Cycling UK Forum

reohn2 wrote:What does Clarkson do that makes him so indispensable?

i am of the understanding that the huge costs of making topgear are dwarfed by the revenues from top gear, so in effect it subsidises our favourite programmes on BBCs 2 & 4.
saying outrageous stuff is a deliberate attempt to get him and his programme more publicity

reohn2 wrote: ... What does Clarkson do that makes him so indispensable?....

Surely, that's obvious: he's a "personality." ie on telly because he's on telly.

hubgearfreak wrote:

reohn2 wrote:What does Clarkson do that makes him so indispensable?

i am of the understanding that the huge costs of making topgear are dwarfed by the revenues from top gear, so in effect it subsidises our favourite programmes on BBCs 2 & 4.
saying outrageous stuff is a deliberate attempt to get him and his programme more publicity

I understand that.
So what you're telling me is that he is indispensible?
We're a society sicker than I thought then

reohn2 wrote:So what you're telling me is that he is indispensible?

no, but would you rather more tv licence*/ lesser quality of programming or tolerate a necessary evil?

*or better collection of fees from them that watch i-player on their macs and avoid it

pete75 wrote:

LANDSURFER74 wrote:pete75...you need to go up thread a bit .... si was saying i should not moan about teachers conditions as i could have been one myself .... actually i was a teacher ..... Fast Jet servicing and avaition weapon loading .... not exactly the '3 r's' ....

Yep but what I object to and consider wrong is his view that someone without an O level in English is somehow inferior in ability to a school teacher. They maybe or they may not be. It is a sweeping and unjustifiable statement.

I think that you need further work on your comprehension.

hubgearfreak wrote: .........but would you rather more tv licence*/ lesser quality of programming or tolerate a necessary evil?
*or better collection of fees from them that watch i-player on their macs and avoid it

Oi!
You talking about me?
I'm listening to Radio 4 at the moment, or should I say that it's on. Perhaps we should charge a fee for the radio too?

Getting back to Clarkson ........
An idiot and a buffoon, of course, but he's well-paid for being an idiot and a buffoon. He put his foot in it - again - but I understand his quote about striking public sector workers being shot was an obvious joke - albeit a bad one! - as the whole quote shows, so it has been taken out of context. I didn't see the show - of course! - but it was being discussed on R4 yesterday.

hubgearfreak wrote:i am of the understanding that the huge costs of making topgear are dwarfed by the revenues from top gear, so in effect it subsidises our favourite programmes on BBCs 2 & 4.

I'm not sure about that. BBC Worldwide made £51M profit from it's four biggest brands last year. A drop in the ocean compared to license fee income of 3.4 billion a year. So a fairly trivial subsidy spread over the rest of the programming.

But anyway programmes should be shown or not shown on their merits. Lots of people find Top Gear entertaining so that's enough justification for it to be shown. I think the shock/horror about JCs comments is OTT. It obviously wasn't a serious comment. Perhaps a bad joke and not all that funny but if we started censoring things people object to where does it end.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/ju ... ide-profit

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/annualreport ... 009_10.pdf

Si wrote:

pete75 wrote:

LANDSURFER74 wrote:pete75...you need to go up thread a bit .... si was saying i should not moan about teachers conditions as i could have been one myself .... actually i was a teacher ..... Fast Jet servicing and avaition weapon loading .... not exactly the '3 r's' ....

Yep but what I object to and consider wrong is his view that someone without an O level in English is somehow inferior in ability to a school teacher. They maybe or they may not be. It is a sweeping and unjustifiable statement.

I think that you need further work on your comprehension.

And I think you need to work on your wit if that's the best you can manage.

pete75 wrote:And I think you need to work on your wit if that's the best you can manage.

Apart from the fact that hubgearfreak has in the past been know to comment on others for the same thing. Going as far as to suggest that if they are involved in a road incident then it is only the Gene Pool being thinned out.
So if you are going to criticize another for some thing, then it is reasonable for you to receive the same criticism for the same thing. Is it not ?

thirdcrank wrote:In the meantime, top people's children would benefit from 'charity' meant for the poor in an earlier age. Teachers may not be poor, but I doubt if there is another country in the developed world where they are treated so badly as in this country, simply because the people most able to raise standards opt out of the state system.

