High life
Pandora’s box
Taki
Gstaad
On the evening that Charles Kennedy resigned, Barry and Lizzie Humphries came to dinner. My German cook Alexander made a special cake for Dame Edna, but Barry smelled a rat. He asked if the cake contained any alcohol. The answer was almost none at all. ‘Well,’ said the great man, who has not had a drink in 30 years, ‘if I ask for another ten helpings, we’ll know what’s in it.’ The idea that these Liberal creeps got rid of a man who had done a good job as leader of such a shitty party for having a drink too many is quite revolting. It’s almost as bad as Oscar Wilde being sent to prison for doing something 90 per cent of the upper classes used to do at school. Sure, they now say that Kennedy lied about his drinking in the past, but, with the kind of slash-and-burn press we have in Britain, what did they expect? Say anything against yourself nowadays, and the vultures will feast on your carcass before you can say Murdoch. I had never given Kennedy a moment’s thought, but now I realise what puerile stuff professional politicians are made of. I only wish my friend Zac Goldsmith would not get involved, because this Cameron fellow is starting to reek. He is recycling New Labour crap, and distancing himself from the greatest prime minister of the 20th century. Which means he’s weak, or another bullshitter like Tony Blair. But Zac is right. If one has an agenda, which he does, he has to work with the creeps in power. I am happy to be unattached and out of the loop, and need ing to kiss no one’s arse, especially a politician’s, but things don’t get done my way. Cameron has already gone soft on immigration, and that Stalinist Letwin is talking about redistribution of wealth. If they’re Tories, I’m Ariel Sharon.
And speaking of the unspeakable, I received a garbled message from Griffin Communications, which sends out Joe Sobran’s syndicated column. Joe, writing out of Virginia, described Sharon as a mass murderer. It was strong stuff, but Sharon has killed a hell of a lot of Arabs, and most likely also murdered Arabs when he headed Unit 101, a commando outfit that carried out retaliatory raids on Arab villages back in the early Fifties. His role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinians — although carried out by Christian Lebanese thugs — is undeniable. The email server of Sobran’s column, however, refused to send his column through. I am computer-illiterate, and don’t understand how the internet works, but this certainly looks like censorship, in the timehonoured manner of Arab regimes and less so — Israel.
So I ask you, dear readers, have we really come to this? No one’s allowed to call a spade a spade any longer? Are we supposed to forgive and forget Sharon’s crimes because he had a massive stroke? Mind you, he was the only one who could have pulled those ghastly settlers back, but, then, who had encouraged them to go there in the first place? Having said that, and having been pro-Palestinian throughout my adult life, I now realise these guys are clowns. Their leaders, that is. How can anyone make peace with people who can’t stop killing each other, and leaders who’d rather steal from their poor than fight their oppressors? One thing is for sure. The Balfour Declaration opened up a hell of a Pandora’s box.
But there is also good news on the horizon. The Home Office is to investigate allegations that immigration officials operated a ‘sex for visas’ scam favouring beautiful Brazilian women. So here’s another question for you: wouldn’t you allow a beautiful Brazilian woman into the country rather than, say, a Transylvanian dwarf? Of course you would, especially if you liked women, which is not a particularly English civil servants’ perversion. Even without the sex, I know I would, but then I don’t count. Incidentally, I received one of the most amusing letters from a family of eight children (they are Portuguese Catholics with proper and strict parents), all ten loyal Spectator readers in their sunny and very pleasant land. It had to do with the John Wilkes ditty of last week, and it made me laugh out loud. The kids got caught doing what Wilkes insisted was all that life supplied. I thank them for their kindness, as I thank my old friend Francis Hughes, who in the interest of progress flew from rainy and freezing London to sunny Gstaad in order to teach me once and for all how to use a word processor. After ten minutes I lost my temper and went off skiing. Poor Francis. He got stuck in Gstaad with nothing to do but look at those strange creatures walking about in fur coats with lots of jingling things hanging from their ears and throats. He is threatening to sue me if I ever again expose him to such creatures.
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