Jeremy's Latest Sun Column

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Don’t vote... let’s have wrestling to decide leader

Sun columnist says the law of the jungle should be applied to politics

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
18:01, 6 May 2016


Mercury Press & Media Ltd

WE like to think that human beings are very clever.

We invented the stapling machine and the jet engine and telephones which can be used to transmit photographs of our private parts to people we fancy.

But hang on a minute.

If we are so intelligent, how come the presidential election in America will be fought between a man with nylon hair and a dishonest woman?

How did we, as a species, let that happen?

Closer to home, how can the Labour Party have elected as its leader a man who stands in front of a mirror before he goes outside, thinking: “Yes. This tracksuit looks good.”?

People had a chance on Thursday to show the Labour Party that they’d made a silly decision with Corbyn but instead many millions went into a polling station and ticked the box which effectively said: “Yes. He does look good in that tracksuit.”

Then you have the people of Scotland, who don’t want to be governed from London.

So they voted in a party that wants them to be governed from Brussels instead.

It’s all unfathomable.

Many people today will go to a DIY store to buy a complex piece of gardening equipment.

They have the ability to pay for it using a piece of plastic and, more incredibly, the ability to assemble it and use it without cutting their arms off when they get home.

But put them in a polling booth and they become no more intelligent than a pigeon.

I watched Question Time on Thursday night.

And there was a man in the audience who’d listened to all the arguments for leaving the EU but said he wanted to stay because the British government had fought against regulation to protect bees.

For those of you who are not up to speed with this issue, let me recap.

In 2013, the EU banned a pesticide farmers used on oilseed rape, because, they had decided, it was hurting Johnny bee.

Farmers argued that without the pesticide it was nearly impossible to grow rape and pleaded with the British government to overturn the ban.


Question Time 5th May 2016
BBC

Which — much to the annoyance of chummy in the Question Time audience — they did last summer.

It’s strange, isn’t it? Because here we have a man who is capable of dressing himself and applying online for tickets to the show and getting himself there.

But in the referendum in just 46 days he’s going to vote to stay in Europe because he trusts Brussels to look after bees more than he trusts Mr Cameron.

He’s not alone.

I spoke the other day to someone who wants to remain in Europe because she sympathises with the plight of the Serbian waitress in her local café.

And then I met a young chap who wants to leave so he can buy duty free cigarettes when he’s travelling to France.

This is why we’ve ended up with so many mad people in charge these days.

Because when it comes to voting, we are all hopeless.

So why don’t we simply abandon the whole process and replace it with the system used by animals such as the zebra?

They mooch around in packs and each pack has a leader.

But there’s no voting or any of that nonsense.

Instead, when another zebra wants to be in charge he simply fights the current leader and if he wins, he’s in.

That would work well in human politics too.

So instead of trusting our future in the EU to the bee man from Question Time, Boris Johnson and David Cameron should have a wrestling match.

I’d like to see that.

And if you’re honest, so would you.


Becks Jr safer in big Merc

 
Brooklyn Beckham learning to drive in a Mercedes                                                                                    Neil Warner

AFTER pictures emerged of young Brooklyn Beckham learning to drive in a 140mph Mercedes, some people have been saying that it’s irresponsible to give him such a fast car.

The suggestion is that, as a young man, he is just a bag of testosterone and that he will have a crash.

Yes, and that’s precisely why it’s a good idea to put him in a large, modern car with all of the latest safety features.

I have always found it absurd that young drivers are forced by sky-high insurance bills to drive around in titchy, third-hand bangers that offer about as much protection in an accident as a carrier bag.

Much better to put them in something enormous.

It doesn’t have to be a £33,000 Mercedes.

You can buy big old Beemers and Audis which come with airbags and seat belt pre-tensioners for a few hundred quid.

I think, therefore, young Brooklyn is setting a good example.

Even though he’s not yet old or wise enough to know he’s driving around with his hat on back to front.


Perfect tights? It’s just pants
 
Clarkson is not a fan of tights, even if they are 'perfect' News Group Newspapers Ltd

EVERYONE seems to be very excited about what are hailed as the “perfect pair of tights”.

But they’re forgetting something.

There’s no such thing.

It’s like saying you have: “The perfect lung infection.”


Concrete evidence? It’s murder

A BODY found on Brooklyn beach in America this week was wearing a pair of cement boots.

“It’s a homicide obviously,” said investigating detective Sherlock Holmes.

What’s more amazing is the news that police have never before found a body that had been killed this way.

Cement boot murders have only ever been fictional.

It probably won’t be long before they find the culprit, as he’s obviously not that bright.

The cement hadn’t been made properly and was full of air pockets.

Which is why the victim was washed up on a beach.


Lew not Putin on a smile

 
Speedster Lewis Hamilton was in no mood to smile despite a podium finish at the Russian Grand Prix               PA:Press Association Images

LAST weekend, Lewis Hamilton drove out of his skin in the Russian Grand Prix to go from tenth on the grid to second place.

It must have been fun for an extremely well-paid man who loves driving fast cars and overtaking people.

But afterwards he looked like he had just been diagnosed with chlamydia.

I was going to send him a tweet, asking him to cheer up, but then I realised.

By being glum and crestfallen, he had the perfect excuse for not engaging with President Putin at the awards ceremony.

Quite clever when you think about it.


DOCTORS announced this week that obesity may be contagious.

They say that if we live with a fat person, we may ingest the bugs that have caused them to be fat and become fat ourselves.

Well sorry but that’s nonsense.

I’m enormous because I eat too many biscuits.

 
Nowhere beats Dorset on a sunny day, says Clarkson                                                                                                              Getty Images

OVER the years, I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve seen the yellow lights go down the Mississippi.

I’ve seen the bridges of the world and they’re for real.

I’ve seen the morning in the mountains of Alaska.

I’ve seen the sunset in the east and in the west.

I’ve sang the glory that was Rome and passed the Hound Dog singer’s home.

Many of the places I’ve seen have been truly, jaw-droppingly beautiful.

But I’ve just spent the week in Dorset, and you know what?

On a sunny spring day, that really does take some beating.


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7132721/Jeremy-Clarkson-Dont-vote-lets-have-wrestling-to-decide-leader.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Ban on petrol cars? Mad Dutch are in Never-Netherlands

SUN columnist says forget the BMW brochure and check out a golf cart instead as crazy Dutch plan could come our way

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist

18:01, 13 May 2016


Going Dutch... Jeremy wonders if Corbyn might take us down the same cycle path by banning petrol and diesel cars in our cities - if he gets the keys to No.10   Getty

SOCIALISTS in the Dutch government have decided that after 2025, the sale of petrol and diesel cars in Holland should be banned.

Doubtless, they have in their minds a quiet, peaceful future with everyone moving around silently, emitting nothing but the occasional whiff of cannabis.

I’m not sure, however, that they’ve really thought this one through.



Put down the BMW brochure... start looking at golf carts            Getty

Because after all these peaceful, happy, silent people get home and munch their way through everything in the fridge, they’re going to need to charge the batteries in their electric cars.

And where’s the power needed to do that going to come from?

At present, Holland is no different to anywhere else in Europe.

The electricity companies are only just keeping pace with demand.

And all anyone has to charge up right now is a phone and a laptop.

When everyone suddenly needs to charge up a bloody great car, the power stations are going to have to go to Defcon a million.

They’ll be sucking in vast quantities of Russian gas and burning it frantically, round the clock.

Just to keep Van der Valk’s Tesla charged up, the whole country will become smothered in a giant cloud of carbon dioxide and filth.

But let’s not forget, shall we, that Holland is often a bit bonkers, because it tries to be liberal and authoritarian at the same time.

This is a country where prostitution is legal but hookers — or sex workers as we must now call them — have to get their fingernails checked once a month by government inspectors to make sure there are no jagged edges which could tear a condom.

It’s a country where drugs are legal too, but only if you smoke them in certain specified places and . . . well, you’ve seen Pulp Fiction I’m sure, so you know about the rest of it.


Clarskon's worried Jeremy Corbyn and his lunatic mates in the Labour Party will be looking at the Dutch plans and thinking : "Hmmm ..."

Obviously then, they’re going to ban petrol and diesel cars.

And that would be fine if we could sit over here and laugh.

What troubles me, however, is in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn and his lunatic mates in the Labour Party will be looking at the Dutch plans and thinking: “Hmmm ...”

We’ve already got average speed cameras on vast swathes of the road network.

We have fines and bans for anyone who dares to transgress the limits, which are being lowered on an almost daily basis.

And we have cycle lanes springing up everywhere.

And all of this is happening under a Tory Government which bills itself as the motorists’ friend.

So can you imagine what would happen if Corbyn got his hands on the keys to No10.

Because this is a man who almost certainly becomes priapic when he sees pictures of all those Chinese people in the olden days going to work on their bicycles.

Sensible, level-headed people would tell him that the country needs the revenue from cars and the fuel they burn.

They’d also tell him that if we’re going to go all electric, we’ll need to start fracking immediately so the power stations can keep pace.

But Corbyn is a socialist and therefore won’t listen.

So, if I were you, I’d put away the brochure for a new BMW and start looking at golf carts.

Oh, and buy a few shares in a Russian gas company.


Auntie’s twits are out


Brilliant journalism... Laura Kuenssberg's impartial reporting has left Corbyn's 'weird-beard' supporters calling for her to be sacked   BBC News & Current Affairs

OVER the past few weeks, I’ve been left slack-jawed with admiration for the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.

Her completely impartial coverage of the local elections and the Brexit debate left me wondering: Where does she stand?

Her Scottish accent leads us to believe she’s on the Left.

Her private school education suggests she isn’t.

But the most important thing – what she says – gives us no clue either way.

It’s brilliant BBC journalism.

Which is presumably why Corbyn’s supporters have taken to Twitter to call her all the names under the sun.

And a petition was started to have her sacked.

These weird-beard lefties are not used to straight reporting on the TV.

And they obviously don’t like it one bit.


RIGHT until the last minute, we were going to call our new Amazon motoring show “Nigel”.

But then we thought, “Hang on. What if someone thinks we’ve named it after Nigel Mansell. Or worse, Nigel Farage.”

So we had a meeting and decided that since the show will be hosted from a giant tent that will be in a different location each week, we should call it what it is: The Grand Tour.

And now we’ve got to decide where that tour is going, where the tent should be pitched each week.

For at least three of the 12 shows we will be in Britain so, dear Sun readers... any thoughts?




No sex please... we're talking

SCIENTISTS have worked out why, when we sit down to watch one episode of Game of Thrones, we end up watching three or four.

They say it’s because we lose our minds and a sense of time.

No it isn’t.

It’s because we want to see if there’s going to be any actual sex in this series.

Or if it’s just going to be more talking.


Hot reign from Spain


Look closely... she's a QILF, according to Jeremy                                 Getty Images

THE Times ran a large photograph this week of Queen Letizia of Spain standing in the rain under an umbrella.

At first I couldn’t work out why a British newspaper should be interested in publishing a picture of this foreign royal who didn’t seem to be doing much of anything at all.

But then I looked more closely and the reason became clear.

Letizia is a rare breed.

She’s a QILF.


A LOT of people have been asking recently if fun-loving Prince Harry wouldn’t make a better king than his shy older brother William.

Hmmm. I wonder if Harry is more fun-loving and approachable BECAUSE he isn’t going to be a king.


ENVIRONMENTALISTS have identified a new menace which, they say, ruins the world’s most pristine places, kills thousands of helpless animals and is using up one of the world’s most important elements.

So, you may be wondering, what is this new threat?

Some hideous North Korean nerve agent?

A genetically modified bat of some kind?

Or maybe a US Air Force experiment that’s gone wrong?

No, actually.

The new terrifying problem is the party balloons used at children’s parties.

Yup, an eco-organisation with a name I can’t be bothered to remember says that balloons which float away when released are a waste of helium and that, when they land, will be eaten by a cormorant, that will then die.

So remember that when you are planning your child’s birthday party.

Say that instead of balloons, he or she will have to play with some soil instead.


Give those soldiers some flowers... Clarkson believes these miniskirted Russian soldiers could end suffering on the battlefield   Getty Images

CRIKEY. Women in the Russian army are now being forced to wear knee-high leather boots and tight white miniskirts.

And I’m not sure this is a bad idea.

Because if you’re in the British Army and you see a burly enemy sergeant rushing towards you in combat clothing, you’re going to shoot him.

If, on the other hand, it’s a pretty young girl in a barely there skirt, you’re going to give her some flowers.


– WEST Ham officials have said that fans who attacked the Manchester United team coach on Tuesday night will be banned for life from the Upton Park stadium.

Er, hang on...


– SO, Greater Manchester Police is saying that its staged terrorist attack in one of the city’s shopping centres this week had to be as realistic as possible.

Right. I see.

So all of the people caught up in a real-life atrocity would be wearing ear defenders and safety goggles would they?


www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/jeremyclarkson/7149444/Jeremy-Clarkson-Ban-on-petrol-cars-Mad-Dutch-are-in-Never-Netherlands.html

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Clarkson: Grr... no amount of patrol boats will stop the traffick

Columnist questions the point of border patrol boats as there’s no way to stop migrants

By JEREMY CLARKSON, Sun Columnist
4 Jun 2016

Nature can be disgusting


Truth be told ... Clarkson tells it like it is             Press Association

I WAS in Africa last week filming our Christmas special and one night we made camp at the side of a small watering hole.

Soon, a cheeky little zebra arrived and as he lapped away there was a chorus of oohs and aahs from our normally hardened film crew.

But then he was attacked by a pack of hyenas, who tore him to pieces in front of our eyes.

Then a pack of wild dogs rocked up and decided they’d like to eat the spoils – which caused more deaths as the two species went at it.

And then a croc lumbered out of the water and joined in.

And I couldn’t help thinking . . . all those nature documentaries we see on the TV, why does no one ever say that nature, by and large, is violent and disgusting?

And that’s before we get to the prolapsed anus I saw on a monkey the next day.

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/7192484/Jeremy-Clarkson-questions-the-point-of-border-patrol-boats-as-there-is-no-way-to-stop-migrants.html

[RedMoon11]

My biggest fear is not a great white shark or being boiled alive… it’s Corbyn in No10

Being dissolved or used as fish bait has nothing on Corbyn creeping into power as Tories battle over EU, says Jezza

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 10th June 2016, 11:25 pm


Scared yet… which one fills you with terror?

WE read yesterday about a tourist who, while hiking in Yellowstone National Park, fell into a spring full of boiling acid.

“There were no remains left to recover,” said a spokesman.


Boiled alive in a Yellowstone hot spring…

We also heard troubling news from Australia. Sixty-foot waves full of sharks have been battering the coast of Sydney, knocking whole houses into the seething torrent. In France, the river Seine became so full that paintings and sculptures at the Louvre had to be moved upstairs.

And in America, a massive gust of wind uprooted a beach umbrella which then speared a woman, killing her instantly.

And all of this just weeks after a whole Canadian city was burned to the ground by an out-of-control forest fire.

Meanwhile, in England a man drove his Mercedes into a puddle and rescuers had to break one of the side windows so he could get out.


Battered by storms in Sydney…

My local news programme sent a reporter to provide live coverage of the event as it unfurled but sadly, by the time she arrived, the puddle, and the man, had gone.

It didn’t stop her though. So she stood there, under the “LIVE” banner telling us that the puddle had been quite deep and that if the man had remained in his car, instead of climbing through the window, he could have…

Could have what? Got his trousers wet?

We see this sort of thing time and time again, reporters standing up to their shoelaces in water or snow or fallen leaves, trying desperately to convince themselves and their viewers that a terrible tragedy has occurred.

I wish they’d give up. Because in Britain, nature is completely vanilla.

We have missionary position weather — no active volcanoes and earthquakes so mild they wouldn’t even knock over a house of cards.

In all of my lifetime, there has only been one truly enormous weather event in Britain, the Great Storm of 1987. And I slept through it.

No rambler in Britain has ever dissolved in a spring full of boiling acid — more’s the pity.
We have no great white sharks, no disease-ridden mosquitoes, no 20ft snakes and the most dangerous mammal you’re likely to find on a stroll through the countryside is a cow. Which isn’t dangerous at all.

We do, however, have Jeremy Corbyn who, technically, is a product of nature.

Many say he’s harmless and benign and that because he has face hair he will never have any power to use.

But having watched the Tories tear themselves apart over Brexit, I’m no longer quite so sure.
I really can see the day when he walks into Number 10. And that . . . that would be the biggest catastrophe to hit this country since the plague.


Or getting your socks wet thanks to a puddle in Croydon


The tan o’clock news


Orange bird… please insert your choice of joke here

WHEN I heard people droning on this week about a bird that had dyed itself orange, I thought they were talking about the BBC’s fragrant newsreader Sophie Raworth.

Apparently, she presented a bulletin this week sporting a rather obvious fake tan.

Or it could be she had simply taken in some rays in her back garden.

I’ve printed a large photograph of her this morning so we can all spend a little time trying to work it out.


PRIME TARGET

THE Americans working on our new car show for Amazon have been rattled by news that our first location – Johannesburg – has been listed as a possible terrorist target.
They suggested that during our stay we should have armed security and snipers on rooftops.
This has all come as a surprise to the Brits working on the show.
Having lived through the IRA bombing campaign, we have a rather different attitude towards a terrorist threat.
A point made rather well by our football supporters, who arrived in the Muslim hotspot of Marseilles this week and immediately took to the street chanting: “Isis, where are you?”
It’s the modern-day equivalent, I guess, of “Hitler has only got one ball”


In and out, what’s it all about?


Serious EU debate in action

WHEN the EU debate began, I was struck by how good-natured it all was.
Opinions were delivered calmly.

People listened with steepled fingers and a thoughtful expression on their faces.
It was democracy at work . . . and it didn’t last.

Now we have both sides hurling insults at one another and coming up with more and more ludicrous claims.

Politicians who want to stay in Europe tell us that we will all die in screaming agony if we leave and Brexit enthusiasts tell us that if we stay, every man woman and child in the entire country will be raped and murdered.

