Who is the More Stupid?

 

So asks some journo I've never heard of in The Mirror.  He calls himself Fleet Streetfox although the silhouette looks more like a woman but then it would be "She calls herself Fleet Streetvixen".

Whoever it is, they really have got it in for Chris Evans and, to a very, very slightly lesser extent, for Jeremy Clarkson too.

Maybe he/she/it is jealous of the success & wealth of the duo. He/she/it does comment upon the £5 Million Evans is getting for taking over TopGear.  Like the many people who complain of the millions of pounds the Top Gear stars get from licence-payers funds, they don't mention the considerably more pounds that come in to the BBC coffers as a result of the show.

The event that has caused Fleet's vitreol is filming around The Cenotaph in London including Ken Block doing doughnuts around there.  An error of judgement that I learned about this morning listening to Chris Evans apologising for on his radio show.

Quentin Willson has helpfully come out to say how it wouldn't have happened under Jeremy's watch.  Not sure why he is telling us this but it is on the BBC's own youth-oriented Newsbeat so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume they asked him for his opinion.

Jeremy, meanwhile, has been showing his softer, more liberal side...

I've not looked at the ins and outs of staying in or out of the European Union yet.  But I have been noticing the sort of people giving us their views.  The outies include Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Ian Duncan Smith and, of course, Nigel Farage.

This makes me want to stay in.

The innies include Professor Stephen Hawking (good start there), David Cameron (Oh dear), Jeremy Corbyn (Jury's out and don't mention The Cenotaph again) and now - Jeremy Clarkson!

Surprised me that one.  But he's never actually said he hates Europe - just all the people who live there.

the Independent report his Sunday Times column, (which I'm not linking to because it costs) in which Jeremy claims to want to be part of a properly functioning EU - “Isn’t it better to stay in and try to make the damn thing work properly? To create a United States of Europe that functions as well as the United States of America? With one army and one currency and one unifying set of values?"

The article continues,

Warning of a world order which saw Trump set against Putin, Clarkson emphasised the need “to make the continent work the way the Continent should – as a liberal, kind, balanced fulcrum in a mad world”.

At that point I wondered if he was taking the mickey.

But I don't think he is.

Reading his stuff from the '80s and '90s shows a very right-wing Clarkson but I did notice when the Star in a Reasonably Priced car was Alistair Campbell and again for John Prescott we had a much more even-handed, almost sympathetic Clarkson.

And I know I'm worried by Putin & Trump.

So it looks like Jeremy is siding with his mate the Prime Minister and not his boss Rupert Murdoch who's views on the EU have been reported by the Evening Standard's Anthony Hilton:

“When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”

I'm Not a Fan of Supermodels

I suppose I'm jealous of people who earn obscene amounts of money just because of how they look.

And they walk funny.

But I do admire Jodie Kidd.

She is more than a body.  She is an accomplished equestrian, a racer and she is intelligent.

And she is co-presenting The Classic Car Show on Channel 5.  (Although I caught episode 1 on Channel 5+24 - which shows Channel 5 a day late but rather than show yesterday's news and weather, they replace it with adverts for cruises)

Her co-presenter is Quentin Willson - the only smarmy person on TV I like since JR has died.

The show has a decent website.  It seems to be sponsored by a posh second-hand watch shop and Jaguar Heritage which could be a  bit worrying for product placement reasons but there was no actual evidence of it happening.

So what do I think of the show so far?

The opening titles were very cheesey but that's OK - there was much looking at watches to make sure they got to the studio on time - watches presumably from a posh second-hand watch shop.

The conversations seemed a bit stilted but time will heal that.  The first piece was Quentin enthusing about the Ford Mustang but they followed that with a story about taking a 1950s Mercedes 300SL Gullwing and it's modern equivalent to London Fashion Week to see which was best according to fashionable people like Tiny Tempah and Graham Norton.  Not very interesting.  But then they recovered well with a piece on the Triumph TR7 - brilliant!

The rest of the show was pretty good too - especially a 1950s Studebaker overgrown in a field in the UK somewhere (they wouldn't tell us where) - I shall be watching again next week.

Although the super models I will be liking will be of the Ferrari/Aston Martin/Lambo etc. variety.

And Jodie Kidd.

And perhaps Helena Christensen.

