Talk:Rod Liddle

Reputation
Rod Liddle seems like a guy writing for the sake of writing, attention and money. He seeks to spread controversy and creates bias pieces of propaganda. Considering his 'colourful background' and the nature of his works, I have little time for Rod Liddle.

'Biased', not 'bias'. Nobody who contributes to talk pages seems to know this. Notreallydavid 10:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

It is quite normal for journalists to write for attention and money. The nature of the subjects tackled in his material, he is bound to create controversy. Controversy can be a very healthy thing, encouraging debate and public interest. SolarBreeze 16:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

"It was also alleged that Liddle refused to ignore the statement earlier in the year in which the MCB spoke about the Holocaust Memorial." Doesn't the author mean 'refused to acknowledge'? Notreallydavid 10:05, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Controversial statements
"Geordies were like "monkeys and morons", despite being raised in Guisborough, in the North East of England "

Yes, but Guisborough is about 50 miles south of Newcastle, and used to be part of Yorkshire - it's now part of Redcar and Cleveland. People who live in the area would not consider themselves Geordies.

I don’t think that Liddle was too concerned about pre-marital sex, he was more concerned with people who supposedly want to reduce the spread of STDs by telling youngsters not to use condoms. This is potentially dangerous and I can understand why he smells the scent of bullshit in the air.--Miller 23:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

His bunny boiler ex-wife has written another Daily Mail article about how sad she is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.199.104.83 (talk) 13:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

COI
Worth noting his article in this week's Spectator : "My profile on the Wikipedia site, which is lauded for its democracy and commitment to facts, appears to have been written in committee by the Muslim Council of Britain, a former BBC colleague who once, unfortunately for the corporation, edited the Today programme, and a handful of militant atheists. At first I was shocked by the Wikipedia stuff and set about editing it so some of the more egregious errors — mostly from the BBC person — might be expunged. But within a day or two the BBC person and the jihadis and the atheists had been hard at work and the profile was even more skewed and partisan and inaccurate than before. So I gave up meddling with my own profile and, having learned a lesson, started meddling with the profiles of people I hated as much as the BBC person hated me."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.0.113.143 (talk) 01:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree with what he says actually, this does indeed read like a press statement put out by the Muslim Council of Britain. It's all sourcable no doubt, but the problem is one of WP:UNDUE weight. A criticism sourced from a site called Islamophobia Watch, with no evidence of notability outside a certain esoteric circle really isn't deserving of a section in the article. If it were balanced by other opinion perhaps, but really Rod Liddle isn't an important enough subject and hasn't provoked much notable controversy. --Lo2u (T • C) 06:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Liddle also boasted in The Spectator (18 April): 'I went into the profile of the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and added the words "cheating, Portuguses c***" in every sentence and was delighted to see that my alterations remained in place for a week or so. From that, I moved on to Harriet Harman which unaccountably omitted to mention the crucial point: that she habitually performed unnatural sex acts upon geese.' I was not at all surprised to find in the 25 April edition, a reply to Liddle's article by User:Charles Matthews, in which he stated "a trawl through the history section of the site article on Cristiano Ronaldo reveals Rod's claims to have vandalised the page are false". Viewfinder (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Viagra
What about the story that he needed Viagra. Also is there any point in giving his own biased reason why he had to accept a caution for domestic abuse. This is a real look at him not some place for his mealy mouthed excuses.

The page seems to advertise his work
The wikipedia page seems to be an advert for his books or documentaries. That is not the purpose of wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BuffyWhodonit (talk • contribs) 08:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Chuka Umunna
See Talk:Chuka_Umunna.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 14:24, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks Ian. Philip Cross (talk) 15:01, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Political party
I have removed the 'Political views' section from the article because it seemed insubstantial and unnecessary. Two of the three sources for this passage also seemed to have been misused, their content did not clearly match the comments preceding the citation

About a month ago, in this edit, an anonymous user removed the reference in the infobox to Liddle's support for the Labour Party on the grounds that a "questionable source", Liddle himself, had been cited. I think we have to take it on trust that Liddle is a Labour Party supporter, despite the considerable evidence against this assertion, because anything else would be original research. Incidentally, Liddle repeated his assertion about Labour being his party in the Channel4/Martin Durkin programme on Nigel Farage a couple of months ago. Philip Cross (talk) 10:38, 22 May 2014 (UTC)


 * This subject has become an issue again. An anonymous user suggested in an edit summary that Liddle's assertion was not credible because of the conservative publications he writes for. This is not a good enough reason. While his sympathies are almost always of the right, the publications Liddle writes for do not entirely consist of conservative contributors. Philip Cross (talk) 08:03, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Collapse of Liddle's first marriage
Another editor removed a few quotes from the passage on the collapse of Liddle's marriage to Rachel Royce. Trivial it might be, this series of events received plenty of coverage in the serious press at the time. As well as the UK broadsheets, a search still uncovers 2004 articles from reputable newspapers in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It is therefore clearly notable. Liddle's insulting comments about Royce, and her response, appear in multiple sources and cannot be written off as "quotes that add nothing." If one is so minded, they are as revealing as any of Liddle's other comments which have found there way into this article. Philip Cross (talk) 13:13, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100310145750/http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5601833/benefits-of-a-multicultural-britain.thtml to http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5601833/benefits-of-a-multicultural-britain.thtml

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 * Original source still online under a new url. The Wayback machine servers are very slow, so it seemed appropriate to substitute it, even though The Spectator has an access limit. Philip Cross (talk) 19:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

caution
When you accept a police caution in England and Wales you are admitting guilt. I'm not sure we should be placing equal weight to his formal admission of guilt, declared to the legal system, given under advice from his lawyer, as his later claims that he didn't do it. This sentence needs to be re-worded to highlight that the caution is a formal declaration of guilt: "He admitted the offence and accepted a police caution, but asserted later that he did so only because it was the quickest way for him to be released, and that he had not assaulted her". DanBCDanBC (talk) 13:39, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Controversy
Why has this page become a litany of the most controversial things this man has said? I don’t see how that fits with wiki’s mission. 2A02:C7F:2C28:5600:7C4E:93EA:8379:3415 (talk) 22:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the page should simply be shorter. Ritenhouse (talk) 22:06, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Early career and sources
As others have pointed out on this talk page, this article seems to be very much a collection of very controversial quotes. Two I take issue with though are in a paragraph in Liddle's early career section.

The first of these is a quote from an article Liddle wrote in which he states he did not become a teacher because he "could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids". While a bizarre quote, it does have context completely removed from it in which the full meaning of the quote is clarified. The next one is a statement he made regarding CSAM decades later, having absolutely nothing to do with his early career in any way. Looking through the history, they seem to have both been added at the same time by the same editor.

Twice I have attempted to remove these off-topic sources only for my edits to be reverted. It's far from the only issue with this article, but it is, to me, the most glaring one. The current state of this article is, frankly, on the borderline of a NPOV dispute. 148.252.146.100 (talk) 01:01, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Is there material regarding the 'context' of the 'shag the kids' quote that we could add? Nomoskedasticity (talk) 06:36, 26 February 2024 (UTC)