The cost of staying is eight thousand trillion pounds a minute.

The cost of leaving is forty two and a billion and one million.

If we stay, there will be five trillion Muslims in London alone and, if we leave, the NHS will crumble to dust and everyone will get cholera.

It’s madness and it’s stupid and it’s just a lot of politicians making points to try to save or keep their jobs.

Meanwhile, us lot, the actual voters, are completely bewildered.

We are facing a massively important choice and, because the debate has been so juvenile, we are casting our votes based on no worthwhile information at all.


ON ITS DRONE



SO, the RAF is working on a drone aircraft that can attack targets without authorisation from a human.
That troubles me.
I don’t doubt for a moment that, in the lab, it is perfectly possible, using clever facial recognition software, for such a thing to perform perfectly. In the same way that the prototype of the iPhone 6 worked perfectly.
But last week mine decided to go wrong for no reason at all.
That’s annoying when it’s a phone. But it would be catastrophic if it were a drone armed with a bank of Hellfire missiles.


Air cars won’t take off


Air cars… aren’t they just… well… ‘planes’?

AS we know, a couple of America’s internet billionaires are working hard on reusable space ships, which all sounds very Bond baddie.

But Larry Page, the founder of Google, has apparently gone one stage further and is said to be squirreled away in a special man- cave, working on a flying car.

He has invested £70million in the project and I’m sorry, but I can’t see why.

Because let’s say he succeeds where countless others have failed.

Let’s say he comes up with a car which can sprout wings and take to the skies at the touch of a button.
The idea sounds brilliant. You see there’s a traffic jam ahead so you take off and fly over it.

Wonderful.

But hang on. If you have a car which can fly, why would you ever use it as a car?

Surely you’d fly everywhere in it.

And if you want to fly everywhere, you already have a machine which does the job.

It’s called an aeroplane.


SHAKE YOUR BOT



A SCIENTIST claimed this week that teenagers could soon be losing their virginity to sex robots.
I doubt it. Most teenagers are too embarrassed to buy condoms, so I really can’t see the day when they walk into an electrical store and ask for the new Brutus sex robot. “Extra large, please.”


www.thesun.co.uk/news/1265054/jeremy-clarkson-says-my-biggest-fear-is-not-a-great-white-shark-or-being-boiled-alive-its-corbyn-in-no10/

[RedMoon11]

So a Televison documentary tells us animals are clever? Try emailing one and see if it manages to send a reply

They're either cute, magnificent or delicious ... but none of them are even as smart as your dishwasher

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 24th June 2016, 10:33 pm


Loco for Koko … gorilla is famous for learning sign language

WE saw recently a television documentary about a gorilla that has mastered sign language and uses it to communicate with people.

And this, of course, prompted many to suggest that there’s no point searching the heavens for signs of intelligent life when there’s so much of it on earth in animals and fish.

We were then told about a pig that can do jigsaws and how dolphins play catch with sea turtles.

And that’s before we get to the orangutan that has even learned to lie.

There’s an agenda to all this.

We must stop eating bacon sandwiches immediately and put away the fly spray because, who knows, the blue bottle that’s been head-butting your kitchen window for the past hour might be on the verge of discovering a cure for cancer.

Except, of course, it isn’t.

Yes, a salmon can remember where it was born but that doesn’t mean it can do poetry or philosophy.

A pigeon is better at finding its way home than the sat nav you get in a £200,000 McLaren but that doesn’t mean it could write a book, or even come up with a plot.

They say that certain apes are clever but the fact is that none of them are even as intelligent as your dishwasher.

Certainly, they aren’t as clever as mine. She’s called Irene and she has a degree.

In my book, all animals fall into one of three categories.

They are either cute, magnificent or delicious.

A puppy is cute. So’s a hedgehog. And so is a vole.

A lion is magnificent and so is a crocodile.

Pigs, cows and sheep are delicious.

The trouble starts when we start to think of them as being clever, or like us in some way.

Because then we lose our ability to think straight.

And end up wiping out our cattle stock because we don’t want to cull the badger.

Because we saw one on a nature documentary and learned how it’s better at mining than the National Coal Board ever was.

Or we end up breaking into laboratories where scientists are trying to cure Ebola and freeing the monkeys, even though they are happy to spend all day picking fleas out of one another’s bottoms and eating them.

Or we get our knickers in a twist because sharpshooters killed a gorilla that was about to maul a toddler.

The message, then, is clear.

The next time you’re told an animal is clever, send it an email and see if you get a reply.


Curbs on Red Arrows raises soar point


NATO Summit Wales 2014 - Final Day GETTY IMAGES
Red sorrows … flight troupe can’t perform because of ‘risk’

THE RAF has announced that the Red Arrows, above, will not be performing a full whizzing- about display at the Farnborough International Air Show next month because of: “The large number of buildings, businesses and major transport links sitting beneath the planned flight display area.”

I’m sorry. What?

Farnborough hasn’t moved since last year, has it? Or expanded dramatically? So why was it all right to perform then, but not now?

The real reason, of course, is that after the terrible air show accident last year, in which 11 people were killed, skyrocketing insurance premiums mean the Red Arrows simply can’t afford to do their thing any more.

This is one thing that perhaps we can do when we are out of the EU.

Get to grips with the business of risk assessment.

Because if we don’t, the time will come when children won’t be allowed to use swings and you’ll have to wear a high- visibility vest before you can go to the lavatory.


Brexit is a leap in the dark


EU referendum PA:PRESS ASSOCIATION
 Wavering … no one knows what the future holds for post-Brexit Britain

I MADE no secret in the run-up to what will become known as Independence Day that I wanted to stay in the EU.

That’s not because I’m a fan of bungling, expensive, unnecessary tiers of government.

It’s because we’d be setting off into the unknown.

We don’t know what will happen to the Pound, to the City, to business and therefore to the economy of Britain.

It’s completely impossible to predict.

Which is why I’m not going to join the chorus of people who’ve been on the news for the past 48 hours trying to make predictions about what will happen next.

They don’t know.

And neither do I. We will just have to wait and see.


Trusty Alpha got me to the poll


Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio WWW.NEWSPRESS.CO.UK
 Poll position … new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio ate up the miles

SO I was filming in Wales on voting day and James May was being even slower than usual.

Which meant there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t be able to get to the polling station before it closed.

Eventually, I could take no more of his dithering and set off with my head full of mental arithmetic and average speeds.

I was using the new 500-horsepower Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, right, so I’d have the oomph to do overtaking.

But it only had a 58-litre fuel tank.

So if I drove fast, I’d have to make a pit stop.

It was all very nerve- shredding but I thought I could just about make it before the 10pm deadline.

Unfortunately, the nation’s highway traffic officer wombles had other ideas.

I’d heard before I set off that a lorry had crashed on the M40.

But this had happened at 12.30 in the afternoon. So by eight at night, obviously, they’d have it cleared and the road would be open again.

Oh no it wasn’t.

I could understand it if the lorry had been carrying toxic waste or leaky nuclear warheads.

But it was full of nothing more hazardous than frozen cow parts.

I could also sympathise – just – if the driver had died. But reports said he’d gone to hospital with nothing more than a “suspected” ankle injury.

Which means they took ten hours to put a lorry back on its wheels and sweep up the mess. Ten hours.

It’s pathetic and I hope that whoever becomes Prime Minister puts everyone responsible in jail.

Happily, despite their best efforts to keep me out of the polling station, I used the M4 and made it with minutes to spare.

That new Alfa. God, it’s fast.


Button it, Lewis


F1 Grand Prix of Mexico GETTY IMAGES
Put the phone down … selfie-prone Lewis should spend more time learning about his car

AFTER last weekend’s single-file procession of Formula One cars through a city no one’s heard of, Lewis Hamilton said his race had been ruined because new rules meant his pit crew couldn’t tell him over the radio how to fix his car.

There are a number of buttons and switches on the steering wheel which engage all sorts of engine settings, and he argued that he didn’t know which ones to press and hold and which needed turning off then on again.

Hmmm. I’m not sure this argument washes, really.

Because Lewis, above, is paid a great deal of money to operate that car and maybe, just maybe, if he spent a bit more time with the instruction booklet and a bit less time on Instagram with his dog and his jet ski, he’d have been able to cope.


Alligator tragedy is a no-brainer


American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) GETTY IMAGES                      Jaw dropping … why are investigators in Florida wasting their time?

AFTER that alligator swam off with a toddler from a waterfront holiday resort in Florida last week, the authorities announced there would be an immediate investigation.

I wonder how it’s going, and if they’ve managed to conclude yet that Florida is full of alligators, which live in water, and eat meat.


Tennis crowds should make a racquet

PART of what makes football so fantastic is the atmosphere.

The chanting, the abuse, the thwack of knuckle on face and the flares.

Football without that rampaging mob soundtrack would be as dull as ditch water.

Which brings me on to Wimbledon.

Tennis is a game that’s played in complete silence.

Woe betide anyone in the crowd whose mobile phone goes off, or anyone who chooses the wrong moment to shout out: “Come on, Tim.”

And it makes me wonder. It’s what we expect, but wouldn’t it be better if we could chant and taunt the players when they fall over or lose a service game? It’s worth a try, surely.

So, ladies of middle England.

When someone is two sets up and ends up losing, raise the roof with a chorus of: “TWO LOVE AND YOU COCKED IT UP, TWO LOVE. . .”


www.thesun.co.uk/news/1338483/jeremy-clarkson-so-animals-are-clever-try-emailing-one-and-see-if-it-replies/

[RedMoon11]

JEREMY CLARKSON Number of MPs who listen to the public is the same as the number of drivers caught smoking… none

It's not too much to ask that our politicians stop being obsessed by themselves and start listening

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 1st July 2016, 10:21 pm


Since the introduction of a law banning smoking in cars with children not one person has been prosecuted

A YEAR ago, our esteemed leaders had some meetings and decided to ban adults from smoking in cars if there was a child on board.

Unless it was a convertible.

Or unless the child was 17 and actually doing the driving.

It was a messy law but it was passed, and afterwards the MPs responsible went out for dinner with some other MPs and perhaps a few ­Westminster journalists and reckoned they’d done a good day’s work.

Well, figures have just revealed that since the law was passed, the police — who are busy trying to catch terrorists most of the time, and paedophiles from the Seventies — have issued not one single ticket to anyone for a ­smoking-related driving crime. Not one.

Which is one tiny example of the problem we have with our system of government these days: The nation’s 650 MPs are completely disconnected from what normal ­people think, want or are.


MPs are totally disconnected from the public and that needs to end

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been told that the Tories pay no attention to ordinary people, and that’s true.

They don’t.

But they do at least listen to their big-business paymasters, which is therefore good for the economy and jobs.

Whereas today, the Labour Party is listening to no one at all.

Not even itself.

Almost all of its MPs wanted to remain in Europe even though almost all of the people who put them in power wanted to leave.

Then there was the Gordon Brown issue.

When a voter raised the question of immigration, he called her a “bigot” and sped away.

They’re still at it today, labelling the millions and ­millions of Labour voters who worry about immigration as “racists”.

And now we have this ­Corbyn issue.

Thousands of grassroots activists want him to stay but most Labour MPs don’t care about that and want him to go.

As I write, the poor man is stuck.

He barely has enough ­supporters at Westminster to form a Shadow Cabinet but out there, in the saloon bars of Northern England and student union halls of all the red-brick universities, he is revered as highly as the other great JC.

Er, John Cleese, obviously.

People are saying that this split will kill the Labour Party but actually, and hopefully, it will kill something far more important . . .

When the Brexit crisis is over and Westminster takes over the wheel of government from ­Brussels, we cannot allow ourselves to be ruled any more by people who ­huddle round their private bars listening only to one another, their advisers and specialist journalists.

They actually care about who said what on Newsnight, even though they’re the only ones watching.

They pore for hours over Page 26 stories in The ­Guardian, even though no one else is ­reading them.

And they still believe the polls, even though those have called the last two elections wrong.

Yes, they are forced by ­convention to sit through their surgeries, but all they ever hear in those is little old ladies ­moaning about their neighbour’s yew hedge and busybody lunatics demanding lower speed limits.

I don’t care if an MP is rich or poor.

I don’t care if he or she is gay or straight or whether they were born with a silver sthingy in their mouth or down a mine.

But they MUST start to listen.

They must stop doing what they want to do — banning ­smoking in cars for example — and do what the voters want them to do.

It’s not a big ask.

Surely.


Lets try players with a passion


The problem is we fielded a team of footballers, who are notoriously not the brightest

ENGLAND’S football statistics make for grim reading.

We haven’t won a qualifying match in any tournament since 1437.

We haven’t won a knockout game since we played the Trex Wanderers and the match was interrupted by the arrival of a giant asteroid, and we haven’t won a tournament since players smoked on the pitch.

This time round we were kicked out by Iceland, a country where the manager is a part-time dentist and the players don’t even have any tattoos.

And ever since, everyone’s been running about saying our boys had too much pressure and the manager made too many changes and Joe Hart is rubbish and so on and so on.

But the problem is bigger: We fielded a team of footballers.

Footballers are not bright.

Harry Kane, above, looked permanently bewildered.

As though he couldn’t understand why he was made to sing a song before the match began and why he wasn’t wearing blue shorts.

They’re told by their agents that they are playing for something called England but they have no real idea what that is, or why it matters.

“But Ernie, I wanted to take my missus to Dubai that week.”

This is the problem we have.

It’s the problem we always have.

And the only solution is to stop using footballers and start using people who belt out the national anthem before the game begins and play like their lives depend on it.

Firemen.

Doctors.

Fighter pilots.

I don’t care.

Just so long as they do.


T-Swift off the menu

 
If you look out your window right now you might see Swift and Hiddleston holding hands

WENT to Pizza Express in the Midlands town of Rugby this week and was amazed to note that Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift were not in there, holding hands.

Because they’re every-bloody-where else these days.


—IT’S possible, in the wake of Brexit, that to save money, trains on the HS2 high-speed rail link will be limited to 185mph, rather than 200.

Which means we will be spending billions to shave eight seconds off the journey time from London to the North West.

It’s also possible there will be no third runway at Heathrow, which means that for a flight in November, you’ll need to check in by June.

And worst of all, the proposed nuclear power station in Somerset is under threat, which means that as more and more morons buy electric cars, we simply won’t have enough capacity to run our hospitals and everyone will die.

Not that after the vote I’m a sore loser or anything.

A bunch of shunts

LAST week I told you how I nearly missed the opportunity to vote in the Referendum because the highway Wombles had closed the M40.

This week I nearly missed my daughter’s school play because they had shut half the M25 after an accident that was nothing more than a parking scrape.

And then, on the way back to London, the M1 was shut completely.
Can someone tell these people that their job is to keep the bloody motorway open.
Not shut it just because someone’s effing door mirror has fallen off.

— WE all know how it goes.
Top Gun, where the best of the best strive to become better than the best of the best by having big hair and terrible underpants.
Well now it’s all over.
Because the best of the best of the best, a man called Colonel Gene Lee, has just been beaten in a dogfight by a plane that was being flown by a computer.
He said afterwards that it seemed to be aware of his intentions and reacted instantly to his changes in flight and his “missile deployment”.
Oo-er missus.
Except I don’t think he was talking about Kelly McGillis at this point.


Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/opinion/1377048/number-of-mps-who-listen-to-the-public-is-the-same-as-the-number-of-drivers-caught-smoking-none/

[RedMoon11]

JEREMY CLARKSON I wanted to stay in EU but, so far, Brexit has been fun

Sun columnist Jeremy swaps wailing for jokes about unfortunate political pairings and spending more time in the pub with new near-neighbours Dave and Sam

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 15th July 2016, 10:55 pm


The other May and Hammond… good news for Jezza because it means he can spend the next few years making jokes about ‘how they are slow and useless’


AS YOU probably know, I was very keen that Britain should remain in the EU and very worried when I woke on that fateful Friday morning to find that we had voted to leave.

In fact, I’ve spent the last two weeks wailing and gnashing my teeth in despair. But on Wednesday night, I bumped into a friend of mine who makes snazzy handbags and she said: “Look. We are where we are. And if we all sit around moaning, we will talk ourselves into a recession.”

It’s a good point. And if I’m honest, so far, only good things have happened since we decided as a country that we’d like to go it alone. First of all, David Cameron has gone. This means that when I bump into him at the pub — we are neighbours — he won’t be forced to have one sip of sherry and then go home at 9.30pm because he’s the prime minister.

I always hated it when he did that. Because it usually meant his wife Samantha went home as well.

He and George Osborne have now been replaced with May and Hammond which is good news too, because it means I can spend the next few years making jokes about how they are slow and useless. And lost.

Best of all, though, we have Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. And this is a man who once said Putin looked like Dobby the house elf.

It gets better, because he also claimed that Hillary Clinton was “like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.

And these are the people with whom he must now do business. Hysterical.

But by far and away the best aspect of the Brexit vote is the effect it’s had on the Labour Party.

Its leader, who is called Jeremy Corbyn, now has the support of about no one in the House of Commons but he is refusing to step down because he was voted into power by about a billion placard-waving student activist lunatics who think he’s a god. This means there is a full-on war between Labour’s MPs and its voters.

Bricks have been thrown, spittle has been exchanged and rising up from the carnage is deeply unpleasant moderate Angela Eagle who, staggeringly, is the only Labour MP less likely to win a general election than the man she’s trying to oust.

And now, we hear that another Labour moderate who represents no one at all, is going to put his name forward as well, which makes Corby’s re-election even more of a certainty.

Sheep are better organised than this lot. Seriously, you could fill the Labour benches with geese and they’d be a more effective opposition.

This means May and Hammond can do pretty much whatever they like for the next few years.

Which, knowing them, will mean they’ll sit about all day reading about old motorcycles and discussing their leather trousers. Meanwhile, you and I will continue to get up in the morning, go to work, earn money, spend it on stuff and then go to sleep.

And that’s the thing. Brexit has given us all a good laugh but ultimately, and thanks entirely to actual people and not politicians, we are all going to be fine.


