Jeremy's Latest Sun Column

[RedMoon11]

If you can’t drive in convoy, how will funerals go?

Arabs and their supercars aren’t as big a nuisance as Magaluf revellers, says Jeremy Clarkson

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 1 August 2015
 

Bee under their bonnet ... fleets of sexy supercars have left Chelsea and Kensington councils in a flap

EVERY August, for the past few years, a gang of extremely wealthy young men from the Middle East have airlifted their hunkered-down, souped-up supercars to London and spent the month ignoring speed limits, parking restrictions and the need for local residents to get some sleep.

Well, we learned this week that Kensington and Chelsea council has had enough and is set to impose new laws which make it illegal to rev your engine, drive in convoy or — a peculiar one, this — accelerate suddenly.

When news of the ban broke, everyone shouted: “Good thing too,” and got on with their bacon and egg.

But I didn’t, because here’s the thing.

Every summer, large numbers of British people decamp to resorts all around the Mediterranean, where they spend a couple of weeks drinking, singing and doing, um, this is a family newspaper, so let’s say piggy back rides with ladies they’ve just met on the beach.

I’m sure that for the people who actually live in Magaluf, or Zante, or Marbella, this is a nuisance. But do they complain?

No. Because they are wise and they realise that the people singing outside their front door at four in the morning have got into that state by pouring their Pounds into the local bars and restaurants.


Drag-aluf ... Brits on the Strip in Magaluf are more bothersome than posh motors                                                                              Getty

The locals know that if they make too much of a fuss, the holidaymakers will simply go elsewhere, and that would be bad for the scooter hire companies and the people who run the fishing boat trips and the owners of the local club.

So why the bloody hell are we in Britain complaining about these Arabs who come to London every August and pour millions and millions of their dirhams and riyals into the capital’s coffers?

I drove through Knightsbridge this morning and I thought it was spectacular.

Every street is festooned with the sort of cars that even I haven’t had the chance to drive yet.

Some people say they’re vulgar. Really? So what do you suppose an old woman in Corfu thinks of your kids who right now are vomiting into her window baskets?

And come on. Are we really going to complain about the noise these cars make when they start moving?

Because in about half a second, they’re ten miles away and you can’t hear them any more.

In fact, you can’t really hear anything at all, thanks to the aircraft, the strimmers, the road drills and the sirens.

I’ll tell you something for nothing. I’d far rather listen to a Lamborghini V10 than my neighbour’s strimmer, that’s for damn sure.

But I am a still small voice on the matter and the fact is that the owners of these cars will soon be fined for the crime of “having a nice car”.

I’d love to see what the fine will be. Because anything south of a million quid isn’t going to trouble someone who can afford to air-freight his Ferrari to London for a holiday.

And I’ll close on this note. If it’s going to be illegal from now on to drive in convoy, how are funeral processions going to work?


Gear we three go again...


A very good Gear ... TV trio are set to make a bigger and better show                                                                                                                                                                PA

AS I’m sure you know, Top Gear is to soldier on under new management.

And that’s great.

But if you’re a fan of three middle-aged petrolheads falling over and catching fire, then I have good news.

Because Richard Hammond, James May and I are to make a new show with the American giant Amazon.

Along with our long-time producer, Andy Wilman, we have formed a production company which is called W Chump and Sons and we are now looking for an office, a rubber plant, some company cars and a name for our new programme.

Then we will be off. To make what will be a seriously well-funded, British-based show with no commercial breaks and, better still, no editorial pressure from on high.

Amazon has been delightfully clear on that. “Just make the show you wanna make, guys.”

Music to my ears.

It’ll be on your televisions and your internets and your tablets and your telephones next year.


Wicked to kill for fun

 
Travesty ... Cecil the lion was killed by an American dentist                                                                                                                                                                                                             AP

BORIS JOHNSON has been photographed riding a bicycle with his wife on the back.

Apparently, this is against the law. But it shouldn’t be.

I tell you what should be against the law, though. Going to Africa and shooting a lion, for fun, with a crossbow.

I am not, as you probably know by now, an animal rights enthusiast. I eat cows, shoot pheasants and am happy to have my headache pills tested on mice.

But I’m sorry, there’s a world of difference between killing an animal for food or research and killing a lion called Cecil for the fun of it.

That’s just barbaric.

The American dentist at the centre of the storm says what he did was legal and denies enticing Cecil out of his protected area before killing him.

But it doesn’t matter. There’s something wrong in his head. And as a result, he should be tied immediately to the front of a dustbin lorry and used as a mascot for the next 30 years.


Shocked by Sewel


Sew disgusting ... House of Lords member was shamed by The Sun

LIKE pretty well everyone else in the country, I was absolutely staggered when I heard about the antics of Lord Sewel.

Because why on earth is he paying prostitutes for sex? Surely a man with such rugged good looks can get his rumpy pumpy for free?


So light headed


Save him ... polar bear

GLOBAL warming enthusiasts have announced that turning off street lights to save polar bears does not increase the number of car accidents or crime.

They have all sorts of facts and figures to back up their argument.

But they’re still wrong.

---

Desperate ... migrants have died trying to get past the Eurotunnel and reach Britain                              AFP

— SO we’ve spent £12million on a fence at the port of Calais to keep the immigrants out.

Right, I see. So these guys have walked across the Sahara desert with no shoes or maps. They’ve crossed the Mediterranean on a leaky boat. And they’ve evaded customs officers on a 2,000-mile trek through Europe.

So I hardly think they’re going to arrive at our new fence and say: “That’s torn it. We’ll have to turn round and go home.”

---

— THIS  week, the Liberal Democrats announced that its brand new shadow cabinet was the most diverse in the party’s history.

And I thought: “Hang on a minute. How can it possibly be diverse when all eight of their MPs are white, middle-aged men in suits?”

And then I thought: “How can you form a cabinet at all from such a small number of people? It’d be like forming a riot in a phone box.”

Well, it turns out that most of the 22 jobs have gone to people who aren’t even MPs.

Twelve are women, ten are men, none is black and none looks like he will ever hire someone to shoot a former boyfriend’s dog.

So. Not really diverse at all then.

---

— PROPERTY experts announced this week that people who can no longer afford to live in London should move to Wellingborough.

They say that for a town which is just an hour from the capital, property prices are surprisingly low.

Yes, but they’re low because the properties in question are in Wellingborough.

---

— THE people who say it’s a small world have very obviously never flown to Sydney.

I did last week and I can reveal it’s enormous.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6569081/Jeremy-Clarkson-how-will-funerals-go-if-you-cant-drive-in-convoy.html

[RedMoon11]

Red planet won’t exactly be a five Mars hol resort

Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson sees red over Martian hysteria

3 October 2015


No atmosphere ... Matt Damon in The Martian                                                                                                                                  20th Century Fox

FOR years, scientists have probed the surface of Mars to see if it’s home to any kind of life form.

And if I’m honest, it’s been a bit like looking for signs of life in Cliff Richard’s underpants.

A complete waste of time. However, Nasa then became involved in the making of Ridley Scott’s new film The Martian.

And guess what? Just days before the film premiered, they announced that the streaks of dirty Martian soil they’ve known about for years are proof the red planet has water.

And now various space commentators are saying Mars is basically the solar system’s Centre Parcs and that, as a result, we will soon be able to take holidays there.

Really? I only ask because the flight takes nine months and the average temperature is around -55C. So it’s not exactly Ibiza.

To make matters worse, the atmosphere isn’t what you’d call ideal for a relaxing minibreak. Most of it is carbon dioxide. There’s only a dribble of oxygen and — amazing to say, given there are no Volkswagens up there — there’s a fart’s worth of nitrogen oxide.

The upshot is that you’re going to need a spacesuit.

Scenery? Well, it’s a bit like Arizona. Except there are no golf courses. Or hotels. Or bars.

In fact, there’s nothing much to do at all. Except sit there shivering and worrying about the nine-month return journey in a glorified pedal bin.

All things considered, then, I can’t imagine a Martian holiday is going to do very well on TripAdvisor.

“Aha,” say the scientists. “But where there’s water, there’s almost certainly going to be life.”

Yes, but it’s not going to be night life is it? Nor is it going to look like Scarlett Johansson.

At best, it will be some kind of bacteria. Or maybe a barnacle.

And we have that kind of stuff on Earth already.

Even if it turned out to be some kind of weird space-cow, I’m still not certain it’s a sensible use of money, going all the way there to look at it. Not unless its milk tastes like Baileys.

I love exploration. I love the idea that we are clever enough to put a man on Mars. And it makes sense to see what’s up there.

But let’s not get carried away, because we already know that Earth is a million times nicer in every way.

Going to Mars for a holiday? That’d be like an Italian taking his summer vacation in North Korea.


Telly’s Labour love-in is scout of control


Wall-to-wall ... Corbyn's all over the TV Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty

WE’RE told that thousands of people joined the Labour Party so they could cast a vote for uber-leftie Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election.

And I’d guess that at least some of them weren’t Conservatives.

Whatever, we are now told that, since his election, party membership has rocketed by more than 50,000.

Which is why, every time I turn on my television, it’s wall-to-wall Labour Party this and Jeremy Corbyn that.

Everyone seems to have got it into their heads that this is a groundswell, a surge, a tsunami, a bright new dawn for British politics. That people are now engaging in a way they haven’t engaged for years.

Give me a break.

Today the Labour Party has almost exactly the same number of members as the Boy Scouts. So does this mean that the nation’s TV stations decamp to the woods every time the boys in shorts set up a camp to discuss knots and woggles?

No.

Because they know the 64million people who aren’t Scouts aren’t interested.


                                                                                    Surely missing the punt


Perilous? Punting down the Cam                                                                                                                                                                                                         SWNS

YOU might imagine that lying back in a punt on the tranquil River Cam, in Cambridge, with maybe a bottle of fizz and your hand trailing daintily in the water, is about as safe as life gets. But no.

Officials have decided that people who operate these two-mph deathtraps must give passengers a lesson in health and safety before they set off. And that the boats must be fitted with notices that clearly point out the various perils.

What perils?

Good question. But punt spokesman Jed Ramsay is adamant, saying the new measures will bring about “improvements in safety”. Hmmm.

I’ve done some checking and it seems that every year two people die from accidents involving their trousers. And a similar number are propelled through the Pearly Gates by their ironing board.

Whereas the number of people who’ve been killed while punting on the Cam this year is none.

And it’s hard to see how you can “improve” on that.


                                        Give us a choo clue


Crammed ... rail passengers

RAIL chiefs have slammed students who decided, after their train had been stationary for 25 minutes, to get off and walk. It was “dangerous”, they said.

No. It was “understandable”.

They were crammed into carriages that were too small and late for a music festival. So why shouldn’t they just leave?

Hopefully the incident will remind rail bosses that keeping people informed when there’s a problem should be the number one priority.


                                                                  Morons’ war on muesli

SO, anti-capitalist protesters who object to the gentrification of East London decided they should make their point by smashing up a muesli cafe and daubing the word “scum” on the windows.

Yup. That’s right. They marched right past Versace and various other high-end shops so they could vent their anger on a gaff that sells bird seed to weird beards.

Which begs a question. Exactly how much weed had they smoked before they decided to do this?

And how did the conversation go?

“It’s, like, the Labour Party conference next week and we need to let the Tory press know we’re behind Brother Corbyn 110 per cent. We need to reach out to the oppressed brothers and sisters and transgenderists.

“So let’s go down to Brick Lane and smash up that shop selling cereal at £2.50 a pop.”

I’m not sure capitalism will survive

---

                                               Number’s up, plod

THE police are now hiding their infernal speed cameras in tractors and horse boxes.

Which gives me an idea.

If they are going to bend the rules that speed traps must be clearly marked, then I’m sure they won’t mind if we ignore the rule that says our car has to have a number plate.

---

— ANYONE who doubts the economy’s vibrancy should try to find a bit of office space in London. Because there isn’t any.

To make my new motoring show, I have set up a production company that needs to buy a base.

But even though London is really very big — and we have a cheque book — so far we’ve drawn a blank.

---

— GOOD news. The police say they will not enforce the new ban on smoking in a car that contains children.

Presumably this is because they are too busy not enforcing the ban on fox hunting. Or not investigating your most recent burglary.

Or could it be because in many families these days, it’s the kids who smoke and the parents who don’t.

---

— ANOTHER week, another story about a 15-year-old boy who’s been making the beast with two backs with his glamorous, twenty-something teacher. “It’s scarred me for life,” they always say.

Yeah, right.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6672719/Looking-for-life-on-Mars-is-a-waste-of-time.html

[RedMoon11]

Beardies look like they’re on run from fuzz...

Anyone with face hair is sure to have done wrong, says Jeremy Clarkson

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 10 October 2015


Bad beardies ... Jeremy Corbyn and Genghis Khan                                                                                                                                                                                          PA:Press Association

YOU must have noticed that in recent months, all sorts of seemingly normal men are starting to appear in public with hair all over their faces.

David Beckham, George Clooney, and Jeremy Paxman have been affected. So too has Richard Hammond. Sort of.

Even people whose baby-faced complexions prevent them from growing any facial furniture are now getting £15,000-a-time beard transplants.

Doctors take hair from a part of your head where it does grow and then re-insert it on your chin.

And I can’t see why. Because what goes on in the mind of a man who wakes one morning and thinks, “You know what? I’d like to pay good money to look like an ape”.

Maybe he thinks that a beard will make him look strong and attractive like a special forces soldier or a rugged and tough mountaineer.

But I’m sorry chaps, it doesn’t.

It makes you look like you’ve got something to hide — a dodgy hard drive usually. Or a stash of disgusting magazines.

Seriously, if I were a policeman I’d arrest anyone with face fuzz on the basis that they are bound to have done something wrong.

Adolf Hitler, Peter Sutcliffe, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Osama Bin Laden, Harold Shipman, Pablo Escobar, Saddam Hussein, Che Guevara . . . All of them had face hair.

 
Good beardies ... Jesus and Abraham Lincoln

So does Jeremy Corbyn, who was recently made leader of the Labour Party.

People have been saying in recent weeks that he’s a wrong ’un because he won’t wear a poppy and he won’t curtsey to the Queen and I couldn’t care less about any of that.

I won’t be voting for him simply because he’s got face hair.

And you won’t be voting for him either, for exactly the same reason. We just don’t trust people with beards.

That’s why Britain has not had a bearded prime minister since Lord Salisbury 113 years ago.

Not even Mrs Thatcher had one. Even though her scrotum was apparently like an out-of-control rhododendron bush.

I’m not saying that everyone in all of history who had a beard was mad or bad.

Obviously, Jesus had a beard and he was a decent sort of chap, by all accounts.

Abraham Lincoln had one too and he was one of America’s best ever presidents.

But since the invention of the disposable razor, there really has been no need to peer at the world from behind what appears to be a hairy hedge.

So let me sign off with this piece of advice for men who are thinking of going au natural in the face department.

Go ahead, but only if you don’t mind your wife or girlfriend’s armpits looking like they’ve been transported through time from a 1970s German pop video.


                                                   It’s Vulcan’s farewell flight... not a plot from Die Hard
 
Argie-bashing relic ... Vulcan bomber                                                                                                                                          London News Pictures

THIS weekend, the last airworthy Vulcan bomber – a weaponised version of Concorde – will make two farewell flights from Doncaster airport.

I’m not sure quite how a plane can do two farewells from the same place, but we shall gloss over that and move on to the fact that if lots of people turn up to watch the old girl slide into history, then she won’t make any flights at all.

Yup, the brave men and women who’ve kept this magnificent Argie-bashing relic flying, on a dribble of donations from men in anoraks, have apparently been told by police chiefs that if large crowds arrive, it’ll be a security risk and they’ll have to “lock down the area”.

Plainly, they’ve been watching too many Hollywood blockbusters.

“Lock down the area” just about works if you’re Bruce Willis.

It doesn’t work at all if you’re a plod from Doncaster.


                                                                                Cameras pulling fast one

 
Coming back ... the dreaded speed camera                                                                                                                                                             Getty Images

A COUPLE of years ago, local authorities began to realise that speed cameras cost a fortune to run and served only to annoy the locals.

Councils in places such as Swindon and Oxfordshire started to switch them off and there was much rejoicing in the land.

But now, the cameras are coming back, and they are more sophisticated and harder to spot than ever.

On the main A40 into London, motorists are advised by a small message on what is basically a postage stamp that there are now average speed cameras along the entire route.

Transport for London say that they are part of a new drive to cut road deaths by 40 per cent by 2020.

And that’s one of the most idiotic targets in all of human history.

Because what it is saying is that if 3,000 people die every year on our roads, it’s totally unacceptable.

But if 1,800 die, it will call it a great success and break out the champagne.

Why 1,800? Why not nought?

And anyway, how have TfL bosses got it into their heads that cameras save lives.

Because the only way they can do that is if the money raised in fines is spent on heart transplants. Which it isn’t.

Yes, there’s been a downward trend in road deaths in recent decades but that’s down partly to better highway engineering and mostly to safer cars.

My new Golf can steer itself and if it spots an obstacle ahead, apply the brakes.

And that sort of thing will save a hell of lot more lives than a mustard yellow government cash machine.

 
Lookalikes . . . Herman Munster and Richard Osman                                                                                                                                                                                                    Getty Images

— IF you caught last week’s episode of Have I Got News For You, you will have noticed that I got a fairly rough ride from the Pointless geek, Richard Osman... who’d turned up with a gag writer and enough comedy ammunition to mow down an entire army.

And I couldn’t really fight back because I’d told myself before the show began that no matter what anyone said about my BBC dismissal, I had it coming and I’d therefore have to just grin and bear it.

Which was a shame.

Because when Osman said I’d signed with Amazon Past Their Prime, I was sorely tempted to point out that I wouldn’t be taking any career advice from a Herman Munster lookalike who earns a crust by being a Baldrick on a teatime quiz show

---

— ALL week in Manchester, people with bones in their noses and dirty hair have been sitting outside the Tory conference so they can rain dockers’ oysters on the delegates.

It makes you so desperately sad to be British.

Because the French are so much better at protesting.

Cut the fish quotas by one sardine and their trawlermen blockade the Channel.

Increase petrol prices by half a cent per litre and trucks are used to jam every autoroute.

Annoy the farmers and they spray the government buildings with ordure.

This week though, the monsieurs went completely over the top.

When staff at Air France were told there were to be thousands of redundancies, they didn’t sit outside the head office, chanting and spitting.

They broke in, and tore the shirts from the directors’ backs.

---

— FANCY robbing a bank? Well now’s a good time because the police have been told that in addition to catching people who go hunting and parents who smoke in their cars, they must now arrest any shopkeeper who gives away plastic bags for free.

---

— SO, Russia is now waging war on a small part of Syria.

And it seems that, so far, the world’s most terrifying super– power has damaged two tents and punctured the front offside wheel on a Toyota Land Cruiser.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6683707/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-beardies-look-like-theyre-on-the-run-from-the-police.html

[RedMoon11]

Virtually no chance of robot sex... they’re built for war not love

Jeremy Clarkson reckons it’s all corporate malarkey

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 17 October 2015
 
ACCORDING to reports last week, we will soon be able to buy robots – for sex.


Love machine ... the future of sex?

Now, as far as I can tell that’s a bit like making the two-headed beast with your washing machine.

But experts say it’ll be completely normal to use a terminator all day long to clear up the house and shoot baddies in the face, then bonk its brains out all night.

And remember, you can ask it to indulge your wildest fantasy and no one will ever know . . . apart from everyone on the internet after you accidentally upload its mainframe to iCloud.

But whatever, I think this whole sex malarkey is just a ruse by the android companies to get us to believe that artificial intelligence can be used to make love. When what they really mean when they say “love” is “war”.

Because there is no United Nations ban on pilotless aircraft or remote control tanks, the rate at which these machines are appearing on the battlefield is mesmerising.

South Korea has the SGR-1 robot which, with minimal human involvement, can locate, identify and kill an enemy . . . from a range of two miles. Israel has sentry guns which we thought only existed at the base in the movie Aliens.

And America has finished testing the X47-B — a pilotless jet fighter which can land on an aircraft carrier, do mid-air refuelling and fire at whatever its controllers think is appropriate.

And here at home, Mr Cameron has announced that Britain is to double the size of its drone fleet.

So that’s all excellent. Except, of course, it isn’t, because the Guardian half of the world seems to be full of people who think robot soldiers and drones and sentry guns are a Very Bad Idea.

Many reckon it’s unfair to blow up someone’s Toyota Land Cruiser in Syria without leaving your office chair in Lincolnshire.

But in war, one side has always had an unfair advantage. The Greeks had Achilles who was arrow-proof apart from his heel.

Later, the Romans had trebuchets which could fire burning farmyard animals into a castle from a mile away.

And if King Harold had had access to a Thompson submachine gun at Hastings I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t have said, “No. I won’t use it because they’ve only got arrows.”

Besides, look at Vietnam. America had aircraft carriers and spy planes and jet fighters and helicopter gunships.

They still got their a***s kicked by people who fought in their pyjamas, using nothing more sophisticated than a hearty growl and some pointy bamboo.

This argument, however, doesn’t wash with Corbynistas, who then go on to say that because drones are remote, they kill innocent civilians as well as the targets.

This is undoubtedly true. Only this week, four sophisticated Russian cruise missiles didn’t just miss their targets. They missed the country they were standing in and landed over the border in Iran.

This is because cruise missiles work on electronics, and as anyone with wifi knows, electronics very often don’t work.

But neither do people half the time. The planes that flew over London in World War Two were stuffed with good men who only wanted to hit the docks and factories. But did they?

In one American mission in WW2, a squadron of bombers dropped 376 bombs on a Japanese factory. Only one hit it.

Later, 1,080 airmen, in 108 planes dropped 648 bombs on one German power plant. And only two got near.

It’s been said that in the whole of World War Two, a staggering 98 per cent of all the bombs dropped went astray.

It was the same story in the Falklands. The RAF flew a squadron of Vulcans on what at the time was the longest bombing raid in history to destroy the runway at Port Stanley. And then missed it.

