Jeremy Clarkson was right
Two posts in one day must be some sort of record.
I had to go out just after writing Hard Choices, to pick up Little Petal. Her car had been leaking water over the past couple of days and she had taken it up to the garage, confident that they would tell her the head gasket had gone and the car was not worth repairing. I, however, was quietly confident that a hose was leaking. It often happens in the cold weather, when the rubber goes hard overnight in the frosts, and then has to heat up to normal working temperature. It causes thermal and mechanical stresses and after a while, cracks. Simples, innit, peeps?
I was proved right. As Little Petal and the mechanic stood beside the opened bonnet of the car, the hose announced it had had enough and enveloped them in a cloud of steam. She phoned me as I was polishing the post to ask if I could go and collect her.
It's funny how you never see the typos until the post is published, or never realise how awkward or open to misinterpretation your wording was until you see it on the final page. Drafts just don't seem to engage the same part of the critical faculties as the real thing. This is probably what happened to Gordon. "British Jobs for British people" must have sounded brilliant when the speech was written, but look what's happened now. If Gordon had blogged his ideas and allowed comments he would have realised a lot sooner just what he had planted.
So, on the way back down the hill, I was explaining to Little Petal just why I believe Gordon has to go. She protested that Globalisation was Blair's baby, and I replied that Blair was a barrister, not an economist. He might have had the idea, but Gordon was the engineer who made it happen. But nobody could have predicted the problems, she said. I disagreed, saying that plenty of people had been pointing out the un-sustainability of the housing boom or the folly in allowing so much personal debt to accumulate, but their advice was ignored. As I saw it, Gordon had to go because he either ignored the advice, which means he was incompetent, or never saw the pitfalls, which again means he was incompetent.
Little Petal's final argument was that Gordon shouldn't go, because that would mean David Cameron taking over, and she didn't like David Cameron. To me that argument smacks of an officer in the German army refusing to go along with the plot to assassinate Hitler because that would mean Goering taking over, and he didn't like fat people.
But I never got a chance to deliver that witty riposte, because I was approaching a right-turn which I needed to take, and as I checked the mirror before putting on the indicator, I saw that a car had pulled out from the car immediately behind me and was about to try and overtake us both, regardless of the presence of the junction. I put the indicator on, because I needed to start slowing for the turn. He decided to have a go at getting past me anyway, and then changed his mind as he realised how close we were to the turning, and just managed to swerve in behind me. I had to go a little further because if I had braked as I would have normally he would either have smashed into the back of me, or braked hard enough to make the car behind smash into the back of him. He had to brake and slow to a crawl, and I got a look at him as I crossed over into the side road.
It was an Audi, one of the ones which Jeremy Clarkson had declared to be the new un-cool car. And yes, I have begun to notice that, as well as the massive 4-wheel drive cars and white vans, the Audis are featuring more and more and more as the car most likely to cut you up or squeeze you onto the verge.
So, if Jeremy Clarkson is capable of noticing trends and pointing them out, why not make him Prime Minister? He is well-qualified, after all, since so many people find him annoying, irritating, and unbelievably arrogant. But it doesn't really matter what the personality is, providing the person is right. That's all we ultimately need.
I had to go out just after writing Hard Choices, to pick up Little Petal. Her car had been leaking water over the past couple of days and she had taken it up to the garage, confident that they would tell her the head gasket had gone and the car was not worth repairing. I, however, was quietly confident that a hose was leaking. It often happens in the cold weather, when the rubber goes hard overnight in the frosts, and then has to heat up to normal working temperature. It causes thermal and mechanical stresses and after a while, cracks. Simples, innit, peeps?
I was proved right. As Little Petal and the mechanic stood beside the opened bonnet of the car, the hose announced it had had enough and enveloped them in a cloud of steam. She phoned me as I was polishing the post to ask if I could go and collect her.
It's funny how you never see the typos until the post is published, or never realise how awkward or open to misinterpretation your wording was until you see it on the final page. Drafts just don't seem to engage the same part of the critical faculties as the real thing. This is probably what happened to Gordon. "British Jobs for British people" must have sounded brilliant when the speech was written, but look what's happened now. If Gordon had blogged his ideas and allowed comments he would have realised a lot sooner just what he had planted.
So, on the way back down the hill, I was explaining to Little Petal just why I believe Gordon has to go. She protested that Globalisation was Blair's baby, and I replied that Blair was a barrister, not an economist. He might have had the idea, but Gordon was the engineer who made it happen. But nobody could have predicted the problems, she said. I disagreed, saying that plenty of people had been pointing out the un-sustainability of the housing boom or the folly in allowing so much personal debt to accumulate, but their advice was ignored. As I saw it, Gordon had to go because he either ignored the advice, which means he was incompetent, or never saw the pitfalls, which again means he was incompetent.