WE’VE done it hundreds of times. It should be easy. I should be relaxed. But tomorrow, in a field just outside Johannesburg, James May, Richard Hammond and I will record the first studio segment for our new show, the Grand Tour. And I don’t mind telling you. I’m crapping myself.


Game of phones


Carry on munching… luvvies need to remember theatre is for everyone

A LUVVIE whose name I can’t be bothered to remember said this week that West End theatre audiences have lost the ability to sit still during the play.

He says that in a recent performance of Doctor Faustus (me neither), which stars the chap who plays Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones, people chatted, munched noisily on sweets and took pictures on their mobile phones.

And?

Casting Jon Snow in a play is going to bring in people who wouldn’t ordinarily go to the theatre. That’s a good thing.

And it’s a good thing too if they have a fun time.


DISABLED ATTACKS A DISGRACE

FIGURES just out show that hate crimes against disabled people have risen sharply in the last year.

I find this surprising. Because who wakes up in a morning and thinks: “I know, I’ll go into town this morning, find someone in a wheelchair and push them into the canal”.
I don’t condone it, obviously, but I accept that there are religious nuts who have a beef with gay people and that there are morons who can form a dislike of a person because of the colour of their skin.
But why would anyone hate someone because they are disabled in some way?
All hate crimes are evil. But this one, I dunno, it makes my blood boil.


Wolf’s a howler

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE Police have decided to classify a wolf whistle as a hate crime.

So if you’re in the county and you want to let a woman know that you find her attractive, don’t. Or you will end up in prison.


We’re on road to nowhere

SO, the powers that be have decided that Oxford Street – which is London’s spine – is to become a pedestrian precinct.

And that’s lovely. People who come to the street to buy stuff they could have bought for much less at home will no longer go home afterwards suffering from asthma and cancer and boils.

The news, however, is less good for people who actually live and work in the capital because all the buses and taxis that currently use Oxford Street will have to be redirected on to other roads.

Most of which have already been turned into cycle lanes.

Or jammed up by Uber drivers who indicate left and then turn right because they have absolutely no idea where they are going. Or how to drive a car.

It makes me wonder. When a politician looks at a stick of rhubarb, does he or she think: “I shall use that as a hat.”

No?

So why, when they look at a road, do they automatically think: “Right, well let’s get the cars off that and use it as a place where bewildered tourists can stand while they eat an overpriced sandwich.”


THE British prime ministerial plane – known as Cam Force One – now needs a new name. Theresy Jet?
I‘ll get my coat.


PACK IT IN, CHRIS

I LIKE Springwatch presenter, Chris Packham. He’s a good chap with a sound taste in music. But I think his latest campaign to stop supermarkets selling grouse that have been killed with a gun are wide of the mark.
He says that the lead found in shot is poisonous and that’s true – it will make you a bit poorly if you eat it by the handful – but what does he suggest as an alternative?
That we bring down the birds with bows and arrows?


AUSTRALIAN authorities have promised a thorough investigation after an eagle swooped out the sky at a wildlife event in Alice Springs and tried to grab a small boy with its talons.

What’s the point? I can tell them already what happened.

The boy is made from meat. And that’s what eagles eat. The end.


Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/1452904/jeremy-clarkson-i-wanted-to-stay-in-eu-but-so-far-brexit-has-been-fun/

[RedMoon11]

We all cock up… even captains of nuclear submarines

After a collision with a ship, a submarine captain faces serious action and possibly the sack, but should we be more forgiving?

BY JEREMY CLARKSON   23rd July 2016, 2:24 am


The nuclear submarine HMS Ambush

SIX years ago, an advanced and very expensive Royal Navy nuclear submarine was trying to park  . . . and somehow crashed into Scotland.

It was very embarrassing.

And now comes news that its sister ship, HMS Ambush, has bumped into a merchant ship while prowling around in the Mediterranean.

Which caused many people to ask: “How does this sort of thing happen?”

We’ve seen enough war movies to know submarines have sonar and sensitive listening devices that enable them to hear plankton mating 5,000 miles away.

We know, too, that the sea is enormous and the chances of seeing another ship, let alone crashing into it — especially when you’re under the surface — are impossibly small.

Certainly, we know that the officers have access to maps and charts on which, I presume, Scotland is clearly marked.

And we imagine there’s a huge chain of command on board to make sure mistakes just can’t happen.

And yet somehow, in the Med this week, it did.

Again. Which meant this £1.1billion warship had to limp into Gibraltar with a crumpled fin.

Oh how the Spanish must have laughed.

The next day, we learned that the senior officer on board will undoubtedly be court-martialled.

And that his career in the Navy will almost certainly be over.

The message must be clear.

Britain has only seven hunter-killer subs and we can’t afford to have them bumping into stuff willy-nilly.


Clarkson has had his share of mishaps on four wheels despite it being his area of expertise

Yes, but hang on a minute.

I road test cars for a living.

But last weekend, while driving a rare and very expensive BMW M4 GTS, I managed to rip off its front spoiler, which jammed the steering.

It was in a very public place and everyone laughed at me.

And if I’d been in the Navy, I’d have been made to put on a uniform while Tom Cruise grilled me with a Herculean bout of mock incredulity.

And then I’d have been sacked. Again.

Remember the Herald of Free Enterprise?

A man on not much more than the minimum wage forgot to close the ferry’s door.

It rolled over and 193 people died.

So there was a huge furore and a million inquiries and it all came down to the fact that the man made a mistake.

A tragic mistake, for sure, and a mistake with horrific consequences.

But a mistake nevertheless.

This is what we always need to remember.

We are people.

And from time to time we cock up.

The punishment is that we know we cocked up.

And that will live with us for the rest of time.


VCR fans taping the hiss

Who is still buying VCRs, asks Jeremy?

NO one will have been surprised by the announcement that Japan’s last manufacturer of VCR machines is to halt production by the end of the month.

What is surprising is the news that last year it sold 750,000 of the damn things. To whom?

Who these days says: “Yes, I know I can watch anything I want immediately, even when I’m on the bus, but I’d rather have a device that forces me to scrabble about on my hands and knees so I can record a television show on a device where the quality is so bad that it takes me 20 minutes to realise, when I sit down to watch it, that I set the timer all wrong and that I taped the wrong thing by mistake”?

I suspect we are talking here about the same sort of people who know they can listen to any song at any time on a machine the size of a stamp – but choose instead to play “records” on something called a “deck”.

They always say the sound is “warmer”, whatever that means.

But I don’t know how they can tell.

Because normally it’s just a lot of static and hiss, static and hiss, static and hiss, static and hiss, static and hiss . . .

Can someone nudge the needle?


 
If you looked like this… you could survive a car crash

AUSTRALIAN road safety experts have created this model of what a human male would have to look like if it were to be capable of surviving a high-speed car crash.

He’d need a head like a boulder, no neck and nipples that could inflate in an emergency.

This is good news for John Prescott, should he ever be unfortunate enough to hit a tree in one of his Jaguars.
Apart from the nipples, obviously.

 
PC WC brigade is potty

MOVES are afoot to allow mothers to breast feed their babies in the House of Commons.

And in a wide-ranging report, it’s also suggested that transgender toilets should be installed.

This is seen as part of an ongoing struggle to fight sexism and prejudice. Hmmm.

More like part of an ongoing struggle for our leaders to completely detach themselves from reality.

First of all, there are no transgender MPs that I’m aware of.

So why use taxpayers’ money to provide a facility that isn’t necessary?

You might as well install urinals suitable for Klingons.

And I’m sorry, but if MPs are debating something important – like, say, whether to bomb Libya – it would be wholly inappropriate for a mewling, puking baby to interrupt proceedings.

We really are bang in the middle of Monty Python’s Stan/Loretta debate here.

Because it’s all very well fighting for a man’s right to have babies.

But where’s the foetus going to gestate?

In a box?


A real need for speed

A PENSIONER told cops he was doing 115mph and didn’t stop when they tried to pull him over because he was desperate for a pee.

Needless to say, his pleas fell on deaf ears, he was charged and doubtless the court will take away his licence.

And I’m not sure that’s fair – because when a man’s got to go . . .

Once, when I was caught short on a motorway trip, I eased the needle up quite a bit and screeched to a halt in the next service station’s disabled parking zone.

As I dashed from the car, someone pointed out that I wasn’t disabled.

To which I had to reply: “But you see, right now, I am.”


MANY people have been saying Leonardo DiCaprio’s fundraising event in St Tropez this week was just an excuse for the star, to spend time with a couple of hundred half-naked ladies. I wonder, however, whether they would be so cynical if they’d got an invite.


Leonardo DiCaprio laps up the attention from female pals




AFTER he’d been battered half to death by Theresa May in the Commons this week, Labour leader (at time of writing) Jeremy Corbyn rose to his feet and asked how many Tory MPs ever had to use a food bank.
Well now, let’s see.
Yup, it’s none.
But now let’s turn it round, shall we, and ask how many Labour MPs are reduced to begging for soup on a Saturday afternoon?
Er, that’d be none as well.
So Jeremy, your point is what exactly?


Rock royalty Roger still living out loud


Still got it… Legendary rocker Roger Daltrey

ONCE, a few years ago, I was invited to spend an evening with Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason.

I arrived at his house fearful that I wouldn’t be able to cope with the excesses of a genuine rock god.

Well, after a glass of wine he produced a lovely chicken casserole that he’d made and afterwards he made cocoa and fell asleep in front of the ten o’clock news.

There was a similar surprise this week, when I spent the afternoon with The Who’s legendary frontman Roger Daltrey, right.

This is a man who lived through all of Keith Moon’s madness.

He’s seen cars being driven into swimming pools and thrown televisions from hotel windows.

He played at Woodstock, for crying out loud.

We met at a pub in West London, where we drank water (well, he did) and we talked about hearing aids.

Apparently, the best is from a company called Widex.

“Listen,” he said, taking them out of his ears and putting them into mine. “You can hear the birds singing.”

Next week I’ll probably find out that these days Robert Plant likes doing watercolours.


The Who In Concert in Miami


Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/1489930/we-all-cock-up-even-captains-of-nuclear-submarines/

[RedMoon11]

Socialist bozos Owen Smith and Jeremy Corbyn are driving Labour to the polenta-loving Left

Unless you're a window-licking imbecile you shouldn't want either Labour leadership contender to become PM

BY JEREMY CLARKSON    30th July 2016


Hard-liner … Which of the world’s many failed socialist revolutions would Smith like to copy?

THIS week, a man with a side parting who’s hoping to run the Labour Party said he wanted a “cold-eyed socialist revolution”.

Workers’ control of factories, all the animals are equal, anarcho-syndicalist communes.

The whole nine yards.

And I’m sure that in sixth-form common rooms and the sort of cafes where they serve nuclear-free South African peace crisps, there was a lot of cheering and punching the air with delight.

“Yes,” they will have exclaimed into their polenta and soil smoothies, “Now both candidates in the Labour leadership election are hard-line, proper, old-school socialists!”

Yes indeed, just like Nicolas Maduro, the equally hard-line socialist who won power in the oil-rich state of Venezuela a couple of years ago.

He too dreamed of a utopia where the rich were taxed hard to pay for the poor.

And how’s that worked out for him?

Not well, I’m afraid.

Things are so bad, in fact, that 50 animals in the capital’s zoo have now died of starvation.

Is this what the man with the side parting wants?

The stench of dead elephant blanketing the whole of central London?

Or maybe he favours the sort of cold-eyed socialism that was practised in Cuba.

Because that was a huge success, apart from the prostitution and the fact that even today, everyone has to make their brake fluid out of shampoo.

Oh, and then there was East German socialism, which called upon the army to shoot families that just wanted a bit of bread.

And Cambodian socialism, which called upon everyone to shoot everyone else for no particular reason at all.

And we mustn’t forget the daddy of cold-eyed socialists, Stalin.

He murdered 60 million people.

Ten times more than Hitler.

This is what both sides in the Labour leadership election have forgotten.

That socialism has been tried.

And it does not work.

So what are you supposed to do if you’re just an ordinary Labour voter?

Not a party member.

Not an activist.

Not a swivel-eyed polenta enthusiast.

Just an ordinary Joe who likes the idea of someone in Westminster having your back.

You don’t want either the man with the side parting or Jeremy Corbyn.

Because you’re not a complete, window-licking imbecile.

And you can’t bring yourself to vote Tory because your grandad would spin so fast in his grave, he’d emerge from the ground and pull your head off.

Which leaves you with what? Ukip, that’s what.

This is what the socialist fringe simply cannot get into their thick heads.

That while they try to out-Left each other to curry favour with the noisy minority, they are driving the silent masses into the arms of Britain’s Trump brigade.


Katie’s motor is hard to miss

 
Pretty in pink … Tracker device isn’t really necessary

IT seems a tracking device has been found on the Range Rover belonging to Katie Price, right, as part of a possible kidnap plot.

Er, why?

It’s not like it’s difficult to spot.


Speed camera’s taking the mick


Speed demon … Camera rakes in the cash, so that surely means it isn’t working?

FIGURES obtained by The Sun show that in three years, Britain’s ten most prolific speed cameras have netted £30million in fines.
One, on the A10 in Cheshunt, Herts, has nabbed more than 38,000 motorists.
And that’s prompted critics to say that if a camera is supposed to be a deterrent, it can’t possibly be doing its job if 38,000 people haven’t even seen it.
I’d go further.
If everyone ignores a law, the law plainly must be wrong.
And if 38,000 people have broken the speed limit on the A10, the speed limit there is very obviously too low.


Boeing, Boeing, gone


Coming in to land … Iconic 747 could soon be a thing of the past

THE Boeing 747 is one of the greatest machines ever made.

As Europe was working on Concorde, believing the future of air travel would be fast and glamorous, the Americans were working on the Jumbo Jet, believing the future would in fact be cheap and easy.

They were right.

But now the big, four-engine design is thirsty compared to more modern alternatives and orders have fallen off a cliff.

So there’s talk the 747’s 46-year production run is about to end.

In that time, 1,500 have been made and, extraordinarily, not one has ever just crashed.

They have been shot down and there has been pilot error.

But never – and I’ll stand by this – has a jumbo gone catastrophically wrong of its own accord.

That is one hell of an achievement.


Knicker survey’s a load of pants

IT began to seem this month that there was a hideous attack and a senseless loss of life somewhere in the world every two hours.

And in the middle of it all came a survey telling us women prefer to wear bikini-style briefs rather than a thong.

We were then told that black is the preferred colour and that red is not popular at all.

And THEN we learned that 19 per cent of women said they didn’t like to wear their favourite pants in case they had a spot of “bladder leakage”.

I’m not making this up.

A survey, as all hell broke loose around the world, was telling us that nearly one in five women live in fear of wetting themselves.

Needless to say, the survey was done by a company that makes incontipanties.


Trigger-lacky UK

 
Careful shots … Armed police in Britain use their weapons at a fraction of the rate US cops do

IT is one of the most incredible statistics I’ve ever heard.
In the past 12 months, the 6,000 police officers who are trained to use guns in Britain fired just seven shots.
Seven.
That’s about how many shots are fired by American policemen every two and a half minutes.

Melting pot Britain

AN extraordinary DNA study of 15,000 people to determine who we really are has found that those in East Anglia are 22 per cent French and that in the East Midlands they’re ten per cent Scandinavian.
Genetically, people in much of Wales and Scotland are actually Irish, while people from Yorkshire – and, er, that’d be me – are 41.7 per cent Anglo-Saxon, which means we are technically more British than anyone else.
Or does it?
Because while the Anglo-Saxons civilised Britain with literature, regional government and the invention of the shires, they actually came to these islands from northwestern Europe.
Which means that actually, I’m basically German.


Speak up Sophie, or else


Newsreader … BBC’s Sophie Raworth needs to speak up for my personal benefit

A WOMAN complained to the BBC after the last General Election saying the graphics were impossible to understand for someone who is colour blind.
And now the BBC Trust has ordered the broadcaster to sharpen up its act in future.
Right.
Well, I’m getting a bit deaf in my old age and sometimes I can’t really hear what Sophie Raworth, above, is going on about when she’s reading the news.
So consider this an official complaint.
And make sure that in future she delivers the bulletin using a megaphone.
I know it will annoy everyone who isn’t deaf but I’m in a minority here and, therefore, I demand that action is taken.
Also, I’m not very good at tennis and it upsets me that the BBC broadcasts Wimbledon, a tournament for people who are.
So you can stop that as well, please.


Turk-up for the books

WE were warned, were we not, that political instability in the Middle East would cause millions of Turkish immigrants to arrive in Britain, leading to chaos?
And sure enough . . .

 
Super ants … Critters are attracted to electricity, meaning they can ruin equipment

However, it turns out the Turkish immigrants are, in fact, ants.
Or, to be precise, a breed of super-ant, above, that has such a fondness for electricity it nests in junction boxes and causes fires.
If you see one, report it immediately to your nearest Ukip office.
Then go and have a kebab.


Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/1525454/socialist-bozos-owen-smith-and-jeremy-corbyn-are-driving-labour-to-the-polenta-loving-left/

[RedMoon11]

After his trouble with trains this week, I’ve got a seat for Corbyn … and room for the missus in the boot

Since I think it’s very important for the country that Jeremy Corbyn remains in his post as Labour leader, I shall leap to his defence

BY JEREMY CLARKSON    27th August 2016


I think it’s very important for the country that Jeremy Corbyn remains leader and will leap to his defence

OH dear. Jeremy Corbyn seems to have made a bit of a mess of things this week.

He was filmed, sitting on the floor of a Virgin train, saying that it was ram-packed and that he’d been unable to find a seat.

But then the nation’s other great beardy, Richard Branson, released CCTV footage which showed ­Napoleon Corbyn walking past many empty, unreserved seats and then, after doing his piece to camera on the floor, using one of them for the rest of the journey.

It’s all been billed as a con. But since I think it’s very important for the country that Jeremy Corbyn remains in his post as Labour leader, I shall leap to his defence.

Many times, when I am filming stuff for our new show, the cameras aren’t turning when something funny or important happens.

So we stop, turn them on and re-enact the scene.

This means that what you’re watching isn’t real. But it is true.