Bombs have always missed, and they will always miss. Civilians have always died in war and that will continue as well. The only difference now is that the man flying the drones from his office in Lincolnshire cannot be hurt. Unless he spills hot coffee in his lap.

And if a drone is shot down, you just go down to Toys ‘R’ Us and buy another.

Which brings us on to a good point made by the sandalistas and the weird beards.

Are politicians more likely to start a war if the financial cost is small and there’s no chance that any soldiers or airmen on their side will be killed?

That, is a good question . . .


                               Stinking piece of butchery seems nothing like a Dane...


Disgusted ... children watch dissection of lion in Denmark                                                                              Scanpix Denmark

I’VE always said that if I were forced to leave London, I’d move to Copenhagen.

I like Denmark. It makes excellent furniture, superb hi-fi, delicious bacon and imaginative children’s toys.

However, a couple of months ago curators at a Danish zoo decided to murder a healthy lion.

And then this week they invited a group of six-year-old schoolchildren to gather round while they cut it in half and tore out its intestines.

So now I feel like those people who come out of their houses, after a neighbour has been arrested for some terrible crime, and say: “He was a smashing bloke.

“There was no way we could have known that he liked to wear his wife’s head as a hat.”

---

                                                                                         Apple’s fruity texting



MY new car comes with something called Apple CarPlay, which allows you to speak your texts, which are then sent automatically.

You therefore don’t have to take your hands from the wheel, and it’s brilliant – apart from one small thing.

I sent my youngest daughter a text the other day saying: “I’ll be there soon xxx.”

The trouble is that when you say “xxx” out loud, the machine hears something completely different.

Which is why my rather surprised daughter received a message from her father saying: “I’ll be there soon x sex sex.”

---

                                                                                 Do you really ink so?

SCIENTISTS at Anglia Ruskin University announced this week that people who have tattoos are likely to be more rebellious than those who don’t.

You don’t say.

It turns out that Anglia Ruskin has two campuses. One is in Cambridge. The other is in Chelmsford.

Hmmm. I wonder which one produced these tattoo findings.

---

Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson                                                                                                          Demotix Images

— I THOUGHT it’d be fun to have a little anagram game this morning. So here goes. Tom Watson is a tawt.

---

Wee may just do nothing

SO Volkswagen is to recall 8.5million of its cars in Europe and make them more environmentally friendly.

Customers now face two choices.

1) Lose the car for a day while the dealer fills it full of urine to make it slower and less economical.

2) Do nothing at all.

Tricky.

---

                                 Green is so mean


Clarkson says cut back on electric cars                                                                                                              Getty
 
THE National Grid announced this week that Britain has enough power to see us through the cold winter months – just.

While gas supplies are fine, we will be producing just 5.1 per cent more electricity than we need.

The message, then, is clear.

Unless you want power cuts, looting and anarchy, do not buy an electric car.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6695563/Jeremy-Clarkson-Virtually-no-chance-of-robot-sex-as-theyre-built-for-war-not-love.html
www.sunmotors.co.uk/news/clarkson-apples-fruity-texting/

[RedMoon11]

Why Mary should star in The Great British Take Off...
Television needs a lot more gratuitous sex, says Jeremy Clarkson

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 24 October 2015


Baking guru Mary should show off her buns

LIKE everyone else in the known universe, I’m an enthusiast of the box set.

Game Of Thrones. Breaking Bad. Dexter. House Of Cards. For millions, they’re the new religion.

My latest addiction is Ray Donovan.

Yes, I know I’m late to the party but I’m here now and I’m loving it. I did all of series one in two days and on Tuesday night, because both Chelsea and Kiev were playing for a draw, I embarked on series two.

Which began, immediately, with a prolonged bout of sweaty, no-holds-barred, grunting sex.

And that got me thinking.

When was the last time we saw this kind of thing on mainstream television? When I was growing up we had Susan Penhaligon and Frank Finlay going at it pretty much constantly in Bouquet Of Barbed Wire.

And every Thursday there was a Play For Today, which usually featured a great many girls rushing about with their 1970s welcome mat lady gardens on full display.

Today though? Nothing.

In fact, I’m fairly sure that the last time I saw a nipple on the BBC, it was James May’s.

It’s the same story in the cinema.

When I was a small boy I went to see Young Winston, which was a swashbuckling schoolboy yarn about the early life of Churchill.

But even in this — rather unexpectedly — there were some bare breasts.

People queued round the block for Emmanuelle, Last Tango In Paris, The Bitch, Cal and Ten.

And I remember leaving The Sound Of Music thinking: “Crikey. Julie Andrews kept her clothes on the whole time.”

Of course, she put that right a few years later in a movie called S.O.B. Not a lot of people remember that.

Today however, you have Alien vs Predator, Iron Man and Captain America vs Mr Incredible, Batman and The Hulk, and there is never even a suggestion that any of the characters have rude bits.

They’re all Ken dolls, with extra muscles. Superheroes on the outside, but superzeroes in their pants.

With a box set, things are very different.

Game Of Thrones is borderline pornography half the time. Dexter only interrupted his murdering to have sex. And Ray Donovan? Well basically, he’s a one-man bonk machine.

And the result is... they are all enormous success stories.

Yes, they are often beautifully written and paced to perfection. And yes, the Americans have cliffhanger endings down to a fine art.

But let’s be honest, we’re all looking forward to the next Game Of Thrones, not because of the production values or the script... but because it’s about time Daenerys and Missandei got it on.

There’s a lesson here for the BBC as it faces up to new challenges in the digital age.

If it wants to survive then it must at least consider the possibility of Cash In The Attic: Nude.

And in Bake Off, there needs to be a little less cooking and a lot more gratuitous sex.


Wifi do I even bother?


Carrier pigeon ... more reliable than wifi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Corbis

THIS week. Day one. The wifi breaks. A man comes and says the problem lies with British Telecom. The wifi stays broken.

Day two. I wait in all morning for BT. A man comes. He mends the wifi and goes away. It breaks again two hours later.

Day three. I wait in all morning. A man comes. He changes the router. The wifi works. He goes away. It breaks again two hours later.

Day four. I wait in all morning. Two men come. One is from BT.

He makes some changes out in the street. The wifi works.

And then, as he drives away, it stops again.

Day five. I wait in all morning. A man comes. He mends the wifi and leaves. It breaks again.

So, in the week so far, I have done no work. I have had my life shortened by five years. And the wifi still isn’t working.

I shall have to send my column to The Sun this week by carrier pigeon.

Danny’s dire job

UNLESS you’ve been living on Mars for the past week, you’ll probably know there’s a new Bond film out.

You’ll know because poor old Daniel Craig has been interviewed by 70million “showbiz” reporters, all of whom have asked him to pout, stroke a white cat, say “the name’s Bond”, get his kit off and every other damn fool question they can think of.

Promoting a film these days must be such a nightmare that if I were him, I’d agree to do one more 007 movie, only so I could shoot myself in the head in the first scene.


Watch out for Hurricane Breezy

SO, in future, any storm that is likely to cause substantial damage when it hits is to be given a name by the Met Office.

I suppose that since this won’t cost any money and does no one any harm, it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit tragic.

It’s all part of the Met Office’s drive to make Britain’s weather seem more interesting. But it isn’t. Elsewhere in the world, they have really big weather. They have winds that can tear a man’s hair out and lightning that can set fire to rock.

But here we have drizzle and a bit of light sunshine. And that’s about it.

The biggest storm I recall came in the October of 1987 and knocked quite a few trees down. It was annoying. But it wasn’t Katrina. And that’s the thing, really.

When Americans are told a named storm is on its way, they hide in underground bunkers. Here, when they say a named storm is coming, you just need to remember a brolly.


A bit of a leap too far


Fun commercial deemed too dangerous to air                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        PA

AN advertisement for something called Hostelworld – sounds ghastly – has been banned because it shows a group of people leaping into a lake.

See a problem with that?

No, me neither.

But it seems the Advertising Standards Authority, which dictates what we can and cannot see when Coronation Street pauses for breath, has decided that it will encourage people to leap into some water.

Which, they say, is dangerous.

No it isn’t. It’s fun.

The ASA needs to understand that, because we have heads, we are not quite as influenced by what we see as they think.

When I see a man advertising sofas, for instance, I am not consumed by a need to dye my face orange and whiten my teeth with Omo.

And nor, when I see an ad for Peugeots, do I feel the need to rush out and buy one.


Crunch time for Tesco

I’M not sure Tesco has got the hang of the humble crisp.

The latest flavour it’s offering is “elderberry and prosecco”. Which is pretentious twaddle.

The fact is, we tend to eat crisps when we’re drinking because we need something that helps mop up the sick.

Cardboard and navel fluff flavour is fine.

---

— UBER drivers: You really haven’t got a clue, have you?

---

— ONE of the major drawbacks of being in the electronic Stone Age all week is that I haven’t been able to catch up on iPlayer with what was surely the highlight of the television week – a programme called How Gay Is Pakistan?

---

Labour deputy leader ... Tom Watson

— TIME, I think, for another one of my special anagram puzzles. See if you can work this one out.

Tom Watson is a monor.

---

— EXCELLENT news. In a desperate bid to reduce Britain’s dependence on Russia for the supply of energy, we this week did a deal to get our nuclear power ... from China.

So that’s OK then.

---

— ONE of the wonderful things about these colder autumn days is that the nation’s cyclists no longer look quite so smug.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6706867/Why-Mary-Berry-should-star-in-The-Great-British-Take-Off.html

[RedMoon11]

Most foolproof system is just invite to crooks
Don’t blame the wrong people for cyber crime

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 31 October 2015

 
Blame game ... Talk Talk aren't responsible for the data hack, says Jezza

SO let me see if I’ve got this straight. The wiring loom of telecoms giant Talk Talk was hacked and, as a result, the personal details of various subscribers were stolen.

As a result, everyone has spent all week rushing about, waving their arms in the air and saying that Talk Talk should have had better security, that it should have let customers know sooner, that it is run by a bunch of flibbertigibbets, and that they should all be hounded into the sea and eaten by fish.

Meanwhile, MPs have announced that they are going to hold select committee meetings so they can appear on television, looking serious and important.

Lawyers have smiled the smile of the sure-fire winner. And customers have claimed that their life-savings have been nicked. And that they have whiplash.

And because a 15-year-old boy has now been arrested under something called the Computer Misuse Act — which I thought was a porn thing — I can’t comment any further.

However, I can broaden it out and say that whenever a company’s servers are hacked, people always get very cross with the company concerned.

And I really can’t see why.

Because let me put it this way. Let’s say you were going on holiday and you didn’t want to leave a valuable painting in your unattended house. So you gave it to Ron, your neighbour to look after while you were gone.

And Ron’s house was burgled. And your painting was nicked.

Are you going to shout and yell obscenities at him? Are you going to tell him that he should have had 500 locks on every door, and tungsten carbide bars on the windows? Are you going to demand your MP takes action immediately? And is he going to haul your neighbour into a select committee to explain why he hadn’t fitted the same sort of alarm system they have in Mission Impossible 3?

No. None of that is going to happen because the blame lies with the burglar. He is the one who broke in.

He is the one who nicked your painting. And he is the one who’s going to have to spend the next few years with his back to the wall in the prison showers. Rightly so.

Ron was always nothing more than a hapless bystander.

And so it goes with banks and internet providers and mobile phone companies and all the other operations that have your details — and your nude photographs — on their servers.

None of them want to be hacked. It screws up their share price. It dramatically affects sales.

It makes them look foolish in public. And, as a result, they’ll do all they can reasonably do to stop it happening.

But the fact is this: The best, most foolproof safe in the world is never anything more than an invitation for the best and most inventive criminal mind to come along and crack it.


We had a blast at Zeppelin raids


Pleased to see us ... no it's a German airship most likely missing its target                                                                                                    Alamy

THIS month, people have been gathering to remember the 100th anniversary of the diabolical German Zeppelin airship bombing raids on Britain in World War One.

Though when I say “diabolical”, I mean “hysterical”.

The first wave swept in from the sea and bombed the beach in East Anglia which caused a couple of people to wake up and say “what was that noise?” before going back to sleep again.

Then came the night time raids on London. Well, they were supposed to have been on London but the crews got muddled in the darkness and dropped their munitions instead on Croydon.

Nobody knew about that until 1974.

Airships were so hard to navigate — they sort of went where the wind took them — that after one raid, the German crews told their officers back at base that they had wiped Birmingham from the map.

But it turned out that they’d actually spent the night bombing the hell out of Amiens in Northern France.

And even when the airships did find the right city, no one was that bothered. In fact, in daylight raids on London, people used to come out of their houses for a better look.

MPs even went on to the roof of the Commons to marvel at the giant beasts which one described as rather beautiful.

Deadly though? No.

---

— ACCORDING to new research, people from Wolverhampton and Sandwell are more unhappy than anyone else in the country.

Naturally, experts have queued up to say this is because of poverty and depression and so on.

But there’s another reason. I have many friends from the West Midlands and all of them are congenitally incapable of being impressed.

Captain Kirk could park an actual, fully functioning Starship Enterprise outside their house and all he’d get is a shrug.

And when you have no word for “wow”, it’s hard to find any reasons to be cheerful.


Health warning


Killer ... this bacon sandwich wants you dead                                                                                                                                         Gettty Images

YES, the World Health Organisation has finally got round to it and announced that bacon sandwiches and hot dogs will give you cancer. Of course they will.

Everything nice, say these po-faced imbeciles, is going to cause you to turn grey and die horribly with a tube up your nose.

Smoking, drinking, watching telly, fizzy drinks, fish, chips, mushy peas, meat pies, sausages, swan — it’s all carcinogenic and lethal according to the WHO.

In fact, so far as I can tell, the only two things you can now eat safely are lettuce and the crotch from a vegetarian’s yoga pants.


Hungry ... Jezza advises take the healthy option and eat this chap's underpants                                                                               Getty Image

---

— DOCTORS in West London are offering £750 to anyone who’s prepared to be injected with the Ebola virus.

It’s all part of a drive to find a cure and that’s very noble. But I’m afraid I’m a bit busy this week. And the next. And for the rest of ever.

---

Met is too busy for Assange


Safe ... avoiding parking on double yellow lines should help Assange evade Brit surveillance tech        PA

SO, the Police have announced they will no longer mount a £12million a year round-the-clock operation to watch out for Julian Assange, the lunatic WikiLeaks founder who’s spent the last three years hiding under a table in the Ecuadorian embassy.

However, there’s talk that the Aussie loony, who’s also wanted in Sweden for sex crimes, is still being watched covertly.

Hmmm.

Of course, there is no doubt that the forces of law and order do have a remarkable range of technology that they can use to remotely monitor criminal activity.

But fortunately for Mr Assange, all of it is used to catch people doing 37mph and parking on double yellow lines.

Providing he does neither of these things, he could slip into a mankini and run down Piccadilly shouting, “I’m Julian Assange” and he’d still get away with it

---

A flight touch is needed

A SURVEY by Oxford University published this week found that men don’t like being touched anywhere on their bodies by complete strangers.

If the strangers in question are men.

If they are women however, it’s a complete free-for-all.

These findings should be studied carefully by security bosses at the nation’s airports because, at present, when a man sets off the alarms in the metal detector, he is hand-searched by a male. Who, for very obvious reasons, leaves his gentleman sausage and its various attachments alone.

But if the search were to be done by a woman, she could rummage around in those secret areas all day long.

This would make the business of air travel a lot more fun.

And reduce the possibility of someone strapping a dagger to his old chap and using it later to hijack the plane.




— APPARENTLY, there’s a new Bond film out. They kept that quiet.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6718118/most-foolproof-system-is-just-invite-to-crooks.html

[RedMoon11]

Without Nigella, I’d never have put avocado on toast
Let the moaners moan, I need back-to-basics cookery

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 7 November 2015
 

Sex symbol ... Nigella Lawson                                                                    Goff Photos

NIGELLA LAWSON opened her new cookery show this week by explaining how to make avocado on toast.

Apparently, you scoop the squishy middle out of an avocado and then you smear it on to a piece of bread that has been in the toaster for a while.

It’s important, apparently, to not eat either the skin or the stone.

Afterwards, we are told that viewers were up in arms and had poured scorn on the “domestic goddess” for insulting their intelligence.

Though when they say “viewers were up in arms”, they mean: “Six friendless fatties with a chip on their shoulder took to Twitter to moan because their lives are empty and pointless.”

Well, she’s not going to get any moaning from me.

Because frankly, I could do with a cookery programme that takes us back to basics.

I would never have even thought of putting an avocado on toast.

Because I’d always thought that avocados were a support system for prawns and that toast was something you ate because you’d drunk too much and you needed something to soak up the sick.


Keeping it simple ... Nigella

Time and again, I’ve watched TV chefs telling me how to make a sauce.

But when I try to copy them I end up with what’s basically a big, soggy football.

They always assume we have the basic skills but many of us don’t.

For example, if you mix butter and eggs and flour and put them in the oven, you end up with a Yorkshire pudding.

Or a cake.

Seriously, both things have exactly the same ingredients — and that’s my problem. I never know what I’m having for supper until I open the oven door and have a look.

They tell us to roast a chicken and then, while that’s happening, they explain how to make a sauce. Out of butter and flour. Which somehow won’t end up as a bun. Or a toad in the hole.

But how do you roast a chicken? They never say. I tried the other day.

I weighed it and did maths and found my spectacles so I could read the temperature gauges on the cooker and I worked out what they meant in English and, later that night, I opened the door and found that my chicken had turned into a small piece of coal.

And you should have seen my onion gravy. I’m not quite sure what went wrong there but it looked like a special effect from Doctor Who — and tasted like the tablet you find at the bottom of a urinal.

I therefore need Nigella to keep it simple. And hope that in future programmes, she tells me how to cut up a carrot without severing my own fingers and how to cook bacon without setting off the smoke alarm.

Meanwhile, if you’re an accomplished cook and want to know how to make a peach and peacock flan, buy a bloody recipe book.

---

— WHEN I was growing up, we would read every week about a new craze that was sweeping the land. There were clackers and space hoppers and Esso petrol station football coins and, of course, Raleigh Chopper bicycles.

Things, however, seem to have changed because the “craze” now said to be catching on in Britain is called chemsex.

You ingest large quantities of crystal meth, mephedrone, GBH and GBL and then you spend hours, or even days, doing sex with anyone who happens to be in the room.

I don’t want to sound old but . . .


Can you Phil the rhythm?


Fomer cymbal ... Phil Collins                                                                                              Getty

PHIL COLLINS announced last week that he will come out of retirement.

And immediately, someone who lives in a skinny-jeans bucket of cool launched an online petition calling on the UN to stop him because “there’s already too much suffering in the world”.

Well now, I admit that some of Phil’s solo hits were a bit schmaltzy.

Listening to much of his stuff was like having your ears syringed with sugar and spice and all things nice.

But come on. Are we saying that Phil is the world’s worst musical criminal?

Because let’s be honest – that’s CeCe p*niston, who did Finally. I’d rather listen to my own firing squad. Or Diana Ross with Upside Down. That makes my teeth itch with rage.

Yes, Phil sang quite a lot about failed relationships and I’m not sure about Groovy Kind Of Love.

But anyone who is familiar with the Genesis album Seconds Out will know he was one of the absolute best drummers the world has ever seen.

If you don’t believe me, fire up your YouTube and check him out doing a duet with Chester Thompson.

Because afterwards, you’ll be writing to the UN demanding that a Swiss drug company finds a cure for the arthritis that’s putting Phil Collins back in front of the microphone rather than behind a drum kit.


It’s all Welland good


And the winner wasn't ... Colin Welland                                                                                                                   PA

COLIN WELLAND has died and, as a result, we’ve been reminded all week of his achievements: His role in Z-Cars, his remarkable performance in the still-brilliant film Kes and how, after picking up a screenwriting Oscar for Chariots Of Fire, he told the American audience “the British are coming”.

No one, however, mentioned the Colin moment that’s most vivid in my head.

Just weeks after he’d scooped the Oscar, he was at an awards bash in London, where he’d been nominated for another screenwriting gong.

He presumably thought he was a shoo-in and was halfway out of his seat on his way to the stage when the announcer revealed the winner was . . . Bill Forsyth, who’d written Gregory’s Girl.

I presume the clip of Colin’s face is online somewhere.

It’s worth a watch.


Honey for old rope...


Beware fakes ... Manuka honey                       Alamy

MAD people who do yoga and rub stones when they have a headache have claimed for years that Manuka honey — which costs £60 a jar — can cure bed sores, E. coli, stomach ulcers and just about everything else as well.

If you listen to them banging on about it, you’d form the impression that one single sthingyful could also bring peace to the Middle East, end world poverty and provide green ’n’ clean electricity until the end of time.

Well, now it seems like they may have been talking out of their back bottoms because researchers have found that almost half of the Manuka honey sold in Britain is fake.

It’s obviously a terrible crime, passing off one sort of honey as another — and yet anything that proves alternative medicine is a load of nonsense is all right in my book.

---

— IN an average day, I eat about 27 bars of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut, so I was a bit alarmed to hear that it’s changed the recipe and will now start using cheaper sultanas instead of raisins.

Cadbury says it needs to ensure the snack is still an “affordable treat”. But it’s not a treat.

It’s as essential to my life as water and smoking. Changing the recipe is like God saying he’s going to change the recipe of air because oxygen is too expensive these days.

---

Power of need

JUST weeks ago, we were told that Britain would have enough electricity to see it through the winter months. But only just.

Now, news emerged this week that the National Grid issued an emergency notice asking the power-generating industry for another 500 megawatts.

The message is clear. We are barely keeping the lights on in Britain and it is therefore imperative nobody buys an electric car.

---

Big bang theory

THE Green Party woman with frizzy hair who appeared on the BBC’s Question Time this week earned a huge round of applause for saying that all of Syria’s problems were caused by us bombing it.

Er . . . we haven’t.

