Dear All,
The enclosed article by Jeremy Clarkson was in last week's Sunday Times but has since been 'pulled' - probably by the subject of the article, Peter Mandelson. So much for free speech. But poor old manglebum fails to appreciate how the blogsphere works and in no time the article finds itself going viral round the world. Wonderful. Enjoy it - .....
Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday Times 8/11/09
I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I’m afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more.
He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt on.
I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.
There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America .
Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can’t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can’t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation’s capital. They can’t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can’t understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it’s racist.
And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn’t understand because he’s a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, “I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.”
It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?
You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for “organising” a plumber.
You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany ... because you just can’t.
The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.
Canada’s full of people pretending to be French, South Africa’s too risky, Russia’s worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn’t help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you’ll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.
I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.
So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit in the meantime.
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Comments
More likely to it being pulled by an editor that suspected a really stupid and obviously inaccurate column (unless you really believe that middle class kids can't get into university) would probably do more good than harm to Mandleson and the government. I get very irritated by people whining about the country who don't seem to be prepared to do anything about it, or just f**k off to somewher that suits them better - this applies to thick TV attention-whores as it does to illegal immigrants.
Can't say i am rushing back for more.......
Heaven forbid! It would just be simply awful if we pay the third world what they deserve and save the environment!
I know he's often deliberately provocative, but the fairtrade bit annoys me. That a millionaire can attack the earning rights of those earning barely enough to survive, and grouping that as some sort of fad that he would like done away with, is just plain nasty.
Yeh I also like Top Gear, and he's an entertaining guy, but if you judge his views in terms of serious political comment, he's obviously a self-important moron. People always defend him and say it's not serious, and obviously he doesn't literally want to tie Peter Mandelson to a van, but the actual opinions do seem to be his. That you can argue that someone is disadvantaged being born rich and white is simply laughable.
After all, for all its over the top sensationalist and extravagant leanings, purely for comedic effect, get it? he at least sends himself up at the same time.
I wish some of the pompous drivel issued by my own Government/Local Authority and their media lackeys had as much honesty. FFS opinions are like arse holes and everyone has got one, you dont have to agree with it and if you dont agree, you should at least be given the option of seeing through it.
Anyway, whats the betting we fuck up this Saturday ?
Charlie Brooker is much better at it anyway.
He didnt.
It's more 'in the style of'
People are allowed to disagree with Clarkson. I know he's over the top on purpose, but surely you don't think that there's no opinion at all behind what he says? Is it all a big laugh and he actually loves the environment, taxation and multiculturalism? Is it all just coincidence that all his pieces espouse strong right wing values?
I would say he is in the role of 'entertainer' and is purposefully hyperbolic, but that there's some genuine vitriol in his comments.
So it says more about the people who lap this up than it does about Clarkson.
If satire is to be funny then it has to have some accuracy, Rory Bremner/Spiiting Image, HIGNFY etc are generally accurate with their satire, this is a mean-spirited rant, there's a difference.
And you're entitled to disagree with the '200 left leaning screaming liberals'. I was just arguing against the idea that Clarkson is above criticism
EDIT: I think we have a slight misunderstanding here. I'm not arguing against it being published, I'm arguing against your idea that criticism of Clarkson is 'jumping on the anti-Clarkson bandwagon' and that we're 'missing the point or pointlessness of his ramblings anyway'. I'm saying there is a point underneath his ramblings, and that point can be disagreed with.
What's he going to do next year when the Tories get in?
I think Sussex is right; you are both agreeing on the prinicple of publishing it, but by Soapy criticising people who 'jump on the anti-Clarkson bandwagon as not 'getting it', is suggesting - as Sussex says - that all the hyperbole does not reflect the true nature of his views. Of course it does; most of the people who criticise him get that he doesn't mean the stuff he says literally, and it's dry/witty/sarcastic/whatever humour, but his general position that generates this humour is also on display. And it is vitriolic.
To be honest, it's probably fair to assume that the political party that closest resembles the political views displayed in this article is the BNP. Who would probably agree and espouse several of the underlying points here (even accounting for the hyperbole). Funny how one is a much-loved TV personality and British institution, and the other is the most hated political party in the country.
He may be funny and have an appealing writing style, but I don't let that forgive his extremely right wing and personally distateful views.
My point is, that shouldn't Clarkson just be left to small town, pre-teen boys?
In the sake of balance I don't like Mandelson much either.
oooooooooooooooooooooo sorry againnnnnnnnnnnn cant have a view that not some total bumlicking BlairBrown left wing kak can we.
just so there is no misunderstanding ------ when this anti English rabble are thrown on the scrap heap in a few months time i hope who ever gets in gives me the job to search out every pro labour left wing "free thinker" noooooooooooo do stop laughing (left wing and free thinkers made me self laugh) and burn them all on Blackheath ---- id do it for free wont even charge for the petrol.
as for banning the article well why dont you Guardianistas check out article 19 of the United Nations Universal declaration of Human Rights . Human rights in the UK who actually is that for ?
Can we disagree with it and not f**k off to somewhere else? You seem to air you disagreement with many 'leftist/Guardian-ist' viewpoints, so presumably you're happy to disagree with something without doing so.
I agree that it should not have been pulled - no one on here has disagreed with that GH.
Who exactly has banned the article? If the Sunday Times decide not to publish it, that's their decision. Doesn't amount to "banning" it or in infringment of freedom of speech.
And Blair and Brown - left wing? Seriously? They've spent their entire time in power acting in the interersts of big business. Not remotely left wing.
He did not write it
Clarkson can be amusing, he can also be an immense tiresome bore, and seems to think himself a second rate comedian at times .
Working at the BBC I am always amused by the way Clarkson and his 'gang' wind up 'the viewer and the trust of the bbc, by making more and more outrageous statements, for the bbc spokesperson to explain that he did not 'mean that, and no offence was implied'..... and the ordinary staff at the beeb have to go on 'courses because of overpaid rent-a-gobs like him and Ross/Brand.
Clarkson to me has a wish to be a 'martyr', or be the mayor of London, and in his own words' some would say '...... he is a middle class reactionary ex public schoolboy, that is so concerned about his 'image' that his own management company control's his photographs,....... so much for the boy's own brave heart of the tv world,...... but his comments on Mandy are amusing........
As always if you are going to lecture us about being English - try and learn at least a few basic grammatical rules of the language. I'm sure you don't want people thinking that you are an ill-educated dick with shit for brains.