Norfolk AGAIN!

Maybe the Norfolk Police are more media savvy than other police forces.

Or maybe a lot of idiots live in Norfolk.

Here is today's picture:

The story is here and tells of a driver stopped for "erratic driving" who had no tyre on the front wheel.  He's hardly got any wheel left on the front wheel.  Breathalyser readings showed more than three times the drink-drive limit so that could explain a few things.

 

I've decided that it's an old Seat Leon.

 

This is on the back of my most recent Norfolk story - which listed previous ones therein.

 

This particular story keeps going partly due to the media's fascination with Royals and also due to this woman who broke her wrist when The Duke of Edinburgh's Land Rover collided with the car she was in:

She has been cashing in big style since the accident appearing on Good Morning and selling stories to The Mirror.  I've not heard much of the driver or her baby who was also in the car he hit.

 

I suppose she couldn't sell out to The Sun because that it what The Duke is blaming for the crash.

 

Meanwhile her name is Emma FAIRWEATHER.

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.”

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?

Betting on Formula 1

Before you check this out be warned that you should probably give up just after the Ford advert and as soon as you get bored with Tony Jardine.

That video is Sky's preview for the Belgian Grand Prix which happened last weekend and unfortunately is an indication of what some F1 fans will have to put up with next year.

It is simply encouraging people to gamble with a little help from Skybet.

Sorry to keep harping on about the dirty deal - it's not as though I can't live without F1 - I firmly believe that the BTCC is a more exciting and more accessible racing championship - however, the way the BBC has handled this - and still refuse to discuss it - is downright disgraceful and is what annoys me so much.

They are also censoring their own Blogs and tweets from their own presenters and gagging their presentation team from mentioning the deal during their programmes.

However, things are changing!

The Mirror has this report today.

This chap on the right (No, it's not that Grant Mitchell from Eastenders) is being called before a select committee of MPs to answer some questions about the deal. He is Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC.

Speaking as a fan who contacted his own MP on this subject, I am delighted that, at last, we may get some answers.

It may be too late to save F1 - viewing figures and advertising revenue will plummet - but at least it won't feel like the BBC, an organisation I once admired, will have gotten away with this scot-free.

Ooh, sense the bitterness!

I've also been quite impressed by the Mirror, they seem to be the only press organisation who have been on our side. It was also them who broke the story that Bernie Ecclestone said that he would have done a deal with Channel 4 but the BBC blocked it.

Who'd have bet on that?

Right-Wing Rubbish

Autoguide news pointed me this morning back to our own Daily Mail and a story about Jeremy Clarkson being racist about Lenny Henry. Being American, they had to explain who Lenny Henry is. For those who don't know, I shall also explain who Lenny Henry is.

He is a very talented comedian/writer/actor from the West Midlands of England:Who also happens to be black.

The Daily Mail is accusing Jeremy of racism due to an article he wrote about how eco-friendly TVs can be set so dim that everyone looks like "Lenny Henry in a cave"

I don't know if he was being racist or not - I know he always tries to find funny analogies for everything and if they are going to be controversial - then all the better. This is why he keeps ending up in trouble. I know that I find him very funny.

"Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear, I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would."

"We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging."

"The Ferrari 355 is like a quail's egg dipped in celery salt and served in Julia Roberts' belly button."

I got those off a Clarkson fansite.

The Daily Mail is a horrible, right-wing, muckraking rag read by people who will gullibly take in all the propaganda it reports. But those people will agree with Jeremy who can only be described as very right of centre. So they won't have a lot of sympathy with their own newspaper here - the comments under the story seem to back this up. The story uses a VC-winning soldier who was offended by the article (good, typical Daily Mail fodder) and who also happens to be black.(Oops)

I think the result was right but for the wrong reasons - it was the old Alf Garnett effect - you're supposed to laugh at him, not with him.

So why pick on Jeremy anyway?

Could it be because he writes for different right-wing rags, The Sun and The Sunday Times? These are part of the awful Murdoch Empire and I would love to see them go the same way as "The News of the World" - it's the end of The World as we know it.

The Mail won't mention the competition, but it must have been one of these papers that Clarkson wrote the offending article in.

May, meanwhile, writes for yet another right-wing rag, The Telegraph - why do all the interesting people write for right-wing rubbish?

Oh yes - money!

Anyway, has anyone asked Lenny Henry what he thinks about all this? Maybe he isn't even aware of the story - I doubt if he bothers with The Sun or The Daily Mail or autoguide.com or Metro's Car Blog. If he does know about it, he is keeping a dignified silence - there's no mention on his Website and although there are a couple of Twitter accounts purporting to be him - I don't believe he actually is a Twitterererer.

As you may be able to guess, I'm not a fan of the right-wing press - but they are diametrically opposed to what I believe in. I'm not afraid to use the word "Socialist" - I know many Americans are - it would be suicide for an American politician to use it - but I know the difference between Socialist and Communist.

And I also envy places like Sweden where people are richer, happier, have a better standard of life and more choice. Yes, everything is more expensive there and they pay more taxes and foreign tourists will be put off, but the Swedes themselves can afford stuff because they don't have to pay extra for their public facilities and they earn more anyway.

Pity the left-wing press is crap too.

They're up for Contempt of Court over that coverage which hounded a man that they had decided at the time was a murderer but, given that someone else has been charged in the meantime, is almost certainly completely innocent.