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6730007/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-that-without-Nigella-Lawson-Id-never-have-put-avocado-on-toast.html

[RedMoon11]

Uber taxi ride is like being in a mad Iraqi’s head
Drivers don’t know how to drive or where they’re going, says Jeremy Clarkson

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 14 November 2015


Uber ... phenomenal success                                                                                                        EPA

THE digital taxi company Uber is already operating in a handful of British cities and there are plans for it to start up everywhere else soon.

In London, it’s been a phenomenal success. There are currently 15,000 Uber drivers on the streets of the capital and everyone is predicting that by this time next year the number will grow to a staggering 42,000.

It’s easy to see why this is happening. Uber is fairly cheap, you don’t have to wait in the rain for one to arrive and only a microscopic percentage of the drivers are potential rapists.

What’s more, there’s an endless supply of new drivers arriving every night on the underside of Eurostar trains and in the back of container trucks.

I know that all around the world these Uber drivers are hated by established taxi drivers, and in some cities like Berlin the company is outlawed in its normal form.

But we live in exciting times and if the internet can provide a better service for less than the traditional alternative, then that’s progress and we shouldn’t stand in its way (coughs discreetly and mutters Amazon under his breath).

That said, I don’t use Uber when I’m out and about.

I prefer black cabs, despite the woeful rear suspension and the tendency for the driver to support Spurs.

Oh, and there’s another reason too. I hate Uber. I hate it with such a passion that it makes my hair swell up and my teeth move about.

The problem is that the drivers don’t have to know how to drive or where they’re going.

Sure, they have to pass a test, which asks them to place the M25 on a map, but that’s about it.

Many can’t even do that. And in the exam, I’ve heard stories of them getting help from other candidates.

They then explain that they have no previous convictions — and it’s hard to prove otherwise when all their records are in a bombed Syrian police station — and off they go into the night with their leased smartphone and their leased Toyota Prius.

And chaos ensues. Every country in the world has its own rules of the road and its own customs. And that’s fine. But when everyone brings their own customs and their own rules and applies them on the streets of London, it really doesn’t work at all.

It’s like being in India, Italy, Iraq and the inside of a madman’s head, all at the same time.

You don’t occasionally see one of the these infernal Priuses coming the wrong way down a one-way street, or sitting in a yellow box at a junction, or turning right where it’s not allowed. It happens all the time.

They lurch out of junctions without stopping, they make lanes that don’t exist, they ignore red lights completely, they drive off after they’ve removed your door mirror and when an ambulance uses its siren to make them move, they sit there, paralysed like frightened rabbits.

You spend half a day in London and you get the impression that half the city’s motorists have suddenly developed cerebral palsy.

And remember, it’s a plague that’s coming to a town near you very soon.

So go outside now and have one last look at your car.

Because I can pretty much guarantee that soon it’ll have a Toyota Prius embedded in one of its doors.

---

— YOU may have noticed that whenever roadworks have caused a lane to be narrowed by cones, motorists are now presented with a little sign saying: “Do Not Overtake Cyclists.”

Which means that for mile after mile, businessmen, people taking their pregnant wives to hospital and truck drivers delivering vital supplies for the nation are forced to trundle along at 2mph, stuck behind a gnarled old Communist with a Jeremy Corbyn fixation, piles and erectile dysfunction issues.

Far better, I think, to put up a sign saying: “Cyclists Dismount And Find Another Route.”

---

— A SPOKESMAN for moneysupermarket.com said this week that “if cars can accelerate quickly and travel at high speed, there’s a greater chance they will be involved in a collision”.

That, of course, is absolute, complete and utter rubbish – and I can prove it by turning to moneysupermarket.com’s own research, which shows that the car most likely to be involved in an “at fault” collision is the not-at-all-fast Land Rover.


Helmut Schmidt dies, aged 96


Passed ... Helmut                                             Schmidt Reuters

— THE former West Germany Chancellor Helmut Schmidt died this week after a lifetime of smoking three packets of a cigarettes a day.

He was 96.


Climate fear is bonkers


No worries ... Britain                                                                                                                  Getty Images/ iStockphoto

A GLOBAL study has found that people in Britain are less worried about climate change than anywhere else in the world.

According to researchers, “only” 46 per cent of Brits think they will be harmed by global warming in their lifetime.

Forty-six per cent! That’s nearly half.

And since many of the respondents will have been in their 50s and 60s, this means some people in this country think that within a couple of decades they will be sucked into the sky by a tornado while out for a walk in Gloucestershire.

Seriously. Half the people in Britain think they will be “harmed” by global warming.

Well steady on. We’re not talking about a killer asteroid here or some terrifying plague of foot-long locusts.

We’re talking about slightly nicer summer afternoons with an increased chance of drizzle in the winter.

I think really that what the researchers are saying is that 46 per cent of Britain’s population is bonkers.

Still, could be worse. Elsewhere in the world, the figure is 72 per cent.


I’m a Brid part actor


 Self-proclaimed serious actor ... Clarkson                                                                                      Dan Sheils/ WENN

IN the forthcoming Bridget Jones movie, I have a cameo role in which I’m seen walking into a church.

I filmed the extremely brief scene this week and my incredible ability to walk and pull the right face at the same time was obviously so spellbinding that the director asked me to do it again. And then again. And then again.


Back on the big screen as parents ... Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth     EagleEyes/ FameFlynet


My e-cig is like a grenade


Danger ... e-cigarette                  Getty Images/ iStockphoto

WHEN someone says that their car or their computer has “blown up”, they don’t mean it’s actually exploded.

They mean simply that it’s stopped working. But when I tell you that my electronic cigarette “blew up” this week, that’s exactly what I mean.

I pushed the button to deliver an invigorating lungful of refreshing nicotine and it was as though I’d pulled the pin on a hand grenade.

I’ve decided, therefore, to stick with normal cigarettes, which give you cancer for sure.

But at least they won’t blow your hands off.

And that brings me neatly on to the Back To The Future-style hoverboard – which is a cross between a Segway and a skateboard.

It was on course to become this year’s must-have Christmas present but now comes news that, all across the country, the toys are catching fire while being charged. And breaking ankles, I presume, when they’re not.

London’s fire brigade is so fed up with attending fires caused by hoverboards, it has started a campaign to make people aware of the dangers. And problems with electrical gadgets don’t stop there.

Remember when Boeing introduced its new Dreamliner?

Everyone was very amazed right up to the time when, a few weeks later, the entire fleet had to be grounded because its lithium-ion batteries kept overheating.

We read also and often about phones that burst into flames, and laptops too.

And I think the message should now be clear . . .

There’s no alternative when it comes to a hoverboard or an e-cig or a phone. They have to be powered by electricity.

But a car doesn’t. So for God’s sake, when you’re buying a new one, make sure it has a petrol engine under the bonnet. (Unless it’s a Vauxhall Zafira, obviously.)


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6742175/Uber-drivers-dont-know-how-to-drive-or-where-theyre-going-says-Jeremy-Clarkson.html

[RedMoon11]

The best way to fight IS ... is ignoring them
Jezza hopes we’ll learn some lessons from history

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 21 November 2015


Attention seeking ... Should the West take revenge or ignore IS?                                                                              Reuters

AFTER the horrific attacks in Paris last weekend, leaders of the world’s 20 richest nations met in Turkey to discuss what on earth can be done about – yes, you’ve guessed it – climate change.

Seriously, they cleared their diaries so they could talk about a problem that doesn’t matter while the rest of us remained rather more focused on a problem that does — IS.

Doubtless, our leaders would all argue that they’d made the right noises after Paris and now it was time to get back to the rather more serious issue of rising sea levels in the Maldives and the fate of the effing polar bear.

Well it isn’t.

Monsieur Hollande said his response to IS’s latest attack would be pitiless and immediately despatched 20 fighter planes to drop million-euro bombs on the terrorists’ forty quid Toyota Land Cruisers.

Russia is at it constantly. So is America. And Mr Cameron is now pressing for permission to do much the same thing with the four and a half planes we currently have in the region.

Are they all mad?

Because if we drop bombs on them, they will become angry and send people over here to blow up in shopping centres.

This will make us angry so we’ll drop more bombs which will cause them to send more people over to Europe to blow up, and so on and so on.

Dropping bombs from planes allows First World leaders to say they’re in the fight, but it will solve nothing. It never has and it never will.

If they really want to make a difference they have to send in ground troops and they won’t do that, not after what happened last time.

To make matters worse, our leaders don’t seem to understand what IS is or what it wants or even what it’s called.

They tell us it doesn’t follow the teachings of Islam, but it does, actually. In the same way that those mad, shouty churches in America follow the principals of Christianity.

They also say that IS wants to destroy our way of life. But does it?

In September, IS chief spokesman Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani called on his followers to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock, run him over with a car or destroy his crops”.

That sounds very scary until you work out what he means by an “infidel”.

He means any Muslim who shaves off his beard or drinks alcohol. He means any Muslim leader who imposes man-made laws rather than those drawn up by God. He means any Shi’ite Muslim.

He does not, however, necessarily mean Christians or Buddhists or Jedi Knights like me. He will just about tolerate us lot so long as we basically leave him and his organisation alone.

But can we do that? Can we sit back and let IS get on with its butchery?

Well, we need at this point to get some guidance from history . . .

Nobody interfered when Oliver Cromwell was running amok in Ireland, killing everyone who got in his way and saying he was doing God’s work.

Nobody tried to stop Stalin, or Pol Pot or Idi Amin.

But they’re all gone now because, eventually, people became bored with their crackpot ideas and moved on.

Time works better than explosive revenge.

So this is my heartfelt plea to the world’s leaders. Instead of talking about climate change, which isn’t going to be an issue for hundreds of years, come home and read some history books.

Maybe then you’ll learn that it’s better to leave a stupid idea alone than drop a bomb on its Toyota Land Cruiser.



 Spicing things up ... members are straight but make an exception for one night                                                      Getty

— SO, this interesting-sounding club where attractive women turn up in stockings and suspenders to spend the night exploring one another’s dark and secret places . . .

We’re told that members are keen to point out that they’re straight girls who like to dine at the Y once in a while to make their sex lives more interesting.

Hmmm. Isn’t that a bit like going shoplifting to break up the monotony of a dull day then telling the court that you’re not actually a shoplifter?

I’d very much like to investigate this theory in more depth. But sadly, men are banned.

Damn.


Storm in a teacup


 Terrifying ... Storm Barney wreaked havoc on garden chairs

I MANAGED to survive Storm Abigail by wearing a waterproof coat when I went outside.

But I wasn’t so lucky with Storm Barney, which tore into London on Tuesday night and knocked over one of my garden chairs.

I know that by giving these storms a name, the Met Office is trying to make our weather seem more interesting but it’s not really working, is it?

Because an upended chair is not really on a par with what happened in New Orleans.



Legend ... Jonah Lomu's death came tragically early                                                                                                            PA

— NOT much news has managed to shine in the glare of Paris this week but I did notice poor old Jonah Lomu has died at the stupid age of 40.

I spent a few moments on YouTube, reliving some of the big man’s greatest moments on the rugby field, and couldn’t help feeling sad.

Because how can a man who could plough through anybody be stopped in his tracks by his own bloody kidney?

---

Gag Wat’s needed

 
Keep him quiet ... Corbyn should ban Tom Watson from speaking                                                             PA

JEREMY CORBYN, who is the leader of the Labour Party, said this week that when an armed police officer has a terrorist in his sights, he should not shoot to kill.

He used the same argument with nuclear weapons, saying that if he came to power he’d never actually use them.

I wish he’d apply the same rules to his deputy leader, Tom Watson.

Have him around by all means.

But don’t ever let him speak.



Thunderball ... Bond's jetpack finally has a use

— BOFFINS have finally found a use for the jetpack that we first saw about a million years ago in the Bond film Thunderball.

It’ll be used to transport a fireman (providing he’s not too fat) to the top of skyscrapers in Dubai if there’s ever an emergency.

That’s great but when he reaches the top, what does he do? Take out his old chap and wee on the blaze?

---

FHM not for Alfa males

NOT that long ago, FHM, the men’s magazine, was selling nearly a million copies a month.

But figures show that back in the summer, its circulation had dropped to less than a tenth of that and now it’s gone to join Loaded, Nuts and Zoo in that great groin graveyard in the sky.

Which makes me wonder.

Have teenage boys grown weary of looking at naked ladies and amusing wounds, or are they perhaps getting their gratification elsewhere these days?

Someone said the other day it’s possible to find such things on the internet, but every time I type “sex” into Google, all I get is yet another picture of the Alfa Romeo Giulia QV.


 
Incredible ... Volunteer firefighter Patrick Hardison before and after the op                                            Reuters

— THE ground-breaking 26-hour operation which gave an American fireman a new face this week is truly and genuinely brilliant. A triumph of science.

We can only hope that in future, such operations become routine and simple.

Just one thing, though.

Can I say right now that if they do, and I get to have a new face, please let it be Gerard Butler’s or Pierce Brosnan’s.

Not James May’s

---

Raising the BA

ACCORDING to the International Council on Clean Transportation, which is run by a load of people I never want to meet, British Airways is the most polluting of all the transatlantic carriers.

Apparently, it covers just 27km per litre of fuel. Whereas Norway’s airline manages 40km per litre.

So what are they saying? That BA’s pilots like to get the hammer down?

Because if so, that’s the airline for me.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6755101/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-the-best-way-to-fight-IS-is-ignoring-them.html

[RedMoon11]

It’s easy to say we’re standing up to terrorists but but we should have a choice
Jeremy Clarkson says cinema bosses simply want to avoid getting blown up - and why not?

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 28 November 2015

 
Cinemas have been refusing to screen an advert reciting the Lord's Prayer 

ALL week, people have been jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth because cinemas are refusing to screen a Church of England commercial in which ordinary people take it in turns to recite lines from the Lord’s Prayer.

Mr Cameron said the ban was ridiculous. Boris Johnson agreed. And various Christians have sobbed and wailed about how the advert was just a harmless moment as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus.

They have a point.

I’m not a Christian but I wouldn’t mind watching an ad for the Church of England.

In the same way that I’m not a woman but I have no problem with ads for tampons.

I’m also not a Peugeot driver and I never will be. But I don’t care if they tell me about their new GTi before the Bond movie starts.

However, here’s the thing. The Government has a right to tell cinemas what they should not show on the screen. Priapic p*nises and so on. But it has absolutely no right to tell them what they should.

Because the next thing you know, audiences will be watching happy families doing star jumps in holiday camps while a voiceover tells us that we can achieve strength through joy. It’ll be Nazi Germany 2.

So if the cinemas decide not to screen the Lord’s Prayer advert, that’s their right. It’s up to them what goes on their screens. Not Mr Cameron or someone in a frock.

And with this Lord’s Prayer business, I can see that they also have a point.

It may be wrong that some people are offended by the Lord’s Prayer and the Church of England but the fact of the matter is: They are.

And they’re not the sort of people who go home and write a strong letter in green ink to The Daily Telegraph.

No. They’re the sort of people who go home, stitch some dynamite into a jacket then return to the cinema so they can explode in seat 14b. If you were the cinema boss, would you run that risk? Would you put the usherette in danger, and the people selling the nasty orange juice? And all your customers?

It’s very easy to say, “We shall not be cowed by these terrorists”. But it’s hard to stand in a public inquiry many months later, with one leg and half an arm, and say: “I know 42 people are now dead but we showed the ad to make a point.”


—THE Director-General of the BBC is to ask members of the public how much the licence fee should cost.

I don’t doubt there will be lots of silly answers along the lines of “4p” and “nothing at all”.

But I’ve been doing some maths and I reckon that for four national television channels, a rolling news service, five national radio stations and the iPlayer catch-up service, the right price should be in the region of £145.50 a year. Which is what it costs now.

I’ve had my differences with some people at the BBC but, let’s be honest shall we, 40p a day for that lot is pretty good value really.


— HAS anyone else noticed that in the past couple of weeks, we haven’t heard a single thing about the Greek economy?

That must mean it’s all fixed. Hooray.


 Why I’m (global) warming to India

NEXT week, the great and the good will trudge through the blood-stained and bullet-scarred streets of Paris to discuss what they think is the biggest problem facing humankind today – climate change.

It’s expected, however, that countries such as India will prevent any meaningful conclusions because they are trying to get their economies going and to do that they need to consume energy and power.

They say it’s unfair that developed countries are now telling poor nations that they must stay poor to save the polar bear.

And you know what. They have a point.



Commuters in Milton Keynes will soon get a chance to trial driverless cars                                                 PA

— I SEE the driverless Pathfinder car was given a big award this week by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

They were obviously very impressed with this all-British car.

But I have a question. If it’s so brilliant at avoiding obstacles and other drivers, why is it fitted with seatbelts?

 
Jeremy says the decision to ban this number plate was ludicrous                                                                                                                                                                                          SWNS.com

YES, it’s that time of year when the DVLA reminds everyone that it has absolutely no sense of humour.

It has announced that in March, when new cars are fitted with 16 plates, anything even remotely rude will be banned.

One example it cites is OR16ASM because it reckons that the number 16 is too close to the letter G.

But it isn’t.

No one in human history has ever muddled up these two things.

Seriously, nobody, when I asked how old they are, has ever said “G”. They are going to allow AL16SON though.

Which I presume would be ideal for someone called Alsixteenson.

Anyone? Anyone?


I’m going off road

IN the last seven years, Richard Hammond, James May and I have performed our live show to 2.2million people in 32 cities in 19 countries.

In that time we’ve consumed 47,000 Big Macs, downed 5,000 gallons of booze, smashed up 652 hotel rooms and laughed until our lungs have shot out of our noses.

But this weekend we appear together at the O2 in London for what could well be the last time.

We’ve a lot of work to do on our new Amazon television show and will therefore be too busy to tour.

Which means that after the final show tomorrow, we won’t need the props any more . . .

Visitors then can expect more mayhem than usual. And maybe some tears as well.


 
Guy Martin says he earns £12 an hour                                                     Richard Sellers/Getty Images

— MOTORCYCLE racer, TV personality and all-round hair enthusiast Guy Martin told the Radio Times this week his feet are on the ground because he knows what a Pound is.

He says that he had to mend a puncture on his bicycle recently because, on £12 an hour, he couldn’t afford to buy a replacement.

Er, Guy. If you’re really on £12 an hour, I can see exactly why you’d know what a Pound is.

Your agent on the other hand . . .


Gratuitous picture of woman in a dress

Clarkson insisted on this eye-catching snap of actress Salma Hayek                                                                 Karwai Tang

SOME people appear to be saying that young celebrity women demean themselves when they turn up at red carpet parties in dresses with extremely low necklines.

Well, to help you make up your mind, I’ve printed a large picture of a girl in just such a dress.


Glossed for words

PAINT makers, here’s an idea. Why not make the colour of the paint on your charts have something to do with the actual colour of the paint in your tins.

I bought some sage grey paint this week which turned out to be the colour of a spring cabbage. And I went for slate grey in the sitting room, which is mud brown. Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you employ Ray Charles in some way?

And who thinks up the names, for crying out loud? Because what’s “Eating Room Red” when it’s at home? Why not call it what it is, “Placenta Purple”.

And while we’re at it. You say one of the colours you offer is “Babouch”, which tells us nothing. Label it “Baby Diarrhoea” and at least we’d be in the ball park?

And “Stony Ground”? I think what you mean is “Phlegm”.


 
Ant and Dec are still the big reason to watch I'm A Celeb                                                                                     PA

— AS I’m sure you know, there are currently lots of people you vaguely recognise living in a wood in Australia.

Every day they have to do various things which look very frightening, but remember this. There is no way in hell they would ever be allowed to do or eat or touch anything which could in any way be harmful.

So all those jumping about and squawking histrionics – they’re just to fill time until we can get back to the reason we are all watching. Ant and Dec.

God they’re good.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6769976/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-cinema-bosses-dont-want-to-offend-and-get-blown-up-by-terrorists.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: We are better off without play-safe police in a real crisis

Sun columnist says cops are shackled by silly health and safety rules... but you’re not

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 12 December 2015

 
  Floody hell ... natural disaster strikes                                                                                                                                                                                                                       NNP

LET’S not get embroiled this morning in a row about why Britain’s towns and villages are suddenly so prone to flooding.

Some say it’s because people are forced to smoke outside these days and, to stay warm, they need patio heaters which cause global warming.

Others say it’s because of fairly normal weather patterns in the Pacific.

I reckon it’s because we keep building houses on the nation’s flood plains so water that would ordinarily soak away over time is now forced to flow in a big brown torrent through your front room.

Today though, none of these arguments matter.

What does matter is what on earth we can do when we come downstairs in the morning to find our brand new television bobbing about in 6,000 gallons of muddy sewage.

First things first, we need to completely ignore the police.

All week they’ve been rushing about in the Lake District telling the poor, unfortunate souls in the flooded village of Glenridding that they may not return to their houses because it’s too dangerous.

What?!?!

How can a soggy house be dangerous? It’s not a firework that hasn’t gone off, for crying out loud.

The first time the floodwaters came, a company called Beckside Construction turned up with a fleet of diggers and bulldozers and worked through the night to save the village.

The second time the stream burst its banks, they turned up again. And guess what? The police said they could not work.

Boss Robert Morris-Eyton despairingly told Channel 4 News: “We could deal with this in a matter of an hour or two but the police are telling us it’s too dangerous.”

He and his men then went off to a local hotel until 2am when, refreshed by who knows what, they decided to fire up their heavy plant and get to work anyway.

That sort of thing makes my heart sing.

And there’s more. Local woman Elizabeth Ali told reporters: “You have to get perspective. There are plenty of people far worse off than us in Cumbria.”

My heart is in full opera mode now. Because this is exactly how you deal with a calamity. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work. You do what you can to help your neighbours.

You think about all of those people in Jordanian refugee camps and all those parents with dying children. You keep calm and you carry on.

Of course, the police will tell you it’s too dangerous. They think everything is too dangerous these days. It’s why they won’t wade into ponds to rescue drowning children. It’s why they won’t climb ladders to pursue a burglar.

