Jeremy Clarckson

Looking forward to reading Jeremy Clarkson's column in the Sunday Times? You won't get a chance to now because they pulled it after the lefties sniffled. Moderately insulting to a broad range of countries it is true but what was anyone expecting in an article by Clarkson?

Anyway to prove a point a web site called "The Bear" reproduced the article in full, here it is, pass it on:

"Get me a rope before Mandelson wipes us all out"

Jeremy Clarkson
for the Sunday Times

I've given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I'm afraid I've decided that it's no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I'm afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn't alive any more.


He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country's top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon on to which the conniving idiot has leapt

I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn't bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he's resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.

There's talk of emigration in the air. It's everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can't see the point because she won't be going to university, because she doesn't have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don't live in America.

Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can't stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can't understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation's capital. They can't understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can't understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it's racist.

And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn't understand because he's a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, "I've had enough of this. I'm off."

It's a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?

You can't go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can't go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don't sweep your lawn properly, and you can't go to Italy because you'll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse's head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for "organising" a plumber.

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

The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you'll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it's okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can't go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.

Canada's full of people pretending to be French, South Africa's too risky, Russia's worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn't help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you'll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.

I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it's been for decades, but the lunatics who've made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.

So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it's a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit in the meantime.

Freedom of speech is alive and well!

Funny, because it's true! Clarkson for President.

Reidy Youre a Star wrote:Funny, because it's true! Clarkson for President.

Don't you mean Clarckson?

Freedom of speech is unfortunately not alive and well if the article was pulled in the first place.

The decision not to publish the article wasn't an infringement on Clarkson's freedom of speech because it was pulled by the newspaper, not censored by the government. Clarkson can still use any platform he is given to say whatever he likes, the paper can still print whatever they like.

Don't you ever get bored of being so frighteningly dull?

Freedom of speech is not only governed by government you know?

Clarkson was employed by the paper to give his slightly extreme opinionated views. On this occasion the views obviously didn't sit well with his employers (presumably due to them being the kind of pricks he was spouting off about) hence the article was pulled.

There are obviously plenty of jobs out there for self obsessed arrogant twats!

PieEater wrote:Don't you ever get bored of being so frighteningly dull?

Freedom of speech is not only governed by government you know?

Clarkson was employed by the paper to give his slightly extreme opinionated views. On this occasion the views obviously didn't sit well with his employers (presumably due to them being the kind of pricks he was spouting off about) hence the article was pulled.

There are obviously plenty of jobs out there for self obsessed arrogant twats!

Hear Hear Pie for president

I feel pretty much the same about Clarkson as he feels about Mandelson. Blokes a cretin who wallows in appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Fucking Top Gear.

He's certainly more daily star than Sunday Times but you have to respect that the guy has made a comfortable living doing stuff he enjoys. Also, he's not one to sit on the fence, what you see is what you get...

PieEater wrote:Don't you ever get bored of being so frighteningly dull?

Freedom of speech is not only governed by government you know?

Clarkson was employed by the paper to give his slightly extreme opinionated views. On this occasion the views obviously didn't sit well with his employers (presumably due to them being the kind of pricks he was spouting off about) hence the article was pulled.

There are obviously plenty of jobs out there for self obsessed arrogant twats!

This may be very boring for you once again.

Interference by the newspaper is called editorial control. This isn't an affront to freedom of speech because the newspaper pays for the option of publishing Clarkson's views, what they do with the column once they receive it is at the discretion of the editors.

Indeed editorial control is preventing him from speaking freely through the publication that employs him to work.

In essence the newspaper is stating it has an agenda and all contributors must tow the party line. A balanced, objective view of the world, no!

When has a newspaper ever sought to provide an objective view of the world? It doesn't happen, whether their reports are contorted by political allegiance or the philosophy of the editor, they're all biased. However, having his views published in a newspaper is not a right of Mr Clarkson, therefore preventing him from expressing his opinions in a weekly column cannot possibly constitute a violation of his rights.

As I said, they employ him to work and he has worked. He submitted his column, he was paid, the fact that his piece wasn't published changes nothing.

Simple question, has he been allowed to express his views freely?

Yes. Nobody has stopped him from writing what he wants, and his message has still reached the public, as the original post of this thread can attest.

In fairness, the only way the newspaper could actually stop him is to hold him against his wil.

You're likely to favour kidnap over the wonderful media being questioned...

In reality, there has probably been almost as much publicity given to the article by cutting it as there would be from publishing it.


Shit paper anyway. The Sunday Times is supposed to be a centrist newspaper, but I think it has a slight bias towards the right. But of course, they cannot be seen to be supporting what would be viewed as pretty much extreme right views from Clarkson, in today’s society at least.

I wouldn't advocate kidnapping and I am strongly in favour of freedom of speech, but only as far as the current legal limits permit. The press in this country are by no means perfect, but they do have the right to decide what they publish, I don't see how you can argue with that.

This is the only legal guarantee of freedom of expression that a citizen of the United Kingdom has:

European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms wrote:Article 10

(1) Everyone has the right of freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without inference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

(2) The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

You will note that this only safeguards against "interference by public authority", therefore a newspaper cannot offend the freedom of expression of any individual, whether they are employees of the publication or not.

You forgot the ice.

It's just not a Saturday night without cracking the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms out

The Bible states "thou shalt not kill" it doesn't prevent it from happening.

You simply have to question why you would employ Clarkson and then censor his articles, stupidity at best.

Moreover, why read a post to merely be a pedant and continue to argue semantics?

Should you not be fighting in the streets and trying to nail some pussy?

I wasn't arguing semantics, I was explaining that Clarkson's freedom of speech had not been violated in this incident, and it seems you have ceded to that assertion.

As for the rest of your post, I really don't know what you want me to say. I can't fathom why you should have referenced the Bible, I don't have a definitive answer on the decision by The Times to omit Clarkson's column, and your view of me is clearly quite ill informed.

Not at all, my view of you is that you're a jumped up little twat with more text book answers than grasp of the World. Fortunately for me, the more you post, the more certain I am that I'm a great judge of character.

The quote from the Bible was in response to your beautiful copy and pasting of Euro dullness. The fact that there is guidance on how one should behave doesn't mean that it happens in reality. I could set out the below:

Don't be a twat

I'm damn sure you wont adhere...

I could have quoted my reference from memory, but it wouldn't have been quite as accurate and it would have taken longer.

On your record of achievement "remembering stuff that may come in handy on a forum"...

Does that come before or after:

"Being a twat"?