And that’s what Corbyn was up to.

On that particular train at that particular time there were seats. So when Corbyn sat on the floor, it was not real. But it is certainly true to say that these days, trains are far too overcrowded.

The big question, however, is what should be done about it.

Corbyn reckons the ­solution is more trains. He sees a workers’ collective, funded by the taxpayer and managed by the State. Something along the lines of British Rail.

But I remember British Rail well and it didn’t work at all.

Mostly the train never turned up, and when it did it was so dirty you have cholera by the time you’d reached Grantham.

So then the nation tried a ­privatised service which, in theory, means passengers have a choice.

But that’s rubbish. If you want to get to Bristol for an evening meeting, you have to use whichever train gets you there at the right time.

You don’t say: “Oh, but the 8am service to York has prettier curtains so I’ll use that instead.”

And now they are talking about this absurd HS2 business which will shave about four seconds off the journey time from London to ­Liverpool at a cost of four thousand and eleventy trillion quid.

It’s stupid. Trains were brilliant when Queen Victoria was on the throne and the only alternative was a horse that threw you off every time it saw a hedge or a tree or a puddle or a hat or an apple or a bit of fog or some rain or any of the other million things that cause Mr Ed to have a panic attack.

Today though, we have the “motor car” which sets off when you want, is clean, safe and actually fairly inexpensive to run.

Also, when you use a car you are not forced to sit next to a stranger who may or may not be a murderer.

So how’s this for an idea? We ­simply close down the rail network completely and turn the entire thing into a network of motorways.

I’d like to invite Mr Corbyn to come for a drive with me so that he can see the advantages.

The only problem is that this week the car I’m using is a two-seat Fiat 124 Spider.

So if he wants to travel with an aide, or his wife, they may have to make the journey in the boot.

Maybe he could make a film about it. I’d like to see that.


I'll rest, you get my case


I should have known not to use a budget airline called Norwegian which paints its planes so they look like p*nises

IT was a great start to my holiday. As I left London, for Gatwick’s unimaginably terrible South Terminal, I received word that my flight to Kefalonia had a four-hour delay.

I should have known not to use a budget airline called Norwegian which paints its planes so they look like p*nises.

Still, keen to know if I still had to check in at the original time, I rang the company and listened to some music for a long time until eventually, a human person came on the line to say: “Yes, you do.”

Right. So I’d have to check in at breakfast time for a plane that wasn’t going to leave until after lunch.

And then spend the time mooching round the shops, not smoking.

Being obtuse, I decided not to bother. Which meant that they didn’t bother to put my suitcase in the hold.

This meant they had to deliver it to where I was staying. Which was on a yacht, an hour’s speedboat ride from the airport.

Serves them right.


Man's best friend


Marathon runner Dion Leonard was joined by a furry companion in north-west China PA:PRESS ASSOCIATION
 
WHILE running a marathon in north-west China, Dion Leonard from Edinburgh was joined by a small stray dog he christened Gobi.

He decided afterwards that he would like to bring the mutt back to Scotland but before the paperwork was in place, it vanished.

A six-month search, using posters, social media and crowdfunding was fruitless so in desperation, Mr Leonard flew back to China last weekend.

And after a four-day search, he received news that Gobi had been found.

It’s now in quarantine, and should be in Britain in time for Christmas.

I’d love to finish off with a pithy or sarcastic comment of some sort, but actually it’s a really nice story.
So I won’t.


Moist most hated word

WE'RE told moist is leading a poll to find Britain's most disliked word.
Really? What about "riddled"?
Nobody is ever riddled with joy or riddled with happiness? You are only ever riddled with cancer. Or bullets.
It's the same story with "gaping". That's only ever used to describe a wound.
Whereas when someone says "ooh that's moist", it's usually the precursor to something rather joyous.


Oscar for Biggest Buffoon?


It turns out Alicia Vikander is a famous actress GETTY IMAGES - WIREIMAGE
 
SO on holiday, I found myself sitting next to a pretty young Swedish girl who worked, she said, in the film industry.

“Oh, doing what?” I asked.

“I’m an actress,” she replied.

“Are you getting much work?” I enquired politely.

“I should ­imagine so,” whispered my son, “now that she has an Oscar.”

Yup. It turned out she was Alicia Vikander.

And that I was an ocean-going buffoon.


Lay off Nice police


Liberté, egalité, soririté . . . women protest the French burkini ban GETTY IMAGES
 
THE police in Nice have been criticised for telling Muslim women they cannot sit on the city’s beaches wearing so-called burkinis.

French courts may now have overturned the ban but I’m sorry, this is a city where last month a fanatic drove a lorry through a crowd of people, killing 86.

I think therefore we can cut the authorities a bit of slack if they over-react for a little while.



Silly vegans


NEW research has found the European cave bear became extinct because of its vegan diet. Hahahahaha.


Road wombles are rubbish


Jams . . . cars backed up on the A40 into London

ON Tuesday afternoon, at rush hour, a medium-sized lorry broke down on the A40 outside London.

So the Highway ­Wombles turned up in a big, powerful 4x4.

They assessed the ­situation and decided that because the truck was blocking the inside lane, it’d be best if they put out some cones blocking the ­middle lane as well.

Then, as the massive jam began to build, they sat on the crash barrier and had a snack.

When is someone going to explain to these people that their primary responsibility is to keep the roads open? Not shut them just because they can.

The fact is their car would have been capable of towing the lorry 100 yards up the road where there was a hard shoulder.

But if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have got to feel important.

So they didn’t bother.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/1681515/after-his-trouble-with-trains-this-week-ive-got-a-seat-for-corbyn-and-room-for-the-missus-in-the-boot/

[RedMoon11]

Vine’s right, cycling is unsafe… so please stay safe and leave your bike at home

Jezza bemoans modern environmental thinking propelling cyclists from place to place on a wave of self-righteousness and a pious belief that they’re the new knights of the road

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 2nd September 2016


Jeremy Vine… victim or simply a ‘self-righteous’ roadhog

LAST weekend, while driving through the Cotswolds, I found myself stuck behind two cyclists who were riding alongside one another.

Of course they were.

Elevated these days to godlike status by modern environmental thinking, cyclists are propelled from place to place on a wave of self-righteousness and a pious belief that they’re the new knights of the road.

Five days later, near the South Coast, the same thing happened again, only this time it was a lone cyclist, his gnarled and nut-brown thighs beating out a Victorian rhythm as he crawled slowly up the hill, proud that behind his wizened, Lycra- clad buttocks there was a queue of cars stretching half way to Dover.

Then in London, we have hundreds of them, ignoring the new multi-million pound cycle lane on the Embankment so they can make a nuisance of themselves on the main carriageway.

There was a time when you could take these morons to task. You could shake your fist and shout and point out that it’s absurd for a fully grown adult to be playing in public on what is a kids’ toy.

But not any more…

Today they all wear helmet cameras to record your rage.

Then, when they get home, they upload it to YouTube and you’re made to look like a short-tempered fool.

Which brings me to the BBC radio ­presenter, and keen cyclist, Jeremy Vine, who this week uploaded some footage of a woman who’d become frustrated with his slow progress through Kensington, West London.

In it, he can be seen cycling down the middle of the road, deliberately blocking the cars in his wake, and when one gets too close he stops — still in the middle of the road — so he can record the woman driver’s foul-mouthed tirade.

The message is clear.

He’s been verbally assaulted while on a noble quest to save the polar bear.

But hang on a minute, Vine. How did you know that the woman in the car behind wasn’t rushing to see her injured child in hospital? How did you know there wasn’t a pregnant girl on the back seat who was about to give birth?

Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to be stuck behind a sanctimonious cyclist when you really are in a genuine, tearing hurry? Vine says he was cycling in the middle of the road because that way he’s unlikely to be hit by people opening their car doors without looking.

Really? Because if safety is your number one priority, why are you wearing a helmet festooned with GoPros?

Are you not aware that it was, in all probability, a camera attached to Michael Schumacher’s helmet that caused his terrible head injuries?

In fact, if safety is your number one priority, why are you on a bicycle in the first place?

Of course, it is not illegal to cycle slowly down the middle of a narrow street. But it is selfish and annoying for everyone else.

How would he like it, I wonder, if I followed him around for a month, blowing gently on the back of his ears?

That’s not illegal either, but after a few days I’m sure he’d turn round and have a strong word.

I may try it.


CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

I WAS filming this week at Beachy Head in East Sussex – one of the most popular suicide spots in the world.
So many people take their final step off the cliffs that a chaplain is on constant patrol in a 4x4.
I spoke to one taxi driver who said he took a jumper out there recently. “He gave me a tenner for a ride that cost seven quid,” he said. “And then he wanted his change.”

Do you need help? Contact The Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org


Jog on health freaks

 
Jog on... to an extended future of incontinence and broken hips, according to Jezza

IT’S been a busy week for health experts and as a result we’ve been told every day that if we wear pyjamas, or fall asleep in front of the TV, or eat tomatoes or drink beer, we will die of heart disease or cancer or some kind of hideous brain disorder.

But let’s say that we do give up salt and tobacco and alcohol.

And let’s say we eat beans and nut cutlets.

And let’s say we do jog around the block every morning.

Yes, this will buy us more time. But how will we spend it?

Playing ball games in the park? Building rope bridges? Skiing?

No. Because we will be in an old people’s home, wetting ourselves and breaking our hips every time we brush past a bit of furniture.

Bear that in mind when someone offers you a choice of full English or a small plate full of weeds, followed by some light jogging.



Parents... learn from the humiliation Mr & Mrs Hunt inflicted on their son Mike

A SURVEY has revealed that almost one in five parents would change the names of their children if they had the chance.

The Mumsnet poll said that one women named her child after the Egyptian goddess of health. Which means the poor kid now has to go through life being called Isis.

Another, for reasons that aren’t clear, christened their child “Colon”.
I once met a man who had never forgiven his parents – Mr and Mrs Hunt – for christening him Michael.
And then shortening it to Mike.
When he had a child, he called it Justin. But then he made an even worse mistake than his parents by using Mike as a middle name.


ET's not calling us


ET calling from outer space... or was the two-second transmission a fat bloke burping in the next door room?

SCIENTISTS in Russia say they have received a two-second microwave transmission from a distant planet, which orbits a sun romantically known as HD164595.

And now, alien enthusiasts are all running around saying this is definite proof we are not alone.

A couple of points.

Number one. The signal was transmitted in 1922 – it’s taken that long to get here – and back then, Earth was cosmically silent.

We had no TV and no satellites, so they couldn’t possibly have known we are here.

This means the signal must have been broadcast to the whole of space.

And to do that, ET would need a radio that’s 100,000 times more powerful than all the energy used by Earth’s entire population.

Nevertheless, scientists all over the world are investigating the transmission – and I bet that in a couple of years they’ll work out that it came from a fat man burping in the room next door.



Why are Brits not buying electric cars... is it because they're 'rubbish' ponders Jezza

THE nation’s weird beards are at a loss to understand why more people aren’t buying electric cars.

They say that Government grants make them easy to buy and that convenient, fast-charging points make them easy to run. Hmmm. I wonder if the reason why 97 per cent of people still buy cars with petrol engines is: Electric cars are rubbish?


EXPERTS' TALL STORY
AMERICAN experts reckon that taller people have better spatial awareness than, say, Richard Hammond.
I think they’d change their mind if they saw me on a football pitch. I once took a penalty and the nearest the ball got to the goalmouth was when it was on the spot.


FORMER Army chief Lord Dannatt has apologised to troops who were given the anti-malarial drug Lariam.

I’m not surprised because, ooh, it messes with your head.

I once took a course of the stuff when I was filming for Top Gear in Africa . . . and after three days I started to like James May.



Ruined... here come the dollars

FOR the first time in 55 years, it is now possible to fly on a commercial airliner from America to Cuba.

This means that the tiny Caribbean island will now be flush with US tourist dollars.

Oh, and ruined.

 
www.thesun.co.uk/news/1719357/jeremy-clarkson-says-vines-right-cycling-is-unsafe-so-please-stay-safe-and-leave-your-bike-at-home/

[RedMoon11]

I’m glad Bernie’s on his way out… he may have made F1 into a global powerhouse, but God it’s boring

None of The drivers, the cars, the racing or even the fans matter any more - it's just about the money

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 10th September 2016 


Bernie Ecclestone… as a fan of the sport, Jeremy’s glad he’s on his way out

I LIKE Bernie Ecclestone. He’s far too small, obviously, and his haircut is ridiculous. And he can drive you completely mad by obsessing over idiotically tiny details.

Once, in Monaco, I needed his permission to walk from one side of the city to the other and he wouldn’t give it.

Things became so heated, I tried to slam the phone down on him, but before I got the receiver into the cradle, I heard the click and knew Bernie had beaten me to it.

However, when he agrees to do something, you shake hands and he always sticks to the deal. And there’s no question that he turned Formula One into the global powerhouse it is today.

However, as a fan of the sport, I’m glad he’s on his way out because, my God, it’s boring these days.

They say the technology developed in Formula One filters on to family saloon cars. But that’s rubbish. There is nothing on your Vauxhall Astra that was developed in F1. Nothing.

And now they are wheeling the cars around the pit lane on trolleys so they don’t get the wrong sort of dust on their tyres. When a sport gets that pernickety, it’s not a sport any more. It’s become a weird club which exists only to make the rich old men who run it even richer.

The drivers. The cars. The racing. The fans. They no longer matter, just so long as Heineken gets the correct amount of airtime and the television director knows to make sure the Rolex logo is featured four times in each race.

You can see the effect this is having very clearly. All over the world, there are empty grandstands and dwindling ­television audiences.

But hey, the sponsors haven’t realised that yet, so they keep arriving in their helicopters, with their guests and their fat cheques, so who cares?

Well, we all will when the television companies stop handing over a ­fortune for the screening rights, because then the sponsors WILL realise the game’s up and that’ll be that.

The only way to rescue the ­situation is for someone to realise that motor racing is supposed to be a spectacle.

It’s supposed to be exciting and noisy and dangerous.

Happily, the new owner, Liberty Media, is American and in the US they understand a thing or two about spectacle.

Put it this way. They have Las Vegas. We have Blackpool. They have Armageddon. We have Poldark. They have Nascar. We have cricket.

They won’t want the cars being wheeled about on trolleys, or tech that will be fitted one day to a hatchback, and Lewis Hamilton will get fired if he doesn’t crash into his team-mate six times a year.

The boss of the all-conquering ­Mercedes team, Toto Wolff, said that he too is looking forward to the new owners taking over. But not for the same reasons as me.

“There are things we can learn from the American way,” he said. “Particularly in digital areas.”

No, Toto. We don’t care about ­digital. We just want to see a crash.


ACCORDING to the latest research, you can offset the ­negative effects of drinking seven glasses of wine a week by taking a brisk 25-minute walk a day. So I’ve done the maths. I can offset my wine intake by walking every day. To Calcutta.


Daisy, I’m confused

 
Everywhere… but who is Daisy Lowe? Asks Jezza

DAISY LOWE is everywhere these days. On Strictly. At the GQ Awards. In every single newspaper, every day.
And it raises a question. Who is she?

Why Vaz mustn’t trot off


Parliament needs… ‘morons who think they can insert themselves into a couple of Eastern European rent boys and get away with it’
'

A FEW years ago, I said on television that people visiting India were likely to get the trots, and immediately Keith Vaz was contacted by journalists to see if he was offended.

Obviously, he hadn’t seen the programme but he was definitely offended and called for me to be sacked immediately.

So you’d imagine that I’m sitting here now, rubbing my hands with glee at his very public humiliation.

But I’m not because I believe that if Parliament is to work properly, it should be a reflection of the people it serves.

There should be wise people, gay people, rich people, poor people, fat people, pretty people and morons who think they can insert themselves into a couple of Eastern European rent boys and get away with it.

LIVE SLOW, DIE OLD

A SURVEY has found that old people are nowhere near as dangerous on the roads as everyone thinks.
Even though we are constantly stuck behind a dithering old fool in a Peugeot, while listening to a report on the radio of how the police have arrested yet another pensioner for driving the wrong way down the M5 for 50 miles, we are told that actually, the elderly are very safe.
Well, that’s what the report’s author said, before pouring himself a small schooner of sherry and sitting back in his wipe-down Shackleton armchair to watch another episode of Countdown.

Hinkley could get ugly


Ugly... Jezza would rather look at John Prescott than the Russian billionaire's bomb-proof yacht

THE French designer Philippe Starck once made an extremely attractive fruit squeezer.
He has also made some interesting chairs.
However, I’m not sure his impressive talents stretch yet to yachts.
That enormous boat that sailed up the Thames this week is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d rather look at John Prescott.


 
Yacht's French designer Philippe Starck also made this extremely attractive fruit squeezer

God alone knows what possessed its Russian owner to wake up one day and think, ‘Hmmm. That Frenchman who designed my orange squeezer. I shall use him to design my boat’.
Because that’s like asking someone who’s very good at tapestry to design the cooling system in the Hinkley nuclear power station.
It’s not going to work.
And indeed it hasn’t.


IN the Commons this week, Theresa May made fun of Jeremy Corbyn’s recent empty train-seat gaffe by saying: “Even on rolling stock Labour is a ­laughing stock.” I’m not sure but I think that may be the worst joke in the history of all humanity.


9
Not on my lead... don't expect to see Jeremy walking his fox any time soon

APPARENTLY, people have started to keep foxes as pets.
Sellers are charging as much as £1,000 a pop and there’s a ready supply of customers who believe they’re getting an exciting alternative to a dog.
Be warned though. Dogs are descended from wolves and have had centuries of artificial selection to become docile.
Foxes, on the other hand, have a completely different ancestry and are still wild.
This means they reek to high heaven. And attack children. And enjoy eating furniture. And wiring. And emptying your bin all over the floor for no good reason.
And then buggering off.
If you want an interesting pet, why not get a great white shark.
Like a fox, it’s vicious and unreliable. But at least it doesn’t smell like a Turkish urinal.

