Morocco's king, an ally of Trump, has scored a significant victory this week not just against Spain, but against the EU as a whole – as the union showed it would not stick together in the event of an attack by a neighbour. The EU's enemies took notice.

The king who outfoxed Pedro Sánchez

Morocco’s absolute ruler Mohammed VI turned Spain’s border into leverage over Madrid

ft.com

I don’t know what the name is for “deliberately exploiting people’s inbuilt sense of decency and fair play as a way of cynically fucking them over”. I don’t know it’s been necessary to have one, most of the time.

This is all horrific stuff, and I invite you to go back to 2018/19 and reread her columns, newspaper interviews and podcast appearances talking about it, and then decide who it sounds like it was, that had been doing all this.

Neither Patricia Highsmith nor Muriel Spark strike me as having been good or particularly nice people. John Buchan, not a nice guy. Dickens was a real piece of shit to his wife, Roald Dahl really poisonously unpleasant.

And now everything is great and everyone is happy, because austerity was wise and totally the right thing to do. All those loud, smart, angry people were correct and they weren’t so disastrously wrong that it’s now hard to see how we start fixing the unbelievable damage that they caused.

Not more complex than: he was one of the special people who have Freedom Plus to do and say whatever they want without any limitations set by the public, who need to be watched like hawks and harshly punished, the second they step out of line or get any ideas about how things should be organised.

Been getting annoyed about how coverage keeps putting a positive spin on SpaceX debris crashing into the moon. Yeah scientists are going to learn something from it because that's what scientists DO, they OBSERVE It's debris!!! They're LUCKY it's crashing into the moon, fuck their littering lol

Ex-PM Starmer said, in response to Raise the Colours terrorising people, ‘I am supporter of flags’, ‘I’m very encouraging of flags. I think they’re patriotic and I think they’re a great symbol of our nation’ and his family had ‘got St George’s flag in our flat’ www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Cllr Dr Alex Powell@apowelllaw.bsky.social · yesterday

The campaign of harassment and intimidation Raise the Colours have undertaken against council staff, contractors, and members of the public as reported by the Clarion today is shocking if not surprising. Excellent reporting. oxfordclarion.uk/the-clarion-...

Many people outside the UK have been asking me who Rod Liddle was. Here's Stewart Lee (from 08:53 onwards) on the man described by Fraser Nelson (former editor of The Spectator) as 'the greatest satirist since Swift.' Let this be the last word on the subject. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFt3...

Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle - 4.5 Migrants

YouTube video by Ian Kenny

youtube.com

As a boomer, I consider this further evidence that people my age and older should have to pass a proficiency test for the internet.

Owen Jones@owenjones.bsky.social · 2d ago

They are radicalising people into extremism.

Driving test but for smartphones

Why isn't anybody sharing their favourite Liddle articles? If he was so good they'd be all over the place at a time like this, wouldn't they?

NEW | A corrective to the gushing tributes… LIDDLE TO BE CELEBRATED An honest obituary for Rod Liddle, dead at 66, dead inside for many years before that. brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/liddle-to-...

Liddle to be celebrated

An honest obituary for Rod Liddle, dead at 66, dead inside for many years before that.

brokenbottleboy.substack.com

Not speaking ill of the dead is how Jimmy Saville got something approaching a state funeral.

Something horrible and awful has happened to me which must never happen again. How can I use this against my enemies, who were not responsible?

I recall when an MP was murdered by a Nazi shouting “Britain First!”, we had weeks of molten political/media terror about the abstract concept of divisiveness and social media abuse, because that’s much more conducive to furthering their shared goals, which do not include resisting the far right.

Incredible shit here: the guy Badenoch is defending was sent to prison for sending racist abuse to the MP Luciana Berger. Who then did a whole series of interviews and columns talking about her criminal harassment by Nazis, in a manner intended to make listeners believe it was done by Labour members

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · yesterday

Even I am taken aback at the new and surprising ways these people find to insult the public’s intelligence and make it more clear the only operative professional standard in force is “LOL fuck you”

This is, imo, absolutely the consequence of politicians, media figures and others being actively unwilling to condemn this behaviour

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · yesterday

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

The British press then came down on the neighbour who had reported Johnson’s drunken 2 am plate-smashing row to the police like a ton of bricks

Nate O@nateo.bsky.social · yesterday

Weird how so many members of the UK commentariat and tabloid sphere beat (Liddle), rape (Taki) and murder (Kay) women (and those are the ones we know about). Oh, remember when Boris Johnson allegedly physically abused Carrie Symonds? ‘Get off me!’ she screamed www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

As a boomer, I consider this further evidence that people my age and older should have to pass a proficiency test for the internet.

Owen Jones@owenjones.bsky.social · 2d ago

They are radicalising people into extremism.

They are radicalising people into extremism.

The Creative Industries added £124 billion to the UK economy in 2023, but yes, let's not bother to fund any training and education in them. I mean, it's not like we're known for music, fashion, artists, filmmakers, performers. Make it make sense.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 6d ago

Creative & performing arts subjects received £16.8 million SPG 2024-25; £12.9 million in 2025-26; £ O million in 2026-27. The University of Creative Arts will thus lose half of its government funding this year; Art University Bournmouth 40.7%, Norwich U of Arts 40.4% and Leeds Arts U 30.3%. 1/2

This looks like the press photo whenever you get an e mail from Mute.

There's about to be a lot of eulogising of Rod Liddle by a large portion of the media and by some MPs. They'll all skip over the domestic abuse and admitting in print that he would try to have sex with (rape) 13-14 year olds. The world is a better and slightly safer place today.

As Rod Liddle has died, I notice this column I wrote in 2019 about his attacks on people with M.E. is on the most read again. Rebekah Brooks, of News UK, described Liddle today as “provocative”. In reality, he spread lies about very sick people for cash. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rod Liddle vilifies disabled people. I’m tired of the hate. We all should be | Frances Ryan

Whether it is ME patients or another target, huge swathes of the media have normalised hatred of minorities for years, says Guardian columnist Frances Ryan

theguardian.com

I’m very much on the “don’t speak ill of the dead” side of civility but that doesn’t mean distorting what someone did with their life, particularly if they used their position to hurt others. Liddle was not a brilliant provocateur. He used misinformation to whip up hate against bedbound people.

Roast slowly and painfully in hell Liddle you piece of shit

Let's just take a moment to think that there is an editor out there who actually thought it was acceptable to publish this filth by Rod Liddle.

Rod Liddle was very much like Marmite, in that you wouldn’t want him on your television screen, radio, or newspaper.