Their hands are tied by idiotic rules on health and safety.

But yours aren’t, you’re governed only by your own common sense.

You’re not going to return to your house and stick your fingers in the electrical sockets to see if there’s any power.

You’re not going to light a match to see if the gas is leaking.

And you’re not going to shoulder-charge a wall that’s been eroded by the torrent to see if it falls down.

You’re just going to pull on a pair of rubber gloves, break out the shovels and get to work.

Then you’re going to ring your insurance company.

Later, you’ll go to the pub and enjoy the shared sense of being in it together as you discuss global warming and El Nino and new houses being built on flood plains.

And pretty soon you’ll come to the conclusion that Britain is a soggy little island which has been flooded very often since the dawn of time.

The only real difference these days is that we can’t do much to help ourselves because the people who write the police rule book reckon everything is “too dangerous”.

---

— A WOMAN who took part in a radio phone-in about Tyson Fury’s anti women’s lib views said she was “disgusted” when the host jokingly thanked her for taking time out of the kitchen to take part.

Hmmm. I wonder. If she was “disgusted” by this, what word would she use to describe the mess made by a dog that’s eaten horse manure then vomited it all over the kitchen floor?

---

Vicky victorious

Howay the lass ... Vicky Pattison                                                                                                               REX

SO, Vicky Pattison has won I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here!

Or, as it should be called, I’m Out Of There: Now I’m A Celebrity.

---

Heathrow saga is a load of hot air

IN THE 1950s, people began to realise that London would need a new airport.

Two sites were identified – one in Buckinghamshire and one in the Thames Estuary.

There was a lot of debate until, 15 years later, the Government of the day decided to not build a new airport at all. And now, here we are at the end of 2015 and it’s happening all over again.

Everyone with even the smallest amount of intelligence knows Heathrow has to have a third runway. Gatwick is in the wrong place. But still the Government dithers and procrastinates. We learned this week that a decision will now not be made until summer, so experts can assess air quality issues.

Give me strength. Air isn’t local. It moves about. So what does it matter if a plane lands in Sussex or Hounslow? The impact is just the same. The only real difference is that if it lands in Sussex, no one will be waiting to get on board because they will all be stuck in a jam on the M25.

Which means its impact on the air quality is completely pointless.

(In the past nine years, China has opened 33 new airports. Just thought you ought to know).

---

— IT’S hard to know what to say about Donald Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims from America. But someone at Transport for London has covered it pretty well. A hoarding on the Tube this week said: “TfL welcomes everybody of ALL faiths, except Donald Trump. The nylon-haired tosser can f*** off.”

---

Enroll at school of rock


Back to school ... teach kids what good music sounds like

FOR many years I despaired of my children’s musical taste.

They’d sit and listen to Britney bloody Spears and various people with their hats on back-to-front inviting people to kill a pig. And every time I put on a bit of proper music from the 1970s, they’d groan and sneer.

“Dad Music”, they called it.

But then along came the movie School of Rock, in which a loser teacher turns his class into a rock band.

He talks about Yes and ELP and Led Zeppelin, and because the “he” in question was played by Jack Black, my kids suddenly decided that 1970s rock music was all right after all.

My youngest is even a fan of Kansas.

Happily, School of Rock is now a musical. I went to see it in New York last week and hear it’ll be coming to Britain soon.

Take your kids to see it because afterwards, they will no longer want to listen to Radio 1.

Which will make long car journeys a lot more enjoyable than they are now.

---

A forced Labour

WHERE I live, in the real world, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks Jeremy Corbyn is a good thing for the Labour Party.

I know people who like him and respect him. But no one thinks he has any chance at all of being Prime Minister.

And yet, on Question Time this week, the audience seemed to think he was the Messiah.

They whooped and hollered whenever his name was mentioned and shouted down anyone on the panel who was even mildly disrespectful.

At one point, David Dimbleby asked in astonishment if anyone disagreed with the mighty JC. There wasn’t anyone.

It’s strange. I thought the audience on Question Time was carefully selected. But then again . . . perhaps it is.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6799020/Jeremy-Clarkson-We-are-better-off-without-play-safe-police-in-a-crisis.html

[RedMoon11]

Good luck spaceman Tim... but you’re not a proper explorer

Jeremy Clarkson does not think Britain’s newest astronaut is out of this world

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 19 December 2015


Tim Peake does not compare to famous explorers Captain Cook and George Mallory, says Clarkson

DOCTOR LIVINGSTONE. Scott of the Antarctic. Captain Cook. George Mallory.

The history books are littered with the names of intrepid British explorers who died heroically while quenching their thirst for knowledge.

So when the door to space finally opened, you’d have imagined we’d have been the first to go through. Wearing nothing but a tweed suit and some stout shoes.

But no. Realising that we couldn’t compete with the Russians and the Americans, we didn’t really bother competing at all. And that’s very sad.

. . . Or is it?

This week the news was dominated by Major Tim Peake, who became only the fourth British person to join the 200 mile high club. And become an astronaut.

 
Tim Peake, far right, is in space conducting experiments                                                            NASA

I salute him for his achievement and I much enjoyed the spectacle of his little boy jumping up and down with glee as the mighty Soyuz space craft blasted off from the launch pad in Kazakhstan.

However, I don’t agree with the experts that because of Major Tim, a whole generation of British schoolchildren will immediately stop Snapchatting pictures of their vomit to various classmates and decide to take up engineering and science.

Because let’s just stop and think what he’s actually doing up there.

First of all, he’s not living on the Starship Enterprise.

There are no doors that open with a “nshhh” noise and no photon torpedoes.

It’s more like a grain silo with third-world grocery store lighting.

Is it high tech? Hmmm, probably. But we’ve all seen Apollo 13 so we sort of know you can live in space when there isn’t even enough electrical power to run a toaster.

What’s more, we never saw Captain Kirk taking a dump but we can be fairly sure he didn’t have to do it into a sort of vacuum cleaner tube. Major Tim does.

When he’s not using the poo chute, he will be doing experiments.

These include looking at water that’s been laced with extra hydrogen, heating up metal then cooling it down and studying lichen.

Lichen?

Well I’m sorry, but no school child is going to decide to take up science because they want to spend their days in a grain silo, upside down, watching moss.

When space travel was science fiction we were told that space ships would be sleek and glamorous.

We were told they’d go to new worlds at impossible speeds, not just cruise around in the night sky, 250 miles above Bridlington.

We understood that there would be fights with Klingons, and attacks on the Death Star and that there’d be princesses and intergalactic sex scenes.

But what have we got?

Some people in polo shirts, doing gardening and defecating into a tube.


'Real explorer' David Livingstone                     Getty Images

In short, Major Tim is on a six-month mission to explore a world that’s not strange or new at all, because he’s lived there since the day he was born.

We all have.

And thanks to the proper explorers from hundreds of years ago, we already know it pretty well.



Loss .. Yvonne Adkins

I READ this week about a fat and ugly woman whose three-month-old baby died as she was having sex

And I couldn’t help thinking, “She had sex? With what exactly?”

---

Story shames us all

Dickensian .. Pamela Hudson was chewed to death by a rat 

HERE we are, nearing the end of 2015, and in York, which is not in Mali or the Congo, a bedridden grandmother has been eaten by a rat.

Apparently, 75-year-old Pamela Hudson died three months after being taken to hospital suffering from dozens of bite wounds.

Can you imagine how that must have felt? Lying on your bed, being gnawed at? By a rat? It beggars belief.

And it makes me wonder.

We may have iPads and the internet and mobile telephones but so long as people are dying Dickensian deaths like this, we can’t really consider ourselves to be truly civilised.

---

I’VE always thought aeroplane safety messages were just a load of nonsense.

All those pictures of the plane bobbing about on the sea while smiling passengers slither down the inflatable chutes. Yeah, right.

And as for the crew’s safety messages before take-off. Wildly optimistic if you ask me.

But then we learned this week that a passenger really was seriously hurt by a suitcase that fell from an overhead locker.

It’s incredible. Next thing you know, someone’s life really will be saved by the whistle in their lifejacket.


Hall or nothing?


Free? Stuart Hall is anything but                                                                 Peter Powell

THERE was much wailing and gnashing of teeth this week when Stuart Hall was released from prison after serving half his five-year sentence for child sex attacks.

The suggestion was that he’s now free to put his life back together and carry on as though nothing ever happened. But the truth is that he’s never going to be able to go shopping, or go to a pub or go out for dinner.

In fact, he’s never going to be able to go out at all. He will never be able to earn any money, he has lost all his friends, his wife has thrown him out.

And so yes, he’s free. But then if you think about it, he’s not free at all.

---

HYSTERICAL eco warriors dressed up as television news reporters told us this week that with no debate in the Commons, the Government is to allow fracking to go ahead in Britain’s national parks and beauty spots.

Well of course there’s no debate, because it always gets sensationalised by idiots who want us to believe that the Peak District is to be turned into a giant gas terminal.

It isn’t. No actual drilling will take place in the National Parks. But gas will be extracted from underneath them. Anyone got a problem with that? Anyone?

Nope. Thought not



The new Pound coin

SO, the Pound coin is to be replaced with a new design that looks like an old threepenny bit.

(Google it if you’re under 50.)

The last round coin rolled off the production lines on Wednesday and is now to be consigned to the history books because it’s too easy to forge.

Apparently, there are 47million counterfeit Pound coins in current circulation. And that begs a question.

If you’re going to go to all the bother of creating a forgery, why copy a £1 coin, rather than a £50 note?



Missile .. Fearsome Brimstone is yet to be used                                              THINK DEFENSE.CO.UK

WE were told that Britain’s involvement in the bombing of IS in Syria was vital because only the RAF had access to the fearsome Brimstone missile, which can hit a motorcycle that’s travelling at 70 mph.

Russia’s missiles can’t be trusted to even hit the right country, leave alone the right house. And we hear all the time about the waywardness of American firepower.

But our British Brimstone was a different story. There would be no civilian causalities with this one. It’d change the course of the war. It’d end IS once and for all.

And so far the number of Brimstone missiles that have been used is, er, none. Yup. Not one.

What’s the betting that soon we are told IS has weapons of mass destruction and that a ground invasion is necessary because they could nuke us in 45 minutes?

---

I KNOW it is wonderfully warm for this time of year, and I much enjoyed wearing a T-shirt while doing my Christmas shopping on Thursday.

But it’s been two weeks since I saw the sun and, I don’t know about you, but I’d happily trade ten degrees for a bit of blue sky.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6813168/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-astronaut-Tim-Peake-does-not-compare-to-famous-explorers.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Living in Bolivia is like getting a steak and eating the plate

Sun columnist thinks it’s odd that Jeremy Corbyn would want to live in the South American country, as it ‘has no air’

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 23 December 2015


Bolivian fashion ... woman in tradtional bowler hat    Getty

JEREMY CORBYN, the elderly gentleman who runs something called “The Labour Party”, told supporters this week that if he couldn’t live in Britain for some reason, he’d move to Bolivia.

Right. I see. Not California or the South of France or a Greek island. Nope. Bolivia, which is a land-locked South American country that has no air.

I’m not kidding. It doesn’t. The capital La Paz is only about two feet below the ozone layer, which means that while you seem to be breathing normally, you’re not getting anything like enough oxygen into your lungs.

This has a profound effect. When I was there, I didn’t even have the energy to go to the bar for another beer.

It has an effect on the locals too, all of whom wear bowler hats that are six sizes too small.

This is because they buy a hat when they are 11 years old then don’t have the breath to go to the shops to buy another one.

Nor does anyone have the energy to put their rubbish in a bin of any kind. So they just put it in a pile in the street.

Then no one can be bothered to come along and clear it up. The smell is pretty bad.

Still, Mr Corbyn much admires what’s happened in Bolivia, socially, in recent years.

Hmmm. Not sure I agree with him. When I was there, not that long ago, I saw a woman having a tug of war with a wild dog over what appeared to be an empty packet of crisps.

Also, on zebra crossings, people dress up in pantomime zebra costumes and dance about in a bid to get motorists to stop. Which they never do.

Pressing the brake pedal is too wearisome.


High altitude ... Bolivia's capital La Paz                                         Alamy

There’s more I’m afraid. I was woken one morning in a Bolivian hotel by one of the cleaners coming into my room.

“Buenos dias,” he said as he shuffled past my bed and into the bathroom. Where he took a dump.

After he’d finished, he came out and shuffled past my bed once more saying, “gracias”. I was very surprised.

At present, Bolivia is run by socialists but who knows for how long. It’s known locally as the LP country — 33 revolutions per minute.

I don’t know how they have the energy to revolt. But perhaps they don’t.

Perhaps the ruling party simply can’t be bothered to defend itself.

There are some absolutely beautiful bits of Bolivia.

But when I went to have a look at them with a film crew, the trip was curtailed because two sound recordists were taken seriously ill, suffering from oxygen deprivation.

The only solution if you want to live up there is Viagra. Apparently, it helps with the altitude sickness.

But there is a downside. Or should I say upside, to this.

Choosing Bolivia then, as the country in which you’d most like to live is a bit like being offered a plate full of steak and chips, and deciding you’d like most of all to eat the plate.

In case you’re interested, the country in which I’d choose to live if I had to leave Britain is Denmark.

It’s a bit like Bolivia, apart from in every single way.

---

— SO, Formula One motor racing is now to be shown on Channel 4 and I think it’s a perfect fit.

Channel 4 has been the home of horse racing for many years and the two sports are virtually identical.

The competitors set off. The commentators try to make it sound interesting. It isn’t. You fall asleep. The favourite wins.


Ho, ho, ho ... young ladies on night out                                                     SWNS:South West News Service

— A COUPLE of weeks ago, we read about a young man who’d been caught taking photographs up the skirts of unsuspecting young women in his local Boots.

Everyone was very appalled.

But this week photographers have been trawling the streets of late night Britain, taking pictures up the skirts of unsuspecting young ladies who’ve perhaps had one or two too many drinks.

And yet somehow this is deemed to be news.

---

Put us in driving seat, Cam

I FELT a bit vomitous as I watched Mr Cameron whizzing about Europe recently sucking up to the prime ministers of places like Hungary and Romania as he desperately tried to get the EU to accept Britain’s plans for reform.

The problem’s a big one. He has said that he will get the EU to agree to his reforms before he calls a referendum on whether we want to stay in or leave.

And so far, the EU isn’t really budging. This means we are more likely to leave and that means he will lose his job.

That will cause the Tory party to implode and that will put Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10.

Far better then to do the whole thing the other way around.

Instead of trying to get a deal before announcing the date of the referendum, he should announce the date and tell the various EU leaders they have until then to come up with a way of making the British people want to stay on board.

It puts us back in the driving seat.

And forces Europe to accept that they need us a damn sight more than we need them.

---

— THE unusually mild weather means that demand for oil and power has fallen dramatically this winter.

Which means that perversely, global warming is good for the planet.


Questioned ... FBI have probed Tokyo Sexwale    Getty

— OH NO. My absolute number one favourite candidate to become president of Fifa next year has been questioned by the FBI about bungs and bribes.

Tokyo Sexwale is one of five candidates lined up for the top job, but insiders are saying his chances of succeeding are now remote.

This is an absolutely tragedy, because Tokyo Sexwale is surely the right man for the job.

Only someone called Barnsley p*nisbiscuit could possibly be better.


Ratings winner ... Countryfile presenters                                                                              Oliver Edwards

— ALL week, people have been trying to work out why Countryfile has started to beat The X Factor in the TV ratings.

It’s not difficult. Television these days is only watched by old people.

And Countryfile is an old people’s show.

I never miss it.


Strife on Mars


U-turn ... scientists say 'signs of water' on Mars may have actually been caused by gas    Getty

IN September, we were told by various beaming scientists that they’d found definite evidence of water on Mars.

Photographs had shown dark stains in various gullies which, they said, could only have been caused by flooding.

But now it turns out that the stains were actually caused by some kind of gas.

The search for water goes on then. Although I could give them a hint. Try Cumbria.


It’s not rocket science


Launch ... Tesla rocket on successful mission                                                                                        Reuters

ELON MUSK, who runs Tesla, launched a rocket this week which went into space, delivered some satellites then came back to Earth again.

Now, I’m not just saying this because he sues everyone who disagrees with him, but well done mate. Because that’s impressive.

For years, Nasa told us that a reusable space craft needed to be massive and manned and that it would have to jettison two of its engines into the sea during every launch. And we believed them.

It’s why, when Top Gear launched a Reliant Robin a few years back, it followed the Space Shuttle model.

It even exploded like a space shuttle when it went wrong.

I guess the lesson here is a simple one.

If you want something to be expensive and mostly useless, get the government to run it.

If you want it to be successful and good value for money, leave it in private hands.


May it be a good one


Seasons greetings ... not to you Brian May                                                          EPA

OBVIOUSLY, I’ve missed Christmas now but I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in the world (except Brian May) a very happy new year.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6823007/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-living-in-Bolivia-is-like-getting-a-steak-and-eating-the-plate.html

[dit]

At present, Bolivia is run by socialists but who knows for how long. It’s known locally as the LP country — 33 revolutions per minute.


Don't know how many people will actually get this reference.




But then again, I'm very old........

[RedMoon11]

Dec 30, 2015 1:09:28 GMT dit said:

At present, Bolivia is run by socialists but who knows for how long. It’s known locally as the LP country — 33 revolutions per minute.


Don't know how many people will actually get this reference.




But then again, I'm very old........

Vinyl LPs have become hip and trendy so the cool kids and those of us of a certain age will get it

[RedMoon11]

Best resolution is to stay home next New Year

Jeremy Clarkson says end-of-year partying isn’t worth the pain

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 1 January 2016


Imagine there's no Auld Lang Syne ... at least we all know Lennon's lyrics

I’M guessing that yesterday was a bit of a write-off.

You spent the morning trying to unstick your tongue from the roof of your mouth so that you could actually swallow some kind of painkiller.

And the afternoon watching a re-run of Bargain Hunt because you didn’t have the co-ordination or the will to operate the remote control.

Obviously, you can’t really remember how on Earth you got into such a state.

And there’s no point trying to piece it all together by consulting your mobile phone because, somehow, the screen is now all cracked and the battery charge point is all full of sherry trifle.

For reasons that are not completely clear, your partner is not speaking to you.

Perhaps this is because you got a bit carried away with someone else under the leftover mistletoe. Or maybe you didn’t.

Maybe you were face down in a pile of pork pies by 10pm, and you only woke up at midnight to be sick. On them. Again . . .

I don’t know why we do parties on New Year’s Eve. Because going out with friends to usher in the New Year is a sure-fire way of ensuring it begins badly.

Actually, I’ll tell you how it begins. It begins with a load of people whose shirts have come undone standing up with a drink held above their heads singing, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot ner ner ne neer ner ner. Der dum di dum di dum di dum for auld lang syne”.

Why don’t we sing Imagine by John Lennon? At least we know the words to that.

Or Hey Jude? Because there aren’t any words to learn in the first place.

And why do we feel the need to get so slaughtered?

In fact, why do we go out at all? Because you’ve got to find a babysitter and, let’s be honest, the only teenager you’re going to find who’s free on New Year’s Eve is going to be a bit weird. And you don’t want to leave your children in the care of someone like that.

Then you’ve got to find a taxi and all the good ones were booked up by June, which means you’re going to be charged £200 to be driven home by someone who’s mad and probably a bit rapey.

What’s more, when you wake up the next day, you’re going to feel so awful that you’re going to make all sorts of resolutions that you won’t keep.

And then you’ll spend the rest of the year feeling guilty.

So this morning, take a bit of advice from me.

Make just one resolution: That, as this year ends, you stay at home and watch TV, like I won’t.

— THIS week, animal enthusiasts have been bouncing off the walls and wailing inconsolably because toy giant Mattel has launched a model car which can be driven by insects. Or “eleCrickety” as they call it, rather cleverly.

Apparently, you load up to five crickets into a small box which then slides into the car.


'Cruelty to crickets' ... one of Mattel's new drivers                        Getty

Campaigners say this is cruel but I can’t see what they’re on about.

Because if you gave an insect the choice of being given a brand new car, or being hit on the head with a shoe, or poisoned with a lethal spray that makes him speed up and whizz about in agony before crashing into a window and dying, I think he’d take the new car.

Except, of course, he wouldn’t because he’s an insect and therefore has no capacity for rational thought.

---

No wind — that’s a blow


Ignore people with beards ... wind power is not enough                                                                                 Corbis

WITH temperatures at the North Pole rising above freezing and huge areas of Northern Europe under six feet of flood water, there will be even louder calls for the world to meet its electricity needs by building more windmills.

People with beards and cheesy underpants will pop out of their cagoules and say that Britain gets just ten per cent of its power from wind and that more must be done.

But they are wrong.

Britain is capable of getting ten per cent of its power from wind but figures just released show that on 12 days in the last three months, the enormous turbines produced just 0.5 per cent of the nation’s electricity needs.

That’s the problem with windmills. They don’t work when the wind isn’t actually blowing.

Which means you need other power stations as well which work whatever the weather is doing.

---

Housing problem is batty


Here's the reason we're not building enough homes                                                                              Getty

AS we all know, Britain is suffering from a huge shortage of new affordable homes.

I’ve always thought that the biggest problem was finding suitable land on which they could be built.

But no. Figures just out show that the country’s biggest developers are sitting on a land bank big enough for 600,000 houses.

And what’s stopping them from getting cracking?

Bats mostly. And newts. Because these days you can’t actually build anything if there’s even the slightest chance that an animal is disturbed or inconvenienced.

Which means thousands of people are living with their mums and dads so that a bat can have a couple of acres all to himself.

One of the reasons that Britain’s new nuclear power station is delayed is because engineers had to rehouse a family of badgers before work could begin.

---

Sanity’s down the pan

WE all know the problem. You’ve a long way to go and you want to get the journey over as soon as possible.

But just half an hour into the trip, your wife says she needs the loo and asks if you can stop at the next service station.

