ROD LIDDLE
I know things may not seem too great now but here’s six reasons why 2025 WILL be better
Rod explains why the chance of being evaporated in a nuclear war has reduced
OK, I get it. It’s sleeting down outside and your gonads are frozen solid.
You daren’t put the heating on without taking out another mortgage.
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Prices are rising faster, David Lammy is still the Foreign Secretary, and half the family has got flu, norovirus or are too p***ed to stand.
So, sure, things don’t look terribly optimistic right now.
But let me be the devil’s advocate for a moment. Let me suggest that 2025 might even be a year to cheer. That things — well, some things — might start to get a bit better.
Perhaps a year to remember.
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Why?
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The chance of being evaporated in a nuclear war has reduced a good deal with the election of Donald Trump in the US. He is realistic about the Ukraine conflict and perhaps we will see that horrible war come to an end.
And he’ll take no nonsense from China. The Middle East crisis may continue for a while but all the doom-mongers were wrong when they said it would lead to global conflagration.
It hasn’t and it won’t.
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Trump will also force Europe to take its defence duties a bit more seriously.
So, all in all, there’s no need to be stocking up on iodine tablets just yet.
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Whopping 150,000 small boat migrants crossed Channel to Britain since 2018 – more than population of Blackpool
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Wokery is on the retreat across the Western world. More and more huge firms are dropping their nasty Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity programmes after realising that they are unfair and bad for business.
The ludicrous transgender lobby is losing every fight in the courts.
Common sense is beginning to raise its head again.
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There is an outside chance Nottingham Forest might win the Premier League. This would cheer everyone up.
Except for people in Derby. And maybe Leicester.
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Western liberalism is pretty much dead in the water.
The political creed that has kept incomes low, allowed millions upon millions of economic migrants into Europe and the US, and celebrated wokery is being defeated at the ballot box in country after country.
OK, it hasn’t quite happened here yet. That’s because of our first-past-the-post system. But there are signs right now that this is changing.
The populism taking Europe by storm might make its breakthrough here.
Either with Nigel Farage and Reform UK, or Kemi Badenoch’s new-look Conservatives.
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I haven’t heard that really stupid and irritating advert for Domino’s Pizza for a bit. So maybe they’ve taken it off air or something.
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This Labour Government surely must perform better than they did in the last half of 2024?
I mean, it would be almost impossible for them to get any worse, wouldn’t it.
Maybe Sir Keir and Co will do a bit of a reboot.
Drop Ed Miliband’s Net Zero nonsense.
Stop penalising the lowest-paid in society. Start investing in industry.
Start rewarding ambition and aspiration.
Realise that the current levels of immigration are not remotely sustainable.
OK, OK. Maybe I’m being a little bit over-optimistic here.
But perhaps Sir Keir will realise that he wasn’t really cut out to be Prime Minister. And hand over the reins to Wes Streeting.
So there’s all that. Plus the fact that Squid Game 2 is on TV.
It’s all going to be bloody marvellous, I’m telling you.
Time to let it RIP, Johnnie
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I WAS terribly sad to learn of the death of veteran DJ Johnnie Walker.
He was still presenting Sounds Of The Seventies until a couple of months ago.
But you could hear, in his voice, the extreme difficulty he had in getting the words out from time to time.
The Liddle household were devoted listeners. Even though I’m the only one who actually remembers the Seventies.
Anyway, rest in peace, Johnnie.
Or if not in peace, then with Led Zep hits hammering out of gigantic Marshall amplifiers.
Class war...
IF I am honest, I don’t see why private schools shouldn’t be subject to VAT. They are businesses no different, in essence, from Tesco or Volkswagen.
But the increase in fees will not have a uniform effect.
The rich middle classes who send their brats to private school will stump up the extra, no probs.
The people it will hurt are the working class mums and dads who have scrimped and saved every last penny to offer a better life for their kids.
Once again, then, Labour is the enemy of aspiration.
Change: it's no segret
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THE weather has been so mild over Christmas that we were able to sit in the garden under a parasol with our eggnogs.
On Christmas Eve, I looked out of the kitchen window and saw a swarm of bees spinning furiously over the lawn.
In late December!
Meanwhile, daffodils have been seen a few miles south of where I live – they should appear in late February.
And in Saltburn, where I live, a little egret has returned for the winter.
They are birds from the warmth of southern Europe, but this one has decided Teesside might be nicer for a winter sunshine break than Cannes.
You don’t have to buy into Ed Miliband’s ludicrous schemes to know, for a fact, that climate change is happening.
Boats sail on
SO, how has Labour coped with the influx of economic migrants coming across the Channel in little boats?
If you remember, Yvette Cooper was going to sort this problem out, once and for all.
She was going to, er, “pursue” the people traffickers and give them a piece of her very, very, small, but perfectly formed, mind.
What’s happened?
Have you seen loads of traffickers taken to task?
And the latest figures show the numbers coming here have increased by 25 per cent since the Tories were in power.
Labour – all talk and no trousers. Or fur coat but no knickers, as my mum used to say.
Roo's in the dog house
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I WONDER if there is anybody in the country, other than the board of Plymouth Argyle FC, who didn’t see this coming?
The club have just sacked Wayne Rooney as manager.
Argyle sit right at the bottom of the Championship and look pretty sure to be relegated. And the thing is, we could all have told you that will happen.
Just look at Wayne’s managerial record. There is no reason why very talented footballers should make really competent managers.
Some do, some don’t.
Wayne was a terrific player for club and country. But he seems to have the managerial skills of a six-month-old cockapoo with ADHD.
Wayne, mate, find something else to do, for gawd’s sake.
CONGRATS to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He has just been knighted.
I assume the citation reads: “For his unstinting commitment to annoying the hell out of all Londoners. And for being woker than a three-month-old baby at two o’clock in the morning.”
The real question, though, is why he has accepted the knighthood. I thought he hated colonialism.
And here he is – now known as a Knight of the Order of the British Empire.
He’ll be erecting statues to Cecil Rhodes next.
AS a fully signed-up member of the British League of Miserable Old Bastards (BLMOB), I was never going to like the New Year’s Eve fireworks very much, was I?
All that money going up in flames in London. To the accompaniment of really crap music.
And the usual political posturing from Sadiq Khan.
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It all seems to be an exercise in international willy-waving.
And with everyone skint and the elderly wrapped up in tinfoil because they can’t afford to put the heating on, doesn’t such extravagance look a bit, y’know, out of place?
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