In this week's Spectator: spontaneous combustion in three easy steps!

It's funny, I've been reading the Spectator online for a while now, and was surprised to find that it was reasonable, interesting and thought-provoking. Having subscribed to the paper edition, it's suddenly morphed into the maddening right-wing rag I'd expected it to be. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people being right-wing - in fact, reading the Spectator was partly an attempt to guard against me becoming a narrow-minded left-wing bigot (they do exist). But... well, maybe if I give a summary of the articles I've read so far in today's edition, you'll understand why it's made me want to beat my head against a brick wall.

1. Rod Liddle - "Make naivety history". We shouldn't cancel third world debt, because poverty isn't our fault at all - it's those nasty African dictators that are doing it, and we don't want to encourage them by writing off their debt repayments, do we now?

2. Michael Henderson - "Time to rescue BBC English". Why does nobody pronounce things properly any more? Verily, it is leading inexorably to the collapse of civilisation as we know it. [My problem with this one wasn't so much the argument as the fact that he had nothing better to write about.]

3. Mark Steyn - "Bush will not be mocked". All you English Tories should start supporting the war on terror, because if you don't, the ever-increasing Muslim population will take over the world! [Direct quote: the war on terror is "really about" the fact that there are "more Muslims, and more of those Muslims are radicalised...at a certain point, they won't need to release dirty nukes, because Islamification will be so advanced that many countries will simply find a way to accommodate it."]

Those summaries may sound like exaggerated parodies - but to be honest, these articles parody themselves. Seriously, what I've written above is a pretty fair summary of their arguments. If you don't believe me, you can read them yourselves at www.spectator.com.

Excuse me while I go and practise that spontaneous combustion thingy. Let nobody say the Spectator isn't educational...