Labouring a Point

Yes I support Labour.

But nobody really reads my posts.

Unlike Auto Express.

Which is very anti-Labour and pro-Tory.

Last week they quoted the Daily Mail in a bit of scaremongering about yesterday's budget.

They were wrong.

But the Daily Mail is very anti-Labour and pro-Tory. It may have something to do with them being owned by a billionaire tax-avoider.

Like The Sun and GB News and Fox News.

And Twitter.

And Facebook.

They preach to the gullible and is why we had Brexit and Liz Truss and Donald Trump.

There are a significant people who refer to The Mail as The Daily Fail.

But this is about Auto Express.

Their chief correspondent, Mike Rutherford here blames politicians while Labour are in charge while, when the Tories were in charge, Auto Express was happy to quote politicians about how the British automotive industry was going to lead the world.

This was my take on that.

They got that one wrong too.

Never mind - things could be even worse.

 

Three for the Price of One

Three different articles from the motoring Interwebs caught my eye today and since I can't be bothered making three posts, here they are in one handily sized container.

The first is from the BBC.

It involves a spiteful and presumably very jealous woman who shops as The Asda.  She has been caught on camera kicking and damaging a McLaren 570S.

Stupid cow.

Hopefully the pictures will be good enough to get her charged with criminal damage although I doubt if she will become as infamous and vilified as that cat woman.

Next up, how can you tell that someone is ashamed to admit that they vote Tory or Reform?

Easy, they say that all politicians are the same then go on to slag off The Labour Party

Auto Express's Mike Rutherford is very much in that camp.  In that article, he tries to deflect with a little anti-Trump rant but you would have to be Nigel Farage to say anything complimentary about the orange toddler.

Finally, from Autocar, a bit of nostalgia - remember The Beastie Boys?

They seem to have aged a bit.

They also started the craze of stealing VW badges.

Well it's back! 

Albeit for modern times.

Apparently, the modern badges incorporate the radar unit used by their ADAS systems.

This means that the car’s adaptive cruise control, speed limiter and lane assist will not function.

Maybe it's worth not having the Radar then?

Anyone know where you can buy an old VW badge to replace it?

Maybe the Beastie Boys fans were onto something after all.

Something Good Come Out of Brexit?

I doubt it - I think it's just an excuse.

Mahindra are using it to justify stopping selling the e2o electric car in Britain.

It was just over a year ago that Autocar and I reported on the prospect of these ugly things coming over here - using our roads - taking our parking spaces.  How dare they!

Anyway, today, Autocar and Reuters of all people are announcing that Mahindra are pulling the plug on it.  See what they did there?  "Pulling The Plug" - it's an electric car - I like that.

Apparently, sales have been "untenable".

Well Duh!  Look at it!

All outstanding orders are cancelled.  They are also buying back sold cars at the original asking price.  That seems a strange move - are they ashamed of them? I would be but that's beside the point.  Maybe there's something they aren't telling us - perhaps, as I speculated last April, there really is some safety thing going on here - with added legal implications?

Or maybe Brexit has seen off an obnoxious, ugly, runt not welcome on our shores.

One more now please...

The End of an Error

The odious Nigel Farage has resigned.

Good.  He should have gone years ago.

But his resignation is not making the headlines.

Because Chris Evans has resigned.

I feel quite sorry for him really - Chris not Nigel - he tried his best and put together a really strong team.

And it looks like that team will carry on without him - even if the Matt LeBlanc stories I reported last week are true.

It has been said that Politics has been mirroring Shakespeare or Game of Thrones lately - two subjects I know very little of.

But Top Gear has been mirroring Politics.  It's even been doing badly against the Euro.

Chris has taken the David Cameron stance rather than the Jeremy Corbyn one.  Only time will tell if Jeremy is right but I'm pretty confident Chris is.

And it looks like there won't be a replacement for him.

So Michael Gove need not put himself forward.

Rolls Royce Brexit

Last week, I decided that there could have been a Ford Brexit.

Then, the World (or Europe at least) fell apart.  We have reports of an acrimonious split and headline-hitting resignations.

Yes, apparently, Matt LeBlanc will quit Top Gear if Chris Evans isn't sacked.  It was reported by The Sun after speaking to "a source".  Now, The Sun does have quite a bit of form for publishing lies but Evans & LeBlanc do seem to be harder to find at the moment than Boris Johnson & Nigel Farage.  Evans didn't do his scheduled Radio 2 show this morning.

While we're discussing form, Top Gear has form for controversial number plates.

And last night, we saw Evans' Rolls Royce Corniche driving about part of the EU with a Brexit Number Plate:

That's  BRX 522 T  which is near enough.

5 is the number of the Top Gear episode that came straight after the Brexit vote.
2 is the number of Top Gear Presenters that include Evans and LeBlanc.
and 2 is thember of guests that we now have every week on the Top Gear sofa.

Wow.  Spooky Huh?

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.”

Some Say... ...He Doesn't Like Clarkson

Quite a clever headline in this week's Radio Times.  The subtitle is "The Stig gives his verdict on Clarkson"

Actually, The current Stig maintains his usual silence.  The original Stig admires Clarkson's style and thinks the show could not continue without him while making a reference to Last of The Summer Wine - which is a comparison I have myself considered on more than one occasion.  The second Stig clearly isn't a Jeremy fan but reckons that the show could continue without him.

In case you're wondering what I'm wittering on about, surely you must have heard the news by now about the rest of the current series of Top Gear being cancelled/postponed after Jeremy hit a producer on the show?

This story is worldwide!

Here is some of Australia's coverage.

And here is someone I feel very sorry for:

This is Oisin Tymon, the producer that Jeremy allegedly (or dare I say "actually"?) hit.  This guy has done nothing wrong.  It looks like he encountered a tired and emotional (usually a euphemism for "drunk") Jeremy who was knackered after a days filming and wanted some food - food that the hotel did not provide at that late hour.  So Jeremy took it out on this producer.  This producer is now getting all sorts of threats because the show is off the air possibly never to return.

This isn't Oisin's fault, it is Jeremy's!

Maybe Jeremy is now struggling to keep the show fresh after 13 years and it is getting to him.  It was Jeremy that reported the incident to the BBC hierarchy and Jeremy, in his newspaper column last week, who made a speech about dinosaurs having had their time.  That's a shame because I want the show to continue - and I want it to continue with Jeremy.  I did consider signing the Keep Jeremy petition that must be apporaching the million signatures mark by now but when I visited the site I decided that Guido Fawkes and his readers don't seem to be very nice people so I opted against being a co-signee.

If Jeremy cannot be persuaded to stay (I don't envisage a sacking) then I agree with Stig II that the show could go on without him.  Obviously speculation has begun with the not-too-serious suggestions of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, my favourite Vladimir Putin and Jeremy's nemesis Piers Morgan.

A more serious suggestion would be Jodie Kidd - she still seems a bit stilted on The Classic Car Show but she would bring a fresh new dynamic to the show stood alongside James & Richard.

Failing that, I'll do it.