I Suspected as Much
Tim Blair – “NOTORIOUS CONSERVATIVE” OUT OF BRITAIN
Mark Steyn is no longer published in the UK. Leftoid Guardian columnist Lionel Shriver will miss him, as will thousands:
His column has now been dropped by both the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator. I don’t know the inside story, so I can’t be certain that the jettisoning of this notoriously conservative Canadian constitutes political self-censorship.
Thus my indignation is solely on account of my own entertainment. Fair enough, few Guardian readers would share his hard-right views. I don’t always agree with him either, but I love Mark Steyn. Even though I write them, I cannot bear most columns, which when light-hearted usually err on the trivial, and when serious usually err on the po-faced. But however you may deplore his opinions, Steyn is funny. How often do you read comment pages and laugh aloud? He writes about big issues with tremendous energy, and he has a sensibility now more pertinent to British politics than ever: a refined sense of the absurd.
Steyn remains available to print readers in Canada, New York, Jerusalem, Chicago, and Australia, among other zones. The Telegraph and Spectator have lost their best columnist.
I can only assume the editorial board decided to go anti-war full stop. He was just too pro-American. Didn’t really jive with the Tories’ kinder, gentler side.
It’s a ridiculous business move. His Telegraph columns are probably the most routinely linked-to columns in the right side of the blogosphere. Most of what he writes elsewhere is just a rehash of those columns. I’d say he got in a fight with Boris, since he’s off the Spectator as well, except Boris gave up control of that magazine when he took up his shadow cabinet post. Who knows. What a crock.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
I think we need someone to start agitating for the Edinborough Times to pick up the ball.
The Tories are against British involvement in Iraq? Bizzaro. In that case, I would say that they’ve been well and truly “triangulated”.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I have something in the Australian I’m trying to decide on what to saw to. Speaking of which.
March 10th, 2006 at 1:49 am
It’s Matthew d’Ancona who’s to blame, new Speccie editor and complete Notting Hill Tory. He’s also a Fellow of All Souls, so very bright. He’s been writing Blairite, or at least Blair-sympathetic pieces in the Sunday Telegraph for years. In short he’s the type of Tory who’s well enough off not to need Toryism. In that context Mark Steyn must seem a little, um, undernuanced, if such a word exists. The Edinburgh Times is The Scotsman. That’s actually worth a thought.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:05 am
Sorry about the mis-spell, I must have been typing semi-phonetically. I was at Kings Cross (?) train station some years ago when an American chappy walked up to me and asked if I knew if this is the station for the train to “Eddinburg”. I said yes, but don’t call it that, you’ll upset the natives.
(Practically every time I find myself in a foreign town, someone comes up and asks directions.)
Yes, The Scotsman! They need a Forth-right columnist! Hehe.
March 10th, 2006 at 2:57 am
Very good! Ha Ha! The place that gets most mis-spelt is Middlesbrough, simply because learning how to spell it could give people the impression you might have been there, which is not a good idea.
Funny about getting asked directions isn’t it? Happens to me all the time here, naturally enough, but when I was in Rome last year there was any number of English folk came up to me and asked me how to get to the Colosseum. Fortunately it’s one of those monuments of which you really can say “you can’t miss it”.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:41 am
People in London always used to come up to me for directions. Then (in the middle of Queens Gate) I sent a cute couple all dressed up to the V&A rather than the Albert Hall. Could have died. The word must’ve spread because they stopped asking me after that.
So, Red, are you going to get Mark Steyn a gig with your pals at the Scotsman? Or are you thinking of a different though.
I do think it has to be Matt though. He’s written one column I thought was really good, and the rest I rarely link to, much less read. He said something once that really cheesed me off… But what’s with all the Telegraph columnists writing for the Spectator. And him getting Steyn thrown off both. Very low.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Telegraph owns the Specator. Steyn’s been on the way out since he fell out with Boris over Iraq.
Ah the demon redhead misdirector of Kensington! It was you!
March 10th, 2006 at 10:15 am
It was only the one time! And in my defense, Queens Gate is a very easy place to get turned around.
March 13th, 2006 at 2:31 am
And that plethora of buildings named Albert can’t help either. And the V&A’s a perfectly fine instead. Suppose it depends what time of day it was. Not showtime, one hopes.
March 13th, 2006 at 10:13 am
No it was. They were obviously on their way to a show. But that’s not it, it’s the fact that the park felt like it was to the south, and Cromwell Road felt like it was to the North. I’d have to hold my map upside down to read it properly, that’s how strong it was in my head. My sense of direction exists independently from the four points of the globe.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:56 am
Hmmm. The sun wasn’t out then, I take it? Difficult to get disoriented in Edinburgh for obvious reasons, but quite easy in Glasgow with its grid of named (not numbered) streets. I have to keep checking where the river is. Golly I don’t like Glasgow.
March 14th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Yeah even in the darkest close I never got turned around in Edinburgh. Of course, I was so sick, maybe some sort of instinctual survival mechanism kicked in.
March 15th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Edinburgh’s a lot more fun when you’re well. It wasn’t our world-class flu bugs that got you, was it? Don’t you just love those sudden panoramas of the Forth you can get from closes in the Old Town? Never fail to delight.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:11 am
I don’t think I saw any of those. I hate that, being somewhere and frantically trying to see what you’re supposed to see, then when you’re 5,000 miles away finding out how much you’ve missed.
It was one of those big braw Eurasian bugs, fighting and scraping its way to the top of the competition heap of two continents (and several bonus rounds with African challengers as well). My first day in London I was awake for a very long time, and went drinking as well, and whenever I stay up too late I get a cold, but this time my immune system, used to the little, delicate new world bugs, got clobbered, and I pretty much didn’t get over it the whole time I was there. It faded for most of it, but while I was in Scotland I had easily the worst sore throat I’ve ever had. And no money for tea or toddies.