing that 52 per cent of children think the Bogeyman "will never ever crawl from...

Obama's won the Nobel Peace – WTF?!

Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize and I'm still reeling at the shock. Most of us are, I should think.

Here are my theories as to how it might have come about:

1. Unlike in most of the rest of the world  Øbama Køøl Aid (TM) remains Oslo's most popular beverage.

2. The Norwegian prize committee's sense of irony is growing ever more sophisticated, as it hinted when it gave the prize in 2002 to comedy ex-president Jimmy Carter, and hinted more strongly when it gave the prize in 2007 to...

How pathetically useless of Cambridge Union to ban Michael Savage

I've long had a soft spot for Cambridge, the charming, picturesque fenland university for people not quite ambitious enough to get into Oxford. But I don't think its Union debating society has done the place any favours by cancelling at the last minute its invitation to the US talk show host Michael Savage.

Savage was due to speak – via videophone – against the motion "This House Believes Political Correctness is Sane and Necessary" on October 15. The reason he had to do it by videophone, of c...

If class IS a problem for David Cameron he has only himself to blame

As a blogger you get pretty used to reading the odd piece of utter bilge below your posts. But rarely have been quite so nauseated and shocked as I was by some of the comments yesterday on the piece I wrote about my Oxford days with my old mucker Dave Cameron.

After twelve years of Blair and Brown Britain is, I think we can all agree, in the most terrible mess. Our economy is in ruins thanks in good part to an outrageous spree of deficit spending by an irredeemably socialist Chancellor. The...