[BITList] (no subject)

[Ronald Thomas]

Don't know about Clarkson for PM but he has a point




  
      The following article by Jeremy Clarkson was to be in the  Sunday Times but was  'pulled' - probably
      by the subject of the article, Mandelson.  
      So much for free speech. 
      But poor old Manglebum fails to appreciate how the blogsphere works and in no time the article finds 
      itself going viral round the world.


       
      Wonderful. Enjoy it - and feel free to pass it on if you enjoyed it..... 
       
           
       
         Jeremy Clarkson 
       
         Sunday Times 15/11/09




       
         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 the conniving 
       
         idiot has leapt on. 
       
           
       
         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.  
           
       
           
       


        

              
              


     




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