Little Petal's final argument was that Gordon shouldn't go, because that would mean David Cameron taking over, and she didn't like David Cameron. To me that argument smacks of an officer in the German army refusing to go along with the plot to assassinate Hitler because that would mean Goering taking over, and he didn't like fat people.
But I never got a chance to deliver that witty riposte, because I was approaching a right-turn which I needed to take, and as I checked the mirror before putting on the indicator, I saw that a car had pulled out from the car immediately behind me and was about to try and overtake us both, regardless of the presence of the junction. I put the indicator on, because I needed to start slowing for the turn. He decided to have a go at getting past me anyway, and then changed his mind as he realised how close we were to the turning, and just managed to swerve in behind me. I had to go a little further because if I had braked as I would have normally he would either have smashed into the back of me, or braked hard enough to make the car behind smash into the back of him. He had to brake and slow to a crawl, and I got a look at him as I crossed over into the side road.
It was an Audi, one of the ones which Jeremy Clarkson had declared to be the new un-cool car. And yes, I have begun to notice that, as well as the massive 4-wheel drive cars and white vans, the Audis are featuring more and more and more as the car most likely to cut you up or squeeze you onto the verge.
So, if Jeremy Clarkson is capable of noticing trends and pointing them out, why not make him Prime Minister? He is well-qualified, after all, since so many people find him annoying, irritating, and unbelievably arrogant. But it doesn't really matter what the personality is, providing the person is right. That's all we ultimately need.
Labels: Gordon out and Clarkson in
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 11:53 am
4 Comments:
Trouble is, my dear, that Clarkson (apart from being more right-wing than your average Tory front bencher) only needs to specialise in one field. Two if you count being self-satisfied as a 'field'. Brown, otoh, has to possess national specialisation.
The country is a bit like a football team. The team start losing, dropping down the division and everyone cries for the guy at the top's resignation. That's just the way it works.
Cameron is an unappealing character but not nearly as unappealing to me as Brown. As you say though, their social appeal is hardly the point and no argument for voting, or not, for a prime minister.
But what of Cameron's policies? What of the Tory stance in general when it comes to the blue collar worker? Somewhat different to their policies to increase the riches of the white collar worker (which you were) I dare say. But let them vote him in, let him save their jobs. I hope he does.
PS: TT drivers have always been twats. Clarkson was years behind anyone with taste. Hth.
P: I agree that bringing back the Tories might have an attendant risk with it, (especially of them giving Mrs T a state funeral when she pops it), but I think that what has happened with NL is that they've been in power for so long they they've forgotten what they are meant to be doing for the country, and instead are concentrating on how to remain in power. The Tories were doing much the same twelve years ago. Sadly, although I have always voted Liberal, I think they still some way off of being capable of getting back in.
I noticed the other night that I was blindly following Hislop and Merton's automatic condemnation of Cameron, and I was shocked to realise I had fallen into the trap of believing that because he was the opposition leader he must be a useless twat, without actually thinking about what he really represented. And, of course, Labour have quite blatantly pinched several Tory ideas over the past few years, so he can't be all that bad.
I don't think TT drivers were twats from new. What seems to have happened is that all the Mondeo drivers got pissed off with the Audis always overtaking them, so as the Audi drivers sold theor new cars to buy newer ones, the Mondeo drives snapped them up.
Gtbos.
You seem to forget that the banking crisis, which lead to world recession started in America and was caused by greedy banks and mortgage brokers lending to sub-prime customers, they virtually forced money on to people. Gordon had fuck all to do with that. The banks in this country and around the world brought in and lent money to American banks, when the sub-primers had used up their 20% of the 120% mortgages and could no longer meet their payments that's when it went tits up. The only fault you could put at the governments door was a failure to regulate and even then i doubt it would have been possible to avert the situation without a form of global regulation.
It is true that the first obvious crisis occurred in the USA, but for a long time before that there had been people in this country commenting on the massive amount of debt built up, and the possibility of a crash in house prices. And a simple analysis of global balance of payments, what we owe the rest of the world, whet the rest of the world owes us, ought to have shown that we were vulnerable.
I, and several people I know, (one of whom sometimes comments anonymously on this blog :), had been saying since 2006 that something wasn't right, when every car in the supermarket carpark bar yours was shiny new, and every house bar yours seemed to have giant flatscreens. If we at the bottom of the pile can see it, why couldn't those at the top of the pile? At a household level most of us have balance sheets of what we have coming in and what we have coming out, and some idea of what to do if the income stops. Do the government not have strategic think-tanks looking at the future possibilities?
My later post on the ivory towers might have a clue to the answer, they they were all too far away from what was actually happening, or they were too wrapped up in the G-summits to pay attention to what was going on outside the security-ringed hotels.
I think the sub-prime crisis broke as a surprise to many because they had put their faith in the magic tricks and stopped applying critical analysis to the state of the world.
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