BALLS TO LOCAL FOOTIE

THERE was a bit of a debate this week about which is better: Non-league football or a Premier League clash between two ginormous titans.
Many in the sport seem to think standing up to your knees in mud on a wet Saturday afternoon, watching 22 heffalumps lumber around the pitch – as you try to work out whether to drink your mug of soup or pour it into your wellingtons to warm your feet – is somehow better than, say, today’s Manchester derby.

Hmmm. Isn’t that a bit like wondering which is best: A Stones gig at the O2, or a cr*p indie band in a pub in Sheffield?



Captain America: Civil War... staggeringly, even worse than Batman v Superman, according to Jezza

EARLIER this year, I sat through the Batman v Superman movie and it was like every headache I’d ever had, all rolled into 90 minutes.
I declared it to be unintelligible twaddle and the worst film ever made.
But staggeringly, Captain America: Civil War manages to be even worse.
That’s like being in a wheelie bin that’s bouncing down an endless cliff.
I therefore have a plea. Can we stop now with this idea of superheroes fighting one another.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/1758117/jeremy-clarkson-says-bernie-made-formula-one-into-a-global-powerhouse-but-god-its-boring/

[RedMoon11]

I love tanks but even if we had more Russia would still have us over a barrel

Britain has 168 tanks and it’s fair to say that if a shooting war started with Putin, they’d all be gone in about 25 minutes

BY JEREMY CLARKSON 16th September 2016


In this day and age, tanks are about as relevant as battleships

THERE were calls this week for the British Army to be given more heavy-duty armour.

MP Nicholas Soames, who is Winston Churchill’s grandson, pointed out that our Armed Forces now have more horses than tanks, and said that this was a tragic state of affairs, especially as Russia is girding its loins in Eastern Europe.

On the face of it, he has a point. Britain has 168 tanks and it’s fair to say that if a shooting war started with Putin, they’d all be gone in about 25 minutes.

However, I’m not sure that more is the answer . . .

The tank was invented a hundred years ago to try to unlock the bloody stalemate of trench warfare.

World War One was raging, and our idiotic generals couldn’t get it into their thick heads that if you charge at an enemy that’s well dug in and has machine guns, everyone will die.

“But we’ve always done it this way,” they thundered as they sent thousands and thousands of soldiers over the top and into a blizzard of lead.

But then, someone in England had a brainwave. What if you charged at the enemy in an armour-plated, go-anywhere vehicle that had a gun on the front.

Even the generals could see this might work so 56 were built and shipped over the Channel where 24 immediately broke down.

However, at 5.30 in the morning on September 15, 1916, 32 of the steel monsters entered the Battle of the Somme.

It didn’t go well. The three tanks ordered to form the spearhead of the attack all had mechanical issues before they reached the German lines.

This meant the three tanks on the right flank were on their own and in great peril. But luckily they broke down too.

On the left flank, the tank crews were overcome with fumes from the engine and got lost. One then got stuck in the mud. And the others broke down.

A few did make it to the battle where it quickly transpired that they weren’t quite as armour-plated as everyone had hoped.

By the time World War Two came along, our tanks were much better. But by this point, the Germans had them too, and theirs were better still.

When the war was over, we continued to develop the technology so that today we have the fearsome Challenger 2 which can shrug off any battlefield weapon and even keep its crew alive in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

All of which is very excellent but it was decided in Afghanistan that deploying such things in civilian areas tends not to win many hearts and minds.

And now? Well, why send a tank to blow something up when you can send a drone?

I love tanks. I went for a spin in a Challenger 2 recently and was nursing a semi after about 40 seconds. It was epic.

And when it fires its 120mm gun, the shock wave is so violent it can knock you over.

But I fear that in this day and age, tanks are about as relevant as battleships.

So I disagree with Nicholas Soames.

We don’t need more of them. What we do need is a new idea.

Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/1798588/i-love-tanks-but-even-if-we-had-more-russia-would-still-have-us-over-a-barrel/

[RedMoon11]

Jeremy Corbyn seems to have forgotten that when the state runs things, the country is left in a right state

The Sun columnist says the Labour party leader is wrong to demand an end to privatisation, as governments are typically useless at running services

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 1st October 2016,

www.thesun.co.uk/news/1890036/jeremy-corbyn-seems-to-have-forgotten-that-when-the-state-runs-things-the-country-is-left-in-a-right-state/

[RedMoon11]

Frack off, eco-mentalists – drilling for gas is way forward if we want lit homes and central heating

People in Lancashire are desperate fracking shouldn't happen near them - but it won't make a difference to their lives and will create a more self-sufficient Britain

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 7th October 2016,

www.thesun.co.uk/news/1933453/frack-off-eco-mentalists-drilling-for-gas-is-way-forward-if-we-want-lit-homes-and-central-heating/

[RedMoon11]

If Jeremy Vine doesn’t apologise for his cycle lunacy, we’ll know he’s just a bitter and twisted class warrior

We drivers don't mind cyclists... just as long as they behave and remember that roads are for CARS

BY JEREMY CLARKSON 14th October 2016


Creeper . . . Vine’s back, and he means business

BAD news everyone. Jeremy Vine is back on the warpath.

Last month, the keen cyclist and part-time radio disc jockey told the world he’d been cycling down the middle of the road in London when the car driver behind lost her temper.

He even uploaded some footage taken on his idiotic, and dangerous helmet-mounted camera, to show just what a selfish, anti-social nuisance he’d been.

You’d have thought he’d have learned his lesson and stuck to playing records by the Doobie Brothers. But no.

He’s back with a bit of not-at-all terrifying footage of someone pulling out of a side turning.

I’ll admit that the someone in question is driving a Peugeot, which means that they don’t have the first clue how to drive.

And that it’s very possible that by now they have indeed caused a ­terrible crash.

But in the footage Vine has uploaded, the man (or woman) does absolutely nothing wrong at all.

They simply pull out of a side road when Vine, on his silly ­children’s toy, was miles away.

He really does need to get off his high horse because, let’s be quite clear on something: The. Roads. Are. For. Cars.

We car drivers are prepared to ­accommodate bicycles but only if they behave like guests and show some damn manners.

An occasional “thank you” would be nice.

Or maybe the occasional “after you”.

But no. All we get is a gallon of spittle-laced fury whenever we dare to get in their way. And why?

In London’s Hyde Park, there has always been a lovely cycle path all the way from Kensington to Mayfair.

And now they are narrowing the road so that a third of it can be turned into another cycle lane that runs parallel, and just feet away, from the one that’s existed for years.

That’s extraordinary generosity on the part of the motorist.

So bear that in mind Vine, when they give you a microphone on Monday lunchtime, and the light goes green to say your show has begun.

Apologise for your irrational moments of madness.

And say that you are extremely grateful for the motorists’ kindness.

If you don’t, we will know that you are simply a bitter and twisted class warrior.

And that you have no place on an impartial organisation such as the BBC.


THERE’S now a 20mph speed limit in the Piccadilly underpass in London.
And, er, why? It’s a dual carriageway so there’s nothing coming in the opposite direction. There are no pedestrians. Or cyclists. So 20 is just absurd.
It’s just stupidity from the lunatics we elect into office.


Kristin’s reply Scott me drooling

AS I may have mentioned about two million times before, I am completely in love with Kristin Scott Thomas.

Things are so bad that I am unable to speak properly if I think she is in the same postcode.

Then, on Wednesday, just as I was about to record the next instalment of our Grand Tour show, I noticed that she’d replied to one of my Instagram posts.

When you watch that show on television, and you notice that I spend the entire time in a corner of the studio, drooling, you’ll know why.


BIKERS, we are told, are 38 times more likely to die than any other road users.
So, if your child comes home and tells you they’ve become a rent boy or a heavy user of heroin, be grateful that at least they don’t have a Honda CBR650F.


Bottom’s up for my Levi’s

EVERY couple of years, I go to the Levi’s shop and buy six pairs of identical jeans, which I wear, every day from then on, in rotation.

And what’s incredible is that down the line, they always, always disintegrate on the same day.

This week, I pulled on a pair, went to the shops, put my hand in my back pocket to get some cash and found my ar*e was hanging out.

With a bright red face, I scuttled home, pulled on another pair and I’m not kidding, the exact same thing happened again.

“I know what you mean,” said James May when I told him the story. “I bought ten pairs of pants from Marks and Spencer and . . . ”

I’m afraid I didn’t listen to the rest of his story.


SO, the man arrested by German police on suspicion of being a terrorist has been found dead in his cell. He committed ­suicide apparently.
Yeah, right.


Bawling at moths

IT was a perfect summer, we’re told, for moths.

You can say that again.

My flat in London is completely infested with the damn things.

They dance about in front of my vulgarsonic projector making the viewing of any film impossible, they’ve eaten two cardigans and all my socks, and now they’ve started to breed, which means every wall and ceiling is a seething mass of maggots.

It’s like living in a horror movie and they are completely immune to any form of insect spray.

I score a direct hit with a sustained burst of fire for a minute and I swear I can hear the damned things laughing.


We ‘mite pay price as OAPs

UNILEVER was savaged this week because it threatened to charge shoppers more for a jar of Marmite due to the plummeting value of the Pound.

We were told, in enormous headlines, that this huge multi-national made profits of £2 billion last year and that it’s ridiculous it should make a little old lady pay 10p more for her jar of beef extract.

Or whatever Marmite is.

Well now I’m sorry, but if Unilever had needed to increase the price of stuff it sells to stay profitable then we would just have to have lived with it.

Because if Unilever stops making money, its shareholders suffer.

And because its shareholders are mostly giant pension funds, we suffer when we retire.

So, you could have either paid a bit more for your Marmite now.

Or died, alone and hungry, aged 67.

Your choice.


Anorexic frogs are no reason to halt progress

SO let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

If you apply nowadays to build an extension on your house, or a factory, or a power station, a bunch of armpit hair enthusiasts will sneak on to the site at night and litter it with a selection of rare newts.

When they are discovered the next morning, the council will say that no building work will be permitted until the newts have been moved, on cushions filled with the softest eiderdown, to a new home.

Well now I’m sorry but can we be clear on one thing.

Newts are basically anorexic frogs and are not important.

That’s why they are endangered and rare.

Because they don’t eat properly.

And they don’t eat properly because they are vain and want to look supermodel good on Frog Instagram.

Sod ’em is what I say.


IN THE olden days, when there was a traffic jam on the motorway, you’d do everything in your power to get out of the way if a police car wanted to get past.
Now, though . . .
The problem is that in the olden days, the police car would get to the scene of what was causing the hold-up and move the obstruction as fast as possible. But not any more. Now, they get to the scene and immediately close the road for 30 hours.
Which is why I get out of their way extremely reluctantly, because I know that if they get past quickly, and get to the obstruction before me, I’m going to be stuck while they do nothing except eat effing sandwiches.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/1979537/if-jeremy-vine-doesnt-apologise-for-his-cycle-lunacy-well-know-hes-just-a-bitter-and-twisted-class-warrior/

[RedMoon11]

Gary Lineker’s dead right on the subject of refugee children… but he is also totally wrong

Pundit has accused vast swathes of the nation of being 'hideously' racist, but Jeremy believes we've been left in a situation where 'the right thing to do is almost certainly the wrong thing to do'

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST    22nd October 2016


Right and wrong… Gary Lineker has stirred up emotions over the tricky subject of migrant kids coming to the UK

GARY LINEKER split the nation this week when he announced on social media that banning refugee children from entering Britain is “hideously racist”.

Some said he should be beheaded for such treachery and pointed out that he can’t ask the country to take in these 32- year-old children until he has filled his own house first.

Others said it was about time that a crisp enthusiast from the world of football stuck his head above the parapet and said what needed saying.

I guess this is to be expected. If you put your p*nis into a beehive, some of it is going to get covered in honey. And some of it is going to get stung. On the face of it, Gary seems to make a good point. I don’t agree that it’s racist to limit the number of people coming into the country. But it does appear to be unkind.

We know that the Russians are bombing the crap out of various Syrian cities and we know that ordinary families are having to flee as a result.

We listen to their plight every night on the news. We see footage of the ruins where they used to live. And then we go to the pub.

This is exactly what George Bernard Shaw was on about when he said: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: That’s the essence of inhumanity.”

He’s right. When you watch a nature documentary, you always wonder why an entire herd of wildebeest carries on munching away at the grass while, right next to them, one of their number is being eaten by a lion.

It’s because they’re animals, of course. They don’t really have the capacity to care.

Humans, on the other hand, do have the capacity to care and yet, when it comes to the Syrians, we don’t. Not really.

Gary therefore is quite right. We should open our doors immediately and let them all in.

Unfortunately, he’s also completely wrong because the one thing we cannot do at the moment is have an immigration free-for-all.

Think about it. IS and all the other groups of ne’er-do-wells in the Middle East are on the run.

The Syrian government is about to retake what’s left of Aleppo.

And the Kurds, backed by British bombs, are having similar success in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

This means that soon, the people doing the fleeing will be the terrorists. And where will they flee to, do you suppose?

There will be thousands of them, heading for Europe — and how can you tell the difference between someone who wants to come here to blow you up and someone who wants to open a shop?

You can’t.

In most situations there is a right thing to do. But with this particular crisis, the right thing to do is almost certainly the wrong thing to do.



Navy is not as weak as it appears on the surface

SO, Russia mocked the Royal Navy as “weak” as it sailed an entire carrier battle group towards the English Channel this week.

On the surface, literally, that certainly appeared to be the case because our response to this gigantic flotilla was to send HMS Duncan.

That’s a stupid name for a warship. You may as well call it HMS Vulnerable. Or HMS Weak. However, let’s not forget, shall we, that the Royal Navy was almost certainly shadowing the Russians from under the water with one of its seven nuclear submarines.

Or even one of its four missile boats.

And we only need one of those to wipe Moscow off the map.


HONEY, I WASTED 3 HOURS

WE are forever being warned by experts not to smoke or play on the railway lines or use our mobile phones in aeroplanes.
Well, now it’s my turn to issue perhaps the gravest warning of them all.
Do not go and see the movie American Honey.
I’ve seen some bad films in my time – Cluedo, Fantasia and Batman vs Superman spring to mind – but American Honey is in a league of its own.
Designed to appeal only to Guardian readers, it is two-and- three-quarter hours long and in all of that time, absolutely nothing happens.
Then it just stops.
It actually annoys me that this is a chunk of my life that I will never get back.
But more than this, it annoys me because of all the great films that don’t get made.
Because the film companies were busy making this self-important, pompous twaddle.


Rare type of puffin’ at Korean zoo


Chimpanzees in the smoke 

WE discovered this week that a chimpanzee in one of North Korea’s zoos has learned to smoke.

It uses a cigarette lighter to spark up its tabs and entertains visitors by sitting on a rock, puffing away.

This, of course, has outraged the world’s fresh air fanatics, who say it’s completely wrong that a chimp should be allowed to smoke.

They also criticise what they call the zoo’s dog pavilion, in which every known breed is on display. I think, however, that it’s probably not a pavilion at all. My bet is that it’s the restaurant.



Creating a buzz… Labour campaign in PM’s old constituency of Witney

RIGHT up to the moment the polls closed, the Labour candidate in David Cameron’s old constituency of Witney really did believe he was in with a shout of winning.

Although it must be said that the photographic evidence from his own Twitter feed suggested otherwise . . .

And it turned out the picture wasn’t lying.


PARDON ME... AND HIM AND HIM...

THIRTY-FIVE thousand dead people who were convicted of same-sex acts when homosexuality was illegal were posthumously pardoned this week.
Next, the authorities will pardon anyone who was convicted in the Middle Ages of being a witch. And then, finally, they’ll have the time to fully investigate all the dead people who were paedophiles.
Meanwhile, if your house is burgled, you are held in a queue and your call will be answered shortly.


Fight by a pair of no marks


Says it all

WHAT’S been interesting about these presidential debates in America is that everyone from Bruce Springsteen to @bantz_69 on my Twitter feed is vehemently opposed to Donald Trump.

He is mocked mercilessly. But interestingly, no one ever says: “So my vote is with Hillary.”

It must be the first election ever where the ballot paper should say “or C, none of the above”.


Feather brained


Beat a drum instead... that'll show the neighbours what real noise is

AND this week, the Give Me Strength award goes to Cheshire East Council who, at great expense, installed recording equipment to determine whether a schoolgirl’s pet cockerel was too loud.

After exhaustive tests they sided with the neighbour who’d complained and now the bird, called Penguin, has been served with an eviction order.

Unless Ellen Mellor, who’s only 12, gets rid of it, she faces a £5,000 fine.

Well Ellen, let me give you a tip.

If you lose this battle and Penguin has to live elsewhere, take up the drums. And show your bossy neighbour what real noise is.


PLANE STUPID


FOR years, the Government has been trying to work out whether Gatwick or Heathrow should be enlarged to cope with the demand for air travel.
In the time it’s taken them to dither, China has put up about 60 new airports. And we are being made to look stupid.
Now Mrs May, says there will be another delay in the announcement so all the arguments can be considered.
I swear we will all be dead by the time they make up their bloody minds.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/2027067/gary-linekers-dead-right-on-the-subject-of-refugee-children-but-he-is-also-totally-wrong

[RedMoon11]

The Grand Tour is finally ready to head onto TV screens, but I’m blaming James May’s toilet habits for the delay

Clarkson, May and Hammond are about to arrive back on our screens... but 'why the bloody hell has it taken so long?'
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON  29th October 2016, 1:48 am


He’s back… after a year of work, and about a million air miles, The Grand Tour will soon make its debut on Amazon Prime

AFTER a year of work, and about a million air miles, our new motoring show will soon make its debut on Amazon Prime and almost everyone I meet asks the same question: “Why the bloody hell has it taken so long?”

My standard answer is that anything involving James May is bound to take an age. This is a man who takes two hours to have a dump.

But the truth is that it took us quite a long time to actually get started in the first place.

For 12 years, Richard Hammond, James and I had worked together at the BBC which is a bit like being children, living at home.

We drove round corners while shouting, producer Andy Wilman edited it all together, and the Beeb did all the boring stuff — insurance, compliance, health and safety, staffing, and watering the plants in the office.