Well from now on, if you say “no”, you can be sent to jail for five years.

Yup, it’s now an offence for people to control the bathroom habits of their husbands or wives.

The Director of Public Prosecutions said the law will still apply even if the behaviour is meant to be playful.

What a weird world in which we live.

I can see the need for domestic abuse to be stamped out.

But I worry that when the police have powers as vivid as this, men are going to get arrested for stopping off at the pub when they said they’d bring supper home by eight.

---

Gunner get you

EVERY year, around eight million tons of plastic is thrown or blown into the sea.

It’s a nightmare for sea creatures which get tangled up in it and an eyesore when it finally washes up on the beach.

Well now, engineers from Holland are building a giant dam off the Dutch coast which, it’s hoped, will Hoover up some of the plastic. And that’s great but surely there’s a cheaper way of solving the problem . . .

Why don’t we simply shoot in the back of the head anyone who drops litter?

I’m not a believer in the death penalty as a general rule but I think that for litter crimes, an exception can be made.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6834066/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-the-best-resolution-is-to-stay-home-next-New-Year.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: For crying out loud... will our MPs please turn off the tears

British stiff upper lip better than Barack Obama’s weeping says Sun columnist

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 8 January 2016


US president Barack Obama sheds a tear at his gun control speech        Carlos Barria

THIS week, Barack Obama made a speech on gun control and half way through, with the cameras rolling, started to cry.

These tears seem to have split America in half. You have those in the blue states saying it was brave for the most powerful man in the world to stand there weeping.

And then you have people in the red states muttering “pussy” into their Coors.

One man calling himself “Vigilante Christian” took to CNN’s message boards, saying that the tears were “FAKE”. Which they weren’t.

I have no problem with Mr Obama crying. He’s American, and that’s what they do. I do, however, worry that the trend toward tearfulness is spreading over here, and that concerns me.

You have Ed Balls claiming that he once cried during an episode of Antiques Roadshow, Nick Clegg saying that music can reduce him to tears and Nicola Sturgeon saying she cried when she saw a photograph of that little drowned Syrian boy on the beach.

Well, I’m sorry but this isn’t good enough.

Because if you can’t hold it together because of a song, or a photograph or some old lady whose vase isn’t worth as much as she’d hoped, you obviously won’t be any good at making harsh decisions when you are in power.

You get the impression that Mr Corbyn is a bit of a sentimental old sausage and as a result it took him three whole days to sack a couple of people and make the rest of his Cabinet sit in different chairs from now on.

So how’s he going to cope when North Korea is on its way over with a hydrogen bomb?

This is Britain, for heaven’s sake. And here, “crying in public” sits in a list of social no-nos just above “pleasuring yourself on a bus”.

You can’t imagine Winston Churchill blubbing into a microphone, or the Queen.

But then she’s German so she doesn’t really count.

And yet, every week, Piers Morgan always tries to get his guests on TV’s Life Stories to blub.

It’s the same story with BBC news reporters. They always turn up at an event and try to make their interviewees break down. Then, as their lips start to wobble, the camera starts to zoom in slowly and immediately I have to vomit.

One of the things that cheered me slightly about all of the flooding in the North is the refusal of anyone to cry.

The camera focused on ruined baby blankets and dead puppies and water-stained wedding photographs in a dustbin.

And the locals cheerily said “it could be worse” and got back to their mops.

That’s who we are.

I once saw a news report about a terrible hurricane in Florida.

Eyewitnesses were interviewed and all were weeping and wailing, except one who said, with a clipped British accent: “Yes. It was a trifle breezy.”

This is what our political masters should remember if they are thinking of taking a leaf out of Mr Obama’s book.

You’re British. Button it.

---

Leading role reversals


Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl                        Universal Pictures

I’VE been wondering who on Earth will win the top gongs at this year’s film awards ceremonies.

With no movies this year about slavery or Aids, I feared they may have to give the Best Actor award to someone who actually did some acting.

But it’s OK. We can relax. Bafta has shortlisted Eddie Redmayne for his role in The Danish Girl, in which he plays an artist who is – yes, you’ve guessed it – transgender.

Meanwhile, Carol is up for Best Film. It’s about a lesbian, obviously.

---

— FITBIT, who sell those cool watches that tell a wearer how often their heart is beating, is being sued because the gadgets “consistently mis-record heart rates by a very significant margin”.

I’m staggered by this because it suggests there are people out there who bought these things, really expecting them to work.

And what’s the benefit even if they do? Because there are other, much cheaper and better ways of telling what your heart is doing.

If you’re sitting there now, reading this, and all is well, it’s fine.

If you’re writhing about on the floor in agony, it’s probably gone a bit wrong.

And if everything is dark and quiet, it’s stopped completely.


Jonathan the giant tortoise is 183                                                                                                                BNPS

THIS week saw the 183rd birthday of the oldest living creature.

He’s a giant tortoise called Jonathan, and I’d like to wish him many happy returns.

Incidentally, the oldest living creature in Britain is a small man called Jeremy Corbyn.

---

Ban fury is a sore point...

THE Institute of Advanced Motorists, which teaches its members to drive a car as though it is still 1935, is up in arms because courts keep letting persistent motoring offenders off a ban.

Government guidelines say that you should have your licence taken away if you amass 12 points within three years.

But new figures show that some people are out there now with as many as 51 points on their licence.

One chap from Basildon got 42 points for refusing to supply details and even though he held points for speeding, including one incident where he was caught doing 109 mph, he still wasn’t banned.

This makes the IAM’s teeth itch. “People should be birched,” said a spokesman before climbing into his Frazer Nash and repairing to the golf club for a half of stout.

Well, I’m sorry but I don’t agree. There are now so many cameras and the speed limits are so ridiculously low that you could get 12 points in one trip to the shops.

Being banned from driving is a huge punishment. And it should only be used in extreme circumstances.

Not because some little old lady drove into town at 34 mph.

Taxi’s fat lot of good


Is travelling by drone the future?                                                                                                            Ethan Miller

AS we know, Google and Apple are engaged in a headlong rush to make driverless cars a reality.

But this week, their efforts were made to look a bit last week by a Chinese company which has unveiled a pilotless drone helicopter.

Called the taxicopter, the idea is simple. You get in. Use an iPad to tell it where you want to go. And it simply goes there.

It has a flying time of 23 minutes and a top speed of 63mph.

My only real worry about this really rather brilliant idea is weight. Put it like this. Cara Delevingne, will be fine.

But I’m not sure it’ll be much use to fatties like me.


Supermodel Cara Delevinge                                                             Axelle

Sugar tax not so sweet


Taxes have been crazy since the days of Oliver Cromwell                                            DEA

IN the past, people in Britain were taxed on how many windows they had in their house. Or fireplaces.

And during the time of Oliver Cromwell, above, you had to give a tenth of your property to the government if you were a Royalist.

And we are not alone. In France, you had to pay a tax if you wanted a bit of salt.

And until quite recently, people all over the world paid taxes depending on how much soap they used. In Canada, Chinese people had to pay a tax for having a head.

We look back at these taxes now and snigger.

Which is what historians will do in a hundred years when they look back and see the British Government made people pay more tax if they wanted some sugar.

There’s only one thing more ridiculous. Raising taxes based on how much carbon dioxide comes out of your car’s exhaust pipe.

No, hang on a minute . . .

---

— DOCTORS announced this week that just one drink can kill you.

Yes. But last year two people died from accidents involving their trousers.

And no one is suggesting that as a result we should go to work every day in the nude.

---

Hard to stomach

— THE average human is made up of around 30trillion cells.

But scientists have now figured out that we have 39trillion bacteria living in our mouths, gut stomach and colon. This means that all of us are not even half human.

The news is not all bad, though. Apparently, we can tip the scales in our favour by having a really big dump.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. . .


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6848952/Jeremy-Clarkson-Barack-Obamas-gun-tears-would-not-cut-it-in-UK.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Thank our close neighbours Kiev for cheap petrol
Sun columnist says Saudi Arabia keep oil prices low because USA demand it

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
15 Jan 2016


Oil prices slashed                                                                                                                                                        Getty Images

WHEN protesters started to gather in Kiev’s Independence Square a couple of years ago, we all sat about thinking, “Where’s Kiev when it’s at home?” and “What shall we have for tea this evening?”

Even when the protest turned into a pitched battle, and Russia took control of the Crimean Peninsula, we continued to imagine that none of it had anything to do with us.

And yet, as a direct result of those things, on the dusty and horse-drawn side of our continent, it now costs about 27p to fill your car’s fuel tank and you can run an oil-fired central heating boiler for 2p a year.

Some say the Middle Eastern OPEC countries are keeping oil prices low to thwart green-minded politicians whose wind and sun-powered alternatives suddenly look very expensive.

Others reckon it’s all a ruse to make fracking uneconomical. Why extract gas from a rock 500ft below Blackpool when you can buy it from Saudi Arabia for less than the cost of a penny chew?

The real reason Saudi Arabia is keeping oil prices low, though, is more simple. America demanded it.

Because it means Russia has to cut prices for its oil too. Which hurts the Russian economy. Which is a punishment for what happened in the Crimea.

You may think this is a sign of the modern world. That in today’s global society, a protest in Kiev means people in Huddersfield can now heat their houses for a third of what it cost two years ago. But it’s always been this way.

Back at the start of the 20th century, an Archduke was shot in Serbia and, as a result, millions of people had to be killed in Belgium.

And before that, you had Henry VIII. He was riding through a town when he looked to the right and saw a pretty girl. He decided he would like to sleep with her. So he did. And he caught syphilis, which made him go mad.

So if he’d been looking left, he wouldn’t have caught syphilis and he therefore wouldn’t have spent the rest of his life divorcing and beheading his wives.

And if he hadn’t done that, Britain wouldn’t have had to leave the Catholic Church. Which means the Mayflower wouldn’t have set sail, which would have meant America would not now be an English-speaking nation.

Instead, they would have adopted what in the 17th century was the second most spoken language — German.

Which would have meant, come the Second World War, the US would have sided with Hitler.

Which means that if Henry VIII had been looking the other way on that fateful day back in the early 16th century, there’d be a Swastika flying over the Houses of Parliament.

The world? It’s always been a village, really.

Alan was the Quest


Sad news ... Alan Rickman's death Getty Images

I’VE been mildly peeved this week by all the coverage of Alan Rickman’s sad death, at the age of 69.

Almost everyone has said he was famous for being a big noise in Harry Potter but that he was at his best playing baddies in films like Die Hard and Robin Hood.

He was bloody good as a villain, that’s for sure. Brilliant in fact. But from where I was sitting, he was actually at his best in Galaxy Quest.


How can this hair be right?


Potential American president ... Donald Trump PA: Press Association

ONE of the things we need to know about a potential American president is: How good are you at making the right decisions?

And that’s what worries me about Donald Trump.

It doesn’t matter what he says or how much he promises, there’s no getting round the fact that when he’s asked how he would like his hair cutting, he gets it all completely wrong.

You can’t trust a man who replies: “So it looks like a forest of orange nylon seaweed caught in an invisible underwater current.”

That’s why I don’t trust Kim Jong-un either.

At least MP’s not a golfer


Openly gay Conservative ... David Mundell PA: Press Association

A MAN called David Mundell made the news this week when he became the first ever openly gay Conservative Cabinet minister.

Ted Heath doesn’t count of course, because he wasn’t gay. He was just a bachelor.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make of the news. I’m not even sure that it is news.

Because why should I be bothered where an MP chooses to hide his sausage at bedtime?

I’d be far more worried if he’d come out as a model railway enthusiast. Or a fan of the caravan holiday. Or a golfer.

That’s how I shall always remember him, having a tantrum with a lumpy purple swimming cap on his head.

Gas leak no shock

THE Glastonbury Festival has admitted breaching environmental regulations after human waste polluted a nearby waterway.

Noooo. Surely not. I’m staggered.

Are the authorities saying that one of the festival-goers relieved himself in a stream?

At this rate, someone’s going to say that visitors to the festival also drank beer and took drugs.


'El Chap' ... drugs lord                                                                 Getty Images

— IT HAS been a week since Mexican authorities recaptured the drugs lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

So I wonder. Has he escaped again yet?


Hatton Garden ... blaggers crawled into vault through hole     PA: Press Association

— SO, the hole through which those Hatton Garden blaggers crawled into the vault was just 25cm high.

Small wonder Plod didn’t bother questioning me about whether I’d been involved.

---

— FOSSILISED remains found recently in the Sahara Desert show that long after the meteorite wiped out the world’s dinosaurs, the seas were still home to a gigantic crocodile.

Its head, we’re told, was the size of a woman. And its jaws were so powerful they could cut a London bus in half. Or Wales. Or a football pitch.

One of those standard units of measurement, for sure. Its lungs, I bet, were the size of Belgium.

It has been called the machismosaurus rex, and that begs a question. Who’s in charge of thinking up names for dinosaurs?

Who came up with T-Rex? And Brontosaurus?

I only ask because, in the Sixties, noted wildlife expert Sir Peter Scott announced that there almost certainly was a monster of some sort living in Loch Ness.

He called it Nessiteras Rhombopteryx. And lots of Nessie believers took this as a sign and ran about shouting: “You see. You see. Sir Peter Scott agrees with us.”

Many years passed before someone worked out that the name he’d chosen was an anagram of “monster hoax by Sir Peter S”.

---

— I’M saddened to say that I can remember the scheduled, coal-saving power cuts that engulfed Britain back in 1974.

And I recall that, when the lights went out, life carried on as normal. We lit a fire to stay warm, ran the small television from a car battery and when that went flat, we sat around talking.

At school, life was pretty bleak and cold even when the power was on. So we didn’t even notice when it went off.

Oh how times have changed. Because this week there was a power cut at our office and no one had a clue what to do. With no computers or wifi, the kids who work there were stumped.

And they couldn’t even go home and work from there. Because the barrier in the car park wouldn’t work either. And stayed down.

---

— SO. The Peugeot 205 GTi has been voted the best hot hatchback of all time.

Wrong. It’s second best, after the Volkswagen Golf GTi.

---

— COLD isn’t it? But then what were you expecting? We are in Britain, and it’s January.

[RedMoon11]

No parking at any time... for Aston Martin, Porsche & Range Rover drivers

Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson reckons cheap and nasty cars never get towed away

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
22 Jan 2016


Waging a class war ... simply drive something cheap and nasty to avoid being impounded                                                                                                                                     Phil Starling

SO, last weekend I left Stamford Bridge having watched Chelsea host a thrilling draw with Everton to find my car wasn’t in the street where I’d left it.

And nor was it in the next street along or the one after that. So I went back to the original street and looked more carefully, in case I’d missed it on the first sweep.

The thing is though, looking for a car in a fairly short residential street is not the same as looking for your house keys at the bottom of a woman’s handbag.

A car is big and obvious. And it wasn’t there. And because the football match had just ended, it was impossible to hail a taxi. Which meant I had to set off on foot, in the freezing cold, on the walk of shame to the local car pound.

Here, the officer behind the armour-plated glass found it very funny when I walked through the door. “Ha” she said, with a big smile. “It’s you.”

And then she asked for photo ID. Naturally, I didn’t have any and nor could I prove I owned the car as the registration document was in a drawer 70 miles away.

But it was nothing that half an hour of smiling couldn’t solve and soon I was handing over £265 to get my car back.

Yes. You read that right. £265.

Now, I am not going to do the usual newspaper columnist thing and pretend I couldn’t afford it. Because obviously I could. But even so.

You get a smaller fine than that these days for burgling a pensioner’s house.

Certainly it’s a hill of money for making what was an honest mistake. I genuinely thought you could park in a residents’ parking bay at weekends.

Whatever, after I coughed up I was allowed into the yard to retrieve my car — and I could not believe my eyes.

It was like I had walked into the Abu Dhabi motor show.

Or a small boy’s wet dream, which is the same thing.

There were rows and rows of Aston Martins, Porsches, Range Rovers and Bentleys gleaming in the frosty, sodium-tinged night air.

It’s obvious when you are in there, with your head whirling round at the sheer spectacle, that these tow-away lorry people aren’t keeping the streets clear from obstruction.

They are waging a class war. They are only pouncing on the privileged.

Which means there’s an easy way to make sure your car is never towed away, even if you leave it in one of the Queen’s flower beds.

Simply drive something cheap and nasty.


— A MAN’S face was partially blown off this week after the electronic cigarette he was smoking exploded.

Experts say this is the first recorded incident of an e-cig detonating when it wasn’t being charged.

Really? I only ask because I was given an e-cig recently and that too went bang in a shower of sparks when I took a drag. It’s probably safer, all things considered, to carry on with the dried leaf alternative.


— NEWS that there may be a gigantic ninth planet orbiting the sun has caused boffins to head for Hawaii, where they are using a Subaru telescope to try to find the colossus.

Subaru? Presumably, when operating it you must play very loud techno music and wear your baseball cap back to front.


No fun par for course



IN recent years, scientists have claimed that pretty much everything enjoyable gives you cancer.

Bacon, artificial flavouring, alcohol, tobacco, biscuits, bras, wifi, sweets, sun cream, retirement, pork, potatoes, bread, bubble bath, coffee, tea, cars, cheese, Coca-Cola, dogs, fish, curry, deodorant, Facebook, the Pill, honey, holidays, lipstick, money, pickles, perfume, soup, pizza, sweets, various toys, television, iPads, milk . . . the list is endless.



Just about the only thing that we could do safely was perform sex acts on one another.

But now they’ve decided that this too will give you cancer.

That leaves golf. Which apparently won’t give you cancer. But you will die of boredom.


Ban ... Presidential candidate Donald Trump                                                                                              AFP

— AMERICA has decided to refuse visas for people who have recently visited countries that they reckon sponsor terrorism.

Syria, Iraq and Sudan are highlighted and that’s a bit of a problem for me, as I’ve been to all three.

Technically then, I’m now barred from entering the US. And Donald Trump isn’t even President yet.


Gas test dummies at fault


Gassy ... Jeep Grand Cherokee exceeds gas limitations

BACK in the summer, everyone ran about shrieking because tests in America had revealed that Volkswagen’s diesel engines were designed to cheat in environmental tests.

Well now it’s emerged that 95 per cent of all diesel cars pump out way more harmful gases than governments allow.

The Jeep Grand Cherokee exceeds the limits by a factor of 15.

And others such as the Subaru Forester and Nissan X-Trail are high on the naughty step as well.

So what’s to be done?

Well look at it this way. If a school examinations board sets papers that no pupil can pass, then it’s the exam board that’s at fault. Not the children.


— AN inquiry into the Labour Party’s disastrous showing at the last election has concluded that Ed Miliband was in no way to blame.

So does this mean they’ve ended up with flower power Corbyn for no reason?

Yup. Or as Blameless Ed would have put it, “Hell yeah”.


Putin MPs on spot


Brit ban? ... Vladimir Putin                                                                                                                        Reuters

NOW that an official report has concluded Russia’s President may well have sanctioned the murder, in London, of spy Alexander Litvinenko, will MPs meet to decide whether Putin should be banned from the UK?

Thought not.


Lost identity ... man found in Herefordshire has a case of Jason Bourne                               Universal Pictures

— A MAN with an American accent, who has been found wandering the lanes of Herefordshire, claims he does not know who he is or how he got there.

Hmmm.

I wonder if the police have tried calling him “Jason”, to see if that rings any bells.

Take a chill pill


Snooze ... Leo's new film is just a lot of walking with some fighting    New Regency Pictures/Entertainment Pictures/ZUMAPRESS.com

HISTORIANS have spent all week spluttering into their sherries about various factual inaccuracies in Leonardo DiCaprio’s excellent new film The Revenant.

It’s based on the true story of a fur trapper who walks through miles of snowy wilderness having been attacked by a bear and left for dead by his colleagues.

On the way he faces many extremely exciting problems, none of which, say the experts, ever actually happened.

Who cares?

If the producers hadn’t come up with all those fights and chases and waterfalls it would have been a two-and-a-half hour film about a man walking through some snow.

And if you want to see that, you can go to Scotland.


— COUNCIL chiefs in Barking, where else, have launched a scheme in which DNA from dog dirt will be used to trace and then prosecute owners.

This means they will have to employ someone to spend their days ferreting about in piles of dog excrement with a lollipop stick.

Any takers for that job?

Anyone?


— A VET has warned dog owners not to throw sticks for their pets when out on a walk.

Apparently, they can get stuck in the animal’s throat, causing “horrific” injuries.

I’m sure that this is possible. In the same way that you should not take a dog for a walk in case it’s hit on the head by a giant meteorite.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6880954/Jeremy-Clarkson-Drive-cheap-cars-if-you-want-to-avoid-being-impounded.html

[RedMoon11]

Footpaths, cycle lanes... roadworks make me cross

Jeremy Clarkson vents at road problems ‘designed to make your life worse’

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
29 January 2016


It's a never-ending cycle of roadworks on the UK's streets                                                                Alamy

WE all know the problem. You’re at a party. They’ve brought round the nibbles and you’re left with a handful of greasy cocktail sticks, not quite knowing where to put them.

Well last week, at The Sun’s Military Awards bash in London, I felt a sudden need to rush across the room and poke them into His Mayorness, Boris Johnson.

I’ve always liked Boris but London, at the moment, simply isn’t working properly.

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Thanks to a staggering amount of roadworks, it had taken me over an hour to get to the party. And that’s an hour to do four miles. I could have hopped there more quickly.

Boris would undoubtedly have told me to use the bus but that’s hardly the job of a Conservative politician — to tell the voters to leave their cars at home and use something that will give them a disease.

And nor could I have used a bicycle because it was raining. And I’m 55. Not five.

Ever since I can remember, people have complained about roadworks. It’s part of the national psyche.

But in London at the moment, the sheer number of road closures and buses on diversion and temporary traffic lights beggars belief. And to make matters worse, they are not digging up the road to make life better for the motorist.

They’re digging them up to create speed humps and width restrictions and cycle ways and bus lanes.

They’re digging them up then to make our lives worse.