Don't look in the Mirror!

Actually, you should regularly check your mirrors when driving - I'm talking about the online Daily Mirror motoring section.

I have never been a regular reader of it anyway but there would sometimes be an interesting Quentin Willson or Richard Hammond article in there.

It's been a while since my previous post so I took a look today to see if there was anything there I could post about.

It looks like they've given up:

The headline story is an advert for personal injury claims thinly disguised as an article about driving in the Easter Holiday traffic.

 

Then you get to the rest of their stories:

They are very few and far between - and getting fewer and further apart - April 9th, March 20th, March 16th.

 

They are interspersed with more personal injury "advertorial"s such that there are 6 advertorials to just four real articles.

 

And there is no sign of Quentin Willson.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if the adverts were not for personal injury advice - I hate personal injury lawyers - they are leeches who cause insurance premiums to be so high.

 

I have deleted Mirror Motoring from my Internet favourites.

 

Something to reflect on there.

 

Nice little joke at the end - pity I used it before really - I hope that doesn't reflect badly on me.

Left, Right?

Back at the start of Summer, I posted about Alexei Sayle becoming a motoring correspondent with The Daily Telegraph.I think I don't particularly like his motoring writing - his latest piece, on the Paris Motor Show, is quite short and quite vague. It does, however, really wind up a small number of Telegraph readers who like to vent their spleen in the comments section. This amuses me very much and I enjoy their annoyance.

I have made the point myself in the past that the better motoring columns tend to be found in the more obnoxious right-wing media - Fox News, The Telegraph and The Mail.

But, then again, I hadn't really looked in the left-wing media.

So I took a look in The Mirror.

I did find two of my favourite correspondents, Richard Hammond & Quentin Willson. But overall, it is quite a disappointing site and very rarely updated - it's had the same couple of stories including one about an electric car called "The Lightning" on its header for at least three weeks now - and some very intrusive advertising.

Socialist Worker doesn't appear to have a motoring section.

I think they should.

Now, who on Earth could they possibly get to be their star guest motoring correspondent?

Flasher Caught by Police and Found Guilty

I saw this story yesterday and considered commenting on it but only thought of a good title for the post this evening.

The story centres around Grimsby man Michael Thompson, 64 - don't know why his age is relevant. He saw a Police Speed Trap and did something that I, myself, often do when I see one - flashed the headlights to warn cars approaching from the other direction. I guess he must have been spotted by another officer who pulled him over, had a heated debate, and charged him with "wilfully obstructing a police officer in the course of her duties".

He was fined £175 and ordered to pay £250 costs. He was also ordered to pay a £15 "victim surcharge" whatever that is - I don't see any other victims here unless the policewoman operating the speed trap didn't achieve her capture bonus.

I'd have thought that the Police would have been in favour of preventing law-breaking - this is what he was doing by slowing down speeding traffic. Anyone not speeding wouldn't be affected and anyone who didn't spot him would deserve to be caught because they weren't being very observant in their driving.

Anyway, according to the Highway Code, flashing your headlights means "I am Here" - so he wasn't warning anyone about anything, he was merely advertising his presence.

Quentin Willson added his two cents today thus.



Mr.Thompson is appealing - which isn't a word I'd use to describe the arresting officer.

Carpool

I'd never heard of this before but a new series starts on the Dave channel this Thursday involving Robert Llewelyn (Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge) driving a different celebrity guest around in a Toyota Prius each week whilst interviewing them.

It's actually not that new because he's being making these shows for ages as Internet-only shows. I found his site and found a whole load of them to view. I watched the Phill Jupitus one and the David Mitchell one which were enjoyable - the PJ one was too sweary for inclusion in my Blog so I've embedded the one where Robert interviews my favouritest smarmy person - motoring journalist Quentin Willson:

There's a lot of pro-electric car stuff in that episode but it's done in such a way, by at least one petrol-head (Willson), that you can actually see the logic in the arguments and if the loony eco-mafia types had this sort of mentality instead, there'd probably be a lot less scepticism and disdain and milk-float references aimed at the whole electric car movement.

The previous guests on his show seem to be a varied mix of people with Sir Patrick Stewart probably the most famous. There's also nearly the full set of Robert's colleagues from Red Dwarf - so next time I've half-an-hour to kill, I may just give this a go.