The Grand Tour … all should be revealed soon

But then they shooed us out of the door and we emerged into the real world for the first time, blinking like startled teenagers.

Happily, a friend lent us an office in Marylebone and Richard Hammond immediately appointed himself stationery manager. He bought a ruler, some highlighter pens and a batch of paper.

I sat about in a corner thinking of what we could do with the new Lamborghini and Andy Wilman sat in another corner telling me that before we could do anything at all, we’d need some cameramen, a bank account, some researchers, and all the other stuff that the Beeb used to do.

James meanwhile was on the lavatory, playing Battleships on his iPad.

Occasionally, our paymasters at Amazon would call to ask how we were getting along and Richard would tell them excitedly about the new fax machine that he’d bought — he lives in Wales and therefore hasn’t heard of email — and I’d go on and on about how I wanted to set a Ferrari on fire and crash it into an airliner.


Explosive ... filming Jeremy Clarkson's new show The Grand Tour in the seaside town of Whitby

Bit by bit, we started to put the pieces together. We found a track and employed a racing driver who could set lap times in the cars we filmed there.

We got our heads round the astonishing complexities of filming in 4K. We dreamed up a name. We even managed to find an office of our own in a street called “Power Road” and we found someone to water the plants we’d bought.

And eventually, we were all ready to make our first proper film. The location was Northern France, the subject was three old Maseratis and the meeting point was St Pancras station at 7am.

Richard was there on time and so was I. But there was no James.

Then the phone rang.

It was Andy, the producer. “James fell over coming out of a restaurant last night and has broken his arm.”

Now on a normal show, the whole shoot would be cancelled and we’d rush round to see James with flowers and chocolate and sympathy. But this is not a normal show . . .

So Andy went on: “I’ve told him to stop being an a**e and get on the next train. He’ll be with you at 11, and he can drive the Maserati with the automatic gearbox.”

And so it began — a nine-month filming blitz that would take us to Barbados, Jordan, Namibia, Italy, Germany, California, Morocco, Tennessee, Dubai, Finland, Holland, South Africa and of course, Whitby.

The fruit of our labours will air on Friday evenings, beginning on November 18 and running for 12 weeks.

It’s been a hugely ambitious project.

And for once, I don’t think that all of it is rubbish.


ON BREAKING LAW


Don't mention that Hammond is on the small side... the Beeb might not like it 
 
ONE of the biggest problems we faced with the new show was the law.

I had dreamed up Stig, the cool wall, and the idea of putting a star in a reasonably priced car but legally, all of these things belong to the BBC. And it wasn’t just the obvious stuff either.

According to our lawyers, we’d be in trouble if James said: “Oh cock”. Or if the audience in our giant travelling ­studio tent was seen in the back of shot, standing up, or if we said Richard Hammond was a bit on the small side.

It got worse. We were told that because, in the past, we would often pull over at a beauty spot and describe the view as lovely, we’d have to stop doing that as well. Seriously. I’d have to get out of my car in the Namib Desert which is one of the most achingly beautiful places on earth and say: “For legal reasons, that view is disgusting.”


ON COCK-UPS


Should've brought thermals

AS before, there will be a Christmas special which, as you’d expect, will not be transmitted at Christmas.

We filmed it in Namibia, which meant packing was easy.

This was a desert country, in Africa, in the southern hemisphere’s early autumn. So I took three T-shirts, three pairs of jeans and that’s it.

I wasn’t alone.

Our crews, who usually have a sixth sense about temperatures and weather, had all taken shorts and vests. And . . . it was the coldest place on Earth.

There was a fog so thick, it felt like I was living in a chilled consommé, and to make matters worse we were driving beach buggies which had no windows, no roofs and, worst of all, no heaters.

I think I may have caught consumption.


ON THE BEST BITS


With special forces in Jordan

WE start the series with a three-car test between the McLaren P1, the Porsche 918 and the LaFerrari.

This is the holy trinity of hypercars and you haven’t seen them together on television before.

However, the highlight of the series for me is the trip we made to a special forces training base in Jordan.

Here, in a disused quarry, super army soldiers from all over the world gather every year to compete in a series of ­gruelling challenges to see who’s best.

And er, we thought we’d give it a go.

Car chases, fast roping out of helicopters, gun fights. We did the lot. Badly. I managed to shoot myself at one point, James May electrocuted his head and Richard Hammond got into a knife fight with a Jordanian special forces giant. Which was the shortest contest in history.


ON NO SWEARING



It's a family-friendly show, so invite the kids along

ONE of the utter joys of working with Amazon is that we get absolutely no ­editorial interference at all.

The only dispute we’ve had was about swearing. They say it’s OK. We say that we want a show that’s family friendly.

We’ve won.


ON HAVING A LAUGH


Everyone having fun yet?

BIGGEST laugh. Morocco. James May was driving a no-nonsense sports car called the Zenos which came with no doors and a steering wheel that can be removed to make getting in and out a bit easier.

He came out of the hotel one morning and actually set off before he realised the wheel was still on the passenger seat.


ON MONEY
 

Where's that £4million-an-episode budget here

YOU may have read that The Grand Tour is the best-funded TV programme in all of history, that each episode cost £4million and that the opening sequence alone cost twice that.

You’ve been told that Matt Damon will be a guest star (he won’t) and that Roger Daltrey and Wilko Johnson wrote the theme music (they didn’t).

And as a result, you are probably expecting this show to make Avengers Assemble look as low-rent as an episode of Cash In The Attic.

I worry about that at night because the truth is: the budget for The Grand Tour is actually not much larger than the budget we had on Top Gear.

When all is said and done, it’s just a car show.

One that’s hosted by three idiots and edited by a genius.


ON LOOKING GOOD


Looking good... The Grand Tour starts on November 18

AS I’m sure you know, James, Richard and I are well known for our crisp ­fashion sense and well-groomed hair.

But it’s all gone a bit awry on the Grand Tour. We turned up to record the show in Holland with no iron or ironing board. Which meant my jacket looked like a dishcloth.

And the make-up girl we used in South Africa arrived with six gallons of thick orange paint and a trowel.


Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/uncategorized/2072954/the-grand-tour-is-finally-ready-but-jeremy-clarkson-blames-james-mays-toilet-habits-for-delays/

[RedMoon11]

'WE GIVE MEN HOPE' I’m just a lucky fat man getting paid to drive a Lambo and shout says Jeremy Clarkson as he lifts lid on The Grand Tour

The former-Top Gear host reveals all about new £160mil Amazon show The Grand Tour, which he stars in along with long-time co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May
EXCLUSIVE

BY ROB GILL AND NICK FRANCIS 30th October 2016


Jeremy Clarkson with The Sun’s Rob Gill, left, and Nick Francis

IT’S 10am in the back room of a West London pub and Jeremy Clarkson is running late.

As he eventually bundles in, he has a typically Jezza explanation: “They’ve closed the road all the way from Bristol to Harrods because someone spilled some oil and they had to resurface it.

“I spilled some olive oil on my kitchen floor last night, but I didn’t re-tile it.”

Rewind to last year and Clarkson, 56, was unemployed after punching a Top Gear producer over missing his steak dinner. But he’s come out smelling of roses.

He signed a reported £160million deal — he says it’s “much lower” — to front Amazon Prime’s blockbuster new car show, The Grand Tour, alongside his old mates Richard Hammond and James May.

The show takes them around the world in a tent, driving supercars, playing soldiers and blowing things up. So its business as usual, then.

“The phone didn’t stop ringing,” says Jeremy. “Everyone got in touch, except Sky. They didn’t want to make a car show.

“An agent in LA said the three of us becoming available like that — and the writers, camera crews, producers — was like Friends at its height.

"The entire cast of a show that big becoming available, it never happens. Amazon jumped in.”

---

CLARKSON ON... THE BBC

IT is a 1920s operation trying to operate in the 2020s. But it will survive.
To be fair they never meddled. Their editorial policy guy is called David Jordan and he’s a genius, the most underpaid man in Britain. We were fine at the BBC for years and years, until Danny Cohen arrived. That was the only problem.
Danny has a different view on life than I do. Extremely different. He reads the Guardian, he loves the Guardian. He’s gone now anyway, I don’t know where he’s gone.
The BBC split meant they could no longer use The Stig, there would be no Star In A Reasonably Priced Car, and no hangar.

---

There was even a suggestion James May wouldn’t be allowed to say “cock”. He can.
Jeremy says: “You can use the word c*** on various Amazon shows, but we don’t want to swear. We want parents to let their kids see it.


The trio left the BBC after a 'fracas' in which Jeremy punched a Top Gear producer when he received a cold steak

“We own the show. We have total control. Amazon don’t interfere editorially, at all. I haven’t even met the boss, Jeff Bezos. He emailed me saying, ‘Good luck . . . whoever you are’. That’s a joke. But that’s it.

“But what worries me most is that everyone is expecting Avengers Assemble, that people think we’ve made something between the new Star Wars movie and Iron Man.


Clarkson revealed the trio have full control over what they want to do

"It is just three middle-aged men doing what they’ve always done — drive cars around corners, shout, fall over, belittle each other, bicker.

“It’s not the moon, we’re in Whitby. I haven’t got a flying suit. It’s all filmed on Planet Earth.

“It’s the same family, we’ve just moved house. It’s comfort food, but we’ve gone from serving shepherd’s pie for 12 years to cottage pie. It’s still potato with mince underneath.”

Despite being the best-paid stars on TV, the three have a combined age of 155 and, as Clarkson happily admits, they are hardly sex symbols.

So how come Top Gear was watched by 350 million worldwide, and a million petitioned the BBC when they gave Jezza the chop?

“We give men hope,” he says. “If you’re watching as a family, the wife will look at us then look at her husband, who’s fat with a fag on the go, and think, ‘You’re not so bad’.


The TV presenter described the situation as being the same family, they've just moved house

“Most people on TV have nice teeth, look after themselves and their hair is well cut, and they shame us. They shame most people.

“We make people feel good about themselves because they’re better than us at everything. It’s just three really ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things.

"When you see Bear Grylls going, ‘I can drink my own urine, stab this snake and eat a swan’, that’s incredible. But he has come from that background.

“I was a local reporter on the Rotherham Advertiser, James plays the harpsichord, Richard Hammond was a local radio DJ. We’re not trained for these situations.

"Put me in a Lamborghini Aventador, I’m not a racing driver. I’m a fat man.


Jeremy insists he's just an ordinary man who got lucky, stressing he's no a racing driver

“We also say things you rarely hear in other shows. I watched Autumnwatch last night — God almighty.

They saw a badger, and at no point did they say, ‘Look at it distributing TB among the poor farmer’s cattle’. Then there was a fox. ‘Look at the little foxy-woxy’. Yes, ripping heads off chickens.

"Everyone gets fed up with a sugary commentary. We don’t bother. It’s just us cock-arsing about.”

---

CLARKSON ON... JAMES MAY

IF James is left to his own devices you’ll get 35 minutes of footage of him talking about an obscure clutch made by Buick in 1936.
We finished our last Top Gear live show a year ago. We all went for dinner. It wasn’t a particularly pi**y night as we had an early start next day. It was a shame, that you ended ten years of touring, then have a 6am start to get to the Eurostar for the Grand Tour.
Richard and I made it, then we got a call from James: (In May’s voice) “While walking last night to my car I had a bit of a tumble”. That’s what old people call it. He broke his arm. (May’s voice): “Well, it was very slippery.”
It’s like working with a little old lady, who breaks every time he has a “tumble”.

---

Some say he is partial to a glass of organic rosé, but today it’s black coffee with a “thousand sugars”.

Which is a pity as he clammed up when we brought up the “fracas”.

“You guys talk away, you won’t get any answers,” he says. “I’ll have a cigarette and when you’ve finished . . ”


Jeremy refuses to talk about the incident which lost him his BBC contract, although every thing worked out

But everyone involved seems to have done well out of it. Even the hotel has a blue plaque marking the spot.

His punchbag Oisin Tymon — who he allegedly called a “lazy, Irish c***” — is said to have got £100,000 in a private settlement.

Jeremy paces round the room to study the paintings on the wall. “That bird up there, is that a nightjar?” he asks. But he does eventually admit he’s in a good place.

“If we’d stayed, we’d have done the same thing week in, week out. ‘Thank you for watching, good night.’ We’ve been forced to reinvent it. It’s a good thing.”

The three signed a three-year deal to make 12 shows a year. The first goes out on November 18, and only five are completed.

“We don’t finish filming this series until December 13, and we start on the second series on December 14,” he says.

“I went to the dentist and I need two fillings and a crown replaced. I just won’t have time so I’ll have toothache until after Christmas.”

But Jeremy’s not complaining. He never loses sight of the fact he’s got a job most people would kill for.

“That man in PC World is my motivation,” he says, explaining: “I once sat in a traffic jam in Liverpool. It was raining, about half five on a Tuesday, one of those horrible nights.

---

CLARKSON ON... RICHARD HAMMOND

RICHARD is genuinely one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, he’s up there with any great comedian.
The speed at which his mind works, he is outrageously funny.
So when you see him ask James in the trailer: “Which arm did you break” when James’ arm was in a sling, it wasn’t scripted.

---

"And I looked in and saw this lad in PC World — he was a kid, about 17 — and I thought, ‘That could be me’. Purple shirt. If he works really hard, in three or four years he could make store manager.

"Then, if he puts in a really strong shift for the next ten, area manager. Then you get to go on an away-day weekend in North Wales. And that’s it. Holy s***, how f***ing lucky am I?

"There’s people who chisel the fat away on London’s sewers. And we get paid to drive a Lamborghini around a corner and shout.”

As a Chelsea fan, the chat turns to Jose Mourinho and his humiliating 4-0 defeat on his Stamford Bridge return.

“Well, here’s the danger of being at the top of your game and going somewhere else,” he says, laughing at the irony.

“Look at me, I’m absolutely brilliant, I’ll be fine at Manchester United . . . oh God.”




www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2077434/im-just-a-lucky-fat-man-getting-paid-to-drive-a-lambo-shout-says-jeremy-clarkson-as-he-lifts-lid-on-the-grand-tour/

[RedMoon11]

GRAND WORLD TOUR Jeremy Clarkson’s globetrotting new show The Grand Tour cost whopping £160MILLION… and this is how he spent it

The petrolhead will rejoin Richard Hammond and James May for new car show after being sacked from Top Gear for allegedly punching a producer
 
BY ROB GILL AND NICK FRANCIS   31st October 2016



SOME say Jeremy Clarkson isn’t bitter about his break-up with the BBC.

All we know is, he’s coming back to our screens on with a bang on Amazon and vows: “Some of it is better than ­anything we’ve done before.”

While he claims The Grand Tour isn’t about shoving it down his ­former employer’s throat, Clarkson admits he was determined to “come back with something”.

And he certainly has.

The opening sequence, shot in the Californian desert, has 6,000 extras.


The trio are making the move to Amazon to host new car show The Grand Tour


Jeremy said: “The opening six minutes before the show starts is moving. I’m very proud of it.”

Jezza, James May and Richard Hammond do all their usual “cock-ar*ing about” — they play special forces soldiers in Jordan and sink cars in Barbados. But they also film the “Holy ­Trinity” of supercars together for the first time.


The show will see them film from a different location each week

The debut show will be for ­petrolheads. The silly stuff returns in episode two.

Referring to his old BBC show, Jeremy said: “Sometimes we could do very strong car ­programmes and sometimes we just cocked about. It’s the same with this.”

Speaking of Top Gear, what did he make of its revamp?

Jeremy said: “I would never ­comment on the efforts of other people. I watched the first two ­episodes. I could see what they were doing.

“I knew enough after watching two. I’ve been busy.”

One task that kept him busy was settling on a name for his new show.

Jeremy recalled: “God almighty. That’s a complicated thing.

“That took months. Every name in the world is taken.

“Somebody has got it, somebody has registered it. There was a lot of ball-ache. There was a lawyer who pointed out that GT is TG backwards.

“Yep, fine. On that basis somebody called CJ will sue me for being called Jeremy Clarkson. It’s just ­nonsense.”

Now the name has been chosen and viewers can once again enjoy Clarkson, Hammond and May doing what they do best — such as a classic A-to-B special in ­Beetle beach buggies across Namibia’s desert.




Viewers can tune in from November 18 to watch the show

Here, Jeremy reveals some Grand Tour secrets ahead of the first episode which debuts on Amazon Prime on November 18.

But there is one final ­question for Jeremy. Will Amazon get their reported £160million budget back?

“Yeah, they will. Do the maths. Look at our previous audience around the world — 350million.

“If just one per cent of that ­previous audience thinks ‘I want to watch those three’ and spends £79 . . .”

That’s £276.5MILLION.

And on that bombshell. Thank you, BBC. Good night.


CLARKSON ON: THE TENT

AFTER filming the stunts in various locations, the Grand Tour team are now taking a gigantic tent around the world to show the clips to studio audiences. Jeremy explains how it works. . . 
THE tent (above) came from watching True Detective. That first series was fantastic.     There was a church which had burned down and the priest or baptist or whatever had set himself up in a tent and I just went, ‘That, that’, froze it, took a picture and sent it to Andy Wilman (Jeremy’s old mate and TGT executive producer).
The budget is 90 per cent moving that tent and ten per cent on beef Hula Hoops for James.
Have you seen the city that travels around with it? It’s insane. In my mind, it was just an open-sided tent. But then you’ve got to light it, you need a flat floor to put the cameras on, then you can’t have the audience standing up, because it might be mistaken for Top Gear, and then we’re filming it in 4K ultra HD. Then you need to put the audience somewhere when they’re not actually in the tent, so you’ve got to put another tent up. Then you need a tent for the gallery and the directors.
And it all has to be folded up at the end of the show and taken to the next place.
We ended up with two tents – and we leapfrog them. The one that was in Rotterdam will go to Nashville and the one that was in Whitby has 7 gone to Finland. It’s a logistical nightmare.