And it’s not just London either. New figures show that across Britain, there are 25,000 road works in place at any one time. Motorways are coned off for months and months so that gantries can be installed.

And why are the gantries necessary? So that speed cameras can be put in.

In Oxford, the ring road has been a snarled-up cauldron for frayed tempers and brake lights for as long as I can remember.

They say it’s so a couple of roundabouts can be altered to make the traffic flow more freely in the future.

Yeah right. It’s actually so they can build new cycle ways, crossing points and footpaths.

So. You’re being held up for months. So that in future, you can be held up for ever.

And now the Government has come up with the most hare-brained scheme yet.

They are saying that councils should be fined up to £5,000 a day for leaving road works unattended.

So councils will have to hand over what is your money if they fail to hurry up with a project which is designed to make your life worse.

Which means they will not be able to spend that money on something that would actually make your life better.


— YOU always think as you roll a pound coin into an RNLI collecting tin in the pub that your cash will help the nation’s brave lifeboat crews rescue trawlermen from North Atlantic storms or small children who’ve been swept out to sea on lilos.

But no. It seems that most of the money is being spent on two hapless Americans who have been rescued nine times while trying to sail home.

And they still haven’t left England yet.

Each call out, by the way, costs around £17,000.

This week, the Americans tied their boat to the harbour wall and went shopping. The tide then went out, the boat toppled over and a candle they’d left burning on board set it on fire.

Apparently, the RNLI has not commented. Well not publicly at least.

But I’d like to bet that behind the scenes, what they’re saying about these guys isn’t flattering.

Or printable.


Problem? Take it up with Bill


American Airlines ... or Cathay Pacific?                                                                                           Eric Winter

AMERICAN Airlines faced a PR disaster this week when one of their flights had to return to Heathrow when passengers and crew started feeling unwell.

And yet they seem to have come up with a clever way of making sure that it wasn’t a PR disaster at all.

Because if you look at the picture of the plane you can see that it says on the side “Cathay Pacific”.

I’m going to adopt that policy from now on.

If I say or do something controversial, I shall simply tell everyone that my name is Bill Oddie.


— THE Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers are nearing completion now and many of you will be wondering why, when every other aircraft carrier in the word has one bit of superstructure poking up from the deck, they have two.

Could it be that the Royal Navy boffins have built a clever decoy to fool the tracking devices on incoming missiles?

Or maybe one houses some kind of super-secret weapons system?

Nope. The new ships are powered by diesel engines so a funnel was needed.

But that would have looked a bit silly, so it’s been surrounded by the command and control centre for flight operations.

In other words. It has two towers to make it look nice.

I rather approve of that.


— DANISH politicians have passed a law which allows the state to confiscate the assets of illegal immigrants.

Which, in the next 12 months, will net them about £7.25.


Labradoodles have been described as the world's cutest dogs                                                    Getty Images

— I THINK it’s fairly safe to say that if nature had been allowed to take its course, the poodle would have become extinct by now.

It’s like the name Malcolm. A thing of the past.

And even in the past, a poodle was only of any use to people who wanted to do topiary on their hedges and needed to practise first.

As a dog, it was rubbish. But then someone realised that if you crossed a poodle with a labrador, you’d end up with a labradoodle.

Altogether now, aaaaaah.

Today, it seems everyone in the world has one and I was just wondering, would they be so popular if the word “labradoodle” wasn’t quite so cute?

What if, for instance, they’d called it a “poo-dor” instead?


Rail cost is in la la land

LAST weekend my son needed to get from Manchester to London so he could go to the Arsenal Chelsea game.

He’d been looking forward to it for ages and the day before the match, he set off to the railway station with a spring in his step and hope in his heart.

But there was a problem. Because he’s a student, he only has about £4 a year left after paying his way in the pub — and the train ticket was £88.

I bet he wish he’d known that it would have been cheaper to fly from Manchester to Los Angeles and then on to London via Madrid and Bratislava.

No really. We read this week about a boy who needed to get from Essex to Sheffield. It would have cost him £47 on the train so he flew there, via Berlin, which cost £37.50.

Do you get that? A train has no jets sucking fuel at the rate of one gallon a second. It doesn’t need two drivers. There are no landing charges. It can take far more people than a plane to dilute the costs yet somehow, it’s massively more expensive.

In fact I’ve done the maths. At the moment it costs about a pound a mile to travel on the train in some areas.

Which means that if you used a train to go from London to LA, the ticket would cost £5,500.

Whereas British Airways will get you there for £415.


— AIR India has told its cabin crews that in future they will no longer be able to wear what they call “intimidating moustaches”.

There’s no such thing.

Moustaches only fall into three categories.

Stupid. Amusing. Or hilarious.


Moustaches fall into three categories... stupid, amusing and hilarious


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6896283/Jeremy-Clarkson-vents-his-anger-at-London-roadworks.html

[RedMoon11]

President? We’re better off sticking with Mrs Queen
Would you rather have the Royal Family or a man with nylon hair, asks Jeremy Clarkson

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
5 February 2016


Nylon hair ... Trump                                                                                                                   Getty Images

THERE are plenty of people in this country who think the whole concept of a Royal Family is idiotic.

They say that we don’t have hereditary doctors or hereditary postmen.

So why should we have a hereditary head of state?

And they argue that we’d be much better off with a properly elected president instead.

Right. I see. So what they want is a system like they have in America where it’s coming down to a two-horse race between a madman with nylon hair and a dodgy woman with a curious past. Or has it?

Apparently not. Because after some crocuses in a state called Iowa, which is famous for absolutely nothing at all, we’re told by an endless stream of plastic newsreaders with Richard Hammond teeth that the dodgy woman with the curious past is actually going to be squaring up to a chap who’s so right-wing he makes the man with the nylon hair look like Ed Miliband.

Over the years, I have tried very hard to understand the American political system and I’m still at a loss.

Here, parties choose their leader in a couple of days and that’s that. But over there, it takes years. And millions and millions of dollars.

It takes so much money, in fact, that if we adopted the same system here, the Queen wouldn’t be able to afford to run.

And we’d end up with Alan Sugar, the Duke of Westminster and no “none of the above” option on the ballot paper. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just the crocuses.

That’s expensive enough. But then you have something called the primaries and the New Hampshire.

And now, hold the front page, the candidate with the nylon hair has decided that his opponent cheated in Iowa so we’ve all got to get hysterical about that.

And we are still nine months away from the actual election where ordinary people get to vote for their president.

Meanwhile, there’s a war in Syria, North Africa is falling to pieces, China’s economy is giving cause for concern, Russia is being run by a loony, Ukraine’s not settled and Europe is groaning under the weight of millions and millions of new arrivals.

But all of this is smothered under wall-to-wall coverage of what’s going on in the elections in a country where we don’t live.

Elections which are a bit like the high jump.

You have an endless run-up followed by a brief moment of action. And then the run-up starts all over again.

Some of the problem, of course, is that Americans try to turn everything into the Super Bowl.

A church hall full of Bible-bashing Hitlers, with a bit of glittery ticker tape and a power rock soundtrack can be made to look and feel like a Vegas heavyweight title fight.

We wouldn’t do that here. It’d all be more restrained.

But we’d still end up with Buckingham Palace full of Roman Abramovich.

And I’m sorry, but I’d rather have Mrs Queen.


Not just Tina taking a break



I’VE been watching The Jump, mainly because I rather like Tina Hobley.

And it’s amazing because, unlike any other “celebrity” show, the participants really do have to put themselves in harm’s way.

That tea tray they use to slide down the ice tunnel at 50mph? There is no way in hell I’d do that. And the jump where they leap 25ft in the air before landing on an inflated balloon?


Perilous ... The Jump Fame                                                                        Flynet

I knew that was going to end in tears long before Rebecca Adlington knocked her entire shoulder off.

And then came news that Tina’s elbow is broken, which means there’s no reason for me to tune in any more.

Instead, I shall watch Getaway Car, in which everyone does a lot of screaming while driving between two plastic barriers at about 9mph.
 

Bomber’s hole lot of grief


Sucked out ... blast hole in plane

WE now know that the man who was this week sucked to his death through a hole in the side of a jet liner was actually the man who caused the hole to appear in the first place.

And while I will admit that the incident must have been very frightening for those on board and a damn nuisance for the airline, you have to admit that it’s also bloody funny.

Because the suicide bomber may be in Heaven now, with his army of virgins — and they will all be laughing their heads off.

“What? So you went to all the trouble of getting a bomb on a plane. And when it went off, only you were sucked out and killed?”

I musket fatter


Bullet proof? Maradona                                         Getty Images

COULD it be that in America, where everyone is shot most days, people become very fat in the hope that their enormous stomachs will act as a sort of bulletproof vest?

It’s an interesting theory which, this week, was answered because a scientist has worked out that a 9mm bullet will indeed be stopped after travelling through 60cm of fat.

However, even if you do have 2ft of blubber around your vital organs, you are not out of the woods, because I once fired an AK47 and the bullet from that would be able to travel all the way through Diego Maradona. And it’d still have enough energy left to knock down a medium-sized tree.

No road markings is barking

A COUNCIL in Norfolk has suggested the country’s roads would be safer if they removed all the white lines.

Yes, and while we are at it, let’s get rid of the shipping lanes in the English Channel.

And who needs those corridors that airliners have to follow?

If it was a free-for-all up there, pilots would be a lot more careful.

The fact is this: A road I often use in London was recently converted so there is no demarcation either to show where the pavement stops or where the road begins.

As a result, the motorist is made to feel like he or she is driving down a pedestrian precinct.

And yes, the measures do force me to drive very slowly and very carefully but I can pretty much guarantee that one day, despite my best efforts, I’m going to knock someone over.

That’s what’s going to happen if they remove the white lines in Norfolk.

Sooner or later, there is going to be the most God-awful head-on collision, and the person in the council who suggested it is going to feel like a right Charlie.


Daft ... labrador                                                                                      Getty Images

— WE saw this week the seemingly tragic picture of a dog which, say the experts, has been so traumatised by its cruel owners it will only sit with its face buried in the corner of a room.

However, I’m not sure these experts know what they are talking about as I have a labrador which is fed well, walked often and petted until the top of her head is smooth.

And she too spends half her time staring at the wall.

It’s a labrador thing.

They’re brilliant dogs. But they are all as daft as brushes.



Set for the scrap heap ... hovercraft                                                    PA:Press Association

— ACCORDING to a man I know, Princess Anne is to be sold for scrap.

As I’m sure you know, she used to be the pride of Britain but for the past few years she’s been languishing in a car park, gathering moss.

Happily, there’s now a push to save her from the scrap heap and restore her to her former glory.

If you fancy helping out, get in touch with the Hovercraft Museum Trust.


— FOR about three seconds, I was intrigued by the photograph of those footsteps in the Himalayan snow.

“It’s the yeti,” everyone cried.

Well yes, but since the footsteps are all in a perfectly straight line, we would have to assume that if the yeti really had left them behind, it must have been hopping.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6912218/Clarkson-Better-the-Queen-than-a-President-with-nylon-hair.html

[RedMoon11]

Eagles downing terror drones is a bird-brained idea, says Jeremy Clarkson

Sun columnist reckons asking a bird to fly into an airborne food blender sounds like nonsense

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
published 12 February 2016


Hey mister death drone ... I'm coming to neutralise you (like hell I am)                Getty Images

NOW that you can buy a drone in a toy shop, and they can be flown by the average eight-year-old, the police are rightly worried about how they could be used to carry bomblets with pinpoint accuracy right up the Archbishop of Canterbury’s cassock.

Certainly, if I were a terrorist, I wouldn’t bother working out how to smuggle some explosives on to a plane because that’s just about impossible in the civilised world these days.

I’d simply fly a drone-bomb into the Heathrow flightpath then set it off when the next Airbus was lumbering into land.

And if I’ve thought of that, you can be fairly certain Johnny Terrorist has as well.

It’s a worry.

So there have obviously been a lot of meetings about what can be done to neutralise the threat and Plod has decided that eagles may be the answer.

They reckon specially trained birds could be tasked with hovering over important buildings, ready to snatch a drone from the sky at a moment’s notice.

At first I was sceptical. Because while you can train a bird of prey to stand on your hand and fly over to a fence for some food, I imagined it would be very hard indeed to make it crash deliberately into what’s basically an airborne food blender.

But then, just a day after the police announcement, came news that birds of prey in Australia have been deliberately starting bushfires.

They have been seen picking up smouldering twigs then dropping them into dried grass.

Then, when the grass catches alight, all the little creatures hiding in it run for their lives into the open, where Johnny Eagle is waiting with a knife and fork.

There’s more, eagles, ospreys and the like have been known to swoop down on your picnic to steal your sandwiches. Not to eat but to drop into a nearby lake as bait for fish.

Clever eh?

It’s often been said that birds of prey are descended from velociraptors, which, as we know from documentaries such as Jurassic Park, can hunt in packs and open doors.

They probably are. And it’s incredible that they’ve learned to bait fish and start fires.

But I’m still not sure about this drone interceptor business.

Because asking a bird to progress from simple fishing duties to becoming an airborne bomb disposal expert is a bit like expecting a child to be able to fly an Apache gunship just because he can do finger painting.

Apparently, the Dutch say they have had some success with their eagles. But the Dutch smoke a lot of weed so we have to take what they say with a pinch of salt.

For all we know, they were using Don Henley.

And when they say “some success”, it means that there must have been some failures too.

Which can’t have been a pretty sight. “Oh no Ruud, the bird is now mince.”

Besides, if a drone with dynamite strapped to its undersides was heading my way, I certainly wouldn’t rely on a fish eagle with a blue light on its head to save me.

A double-barrelled Beretta 12-gauge, on the other hand . . .


Zuma just pool-ing resources

SOUTH Africans took to the streets this week calling on President Jacob Zuma to stand down.

They say he is corrupt but I can’t see what they’re on about.

He’s made it perfectly plain that the large swimming pool he had built at taxpayers’ expense is actually a water storage facility that would be needed if his palace caught fire.

Seems reasonable to me.


 Bumper scars

YOU’VE got to feel sorry for the 29-year-old man from Guinea who was smuggled into Spain inside the rear bumper of a Renault Clio.

All of that discomfort, pain and humiliation. All that sea sickness and all those exhaust fumes.

And then he was nicked and is now in a detention centre, waiting to be sent home.


Old rockers still have a role

AN Instagrammer was left red faced this week after her followers pointed out the photo of the “random man” and his dog on a beach she posted online was in fact Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

Zoella, who is a celebrity on YouTube apparently, shouldn’t worry though, because she’s not alone.

Last summer I was having a drink outside a pub when a girl stopped and asked for a photo.

She then gave the camera to my drinking companion so he could take the snap.

Which means she went home with a picture of me, a fat bloke from a car show . . . that had been taken by Brian Johnson, who’s the lead singer with AC/DC, one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

https://www.instagram.com/p/lBUKN9QcYJ

Brian who ?.. young girl had no idea


My mate Brian ... on some obscure Beeb show I used to present


Give the drivers a break

WHEN the Tories came to power they vowed to end New Labour’s war on the motorist.

Which they haven’t done.

There are now more speed cameras, more bus lanes and more cycle paths than Tony Blair could ever have dreamed of.

And now comes news that they are thinking of lowering the drink-drive limit from a pint and a half to one mouthful of sherry trifle.

They tell us that the lower limit is already in place in countries such as France. And that’s true. It is.

But what they don’t tell us is that if you’re just over the limit in France, you get a small fine.

Here if you are just over they will take away your licence, so you lose your job and you are then evicted from your house and your children will become drug-addicted sex workers to make ends meet.

End the war on the motorist, my a**e.


Big cat’s the way to do it

AS a general rule, I don’t spend all day looking at amusing animal-related video clips on YouTube.

But I was rather captivated by shots of that leopard which broke into an Indian school this week and ran amok, attacking anyone who got in its way.

And I was even more captivated by what happened after the animal had been tranquilised and shipped back into the woods.

Because school carried on as though nothing had happened.

That’s incredible.


Asserting who's boss ... Leopard causes a few scares in India                                                                    Getty Images

If a leopard had broken into a British school and run around biting the music teacher and the head of chemistry, you can be fairly sure that every school in the land would have been closed for a year while Government panels worked out what went wrong and what steps were necessary to make sure no big cat attacks could happen again.

Perhaps that’s why our economy is growing at around 2.5 per cent.

Whereas in India, where life carries on even after you’ve been attacked by a leopard, growth is 7 per cent.

— BRITAIN’S most senior policeman, Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, gave a talk in Manchester this week and afterwards went to retrieve his hat, which he’d left in a cupboard.

And, yup, it had been nicked.

— PERFORMERS with the English National Opera are threatening to stage a strike.

Which has caused literally no one to say: “Oh no. How ever will we manage?”


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6928564/Eagles-downing-terror-drones-is-a-bird-brained-idea-says-Jeremy-Clarkson.html

[RedMoon11]

The dangers of Booze: It’s too late for me but please save yourself

Jeremy Clarkson says at 44, your body simply loses its ability to deal with booze

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
18:01, 19 Feb 2016


Sore head ... a young, fresh liver can deal with it without too much bother but an old, tired liver cannot    Getty Images

WHEN you are a teenager you can drink as much as you like, safe in the knowledge that by 11 the following morning the hangover will have gone and normal service will have been resumed.

Things get a little worse in your twenties and in your thirties hangovers can last until tea time the next day.

But then, at the age of 44 and two months — I’ve worked that out — the human body simply loses its ability to deal with alcohol and you must wait until the poison evaporates, which can take up to a week.

Two nights ago I was led astray by a friend. Although when I say “by a friend”, I mean “by my own lack of a spine”.

We conducted an experiment to see if drunk tennis was possible and, having discovered that actually, it isn’t, we went out for some food and then I’m not sure what happened next but the birds were singing and the sun was up.

After a couple of hours’ sleep, during which time I dribbled the last tiny bit of moisture from my body into my pillow, I woke feeling as though I had become a walnut.

I stumbled about for a bit, trying to get dressed then, after half an hour, I emerged from my bedroom, with my trousers on back to front, to face the day.

I faced it mostly by sitting in a chair staring at nothing much. On and on it went until the sun went down and friends came over for something to eat.

And you’d think by then that a fully grown adult male could have staged some kind of recovery.

But no.

I discovered over dinner that it takes a conscious effort to keep your eyes straight. But I was too exhausted to make that effort so I had to sit there cross-eyed, looking like a simpleton.

Moments later, the friend who’d led me astray that night before simply fell asleep at the table. Though again, I should point out that by “friend”, I mean me.

Today, two nights after the drinking incident, he is still in bed and it’s ten in the morning.

I’m up and about but it still feels like my head has staged an explosion in a mattress factory. It’s all dull and achy and I can’t hear properly.

And there’s a good reason for this. Unlike nicotine or even heroin, alcohol is toxic.

It’s a poison. A young, fresh liver can deal with it without too much bother but an old, tired liver cannot.

If you are 43 years old then and you think you can handle it, that you can manage, take it from me — you can’t.

And so I shall conclude in the style of a Hollywood hero at the end of a disaster movie: “It’s too late for me. I’m stuck here in the burning wreckage of a ruined life. But it’s not too late for you. Give it up and save yourselves.”


— IS there a sound on Earth more infuriating than someone in the next room not being able to decide what to watch on Netflix?

Beep. Beep. Beep beep beep (long pause). Beep (short pause). Beep beep. Beep.

And repeat. For ever.


I didn’t catch the golf bug-gy

I’VE been forced to play golf. Which meant I had to dress up like Rupert Bear and get into an electric buggy with a boot full of bats.

The buggy into which I climbed was called a Tomberlin Anvil and looked very snazzy, with big alloys, flared arches and a small, leather-look, boy racer steering wheel.

I can see exactly why someone would buy such a thing. Because it looked tremendous and could be charged using the sun.



Strait down middle of the Bearway ... Rupert

However, the path to the golf course was steep and twisty and narrow and on the first hairpin bend I discovered a slight problem with the Tomberlin. It had the turning circle of a Boeing 747.

This meant I had to do a three-point turn. On a steep track, with an electric motor. And what felt like one-wheel drive.

It wasn’t easy, because in the small amount of time between taking my foot off the brake and putting it on to the accelerator, the buggy would roll forwards a few inches.

And because it was heading for a sheer drop, I’d put my foot back on the brake again, fearing death was imminent.


Golf buggy ... not exactly Jeremy's favourite vehicle

Soon, and much to the amusement of the spectators who’d broken off from their game to watch the Big Motoring Expert drive a golf buggy round a corner, I crashed into a fence.

Then I shot backwards into a rockery. And then there was a lot of wheelspin. And swearing as I dealt with the Anvil’s anvil-heavy steering.

And I was delighted, because it took me such a long time to get round the corner, there was only time to do one hole.

The Tomberlin then. An ideal golf buggy for people who don’t like golf.


EU bid is Belgian waffle

MR CAMERON, who is the Prime Minister, began to look exhausted racing around Europe, burnishing the bottoms of various European leaders as he desperately tried to make a new deal for Britain.

And I’m sorry, but what’s the point, because almost everyone knows already which way they’ll vote in the referendum.

It’s much the same story closer to home. All of the commentators are waiting with bated breath to see if Michael Gove will support the “Out” movement.

And all of the audience is thinking: “Michael who?”

I like Gove. He’s a nice chap and bright, too.

But I know which way I’m going to vote and his views will make no difference at all.


Mr Gove ... your stance won't affect others

Ciggies to save their bacon

WE are told that 58 per cent of the British people have cut down on their meat consumption following recent health concerns about bacon and sausages.

Right. I see.

So more than half of us have looked at the unhealthy lives we lead and thought: “I know what I can do to live longer, I’ll give up the bacon sarnies.”

Meanwhile, it’s been reported that more than a fifth of young women are now smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

They’re probably thinking they’ll be OK though, because they no longer eat Pork Farms’ sausage rolls.


Air to a fortune

WHEN I first heard the police warning about fake airbags being sold on eBay, I laughed because they said these fakes may explode.