Hmm.

I can afford (and indeed pay) the fees for my son + daughter go to the private school of my choosing.

However I have no power at all to raise the standards of the state sector. If I send them to a 'good' state school (in other words one with a lots of conscientious parents), that school will maintain its standards. If I send them to a 'bad' state school (one with don't-give-a-damn parents), that school has no chance of becoming 'good' but my children have a very high chance of becoming 'bad'.

The business of entering a 'good' state school is if anything less democratic than that of entering a private school.

At my children's school, if you can pay the fees (limited financial help is available), you can go there.

At the nearby 'good' state school, you have to:

* live in the right road (=£££££)
* apply at the right time - we moved, and so had no chance of getting a place during the normal intake at the state school.

I suspect teachers are not so much poorly treated by their employers as by their pupils, and that pay and other benefits are not the only factors at play.

I know that private school fees have gone up well above inflation, my understanding is that this was done because teachers' pay was going up above inflation too, so there was competition from the state sector for resources (teachers).

I worked with a Guardian-reading banker (well, not banker perhaps, but he worked in an investment bank) who was previously a teacher (as was his wife). They both quit the profession, she to keep house in Poole, he to work in the bank, because the obnoxious behaviour of the children was so bad as to triumph over their natural left-wing instincts. I'm sure that many teachers in such schools would sacrifice pay for having civilized children to teach....

Edwards wrote:Apart from the fact that hubgearfreak has in the past been know to comment on others for the same thing. Going as far as to suggest that if they are involved in a road incident then it is only the Gene Pool being thinned out.

really, i said that?

thirdcrank wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15993549

It will be intersting to see how the BBC responds to this latest bit of "laddish humour" AKA buffoonery. He wasn't just talking about running over riff-raff like cyclists this time.

(I think I can hear a toothless watchdog retreating further into the kennel.)

The comments he made yesterday, while obnoxious (which is I think what he's paid for), qualify as 'fair comment'.

Apparently Unison is considering reporting him to the police, if they do so they are worse than Clarkson.

It is a hyperbolic comment that nobody could possibly take literally. Public sector workers are not an abused minority cf. people of ethnic minorities, homosexuals, etc. Nobody has ever been shot for going on strike.

On the other hand, suggesting cyclists should be run over is quite plausible as this does happen regularly, people do use their vehicles as weapons against cyclists, and it is quite possible for such comments to be taken seriously.

Anyway, it's very silly to be making so much fuss about his comments. It is not illegal to be rude about unions and strikes, lots of people agree with the sentiment and all the fuss is doing is making the unions look more ridiculous and out-of-touch in their eyes. I don't think there was close to this much fuss when John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, said that Margaret Thatcher should have been shot in the 80s.

It's not remotely comparable to the Brand/Ross Sachs phone pest scandal either (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebri ... Sachs.html)

Let's not forget that Clarkson has previously suggested that Mexicans are lazy, that truck drivers spend their time murdering prostitutes, that Gordon Brown was a one-eyed Scottish idiot, etc., ad nauseam.

Is criticising people for being on strike really worse than that?

hubgearfreak wrote:really, i said that?

Apologies I have just checked and I was wrong. The part I attributed to you was not in relation the spelling or grammar.

So apologies again.

In the same program Clarkson also complained about rains stopping when they have hit somebody and killed them. In that part he was trying to be funny but was just showing how low he will go to get noticed.
That was before the "Shoot them in front of their relatives" remark.

I offered to show him that speed does kill but the coward do not take up the offer. He is happy to upset relatives of the dead "saying speed does not kill it is stopping that does".
It is such a shame I could not get to prove him wrong with a V8 4x4.

thelawnet wrote:Nobody has ever been shot for going on strike.

i'd be surprised if this is true