Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times

The enlosed article by Jeremy Clarkson was in this 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 - and feel free to pass it on if you enjoyed it.....

Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday Times 8/11/09

Iâ??ve given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and Iâ??m afraid Iâ??ve decided that itâ??s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. Iâ??m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isnâ??t alive any more.
He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the countryâ??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

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 didnâ??t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though heâ??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.

Thereâ??s talk of emigration in the air. Itâ??s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and canâ??t see the point because she wonâ??t be going to university, because she doesnâ??t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we donâ??t live in America .

Then you have the chaps and chapesses who canâ??t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They canâ??t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nationâ??s capital. They canâ??t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They canâ??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 itâ??s racist.

And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesnâ??t understand because heâ??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, â??Iâ??ve had enough of this. Iâ??m off.â?

Itâ??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 canâ??t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you canâ??t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you donâ??t sweep your lawn properly, and you canâ??t go to Italy because youâ??ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horseâ??s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for â??organisingâ? a plumber.

You canâ??t go to Australia because itâ??s full of things that will eat you, you canâ??t go to New Zealand because they donâ??t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you canâ??t go to Monte Carlo because they donâ??t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you canâ??t go to Spain because youâ??re not called Del and you werenâ??t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you canâ??t go to Germany ... because you just canâ??t.

The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, youâ??ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if itâ??s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we canâ??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.

Canadaâ??s full of people pretending to be French, South Africaâ??s too risky, Russiaâ??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 doesnâ??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 youâ??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 itâ??s been for decades, but the lunatics whoâ??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 itâ??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. onto in the meantime.

 

Good old Clarkson, ranting at his best. Although I do agree with him about Mandelson, silly (but dangerous) fool that he is.

 

He's a very entertaining character is Clarkson. I sometimes think he deliberately pushes the boundaries of political correctness just because it entertains him when all the uptight, bored, lefties write their letters of complaint.

 

good old Clarkson :gnthb:

 

Good for Jeremy.

He may be upset because he is middle class and educated, so his children won't be allowed to go to university. But he can console himself that his grandchildren will be allowed to go to university because their parents will be poorly educated (without a degree). But his great grandchildren won't be able to go to university - though their children will. :D

 

I don't see what all the fuss is about with university degrees to be honest. Surely we can't judge a whole nation's educational standard by how many degree graduates we have.

I don't have a degree. I have industry driven qualifications, one of which comes from a university, and lots of experience, but no degree. And more importantly, no £20k debt that degree graduates seem to have.

I've encountered graduates throughout the course of my career. They are like walking technical references. In my industry (software development) they can recite in detail all the latest buzzwords, but when they start to do a job they tend to be horrified that we don't spend six weeks writing a 10,000 word 'project initiation document' or 'Functional and Technical Requirements Specification and Design' before we start. We just get on with it.

I'm not saying that a degree isn't valuable, but I do think the lecturers need to get out of the classroom and into the real world every now and then. I hear tales of 10,000 word assignments, and think to myself 'my boss would never read that, he wants at most a few pages outlining what's needed, when by, and how much it costs'.

 

Clueless I do agree with you. Being a working class (eek), office worker I saw a few, and I mean only a few, graduates. They were brilliant at theory but put it into practice.....well! That's not to say I don't acknowledge graduates, I couldn't do it! Or could I??

Clarkson is a right work up merchant, but I love him and I have to be honest, agree with him most of the time!

cheers

 

I don't usually like Jeremy Clarkson, but I have been converted by that wonderful rant!!!

 

I couldn't care less what he thinks, he is a ..............well he is a bit of a prat in my opinion, but what I do care about is that he was gagged, that I don't like at all.

 

there IS no free speech these days. my neighbour found my blog posts about him and although 100% true (he didnt dispute that) I got fined £80 for making them!!

I have seen other items in the news, such as a man swore at a council employee and he got the same £80 fine I did!! wtf is this world coming to?

 

That's 'democracy' for you. We have an unelected PM to. The last PM, who was elected, said on TV when talking about the looming Iraq war, said on national TV that he doesn't need parliament's approval because he is the PM. Some might call our political system a democracy, others might call it a dictatorship.

 

Strictly speaking, Prime Ministers aren't elected. Their party is first past the post in terms of amount of votes and they lead their party. Yes, we vote for the party on the basis of the leader (few vote because of who the Shadow Home Secretary is for example!) but only the Prime Minister's or Party Leader's constituents actually vote for him/her.

Peter Mandelson is scary. He was sacked twice for incompetence in the past and then gets a peerage so he can get back into politics by the back door. I find it ironic that the hereditary lords were mostly abolished, in the spirit of democracy and enlightened thinking, only for the House of Lords to be filled with Labour Life Peers.

 

Careful with all this dangerous free thinking, personal opinion lark, the government don't like it.

 

Watch out for big black Range Rovers following you with extra bright headlights, oh and Fiat Unos.