All airbags contain explosives which are designed to detonate when a collision is detected.

And then I laughed some more, because who would buy an airbag from eBay? A dining room table, yes. Or an old album by Darts.

But an airbag? I mean, it’s not something even the most skilled DIY enthusiast would be able to fit.

But then I thought: “Hang on. This is the perfect crime.”

Because if you sell someone a fake airbag, they only realise they’ve been had as they are flying through the windscreen on their way to the Pearly Gates.


— WE like to think that the habit of “modding” your wheels began quite recently. Big exhausts. Fat rims. Wings. These are recent inventions, yes?

No, actually, because archaeologists working in fields near Peterborough have discovered a wheel from between 1100BC and 800BC which is a metre in diameter.

We don’t even have wheels which are a metre in diameter today.

That must have been quite some episode of Pimp My Chariot.


Wheel I'll be damned


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6943930/Jeremy-Clarkson-Ive-overdone-the-booze-and-am-suffering.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Get homeless people out of recycling bins & into Las Vegas

Homeless don’t want to sleep in doorways or shelters, so a new option is needed

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
18:01, 4 Mar 2016


Whatever will we do? Is a Calais-style Jungle camp the answer? Or is it the Nevada desert? Alamy

ONE of Britain’s biggest waste management firms claimed this week that more and more homeless people are choosing to sleep in recycling bins.

Of course, this sparked fears one of them will accidentally be tipped into a dustbin lorry, where they will be compacted then used as landfill. Or turned into an ironing board.

Safety boss Tim Standring says: “No matter how well we check our containers, there’s absolutely no guarantee that we’re going to find everybody.”

Well now, that’s not strictly true, is it Tim?

You might not be able to spot someone if they were hiding in a cave in the Scottish Highlands.

But I reckon that even if a very small person like Richard Hammond was sleeping in a recycling bin, it wouldn’t take me very long to find him. I think the real problem is that binmen don’t want to go rummaging through a container full of rotting food and discarded needles in case a meth-scarred Romanian is having 40 winks under a urine-soaked blanket.

I wouldn’t want to do that either. So what’s to be done?

Well, I’ve done some checking and it seems homeless people don’t want to sleep in shop doorways any more because they are often kicked in the head by drunks on their way home from nightclubs.

I can’t see why anyone would want to kick a homeless person in the head but it happens apparently, so shop doorways are out.

Homeless shelters are difficult too, because they have rules about behaviour and dogs and most of them are full anyway.

Maybe then, we should have a look at the so-called Jungle, which sprouted out of nothing on the outskirts of Calais.

Made from tarpaulin, plastic sheeting, cardboard and corrugated iron, it quickly became a town with restaurants, shops and even a church.

Yes, the French keep knocking it down, which seems a very heartless thing to do, but the people who created it will simply rebuild somewhere else.

And eventually it will develop a thriving economy and more permanent structures.

And then the people who live there won’t be homeless any more.

Could we allow that to happen in Britain? Should we? And would it work?

Well, consider this. Back in the early 20th century, homeless people looking for work on the new fangled railroads in America congregated at a spot in the Nevada desert.

They eked out an existence in homemade shelters until, eventually, they had found water and created a town.

It was rough, hot, violent and difficult. But it continued to grow and grow.

And now, we all know it as Las Vegas.

Display’s horn in my side


Travellers steal rhino horns ... something must be done to stop trade

A GANG of travellers who stole rhino horns from museums and stately homes across Britain and Europe are now facing lengthy prison sentences.

It’s claimed that the horns they stole would fetch up to £220,000 each in Vietnam and China, where idiotic rich locals believe that if they snort powdered rhino horn, their p*nises will become bigger.

I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal but we really must do something to stop this trade.

And we can start by urging the owners of stately homes and the curators of museums to stop displaying rhino horns.

What are they hoping to achieve by keeping them on the shelves? Is it supposed to remind us of the days when white empire builders killed these animals?

Well, if so, why not also display the headless bodies of witches?

Or William Wallace’s intestines? Or the mummified bodies of dead slave children?

I’ll tell you why not. Because it would be barbaric and unnecessary.


Something to tell us?

AT the Oscars ceremony last weekend Kate Winslet was seen whispering something to a friend, who then giggled and beamed and put her hand on the Titanic star’s tummy.

This prompted some commentators to ask: “Got something to tell us, Kate?”

To which the answer, for all we know, is: “Yes, I was saying I had a nasty bout of diarrhoea.”


At the end of the day...


Bearist event ... The Revenant misses out                                                                                                                    AP:Associated Press

SO, after all that, the bear in The Revenant wasn’t given an Oscar for anything at all.

Paddington didn’t get one either. I reckon the whole event is bearist.


Bog off, Mr May

FORD has introduced an online calculator designed to show how much of your life is wasted by commuting.

And the answer for me is . . . not half as much as I waste on film shoots waiting for James May to finish up on the lavatory.


Bugatti at £1.7m? Bargain!


They could charge twice as much and still sell every single one                                       Dominic Fraser

MUCH of the motoring world has spent the week absorbing a raft of astonishing revelations about Bugatti’s new Chiron supercar.

Billed as the most powerful road car in the world, its four turbochargers feed the 8,000cc, 16-cylinder engine with a truly incredible 60,000 litres of air . . . every minute.

Drive one of these down the M1 and everyone in Milton Keynes would suffocate.

To try to keep pollution down, the Chiron is fitted with four catalytic converters which, if laid out flat, would cover an area the size of 30 football pitches.

More detail? OK, try this. In a tight turn a fighter jet can manage about 9G.

Whereas flat out, the rubber in the Chiron’s tyres is subjected to 3,800G.

That’s because it has a top speed of 261 mph.

The only moderate thing about this machine is the price. It’s £1.7million.

I reckon they could charge twice as much and they’d still sell every one they make.


Woe is me

ON a long flight back to Britain last weekend, I got no sleep.

Partly this was because British Airways thinks the cabin on its night flights should be hotter than the surface of the sun.

And partly it was because I had toothache.

So I landed after eight hours, at five in the morning, and raced immediately to my dentist, who injected me in my gum. And then again.

And then when that had no effect, he stuck what appeared to be a Zulu spear down the side of my agonising tooth.

Were you in Scotland last weekend?

Did you hear what sounded like a wolf that had got its paw stuck in a mincing machine? Well, that was me, in London.

And still the tooth wouldn’t go numb.

In the end, he sent me home and now I’ve got to go through the whole procedure again.

My appointment is at five this afternoon.

So put your fingers in your ears at about ten past.


Can’t trust Boris

Is Boris' Brexit stance really clever? 

BORIS JOHNSON, as we are told 5,000 times a day, has decided to campaign for Britain to leave the EU in the forthcoming referendum.

Brexit enthusiasts claim this is a big coup because Boris is seen as being clever and wise.

Well I’m sorry, but I can’t trust the judgment of a man who looked at the Embankment in London and thought: “You know what? That’s a very busy road. So I shall turn half of it into a cycle lane.”


You can’t have any fun on planes anymore

FOLLOWING the drunken stag night brawl aboard a Ryanair flight this week, there are now calls for alcohol to be banned on all flights in future.

Right. I see. So that’s no smoking, no drinking, no mobile telephones, no slouching, no moisturiser, no deodorant, no laptops with flat batteries, no tennis racquets, no nail scissors, no lighters, no razors, and so on and so on . . .

Weirdly, however, you are still allowed to board with a screaming baby that keeps the other passengers awake all night.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/6978267/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-we-need-to-get-homeless-people-out-of-recycling-bins-and-into-Las-Vegas.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: A virus could kill off human race. But do we care? Er...no

Sun columnist says mankind is oblivious to its biggest threat

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
18:01, 11 March 2016


The zika virus causes an infected person's children to be born with abnormally small heads                     Reuters

FOR many years, clever people with tall foreheads and mad hair have explained that mankind, almost certainly, will not be wiped out by nuclear weapons or some kind of giant meteorite.

But they’ve said we could very easily all be killed by something we can’t even see: A virus.

The figures bear this out, because the number of people killed so far by atomic weapons is a few thousand. The number killed by a meteorite is one. And the number killed by some kind of plague is in the millions and millions.

The Black Death, for example, killed 50million people.

And that was in the 14th century, when the population of the whole world was only about 50million and seven.

Strangely, however, we seem to be terribly blasé whenever a new virus works its way into the human food chain.

When bird flu was first identified we listened to the doom on television.

And then went into the shed to feed the budgies. Until it was time for a nice chicken sandwich.

Aids? Well, we all watched poor old Freddie Mercury die then we booked a hooker and crossed our fingers.

More recently, Ebola broke out of the bat cave it calls home and began to run amok in West Africa.

Ebola is the Worst Thing In The World.

It liquefies your internal organs and as your relatives lean over your baggy, soggy body to say their goodbyes, you have a fit and explode, showering them with infected goo.

So they too end up going the same way.

And were we bothered? Not really.

Today we have the Zika virus. It’s carried by mosquitoes and it causes an infected person’s children to be born with abnormally small heads. In Brazil in 2014 the number of women who gave birth to babies with so called “microcephaly” was 150. Whereas the number of cases reported in the past six months stands at 4,700.

That’s such a massive leap that doctors are now convinced the sickness is being transmitted sexually. Which, if the past is anything to go by, means the number of people having unprotected rumpy pumpy. . . will carry on as before.

Zika is a strange and horrible example of God’s love for people.

All you feel when you catch it is a bit below the weather. But then, many months later, you give birth to a child with a head the size of a walnut.

And about the same IQ.

If it gets a serious toe-hold, it means that in 30 years the human race will be less intelligent than most woodpeckers.

In Barbados, one of the countries that’s been affected, they are so worried that the authorities are blanketing the coastline every night with thick clouds of mozzie-killing poisonous gas.

It’s like the post-napalm scene in Apocalypse Now. Except that instead of Robert Duvall saying the smell reminds him of victory, you have hordes of British holidaymakers complaining to their hotel managers about the smell.

And then heading off to their rooms for a shag.


— I’M breaking the law by writing this column.

The trouble is, I’m currently in India and was only given a visa on the understanding that, while I was here, I would do no work.

It even says in my passport that I can only stay in the country if I don’t do any “reporting”.

Which is a shame, because I was going to tell you how in India, XX XXXXXX XXX wonderfully soapy XX XX wistful smile XXXX to find XXXXXXXX, XXXXX XX vigorous pumping XX XXXXXXX XXX excellent melons XXX XXXX happy.

Sadly, though, I can’t.


Skirting around the rules ... Maria tested positive for a banned substance          Getty Images

I WAS delighted that Maria Sharapova owned up to failing a drug test this week.

Because it gives me an excuse to fill half my page this morning with a picture of the shamed star in a tennis skirt.


Milkman alarms me ... but I won’t sue

ASLAN KAYARDI is a driving instructor. He is 33 and has taught more than 200 people to drive.

He has no penalty points on his licence.

Recently he overtook a cyclist in a 30mph zone and was caught on camera giving the bicycle somewhere between two to three feet of space.

See anything wrong with that? Nope. Me neither. And nor could the police who heard the evidence from both the cyclist and Mr Kayardi and decided no action was necessary.

However, the cyclist in question was a barrister, who decided to bring a prosecution himself saying that a heart-rate monitor he was wearing at the time of the incident showed he’d been alarmed.

A Crown Court jury dismissed the case in minutes. I shall make no further comment except to say that when the milkman makes a noise outside my bedroom window at two in the morning, I’m very alarmed.

But I have not brought a prosecution against him because that would make me look like a bitter and twisted, lily-livered, mealy-mouthed, attention-seeking waste of blood and organs.


A kit Po-faced


The Afghan women's team look more like Teletubbies in their new kit                           AP:Associated Press/Rex Features

FOR many years, the Afghanistan women’s football team have been prevented from reaching any form of global success . . . because the players’ headscarves kept falling over their eyes.

But now they’ve been given a new, all-in-one uniform which incorporates a pair of tights, a long-sleeved shirt and a hood.

This will mean they’re a lot more efficient. The only problem is they all look like Teletubbies.


— I DON’T pretend to be an expert on football but having been a human being for nearly 56 years, I think I understand exactly why Leicester City are now hot favourites to win the Premier League this year.

Confidence and pride.

Other teams may have more money and more exotic facilities at the training grounds.

And many have better players.

But human nature means that someone with 100 per cent of the skills who’s playing at 50 per cent of his ability, as he waits for the next transfer window to give him an even bigger television set, is always going to be beaten by someone with 75 per cent of the skills who bursts on to the pitch with a heart full of get up and go.


Activists are out of Duch


Snow joke ... Kate caused uproar on her secret skiing trip               Reuters

OH dear. It seems the Duchess of Cambridge has sparked fury by going on a secret skiing holiday in a pair of £295, possum-lined mittens.

Animal enthusiasts are up in arms, saying the poor creature should not have died simply so our future Queen doesn’t get chilly fingers.

Right. I see.

So would these people have been happier if her gloves had been made from plastic?

I only ask because plastic is made from hydrocarbons.

Which is one of the reasons most animal enthusiasts wear shoes made from the outer layer of a cow.


Kim Kard to dress


Naked again ... Kim broadcasts her boobs to the universe on Twitter Social Media

IT must be exhausting being a Kardashian and having to remember, before leaving the house in a morning, to take all your clothes off.



Aim high ... comedian Lee Mack on Pointless BBC

— CULTURE Secretary John Whittingdale said this week that news programmes are core to the BBC and should be unaffected by budget cuts. He’s quite wrong, though.

What’s core to the BBC, so far as I’m concerned, is Pointless.

It remains my ambition in life to appear on it.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/6994983/A-virus-could-kill-off-human-race-says-Jeremy-Clarkson.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Sugar tax is a waste of time, because in the long run we’re all dead anyway

The Chancellor’s levy on fizzy drinks may leave us looking like Chloe Madeley, but it won’t stop us getting ill

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
19:01, 18 Mar 2016


Sweet surrender ... George Osborne has decided he can reduce the nation's flabby bits if he puts a tax on sugary drinks

OVER the years, various governments have dreamed up very many new and idiotic ways of raising money.

We’ve had window taxes, hat taxes, tea taxes and, of course, the poll tax. But it’s when they turn their attention to drink, things really go haywire.

Back in the 17th century, our straight-laced and teetotal monarch decided that he would like to annoy the Catholics, so he abolished all taxes on gin, to discourage people in Britain from drinking brandy that had been imported from France.

Gin then became so cheap that everyone could afford to drink about two pints of it every night.

And very quickly, the people of Britain were reduced to gibbering, vomiting wrecks. So the tax had to come back.

Today, we have Mr Osborne, who has decided he can reduce the nation’s flabby bits, and thus save the National Health Service a fortune, if he puts a tax on sugary drinks.

Right. I see, so does that mean there will be tax on all drinks that contain sugar? Orange juice? Robinson’s lemon barley water? Tonic water?

Or what about a hot lemon and honey drink that people make for themselves when they have a cold? Will that now cost a million pounds?

Apparently not, because it turns out there are lots of different types of sugar, some of which are good for us and some of which aren’t.

And this is where I always come unstuck when I decide that I can no longer see my feet and I really ought to lose a couple of feet from my waistline.

I simply do not know what anyone is on about when they talk about protein and carbohydrates and cholesterol and so on.

Take the avocado as a prime example. We are told that it is stuffed full of fat so we say: “Ooh right. Well I won’t eat one of those then.” But apparently we can because it’s good fat.

It’s the same story with eggs. Good or bad? Who knows.

This is what Jamie Oliver and all of the other middle-class, recipe-book health gurus must understand.

They may as well be lecturing us on compression factors in supersonic jet travel because we don’t even understand the words they’re using.

I think I understand that a can of Coke is now going to cost me £700,000 and yet I can carry on putting three teasthingyfuls of sugar in my morning coffee for the square root of bugger all.

Which of course is the next issue. We need sugar. We crave it. So if we can’t afford to get a hit from a fizzy drink, we shall have to up our daily quota of chocolate, which, weirdly, is unaffected by Osborne’s plans.

Or we will have to lick the back of a bee.

And all so we can make the National Health Service cheaper to run. Which brings me on to my final point.

Let’s say the sugar tax works. Let’s say that in a few years’ time, everyone in the country looks like the love child of Willem Dafoe and Chloe Madeley.

This doesn’t mean we’d never fall ill and die. It just means we’d fall ill and die from something other than being too fat.


Pesky pap pics will not cell

I’M not quite sure why, but a couple of British paparazzi have decided to follow me around as I film the new Amazon motoring show.

It’s annoying because it means pictures of our punchlines (not that sort) appear in the papers before we have a chance to show them on television.

Anyway, they turned up at our hotel in Morocco this week, brazenly sitting in reception as we arrived.

And the next morning, they were waiting in a car outside so they could follow us. They even waved hello.

And we waved back. Although it turned out, we were waving goodbye.

Because shortly after we arrived on set the police arrived, confiscated their camera equipment and carted them off to prison so they could spend a few hours playing Hide the Sausage with Omar the Strangler.

It turns out that you can’t come to Morocco on a tourist visa if you’re not actually a tourist.

We heard later that in the back of the police van they were “shaking like Bambi”.

James, Richard and I, on the other hand, spent the day wearing slightly wider smiles than usual.


-THE 2016 Formula One World Championship kicks off tomorrow. Lewis Hamilton will win it.


-THERE’S been much praise this week for a school in Scotland where pupils are made to run a mile a day.

As a result, they’re all healthy and well behaved and wonderful in every way.

Yes, and exactly the same could be said of Hitler’s holiday camps, where children were made to spend an hour every morning doing star jumps and running about.

Sure, they were fit and strong.

But in the war that followed, they were beaten by people like Alan Turing and Winston Churchill who had spent their time at school learning how to be clever instead.


-BACK in 1991, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released an album called Sugar Tax.

Seven years earlier, they did a track called Tesla Girls. And a year before that, there was Genetic Engineering.

It seems they weren’t so much a band, as a collection of prophets.


Lay off wags at the nags

THIS week, we were shown what were described as “sickening scenes” at the Cheltenham Festival of Horses.

Two young men, who play football for a living, were seen in a lofty private box, urinating into their glasses and then apparently emptying the glasses on to the heads of horse enthusiasts below.

They were with two young ladies, who bared their breasts at watching paparazzi.

Later, one of them would tell newsmen that inside the box, one of the men had a phone charger up his bottom and was pretending to be a horse.

And I’m sorry, but I fail to see how any of this is “sickening”.

Jihadi John, beheading a homosexual on the internet, or setting fire to a downed pilot – that’s sickening. But bared breasts and someone with a phone charger up his anus? That’s just Cheltenham.

It’s a good laugh and an opportunity for people who spend the rest of the year knee-deep in horse excrement, or the A&E department of the local hospital, to put on some normal clothes and have a few drinks.

Long may it continue.


- FIRST there was Bowie. And then Alan Rickman. And then Lemmy out of Motorhead. And then Keith Emerson.

And now comes the biggest shock of them all: Cliff Michelmore has died. Cliff was the face of television in my youth.


The voice of a generation ... Cliff Michelmore, presenter of BBC1 Holiday, has died    Rex Features

He talked me through the moon landings and hosted the impossibly exotic Holiday programme on BBC1. I simply could not believe it when his death was announced this week.

Because he’s one of those people who I thought had pegged it years ago.



Keeping abreast of current affairs... Chancellor George Osborne can't keep his eyes of Theresa May's budget cuts        Pixel 8000

- MANY people seem to have noticed that Theresa May appeared in parliament this week with the top of her breasts on show.

Apparently, however, this is wrong. It’s sexist to notice. And even worse to comment.

Right. I see. But what if George Osborne had delivered his speech with the top of his p*nis on show. Would it have been offensive to comment on that?


- I SUPPOSE at this juncture you’ll all be expecting me to comment in some way about the Top Gear Cenotaph business, but I’m afraid that I’ve run out of space. Sorry.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7012210/Coke-may-cost-a-packet-but-I-can-still-sugar-my-tea-for-free-says-Jeremy-Clarkson.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: It’s no Djok, girls, men bring more cash into tennis

Sun Columnist says despite the storm of sexism circling the sport, more people pay to watch the boys play

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun columnist
19:01, 25 Mar 2016


No love lost ... Novak Djokovic got caught up in a storm of sexism when he suggested men should be paid more than their female counterparts    Getty Images

WHEN a South African tennis official said this week that women in the sport didn’t really deserve the same prize money as men, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And things got even noisier when world number one Novak Djokovic said women should receive what they get now. But that men should have more.

All of the female stars jumped up and down saying that they train just as hard as the men, and travel just as far, and sweat just as much. So it’s only right and proper that they get the same wages. When the dust had finally settled, the South African official had lost his job and Djokovic had been forced to issue a grovelling apology.

But before we all move on to the next thing, I have a small question.

Should women football players get the same wages as their male counterparts?

Really? Why not? They train just as hard. They play for the same duration. They know their careers will be over by the time they are 32.

So why should they also not get £100,000 a week?

And what about boxing? In any gym, you’ll find a stocky lady sweating buckets as she beats the living daylights out of a punch bag.

Yet come fight night, she’s going to be lucky to take home £7.50.

And how can that be right when Floyd Mayweather trousered, last year alone, nearly 200million dollars?

Well, the simple fact of the matter is: The only people who turn up to watch women’s boxing are the immediate families of those taking part. And a few sexual deviants.

There are no television rights either, which is the problem women footballers have.

They may sweat blood but Sky Sports is not going to clear the schedules to bring us Chelsea Ladies against Doncaster Belles.

It’s not quite the same story with tennis because the women’s games are jumbled up with the men’s games.

You go to a tournament, you get both. You watch on TV, it’s the same story.

But the fact is that more people watch the men’s finals at Wimbledon than the women’s finals.

The tickets at Centre Court fetch more too.

This means that the men bring more cash to the sport, then have to share it equally with the women.

Is that fair? If you think it isn’t, may I suggest you say nothing.

Because if you do, you will be hung from a lamppost and pelted with used feminine hygiene products until the end of time.