These are some of the locations you can expect to see the trio in on their Grand Tour


Swindon, UK


At least one episode will see the boys staying close to home in Swindon

The BBC break-up meant no Stig and no hangar. But the boys have another “secret test track” – in Swindon.

They also test doomsday-proof “bug out” cars in Lolworth, South Cambs, smelly “eco cars” in Wales and Clarkson’s home-made SUV in Cobham.


FRANCE

A shoot with three old Maseratis. May arrived with his arm in a sling after “taking a tumble”.
Jeremy said: “It wasn’t a particularly p***y night.”
Producer Andy Wilman told May to “stop being an ar*e” and put him in the Maserati with the automatic gearbox.


Italy


The trio struggled to move after Jeremy tweeted their location

Thousands of Italian fans mobbed The Grand Tour lads in a square in Vicenza after Jeremy tweeted “come along”.

He rocked up in an Aston Martin DB11, May drove a Rolls-Royce Dawn and ­Hammond was in a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.


PORTUGAL

The Holy Trinity of supercars – McLaren P1 v LaFerrari v Porsche 918 Spyder – at a ­Portuguese race track.
Jeremy said: “It took a year’s work to put that together. It was really tricky. I’d say that film is better than anything we have ever done before.”


Morocco


The show is apparently a balance between the trio messing around some weeks, and being aimed at petrolheads the next

The set for Game Of Thrones. Here, the boys test the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider, Mazda MX-5 and Zenos E10.
Jeremy said: “Biggest laugh. May actually set off before he realised the steering wheel (in the Zenos) was still on the passenger seat.”


JORDAN


At a special forces training base built by the King of ­Jordan.
Jeremy said: “We decided we’d go there and be special forces people.
“There’s a lot of running around and shooting and being shot. And a car chase, obviously.”


Namibia


At some points Jeremy says he was scared of the extremity of the locations they chose

A classic A-to-B special in ­Beetle beach buggies.

Jeremy said: “I was genuinely scared. I thought, what if the car does break? What if I have to walk through the desert? I won’t be able to.

“I can’t even come and shake hands goodbye.”


BARBADOS

The boys try to make an artificial reef by dropping cars into the sea. Their boat capsizes.
Jeremy said: “I came up with that idea reading an in-flight magazine. Most of my ideas come from reading in-flight magazines. We didn’t do much damage (he coughs).”


Los Angeles


The opening scene of episode one, shot in LA, is one of the biggest of the whole season

The first sequence of episode one, which was filmed in the Californian desert, includes 6,000 extras, stilt walkers, fire breathers, a Mad Max-style ­flotilla of crazy cars and a squadron of jets.

Jeremy said: “And that is just one tiny, tiny part of the opening scene.”


www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2081909/jeremy-clarksons-globetrotting-new-show-the-grand-tour-cost-whopping-276-5million-and-this-is-how-he-spent-it/

[RedMoon11]

Now I’ve grown up I’ve realised kids won’t recall what toys Santa gave them – so don’t bankrupt yourselves

Halloween is over, so it is now time to start thinking about what stupidly expensive presents yout little mites will be given on Christmas morning

BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 5th November 2016



IT WAS Halloween this week, which meant every parent in the land was forced to dress their children up in idiotic costumes and stand around in the cold while they ran about annoying the neighbours.

And with that out of the way, it is now time to start thinking about what stupidly expensive presents the little mites will be given on Christmas morning.

A new carbon-fibre bicycle, perhaps. Or a three-quarter sized working model of a MiG-29 fighter jet.

Before then of course, there will be the school nativity play, which you will be expected to attend even if you are in charge of the peace process in Syria and have late-stage diphtheria.

I spoke to one woman this week who said she’d had a letter from her kids’ school, saying: “We note from our records that you haven’t taken your children skiing for FIVE years.”

And it made her so guilty, she’s actually booked a holiday to the Alps with them next half-term

These days, we have got it into our heads that children are incapable of actually staying alive unless we keep them occupied literally every second of the day.

We imagine that if we leave children for a second while we have a cup of coffee, they will grow up to be glue-sniffers and murderers.

So when we are on holiday, it’s like a military campaign.

“Right, we will go to the water park from nine till ten and then we will play Frisbee on the beach until lunch and then in the afternoon we will swim with the dolphins, have a water-ski lesson, build a sandcastle bigger than the Pyramids, learn how to speak Greek, play four sets of tennis, get a Padi licence and buy some toys.”

And why? Because think about it, how much of your childhood can you actually remember?

Me, I remember peeling a hard-boiled egg when I was two and then it’s a blank until I was ten and I went for a walk with my neighbours, Lynn and Jane, and we sang In The Summertime, by Mungo Jerry.

Holidays? I know from family photographs that we always went to Cornwall and I have a dim memory of a waitress falling off a motorbike in a pub car park. And er . . . that’s it.

It breaks my heart to think how much effort my mum and dad must have put into my Christmas presents every year and I can’t remember what any of them were.

Nor can I recall any family trips, birthday parties or much of anything at all.

It’ll be the same thing with your kids. You’ll have worn yourselves out and emptied the bank account to keep them busy and happy, and 30 years from now, when they have kids of their own, it’ll all just be a big grey fog in their heads.

That’s why I’ve filled an album with Photoshopped pictures of my kids in all sorts of exotic locations around the world.

When I’m dead, they’ll find it and imagine that I gave them the best childhood imaginable.

Clever, eh?

Read more at - www.thesun.co.uk/news/2121413/now-ive-grown-up-ive-realised-kids-wont-recall-what-toys-santa-gave-them-so-dont-bankrupt-yourselves/

[RedMoon11]

For sheer horror value, my plate of maggots and pasta easily trump Donald’s Trump victory

If you think the situation in America is looking grim, just be thankful you haven't been enjoying supper in front of the box with Jezza

BY JEREMY CLARKSON 12th November 2016



AS both candidates in the American election seemed to be fairly horrid, I decided not to bother watching the coverage.

Instead, I settled down to watch the latest instalment of Goliath on my massive vulgarsonic television.

There was, however, a problem.

My flat has been colonised by about two million moths, which spend all day in a cupboard with their wings over their eyes, saying: “Oh the light, the light.”

And then, as soon as it goes dark, they come out and head immediately for the brightest thing they can find. Which, on election night, was the beam of light from my vulgarsonic’s projector.

Soon it felt like I was trying to watch television in 1931.

The screen was a flickering mass of shadows and something had to be done, so I reached for the fly spray. Which they seemed to like very much.

I then resorted to running around the room, trying to squash them by slapping my hands together, but after a few minutes of doing this, I noticed that all the people in neighbouring flats had gathered round their windows to watch the man from the television in No26 jumping over his furniture and clapping for no obvious reason. Feeling a bit embarrassed, I went to the kitchen to make myself some supper.

I chopped up some pork tenderloin and some peppers and mushrooms and emptied some pasta into a pan of boiling water and, 20 minutes later, I was at the kitchen table munching away . . .

And then, for no particular reason, I looked up and noticed the ceiling had come to life.

I checked the bottle I’d been drinking from to make sure it wasn’t absinthe and after discovering it was just wine, I climbed on the chair for a closer inspection. I was amazed to find the ceiling was indeed alive, because it was completely blanketed in maggots.

God knows how many I’d eaten as I sat there contemplating my living ceiling, but it was several hundred, I imagine.

The next morning I woke to find the BBC in funeral mode because Mr Trump had won the election. But I didn’t care.

It doesn’t matter what he does when he takes office in January, because by then my teeth will have fallen out, my arms will be wings and I’ll have become Jeff Goldblum. I’m afraid. I’m very afraid.

-THE morning after my maggotty supper, as I listened to the BBC droning on about the awfulness of Mr Trump, I heard an almighty crash.

It turned out that a neighbour had backed his two-ton Range Rover into my garage, knocking the wall back by a foot.

This meant the roof was propped up by nothing but the door. So if I opened it to get my car out, it would collapse and I’d be down one Golf GTi.

A builder came round and said the wall can only be fixed from the inside. So the door will have to be opened.

“But my car will be ruined,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

I suppose though, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter, because soon I won’t need a car. Because I’ll be a moth.

Read more at: www.thesun.co.uk/news/2168676/for-sheer-horror-value-my-plate-of-maggots-and-pasta-easily-trump-donalds-trump-victory/

[RedMoon11]

Middle class drug users may think their habits are innocent, but they can’t see the misery behind the drug industry

They might think their dealers are nice, but behind the pleasant exterior beats the heart of a cruel monster

BY JEREMY CLARKSON    19th November 2016


The drugs industry is cruel, full of vicious gang wars, murder, and even using children to deliver drugs

WHEN I was growing up, I was dimly aware that drugs existed but only in California, in the films.

Not in actual real life.

At school, there were rumours that one of the sixth-formers had once had a puff on a joint at a party.

But they were only rumours.

They couldn’t have been true because we were in Burton-on-Trent.

Not Los Angeles,

Oh, how different things are today.

I have a friend who now has to say on party invites “please leave your drugs at home” because if he didn’t most of the guests would spend most of the night in his lavatory.

I was at a restaurant in London the other night and every time I went for a pee I had to wait about half an hour for a bunch of kids to come out of the cubicle.

Drugs are everywhere.

I’m offered them on pretty much a daily basis as I walk down the street.

And you hear people talking about their dealer as though he’s their hairdresser.

“Oh,” they say to their friends, “you really should use my man.

He’s such a nice chap and so reliable.”

But the fact of the matter is that while he may indeed be a nice chap, he’s actually the front man for a whole industry that’s not very nice at all.

When you break out the charlie after an agreeable dinner party with friends, you may be dimly aware that the people who made it, in the woods of Colombia, have a pretty miserable life.

You’ve probably even watched Narcos and thought, “Ooh that looks horrid.”

But according to the National Crime Agency, the problems caused by drugs aren’t exclusively to be found on the other side of the world.

They say that here at home, drugs have caused a full-on gang war.

They say that traditional established dealers in various regions around the country are fighting for their turf with London-based Somalis who are seeking to take the whole country for themselves.

It seems that they are doing this by offering high quality drugs for less.

Which is page one, chapter one from the Book Of Business.

But their method for dealing with those who moan or don’t pay isn’t from any book I’ve ever read.

Because when they want to punish someone, they either dissolve them in acid, or boil them alive.

And we are not talking here about burly men who learned their trade as pirates in the Indian Ocean or enforcers in Mogadishu.

Because a great many of the foot soldiers are children.

The police say they are thinking of charging the bosses under anti-slavery laws from now on.

But I don’t think they’ll care.

If they’re caught, they’re caught and it doesn’t really matter what charge is used to propel them into prison.

It’d be better to let people know that behind the middle-class acceptability of drugs, beats the heart of an extremely cruel and violent monster.

Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/2216539/middle-class-drug-users-may-think-their-habits-are-innocent-but-they-cant-see-the-misery-behind-the-drug-industry/

[RedMoon11]

Asking hospital patients for passports isn’t racist – it makes sense if we want our NHS to survive

The Government needs to keep costs down, and it's not unreasonable to make sure overseas patients pay for their treatment

BY JEREMY CLARKSON     26th November 2016



WHEN my grandfather was working in the NHS, as a GP, he had only three weapons in his medical armoury – aspirin, bandages and a bit of time for those who dropped by because they were lonely.

Illnesses and ailments then were either cheap to fix or fatal. Which meant that the NHS worked very well.

It’s a different story today though because medical science is able to transplant hearts and enlarge breasts and prevent strokes.

Treating a cancer patient can cost £100,000. And since half the population will get this bastard of a disease at some point, you do have to scratch your head and think, “How on earth can we afford it?”.

The sad truth is that one day, it won’t be possible.

But until that day arrives, the Government is looking at ways to keep costs down, and has suggested that patients must produce ID to show they are at least eligible for free treatment.

This would, it’s hoped, prevent doctors spending our money on patients who arrived at Heathrow that morning having contributed not one penny to the NHS. So-called health tourists.

The issue was discussed this week on the BBC’s Question Time and was dismissed by pretty much the entire panel, and presenter David Dimbleby himself, as racist.

In the audience were a handful of lunatics who made mooing noises. But mostly it was an endless succession of junior doctors and student activists who said the NHS should provide care at all levels to everyone from all over the world all of the time.

I’m afraid I watched the whole thing unfurl with sagging shoulders and a heavy heart.

That personable but completely misguided lunatic who runs what used to be called the Liberal Democrats — but since the election is the Liberal Democrat — said all of the money used to prop up the economy should be spent on the NHS and that if someone arrived from, say, Nigeria for a transplant, he or she should be treated, no questions asked, and then sent a bill for the work afterwards.

Really? And they’d do what with it? Pay up? Or put it in the bin?

So then expensive lawyers would have to become involved, and their letters would go in the bin too. And then what?

Wouldn’t it be easier to say to someone arriving at the hospital: “Can we see your passport?

That’s not racist. It’s just sensible.

Read more at: www.thesun.co.uk/news/2267401/asking-hospital-patients-for-passports-isnt-racist-it-makes-sense-if-we-want-our-nhs-to-survive/

[RedMoon11]

Fancy a job with short shifts, zero tax and pay by the sackful? Become a crook!

When it comes to crimes in-between terrorism and motoring, Jeremy fears it looks like the police are pretty much hopeless.

BY JEREMY CLARKSON 3rd December 2016



IF you park, even for a moment, on a double yellow line you will definitely be caught and you will definitely be fined.

It’s the same story these days with speeding.

If you break the limit, even for a small amount of time on the A9 in Scotland or the A40 in London or in the roadworks on the M1 or the M3, you will be nicked.

When it comes to motoring, there is an absolute zero tolerance of any infringement.

And I get the impression, while touching a lot of wood, that our police and security forces are pretty good at catching terrorists as well.

If some halfwit in a frock wanders into a hardware store to buy a bottle of ammonia and some sugar, he can be fairly certain that when he comes outside, he’ll be invited by some burly officers to get in the back of their van.

However, when it comes to crimes in-between terrorism and motoring, it looks like the police are pretty much hopeless.

Figures just out show that in ­ London, a staggering 94 per cent of all burglaries are not solved.

And I suspect that no real attempt is made to solve them either.

I was burgled a few years ago and the man responsible was caught in sharp focus, on a CCTV camera, ­carrying my television out of my front door.

I gave the picture to the police and published it in this very newspaper, asking for information.

But still, unbelievably, he was never apprehended.

Almost everyone I know has a similar tale to tell.


Sorry James… still no news on your telly

The homeowner gives the police ­photographic evidence of the man who did it, they get a crime number for insurance purposes and that’s the end of it.

James May once had his television stolen while he was in the kitchen, making a Lego bus, probably.

But ­anyway, whenever he is pulled over by the constabulary for some minor ­motoring offence he always says: “Oh good. If you have time to stop me for doing 31, then you must have found the man who nicked my TV.”

Then he puts on his crestfallen and slightly bewildered Eeyore face when he’s told that no, they have not.

The Labour Party says that this ­woeful state of affairs is because of Tory cuts.

The police, on the other hand, say the figures look bad because they’ve changed the way they count crime.

Really?! So does that mean they now have 11 fingers on one hand and three on the other?

How can you change the way you count, for God’s sake?

Whatever, they’ve made an impassioned plea to homeowners to be more careful, fitting extra locks and more bars on the windows and so on.

But I’ve had a better idea . . .

I look on my way to work at teachers trying to get classes of unruly kids across the road safely.

I see people up poles, trying to mend overhead cables and I notice road workers shivering in the freezing winter air.

In shops, there are people doing mind-numbing work and in bars, there are kids waiting table for the minimum wage.

And I can’t help thinking, why don’t you all just take up burglary?

The working day is over in a few minutes, there’s no tax and there is only a six per cent chance you’ll get caught.

Which falls to zero per cent if you aren’t off your head on drink and drugs when you are on the job.

In fact come to think of it . . .

This weekend, I’m in Scotland where I’m supposed to be recording the latest instalment of The Grand Tour.

But I think it’d be even more profitable if I just rob a bank instead.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/2318161/fancy-a-job-with-short-shifts-zero-tax-and-pay-by-the-sackful-become-a-crook/

[RedMoon11]

Boris Johnson is a loose cannon, but why don’t we let police use the hoses instead?
The water cannons which cost £320,000 will be sold for £6,000 at best - but they may be better used by cops
COMMENT
BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 17th December 2016

www.thesun.co.uk/news/2419181/boris-johnson-is-a-loose-cannon-but-why-dont-we-let-police-use-the-hoses-instead/


Help fight the Government’s plan to silence the free Press – and save your own freedom
WHILE you’re drunk in front of the TV this Christmas, the Government is planning a coup to silence our free press – fight back and save your own freedom here
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON 24th December 2016
 
OVER the past few years, my wife’s phone has been hacked.

Friends have been pursued across ploughed fields by the paparazzi.

Every girl I ever spoke to was billed in the next day’s papers as a “mystery blonde”.

And every little thing I ever did was twisted by wilfully obtuse journalists to make it look like I was Hitler.

Newspapers, and the people who produce them and write them and own them, are a constant thorn in my side, an unending headache, and I sometimes lay awake at night wondering what the editor of the Daily Mail would look like without a head.

So you’d expect me to be whooping for joy at the news that over the Christmas break, while you’re making merry with the party poppers and the crackers, various shadowy Government people are drawing up plans to bring the nation’s newspapers to heel.

But I’m not. I’m horrified to the point of panicky breathlessness. And you should be too.

If you were asked to define what is actually meant by a “free country”, you may say that it’s the freedom to worship whatever God you hold dear or the freedom to vote in an election.

But actually, the keystone of freedom is a press that is completely and utterly free from any sort of government interference.

Think about it.

When there’s a coup, the first thing the wannabe leader tries to do is take control of the nation’s television and radio stations.

Having the ability to broadcast his message to everyone is more important than having control of the country’s army or air force.

That’s what is happening here.

The Government, quietly, while you are drunk in front of the television, is staging a coup.

It is taking control of the papers so it can effectively control what’s written in them.

Remember the exposé of MP’s expenses, when we learned they’d been using our money to build duck houses in their moats?

Well, that won’t be allowed any more.

