James Delingpole's Blog, page 77

Norwich North: If only they could ALL lose

Quite the most depressing thing about tomorrow's Norwich North by-election is that, whoever wins, it will be a ruddy disaster for all of us.

I suppose the very worst-case scenario would be a victory for the Green candidate Rupert Read. As Oliver Kamm has pointed out, behind Read's personable manner and bunny-hugging vegan fluffiness, lurk some really quite terrifyingly hard core views.

After the Madrid train bombings, he crowed to the Independent:

<>"If you live by the sword, then your innocent citiz</>

The return of the vinyl? How Britain got its groove back

On top of a brown Formica cabinet in a Portakabin office in an anonymous warehouse on the outskirts of London sits the most privileged record player in pop-music history.

<>The Garrard direct-drive turntable was the first outside a recording studio ever to play the Beatles' Revolver and Sgt Pepper; the first to experience Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon; it was the first to be challenged by the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen; it was there at the birth of dance music; and it's still going st</>

Lying is not the way to defeat the BNP

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Do you remember earlier this month when the Government "proved" that there is "no bias in the allocation of social housing to immigrants"? I do, because Radio 4 didn't stop crowing about it all day.

<>"So this totally nails once and for all the evil and racist myth that white, indigenous populations are discriminated against by housing officers," ran the general tenor of Radio 4's - and for that matter, all the print media's - reporting of the issue. "Which means that not only are white, working cl</></>

The ineffable wrongness and stupidity of Harriet Harman

"Ageist" BBC must reinstate Arlene, says Harman.

<>Until I read that headline, I thought I knew exactly where I stood on l'affaire Strictly Come Dancing. I'm old enough to remember getting jolly excited watching lovely Arlene Phillips and Hot Gossip pouting and bottom-waggling their way through I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper, so I'm also old enough to be bothered by talented people losing their jobs as a result of "ageism". (Though the BBC, of course, denies that this was the reason it decid</>

Camp it Up

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Here's the fundamental problem with family camping holidays: husband and kids love them, wife pretends to but secretly finds the squalor, the poor lighting, and the lack of bathrooms with fluffy white towels a bit yuck.

<>And the solution? Glamping. It's short for 'glamorous camping', the theory being that you get to enjoy all the things that are special about life under canvas (proximity to nature; birdsong; sense of pioneering adventure, etc) but with the ghastliness (bad backs, rudimentary loos)</></>

Uppers and downers

Poor Michael Jackson. I know he was (probably) a kiddie fiddler and his music was crap, but that didn't stop me empathising when watching Michael Jackson's Last Days: What Really Happened (Channel 4, Sunday). Give or take the odd nose, skin-whitening operation, lurid court case, moon walk and dwindling multimillion-dollar fortune, there but for the grace of God went most of us.

<>I'm talking about that hideous moment in your life when you realise you've bitten off more than you can chew and you've </>