—I WENT out this week with a man who claims he’s been in therapy ever since he left his boarding school in the 1970s.

“There was so much sexual abuse,” he sighed, “from the older boys, the teachers, everyone.

“But no one ever touched me and I’ve never been able to work out why.”


—OVER the past few weeks, many people have presented me with sound, well-thought-out reasons for Britain leaving the EU.

But emotionally, I feel European. And for ideological reasons, I support the EU.

I like the idea that in the future, a well-run United States of Europe would provide balance and wisdom in a troubled world that may well have Trump on one side and Putin on the other. So I’ve listened to the arguments about trade agreements and security and immigration and I’ve thought, “Yeah, but I want to stay.”

This week, however, a friend asked me this: “If Britain wasn’t in the EU and we were having a vote on whether to join, what would you do?” It was clever because the answer was obvious. I’d vote “No” in letters six feet high.


—LAST weekend, Fernando Alonso was involved in a spectacular crash during the deservedly unwatched Australian Grand Prix.

He smashed into the back of another car at 180mph and flew upside down into a barrier.

And afterwards he walked away without so much as a cut finger.

Some people have put this down to car safety, while others have described it as blind luck.

It is probably a combination of the two – and the fact his head was cushioned from the impact by his enormous eyebrows.


Winners on Kruse control


Dropped ... Max Kruse has been left out of the German national team after deleting photographs on a mobile phone

WHEN news emerged that Germany had dropped midfielder Max Kruse from the national football squad after a series of “off-field incidents”, we all assumed that he must have goosed Ms Merkel while off his face on crystal meth.

But no. It seems that while celebrating his birthday at a nightclub recently, someone was repeatedly taking his photograph. So he grabbed the phone and what? Smashed it? Threw it into the lavatory? Er no. He deleted the pictures.

Can you see anything wrong with that? Me neither. It’s something I’ve done myself actually.

But this incident, it seems, is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent months, Kruse was ordered by the manager to build a chicken coop after it emerged that he liked Nutella.

And then he was fined for leaving his wallet in the back of a cab.

It all sounds too ridiculous for words. Barbaric even.

But it’s probably why Germany won the World Cup and we, er, didn’t.


Fuming at pointless checks . . .

FOR years, government inspectors checked every new car that went on sale in the UK to make sure it wasn’t producing too much something or other from its exhaust pipe.

And in ten years, after only two models had failed – a Mini diesel and a Mitsubishi Carisma – they decided it was a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. So the scheme was quietly dropped.

The chairwoman of the Transport Select Committee, Louise Ellman, said this was “deeply disturbing”.

Really? I only ask because how can it be “deeply disturbing” to not waste our money checking for something which isn’t happening and doesn’t matter anyway?


ITV chiefs bottle it


No smoke without ire ... ITV cancelled This Morning over a small fire that was "nowhere near the studios" PA:Press Association

ITV was forced to cancel Good Morning Britain yesterday after a small fire broke out in a post room that was described as being “nowhere near the studios”.

It reminds me of the day I was sent home from the BBC because a blaze had broken out at a dairy a quarter of a mile away.

Had it been a fireworks factory, I could have understood. Or a plant making dynamite. But a dairy?

I tried to explain to the health and safety people in their stupid high-visibility jackets that one of the characteristics of milk is that it doesn’t explode.

But they were having none of it. “It might,” said one. And that was that.


Bored of Iain? This is Myle’s better


Klass act ... Myleene's exotic exploits are sure to interest anyone who has tired of IDS   Xposure

I TRY to keep up with the world of politics but I’m completely baffled by the events of this week.

A man called Iain Duncan Smith resigned and no one seems sure whether it’s because he wanted to give more money to people in wheelchairs or whether it’s because he wants to leave the EU. And now, because he’s gone, George Osborne can never be Prime Minister.

I suspect this is one of those stories that is only of any interest to people who work in Westminster.

The rest of us are far more interested in the fact that Myleene Klass is still up to her knees in the sea. Where I reckon she’s been for at least the last four years.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7028437/Men-make-more-money-when-it-comes-to-tennis.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Sorry, Eric, you’re just too wealthy to sing the blues
Sun columnist says wealth has nothing to do with being able to relate to those living on the breadline — if Clapton can sing sad tunes David Cameron can lead this country

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
18:01, 8 Apr 2016


Eric Clapton ... singer's considerable wealth hasn't impeded his ability to sing the blues          Rex Features

WE were told this week that if we knew the true scale of David Cameron’s vast wealth, he’d be hounded from office.

The message was clear. Anyone with large lumps of money in the bank can have no idea what life is like for families on the breadline and is therefore completely incapable of being in charge.

So does that mean the nation should have prevented Winston Churchill from becoming Prime Minister in 1940? “You were born in a palace, you fat Tory b******. You don’t know what it’s like for the ordinary British Tommy.

Or what about Sir Richard Branson? He owns an island. Does that mean he’s not fit to run an airline?

Maybe he should hand the reins over to a postman from Basildon.

Then you have Eric Clapton. Should he be banned from singing the blues because he’s wearing a $5,000 Armani suit?

We seem to have got it into our heads in this country that wealth is a dirty word and that rich people must be sent to prison as soon as possible.

I don’t understand why. A great many wealthy people in Britain earned their cash by getting up early, working hard and investing shrewdly.

They provide employment and their business keeps the economy oiled.

But when they get into their Porsche to drive home at night, someone throws an egg at them. Really, it should be the other way around.

We should be encouraged to laugh and sneer at people on bicycles. Because they are generating nothing at all.

Apart from a smell.

We should be throwing eggs at people at the benefits office and cabbages at people on buses.

Kids should be taught in school that if they start a business and put in a decent shift, they’ll have a better phone and better training shoes.

And they should be made to understand that business doesn’t just benefit the people who run it.

They should learn that the National Health Service and the Army and the road network can only function properly if the economy is doing well.

And that the economy is completely reliant on business.

You go for an operation? Well afterwards you should wave a cheery thank you at the man in the Porsche. Because it was his business and his hard work that paid for it.

Instead of this, however, we are told in enormous headlines that David Cameron can’t be Prime Minister because he’s too rich.

Interestingly, this observation was made in the Daily Mail, which is edited by a chap who owns a grouse moor.

And owned by a chap who has a fortune of around £750million.


Trolls must be hunted

LAST week, a nine-year-old girl called Bonnie Armitage was killed while out hunting on her Shetland pony.

And immediately a bunch of fox enthusiasts took to social media to rejoice at the news.

I will not repeat here what they said in case anyone from Bonnie’s family is reading this.

I’ll only say their comments were vile and cruel beyond imagination.

A police spokesman said they are investigating the people who made the comments to find out if a criminal act has been committed.

Well now listen, constable. If it turns out that what they said is legal, then the law needs changing. Immediately.


— TEACHERS are worried that handwriting is becoming a lost art as more and more children rely on gadgets to communicate rather than a pen.

I made a note about this while I was in the pub last night. But this morning, I’m damned if I can read what it says.

Something about a dog. But that’s it. Or is it log?


— SO. An electric-powered Tesla has won a runway drag race against a Boeing 737 jetliner.

However, after the race was over, the jetliner could have taken off and flown all the way to India. Which makes it useful.

Whereas the car would have to go back to base to have its batteries charged. Which makes it not useful at all.

Unless you live at one end of a runway, and your office is at the other end.

And you are always in a hurry.


Get a trill with real bear sex

WE’VE been told that a new production at the Royal Opera House contains sex scenes where the performers go at it “like animals”.

Presumably, this announcement has been made on the basis that “sex sells” and therefore they’ll get bigger audiences.

The problem, however, is that if you want to see people making love, you can simply turn on the internet, where none of the scenes are ruined by some fatty in the background warbling away in Latin.

Or if you want to see actual animals going at it, the Chinese have set up iPanda.com, a site where you can watch two amorous pandas in a zoo.


— SOCIOLOGISTS announced this week that men will use a woman they’ve met on Tinder for sex if she turns out to be less attractive than her profile photo had suggested.

And what if she turns out to be more attractive than she appeared to be in the picture?

They don’t say. Presumably because that’s never happened.


— HATS off to billionaire Bond baddie Elon Musk, whose plans to conquer space were set back when one of his rockets exploded. He described the incident as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.

The best ever way of saying “it blew up”.


— I MET last week with a leading light in Middle Eastern politics – who wishes to remain anonymous – and I asked him to explain what it is exactly that IS wants.

“Fundamentally,” he said, “they’re communists.”

Seeing my surprise, he went on to say that they hide behind religion but they only ever select targets which they see to be rich and privileged.

When you look at it this way, their hatred of the West is much easier to understand.


No taxing problem

A WHISTLE-BLOWER revealed this week that thousands of people from around the world have been investing their money in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and Panama.

And now everyone is in a state of shock.

I can’t understand why, because look at it this way.

You have a £100. You can put it in a bank in Britain, which would mean handing over £25 to the Government.

Or you can put it in a bank in Panama, which would mean handing over £0 to the Government.

What would you do?

The blame, then, lies not with the people who’ve been avoiding tax.

It lies with the Government for allowing the loophole to exist.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7061550/Jeremy-Clarkson-says-David-Camerons-wealth-has-no-bearing-on-ability-to-lead.html

[RedMoon11]

I’m more worried that John Whittingdale is a fan of Iron Maiden than his dominatrix ex

Sun Columnist says if we want leaders to be real people, we’re going to have to except their real world problems

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
18:01, 15 April 2016


Real life problems ... the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, once went out with somebody who's a "sex worker"

WE always say we want our leaders to be real people who’ve experienced real life and real problems. But do we?

I mean, it is extremely unlikely that a former drug addict could ever become a government minister in Britain these days.

We’d also say no to someone who’d had an affair or lost their licence for drinkdriving or been convicted for shoplifting. Even if they were eight at the time. And they’d only nicked a tube of Smarties from the local corner shop.

And what if it turned out that someone had once been a member of the Communist Party.

They could argue all they like that they were only 19 and that it’s normal for teenagers to come over all Bolshevik.

But we wouldn’t listen.

We would show them the door and boot them through it. And now comes news that the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, once went out with somebody who’s a “sex worker”. I think that’s Corbyn for “prostitute”.

He was single at the time and there’s no suggestion he paid her for sex but, even so, there have been calls for him to step down.

And that brings us on to his boss, Mr Cameron, whose dad once had a perfectly legal company registered in a tax haven.

“Noooo,” screamed everybody. “We can’t have people running the country whose father did something we now think is unacceptable.”

Where does that one end?

If we discover that Theresa May’s great-great-great-great-great-grandad was a Viking rapist called Vlad the Impaler, should we demand her resignation?

We probably would, because we’ve ended up in a position where politicians have to be cleaner than is possible. They can have absolutely nothing in the cupboard which would be deemed unsavoury.

They can’t have ever gone to a fancy dress party as Hitler or got a bit wild on a stag night.

And now we’re even saying that they can be drummed from office if their parents or friends did something which has subsequently become unethical.

Unless we put a stop to this nonsense we are going to end up with a parliament full of weirdos.

Look back to the kids in your class. There was always one with neat hair who never read a porn mag or smoked or had a drink and a snog behind the bike sheds.

Well, the way things are going he’s going to become Prime Minister.

Yes, there are certain things that should stop a person entering government. But going out with a girl when you are single isn’t one of them.

Besides, if you look carefully into John Whittingdale’s life you can find something a lot more worrying than his dominatrix former girlfriend.

The man is a fan of Iron Maiden.


We can’t phone home, ET

To bodly go ... a Russian internet billionaire has joined forces with Professor Stephen Hawking to develop a tiny spaceship that would carry a camera and a radio but would weigh only a few grams                                     Getty Images

THE search for intelligent extra-terrestrial life has always been pointless.

Because let’s just say for a moment that the dweebs and nerds who spend their days listening to the heavens burping and farting do actually find a radio message that’s been sent from a distant planet.

It’s not like we could hop in to a spaceship and pop over for tea and buns, because it would take about 20,000 years to arrive.

By which time the crew would be, er, dead.

However, a Russian internet billionaire has joined forces with Professor Stephen Hawking to develop a tiny spaceship that would carry a camera and a radio but would weigh only a few grams.

A laser-powered space canon would fire raw energy into “light sails” attached to the craft and it would whizz off at 130million mph.

That’s pretty fast. It’s so fast in fact it means it could reach the Alpha Centauri star system 25trillion miles away in just 20 years.

And that, of course, is all very excellent.

It’s amazing that we could send what’s basically a mobile phone into the heavens. But what happens next?

Well, it would take some pictures, which would then have to be transmitted back to Earth.

And that’d take, ooh, about 1,000 years.

Unless they were using Vodafone, in which case they wouldn’t arrive at all.


— WE’RE told in Britain that if we drink more than one pint of beer or one glass of wine a day we will die in screaming agony from cancer.

And we have to accept these numbers because they come from doctors and experts and scientists. So they are “official”.

Or are they? Because in other countries, the “official” figures are completely different.

Canadian experts say it’s fine to drink 2.2 pints a day. In China, it’s 2.7 pints.

And best of all there’s Chile, which says three pints is fine.

Sound country, Chile. I’ve been saying that for years.


Cheer up, it will happen

If you go down to the woods ... for many people in Britain, Thursday was a perfect spring day. It was warm, the sun shone and the woods were full of bluebells Getty Images

FOR many people in Britain, Thursday was a perfect spring day.

It was warm, the sun shone and the woods were full of bluebells.

But instead of letting us enjoy the moment, every single newspaper told us that it wouldn’t last and that, soon, there would be sleet.

We know already. This is Britain. Good weather never lasts.

And if you don’t stop being so Eeyorish, I’m going to come round to your house when you’re next having sex and tell you that while you may be having fun now, in the morning you’ll have to take the bins out.



It's going to dragon and on ...Game Of Thrones Season 6 is soon to return to our screens AP:Associated Press

—THIS month, Game Of Thrones returns to our screens, which will prompt half the country (the miserable, deluded half) to say: “I can’t see what all the fuss is about.

“I watched it for five minutes and it was all princesses and dragons.”

They do this because they know they’ve left it too late to join in so they try to ruin our enjoyment.

Don’t rise to it.

Simply smile sweetly, then go home to watch some graphic lesbianism.



The car's the star ... or is it Gigi Hadid?

—IN a BMW advertisement to promote its new M2 sports coupe, viewers are invited to try to keep their eyes on a pretty girl rather than the car.

So I did.

And as I sat there, wishing the car would get out of shot, I couldn’t help wondering, “This commercial, was it directed by that Tory MP who wanted to be interviewed by some ‘totty’?

“Or have I been through a time warp and it’s 1976 again?”



Winning formula? ... a recent study used science and maths to rank F1 drivers through the ages Getty Images

—A STUDY by the University of Sheffield, which used science and maths to rank Formula One drivers through the ages, has said that Nico Rosberg, above, is the 49th best driver of all time. Rubbish. He’s nowhere near that good.


— A SPANISH bed-maker – I bet they’re busy – has introduced a new smart mattress which records what sort of “activity” takes place on it while it’s being used.

Best you don’t put such a thing on your teenage son’s bed.



Rock and a hard place ... Led Zeppelin are being sued by a band they once toured with who claim that they actually wrote Stairway To Heaven   Rex Features

— SO, Led Zeppelin are being sued by a band they once toured with who claim that they actually wrote Stairway To Heaven.

Certainly, if you listen to their song, which pre-dates Led Zep’s hit, you are forced to concede that there are some striking similarities. However, I can’t help wondering what’s taken them so long?

Did they not hear Stairway To Heaven until just last week?

Because there are tribes in remote Amazonian jungles who know that if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last . . .


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/7079284/Do-we-really-want-our-leaders-to-have-real-problems.html
 

[RedMoon11]

Sob stories like Watership Down made me cry and ruined my childhood

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist

18:01, 29 Apr 2016


I showed my children Watership Down when they were young and I've felt guilty ever since                                Rex Features

SO, the film of Watership Down is being re-made for TV, and the production company responsible has said the scenes of bunny violence will be toned down to make it more acceptable to a family audience.

This comes after Channel 5 screened the blood and guts original on Easter Sunday and was inundated afterwards by six or seven complaints that children watching had found it all too horrid for words.

Indeed, the British Board of Film Classification said just a few weeks ago that the original film would now be considered way to distressing for the U certificate it was given.

And that today it would get a PG.

And I’m sure that at this point, you’re expecting me to leap on to my high horse and say the film censors and the people who complained to Channel 5 are pathetic and that they should be executed in front of their families immediately.

Well I’m not. Because my childhood was pretty much ruined by films that were ridiculously and unnecessarily sad.

Born Free? I sobbed throughout. Lassie? I was inconsolable. Bambi? I wept for a week.

And then there was a Norman Wisdom film about a milkman who replaced his horse — which I remember was called Nellie — with a milk float.

It was supposed to be a comedy but I was so devastated, I had to be taken out of the cinema and given warm milk.

And all of this is before I get to Ring of Bright Water, a lovely movie about a wonderful couple in Scotland who adopted an otter they called Mij.

We saw Mij getting friendlier and friendlier and doing amusing, ottery thing in the shallows.

We loved Mij.

And then someone hit it on the back of its head with a shovel and it was dead and that was the end.

And I’m sorry, but that’s not really a kid’s storyline is it.

Old Yeller wasn’t much good either. This was about a kid who adopted a big yellow dog he called Yeller.

He and the kid had many scrapes and adventures. And we in the audience grew to love that dog just as much as its owner.

So imagine our surprise when at the end of the film, it got rabies and had to be shot.

And oh my God, I’ve just remembered Kes, in which a young boy from Barnsley rescued a kestrel that he trained and loved and yup, you’ve guessed. His brother killed it.

There are those who say that storylines like this toughen kids up and prepare them for a life where bad things happen.

But I don’t buy that argument. A sad storyline doesn’t toughen a kid. It just makes them cry, and why would you want to make a child do that?

I actually showed my children Watership Down when they were very young and I’ve felt guilty about it ever since because it was a cruel and terrible thing to do.

I therefore wish the producers of the new film all the best.

And look forward to a storyline in which frackers come to the field where the rabbits live and the rabbits help them dig their holes.

That’d be charming.


Memory’s Throne me


Game Of Thrones has become a game of memory

WELL I watched Game Of Thrones on Monday and was utterly spellbound throughout.

Even though I’ve completely forgotten who all of the characters are and what the bloody hell they’re doing.

It really isn’t a show for people who can’t even remember, er, hang on.

What is it I can’t remember? Oh it’s on the tip of my . . . Nope sorry. It’s gone.


Warning signs of madness

 
Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith proposes preposterous air quality signs Rex Features

ZAC GOLDSMITH, the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, has announced that if he wins, he will put up signs at traffic blackspots so pedestrians can see how bad the air quality is at that moment.

Right. I see. And what exactly are the pedestrians going to do with this information? Hold their breath?

Air quality information will be like those road signs which warn of falling rocks ahead. And I should do what exactly? Turn round and go home. Reinforce the roof of my car? Drive very quickly?

Mind you, even they pale into insignificance against the dot matrix signs we now have on motorways.

They are supposed to be used to warn us of queuing traffic or an accident ahead. But now they are used to make us feel like we are all 12.

Just last week, one of these signs on the M40 said “Check Your Fuel” and I couldn’t help thinking: “Why are you saying that?”

I have a fuel gauge and a light which comes on when I’m getting low.

You may as well flash up a sign saying “Clean Your Teeth”. Or “Don’t steal sweets from the corner shop”.

Still, in the big scheme of things, Zac’s silly signs aren’t really the end of the world.

No. The end of the world will come – in London at least – if everyone votes for that Khan chap from the Labour Party.


Yachts of cash at home

 
Business is simple, sell your product for more than it cost to make                                                 Splash News

IN my mind, it’s very easy to run a business.

You simply sell a product for more than it cost you to make it.

And then you join the local golf club.

However, I’ve been reading about this British Home Stores and I’m afraid I’m all at sea...

Because it seems that what you actually do is buy a business for £1 and then, in the following 13 months, you trouser £25million.

And then you buy a yacht.

Poss off, Auntie
APPARENTLY, the BBC is considering plans to offer jobs to those from backgrounds it says are under-represented at the corporation.

Which is good news for boys who went to public school.


Emma Thompson recieved a nasty suprise from a farmer during protest Getty Images - WireImage

— IF a farmer wants to spray his field with manure, then that’s his right.

Even if Emma Thompson happens to be standing in it at the time.

Though when I say “even” what I mean is “especially”.


 
Ron Hopper's pals decided to turn his ashes into bait and caught a huge carp Bournemouth News

— AT first it seems like a heartwarming story.

When a keen angler called Ron Hopper died, his two mates decided to turn his ashes into bait.

Which they then used to hook a dirty great carp.

They told newspapermen this week that they had joked about the idea with Ron before he died of liver cancer and that he’d laughed and said it was a “brilliant idea”.

What troubles me is that I often tell friends that they’ve had a “brilliant idea” and as the door closes behind them, I often think: “God, you are numpties if you think that’s any kind of a plan.”

I only hope that this didn’t happen with poor old Ron.


— I AGREE with Jeremy Corbyn, who says there is no crisis in the Labour Party.

Of course there isn’t.

When he became leader, he made it very plain that he wanted to create a loony left sixth-form debating society and from where I’m sitting, it seems everything is going very smoothly indeed.


— I WOKE up very excited on Monday morning because on Thursday I’d get to drive a Challenger II main battle tank and on Friday I’d be going to see Roger Hodgson from Supertramp at the Albert Hall.

I had a bit of a problem with the tank though. You know when Winnie the Pooh eats too much honey and gets wedged in Rabbit’s hole?

Well, that’s what happened to me when I tried to get through the tank’s hatch.

Still, things are bound to get worse.

As I write, I am preparing to go to the concert.

I shall probably get stuck in the revolving door.


Read more: www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7117053/Jeremy-Clarkson-say-warren-peace-is-better-tale-than-Watership-Down.html