Of course, you may ask why newspapers don’t simply ignore the proposed Government edict and carry on as before.

It’s not like there are soldiers with guns in the offices, throwing hand grenades at the editor and taking journalists to a stadium to be disappeared.

Aha. No. That’s true.

But here’s the deal that’s being considered.

If any newspaper fails to sign up to a new regulatory body — it’s called Impress and it’s funded in part by Max Mosley — then they will be hounded into bankruptcy by the most disgusting plan to emerge from Britain since the invention of the concentration camp.

It is this.

If a newspaper prints a completely true story about a government minister — or anyone else for that matter — he can sue.

And the paper will be forced to pay his legal costs.

EVEN IF HE LOSES THE CASE.

This means that newspapers will be full of nothing but the loveliness of Theresa May’s hair and how Rolf Harris has many good points.

Of course, you may argue that you don’t care, because you have social media these days and that tells you everything you need to know.

Rubbish.

When you see harrowing footage on YouTube or Twitter of some dead bodies in Syria, you are told by the voiceover that they were killed by the president’s army.

But were they?

Who is doing the voiceover?

Who took the pictures?

Who uploaded them?

You don’t know.

You don’t even know the people covered in blood are really dead.

Twitter and sites like it tell us everything — and that’s the problem.

They tell us the bellendboy2945 is having a burger for his lunch and that kookygirl3756 is going to Topshop, and while these things are news, they don’t matter.

We need someone to filter the endless noise, to decide what’s important and what isn’t, what’s true and what’s not.

That’s why we need newspapers.

And they should be stronger than they are now, not weaker.

I learned the other day that the RAF has dropped four times more bombs on Syria and Iraq in recent months than it did in the whole of the ten-year Afghanistan campaign.

And how many journalists are out there, checking up on what these bombs are being dropped on?

No, you’re wrong.

The correct answer is none.

That almost certainly suits the Government very well.

The last thing it needs in a confusing campaign is some pesky hack in a trilby poking around in the armaments store, asking awkward questions.

But it’s just plain wrong that Our Boys can wage a war without checks and balances from the fifth estate.

The newspapers. It hasn’t happened since the Charge of the Light Brigade, for God’s sake.

On a much smaller scale, what do you think stops me from accepting a bribe to say a car is very nice on the Grand Tour?
I’d love to tell you it’s my solid backbone and my unshakable love of honesty and integrity.

But the truth is, I stay squeaky clean on that front because I fear the newspapers finding out.

I bet the same thing happens in big business.

They know that if they do something dodgy, they’ll never be caught out by Plod or whatever government agency is in place to keep them in check.

But they do worry that the papers will get a whiff. That’s what keeps them honest.

I know this won’t be a popular sentiment in The Sun but I feel sorry for former motor racing boss Max Mosley.

He chose to spend his afternoons paying prostitutes to pick lice from his hair, and I agree that this really is his business.

It’s the same story with Hugh Grant. He chose to relieve some of the pressure in his scrotum while away in Los Angeles, and what business is that of ours?

But if we introduce legislation to stop newspapers writing about Hugh and Max, then it will also prevent them from writing about stuff that really does matter.



And now you’re thinking, “Well you would say that. You get paid to write in The Sun and The Sunday Times every week”.

Yup. I do.

But as you may have read — IN THE NEWSPAPERS — I get paid a lot more by Amazon to drive round corners while shouting.

I come here every week, when I really don’t need to, because I love newspapers.

I love the smell of them.

I love the weight of them.

I love the surprises and the gravitas and the brilliance and the wit.

I love the way that a paper can be written in a day, and then printed, and then delivered to your door, whether you are in Penzance or Inverness, the next morning.

And all for a few pence.

There is nothing you can buy today — with the possible exception of a McDonald’s Happy Meal — which offers better value for money.

And Britain is unique in the world for having such a massive range of choice.

Unlike any other country in the world, we have 11 national daily papers. And we should be proud of that.
Instead, we are going to let the Government give the newspaper owners a simple choice. Succumb to state control or go out of business.

If you really don’t think this is a good idea, then email [e-mail] and make your feelings known.
Or else I’ll see you on the flip side of Christmas, with a column about how the Government is magnificent and never makes mistakes of any kind ever.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/2470944/help-fight-the-governments-plan-to-silence-the-free-press-and-save-your-own-freedom/

[RedMoon11]

Margaret Thatcher was right to be furious at hippies who broke into nuclear subs
The former PM said other intruders should be shot on sight after the gang daubed peace symbols on the base

BY JEREMY CLARKSON  31st December 2016

www.thesun.co.uk/news/2506560/margaret-thatcher-was-right-to-be-furious-at-hippies-who-broke-into-nuclear-subs/




Watchdog’s finger-wagging Lynn Faulds Wood needs to learn MBEs aren’t anti-lollipop ladies
Jeremy Clarkson has his say on New Years Honours, Donald Trump, and the nanny state slowing down our lives
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON  6th January 2017

www.thesun.co.uk/news/opinion/2554198/watchdogs-finger-wagging-lynn-faulds-wood-needs-to-learn-mbes-arent-anti-lollipop-ladies/

[RedMoon11]

We can’t have a meltdown over 40 mins of sleet – we need to get a grip and keep our roads and airports operating as normal
Once again Britain struggles to cope with a tiny bit of snow, Jeremy Clarkson vents his frustration at the media and public's major overreaction
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 14th January 2017


Snow brings traffic to a standstill on the northbound A19 in Peterlee, County Durham

ON Thursday evening, every television and radio reporter in all of Britain took to the airwaves to run about in small circles as they shouted breathlessly about the chaos and terror.

The way they were banging on, you’d have thought that an army of alien zombies had landed. Whereas, in fact, they were talking about a bit of light sleet.

Over now to John McPanic at Heathrow. “Yes. Thank you. More than 80 flights have been cancelled because ground crews are struggling to cope with the conditions . . . ”

I’m sorry to interrupt, John, but we must go live now to Peter OhmyGodwe’reallgoingtodie, who’s on a bridge over the M1 in Bedfordshire.

“Yes. Thank you. The authorities have imposed a blanket 40mph speed limit because if a bit of sleet were to hit a car’s windscreen, the driver may panic and crash into the central reservation, which would kill thousands and leave vast swathes of Western Europe at the mercy of Putin’s ground forces . . . ”

At this point, we left Mr OhmyGodwe’reallgoingtodie and went live to Susan Over-Reaction, who explained that the weather had brought the Tube network to a grinding halt.
Without ever explaining how a train 60ft below the ground could possibly be affected by a small bit of sleet on the surface.

Nor was the listener given time to figure it out because we were off to Ron Certain-Death, in Essex, who had this: “The entire British Army has been mobilised this evening because experts say there will be a tide.

“This will cause sea levels to rise at the rate of four inches every 20 minutes and there are fears that if it keeps rising forever because the moon’s been affected by the sleet, whole communities will need to wear Wellingtons in the morning.”

At this point I switched from Radio Hysteria to Smooth Radio and settled back to listen to the Carpenters singing something calming. And when the song was over, the light sleet had stopped.

I kid you not. It fell for less than 40 minutes, it didn’t settle and it didn’t freeze. But because of our complete inability to cope with anything at all these days, it paralysed the M1, the Tube network and Heathrow Airport.

We really do need to get a grip because this is Britain, where there are no tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes or temperatures that are even remotely interesting.

Yes, safety matters and we can’t have people trying to set land speed records in petrol tankers on the M4 when it’s icy. Nor can we have knife throwing competitions in train stations at rush hour.

But really and truly, there was no need to do anything at all on Thursday, because look at it this way . . .

Guess how many flights were cancelled because of weather at Oslo airport last year?

Yes, you’re quite right. Even though it’s in the frozen north, the correct answer is . . . none.

We need Government leadership here and I have thought of a message that sets the right tone. Radio and television stations are banned from mentioning the weather, outside the actual forecast, unless it’s less than -200 degrees or more than +5,000.

And all roads, train stations and airports must operate as normal unless we really are attacked by alien zombies.


Picturesque flurries of snow over Tower Bridge as temperatures begin to drop

— WITH the sleet falling all over London on Thursday evening, you’d expect the roads to have been a constipated mass of frayed tempers, jams and minor shunts.

But no. The traffic was flowing freely. People were calm and polite.

And I zoomed around the capital like I was the Omega Man.

At first, I couldn’t work out why everything was working so well. But then it came to me in a flash.

Because the weather was so unpleasant, there were no cyclists to get in everyone’s way.

---

— LONDON was brought to its knees this week by a Tube strike and everyone was jolly cross.

Everyone I spoke to had the same things to say. And mostly these things involved some swearing and a lot of dreaming out loud about cattle prods and sacking the bloody lot of them because they’re all paid £40,000 a year.

And all they have to do in return is not fall asleep.

Somehow though, the BBC was able to paint a completely different picture.

God knows how they managed it but while out on the streets, canvassing opinion, they managed to find loads of people standing in the rain, in mile-long bus queues, and all of them were happy to say: “I support the strikers.”

It must have been as difficult as barging into a Bafta meeting and finding a bunch of people to say: “Yeah. I think Donald Trump is terrific."

---

— I STAYED recently at a hotel in Moscow and was told by the receptionist I’d be staying in a room that had been used earlier by Michelle and Barack Obama.
You can imagine my surprise then when I noticed the sheets were all soggy and there appeared to be clandestine recording equipment all over the place.

God knows what had been going on in there.

---

Tories' flexible friend

THIS week, Jeremy Corbyn put on a ridiculous hat and announced on Radio 4 that he wanted more immigration and a limit to the amount of money people can earn in a year.

This was very interesting, especially as he’d already announced that later in the day he’d be unveiling plans to limit immigration and not punish the rich.

Many commentators mocked the man for his muddled thinking, saying he obviously hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. And that his hat was stupid.

But I think it shows he has a flexible mind. By announcing one thing in the morning then another later in the day, he’s showing people he’s flexible.

And by saying that if a company wants to sell something to the Government, none of its bosses should be allowed to earn more than the tea lady shows that, at heart, he is still a proper communist.

Also, it’s obvious he doesn’t care what people think of his hat. Laugh all you like, it’s keeping his head warm and that’s all that matters.

So no. I will not join in with the lamthingying of Mr Corbyn and I hope with all my heart that he remains leader of the Labour Party for many, many years to come.

---

VW faces emission impossible

THOUSANDS of people who bought a Volkswagen are signing up with the law firm of Ambulance, Chase and Run saying they’ve been emotionally scarred by the news that their car’s emission figures were all faked.

This means, and it’ll be hysterical to watch, that they must all stand up in court with oniony eyes and snivelly noses and explain to the judge that they weren’t interested in how much their car cost or how many miles to the gallon it did – only the impact it would have on Johnny Polar Bear.

It’s reckoned that if they put in a particularly good performance, they could trouser around three grand. Not bad for a morning’s work.

I’m not siding here with VW. They cheated. They lied. And they were caught.

But I do think we need a bit of perspective. It’s not like they sold a car that they knew would explode or crash into a tree.

All they did was make an engine that wasn’t quite as kind to the environment as they’d claimed.

For that, many say they will have to cough up $16billion.

Which seems like they are being executed for a crime that’s no worse than shoplifting.

---

— MERYL STREEP said some justifiable things about Donald Trump this week.

And Donald Trump responded by saying she was “overrated”.

This sent the entire world into a complete tizzy fit, with everyone saying that Meryl has won five million Oscars which makes her the greatest actress the world has ever seen, or ever will see.

Hmmm. I don’t like to side with His Donaldness but I’m not sure this is strictly accurate . . 

There was Kramer vs. Kramer, in which she cried a lot, Sophie’s Choice, in which she cried even more, the French Lieutenant’s Woman, in which she cried buckets, Plenty, which was a weeping fest and The Deer Hunter, in which there was some Russian roulette, some wry observations on the Vietnam War and Meryl Streep crying.

It’s all she ever does.

I can’t remember if she cried in Mamma Mia! but that’s because – in a bit of a role reversal – I spent the entire film in tears at the sheer amount of time I was wasting by watching it.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/2610256/jeremy-clarkson-we-cant-have-a-meltdown-over-40-mins-of-sleet/

[RedMoon11]

I’ve read Prince Charles’ new eco yarn about climate change… hope he likes my Ladybird book on the V8 engine

Jeremy Clarkson makes a mockery of Princes Charles' idealistic climate change worries, and why he would rather visit Berlin than Paris
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON, SUN COLUMNIST 20th January 2017


Clarkson’s favourite edition . . . Ladybird books as they were

WHEN I was five, which was about a million years ago, I was given a book called The Ladybird Book Of Motor Cars.

It was the most exciting thing ever, and every night I’d take it to bed and stare at the drawings of impossibly exotic Maseratis and Lamborghinis.

Often they’d cause a fizzing sensation in my gentleman’s region which I could not fully understand.

Then there was the Ladybird Book Of The Hovercraft which was also tremendous and the Ladybird Book Of Jesus.

But that one was a bit boring.

Eventually, I started going to bed with other sorts of publications and figured that the whole Ladybird series of books had gone the way of the red telephone box and Enid Blyton — crushed under the wheels of Snapchat and Call of Duty.

But then, a couple of years ago, they were back.

They had the authentic Sixties artwork and an authentic Sixties tone but they covered modern stuff like the hangover, and the sickie and How It Works: The Husband.

And they were very funny.


Prince Charles was thrilled to have a platform to air his views

So I was especially looking forward to a new version called The Ladybird Book On Climate Change.

I thought it’d be filled with amusing pictures of drowning polar bears and Prius drivers who’d had an accident.

The scope for comedy when it comes to sanctimonious eco-mentalists is endless.

Sadly however, the publishers decided the book should have a forward by someone important — and approached Prince Charles.

Who doesn’t seem to have got the comedy angle at all.

So he tells readers that action on climate change, which he describes as the “wolf at the door”, must be “scaled up and scaled up now”.

And what’s more, he’s overseen the entire production of the book to make sure that nothing in it can be disputed.

Well I bet I can argue with every single point.

Like, for example: Is the world heating up at all? And if it is, does man have anything to do with it?”

Because let’s face it, when it cooled down and there was an ice age, there was no such thing as a Range Rover or a patio heater.

And when we had the mini ice age a while back, kings and princes lived in unheated castles rather than enormous palaces and went around on horses, not in Aston Martins.

I don’t object to Prince Charles believing that we can somehow stop climate change.

It’s rather sweet that he thinks that by making lovely shortbread from ethically sourced organic materials he can somehow offset all the coal-fired power stations in China.

And it’s charming that he thinks the people of Africa should continue to eat mud and drink from puddles because it would be harmful to the polar bear to give them medicine and electricity.

I’m even rather glad he’s chosen to make his point in an impulse buy, stocking-filler Ladybird Book, rather than on television, in front of a braying audience of Corbynistas and armpit hair enthusiasts.

Because maybe I’ll be given the opportunity to retort.

With the Ladybird Book On The V8.

Read more at www.thesun.co.uk/news/opinion/2668288/ive-read-prince-charles-new-eco-yarn-about-climate-change-hope-he-likes-my-ladybird-book-on-the-v8-engine/

[RedMoon11]

Cry havoc and let slip the smog of war… but don’t worry, London’s not Beijing, Calcutta or Chernobyl yet

We all need to calm down, Britain doesn't have bad smog like Beijing or Chernobyl
 
BY JEREMY CLARKSON   28th January 2017


London was covered in smog

EARLIER this week, the weather in large chunks of Britain was ­absolutely spectacular.

Frosty, photogenic mist burned away by mid-morning to leave gin-clear blue days of unparalleled perfection.

There was a time when we would have celebrated the moment by going to the park to feed the ducks. Or ­meeting a friend in town for a cup of coffee. ­Weather like this made me happy.

But not any more . . .

On the roads, we get dot matrix signs saying: “Smog alert. For the love of God leave your car at home.”


TV reports said the smog would kill us

And on the television we get important bulletins telling us that because of the pollution, we are all going to die.

Yeah. In the same way that everyone in East Anglia the previous week was ordered to leave their homes because they were about to be consumed by a storm surge . . .  that never happened.

Undeterred, the Mayor of London issued a warning, saying that the capital was suffering from its worst pollution ever.

Which seemed a bit odd as he could be seen making the announcement from about 30 miles away.

The air was so clear and so fresh and so beautiful that even I went for a walk.

I came back afterwards with rosy cheeks but was told by a radio bulletin that I’d almost certainly got a lung disease and that it’d be best to get my affairs in order by nightfall.

Meanwhile, we were informed that because of the smog and the epidemic of disease that was heading our way, a permanent 60mph speed limit would have to be imposed on the M1 near Sheffield.

I’ve looked into the reasoning behind this and it seems to have something to do with the amount of nitrogen dioxide that’s pumped out of the back of lorries and coaches.


HGVs and lorries are the problem


A cloud of smog descended on the capital

Right. I see. So to address the problem of diesel-engined HGVs, they say that people in cars — even electric-powered Teslas — must slow down. And pay heavy fines if they don’t.

I was driving a Honda with a hybrid power plant last week. The gas that comes out of its exhaust is lemon-fresh and zesty-clean. But even in a car like that, I’d have to do pretty much the same speed as the lorries and coaches, which are the real cause of the problem. It’s idiocy.

Beijing has bad pollution. Calcutta has bad pollution. In Chernobyl, it’s awful.

But Britain? No. You only need open your eyes to see that we just don’t.

The only problem is that the EU sets targets which every member state must achieve. Elsewhere in Europe, they deal with these targets by filling in a form saying everything is fine.

Whereas in Britain we actually make civil servants stand at the side of the road with gas-o-meters then admit that we are in breach.

I’d like to think this will stop when we leave the EU but with Prince Charles and his loony climate-change mates running amok, it’s possible we will set even lower targets which will mean even lower speed limits and even more messages of doom and gloom in the television weather bulletins.

To cheer myself up, I’ve decided to buy another patio heater.


www.thesun.co.uk/news/2726618/cry-havoc-and-let-slip-the-smog-of-war-this-kind-of-weather-used-to-make-me-happy/