Jeremy Clarkson... 'Road Tax??'

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John the Monkey

Frivolous Cyclist
Location
Crewe
I'm afraid I'm not going to chill out about this. People are being abused, put in danger, injured and often killed by drivers who have developed an attitude towards cyclists perpetuated and justified by gits like Clarkson. However considering the fact they totally got away with serious racism* last week suggests there's little I can do by complaining.
Clarkson is an intelligent man who earns his money by pretending to be the sort of boorish oaf you'd make excuses to move out of earshot from in the saloon bar. That is his tragedy, albeit a sadly lucrative one. I find it impossible to watch Top Gear because of it.

"[Clarkson] is either an idiot, who actually believes all the badly researched, lying, offensive sh*t he says, or he's a genius, who's worked out exactly the most accurate way to annoy me."
-Stewart Lee
 

John the Monkey

Frivolous Cyclist
Location
Crewe
Stuart Lee has summed up Hammond rather well. Not a big fan of his but this is shockingly accurate in places.

"He's not a real hamster".

Still makes me laugh.
 

Simon_m

Guru
I think that it will reinforce drivers attitudes to cycles because of the road tax thing. People are easily led by TV and like to behave like their heroes, ie Clarkson. But hey, it's an "entertainment" show which I still love and enjoy. Wouldn't mind going to Albania though, looks pretty cool. Not on a bike though :tongue:
 

John the Monkey

Frivolous Cyclist
Location
Crewe
Just watched the Stuart Lee clip and was disgusted with it. I am not a great fan of TG but I found stuart Lee as bad as Clarkson.
Lee himself said this about his Top Gear routines;

"I mean, you can't be on Top Gear, where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.

...

He claimed that he would still use the material if the Top Gear team turned up to his show and added: "Clarkson is a right-wing libertarian so he'd probably be all right with it.

"I'd happily debate the routine with Hammond and I think he'd get what it's about, that he's being used as a symbol of the sort of debased crassness that passes for controversial humour these days."

when Clarkson joked about lorry drivers, Hammond said this;

Richard Hammond told Newsbeat: "Jeremy was just being Jeremy, just being himself and that's what people watch the show for, so why change it?"

when he joked about Hammond's ("Speeding kills", he smirked) crash, the BBC said this;

A BBC spokesman said: "Jeremy Clarkson did not say it was untrue that speed kills. On the contrary, he made the statement without qualification and allowed viewers to draw their own conclusions. The laughter shown was a true reflection of the atmosphere at the studio, where the audience were determined to celebrate Richard's strength and survival."

Lee should probably just get someone to roll up and say "Oh, that's just Stewart", as it seems to work for Top Gear presenters.
 

asterix

Comrade Member
Location
Limoges or York
Just watched the Stuart Lee clip and was disgusted with it.

Yeah, but all true, though.

(except for where he is joking of course)
 
Everyone write and complain....

Then top gear will announce an apology from the "angry cyclists" on air, and make some further joke about it, like they always do...

...ie, don't waste your time complaining.


I find all this arguing about the semantics of "Road Tax" v. "VED" boring. That's all it is - playing upon words. As far as I'm concerned, each time mine comes up for renewal :sad: it says "tax disc" on the form and that's good enough for me.

More to the point, is that a good many cyclists pay for the tax disc, on a car that spends a lot of its time gathering dust on the driveway whilst we take the bike instead. So I'm shelling out some £160 or whatever, for not using my car...

As for C***son's enchilada escapada, I fail to understand how he has 'immunity' whereas Woss/Brand didn't....

It's to try and get away from making the tax sound like it pays for the road.

And if your logic worked based on you using your bike with your car taxed on the road, why can't we have 2 cars and only tax one? Sadly I hate this "I have a car that is taxed at home blah blah" argument itself.



Though of course, how most others here will take it - it's there just for effect, like most of the other comments about a billion and one minorities, nations and whatnot...


Sometimes I wish they'd ditch TG and bring back Wheelbase. Now, there was a motoring programme I used to watch.

But it'll never happen. :sad:

Watch Fifth Gear then, if Top Gear added more road tests in I would be bored. I like the semi-... well mostly-scripted random antics of the show more than driving cars around.

[QUOTE 1305284"]
My favourite comment on Clarkson was the old Stig saying he wasn't a very good driver.
[/quote]

Even Clarkson admits that though...
 
A lot of comparison has been drawn between JC and Alf Garnett. There's a fallacy there, however.

Alf Garnett was a wholly fictitious person, and was never represented as otherwise. The sitcom in which he featured was represented as just that - a sitcom, written by scriptwriters, portrayed by actors. Indeed the actor behind Alf Garnett - Warren Mitchell - was (still is) a thouroughly likeable individual, as far removed from the character he portrayed as it's possible to be.

But JC is represented as a real individual. The programme is represented as some sort of documentary - i.e. factual. If it were to transpire that JC was a fictional character played by an actor (presumably with an entirely different name and personality), and that the TG programme were in fact a scripted sitcom, I'd feel more comfortable about it.

Perhaps someone can fill me in on this idea?
 

John the Monkey

Frivolous Cyclist
Location
Crewe
From the piece about the Mexico joke on Chortle.co.uk;

"However, in his column in The Sun yesterday, a defiant Clarkson wrote: ‘There are calls in Britain at the moment for all offensive humour to be banned. But what people don't realise is that without offence, there can be no jokes.’"

I think a key difference is that a lot of this sort of humour used to be people "punching upwards" (I think Richard Herring said that). I.e., people are making fun, and being offensive, but at the expense of people more powerful/rich/successful than them. Top Gear, and some other humour (Some of Ricky Gervais' stuff, I think) seems to be the powerful "punching downward", uncomfortably close to the nature of the school bully.

There's a big thread about it on Chortle (not to do with Clarkson, but on whether that sort of comedy is akin to bullying, and whether that's acceptable here - there's some bad language in it, sensitive types).
 
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