The Jeremy Clarkson rant against Peter Mandelson

... A short while ago, Jeremy Clarkson posted a rather scathing rant about Peter Mandelson. For some reason it was pulled, but not before someone got a copy. If it had not been pulled it would have glowed slightly before fading to ash and blowing away in the wind. Instead it has now gone viral and I am sure there will be far more publicity as a result... thanks to MD for the heads up on this one...

Jeremy Clarkson - Sunday Times 8/11/09

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 upon. 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 note 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. onto in the meantime.

"In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!" Alfred E. Newman

YMCA - Any style

My favourite... Korean.

And Japanese (Mario Brothers) style here.

Francais... here.

Chinese... it's waterproof too... remarkable considering it's a washing machine... here. Russell Peters explains why there will never be a Chinese version here.

... and the funniest.... is from "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"... H.O.W.A.R.D.... here. The up tempo version...

What is the difference between...

... a big pussy and a little pussy... SFW ... here.

Games for a quiet afternoon in the office

Here.


... and do not think I would give you something that does not tax your brain...

World Mapper

This site contains some fascinating insight into the data which makes up our world. Here.

Oh, no! No that old joke...

You would have thought that this hotel would be in the capital of the Netherlands... with lips, a squashed hamster, and a compote of fruits. Thanks to MD for this interesting place to stay... here.

Tricks of the Eye...

While everyone (well, everyone who emails them to me) knows of the work of Julian Beever and his "3D pavement art", the correct term is 'trompe-l'oeil' or 'trick of the eye' and it also encompasses murals and graffiti to a certain extent. The history of this technique goes back a long way and there are some famous examples in fine art galleries around the world.

Wikipedia with some examples here.

My favourites are on the site here. Unless I am missing it somehow, my one criticism of the site is that it could do with a map of the pictures rather than pictures linked to a map... but wait.. there on the left is 'Geolocation'. I am sure there are a lot missing from this site. Brussels alone has numerous ones not on this list and Germany (particularly Bavaria to the Alps) has many villages with wall murals. Perhaps someone can point the site owner to others.

For example, John Pugh... here. Ron Francis here. There are many, many, more.

Rock and Roll Aussie Style

Here.

Indigen

About five years or so ago, a friend of mine sent me the cartoon below. At the time I thought it one of the cleverest cartoons I had seen in a long time for extending a 'normal' situation into one of the funniest and most bizarre series of comical events.

Again, this is one more example of the fine animation work being produced in Arles by Supinfocom Group here.

Surf's Up - Rats!!!

Here.

A different twist on "Five A Day"...

... makes you think beyond the mistake made and ask "What else?", "What if the prisoner had not been honest?" etc.

Here.

A rotten way to take the piss...

... here. But environmentally friendly all round...

Murree Brewery

When I first went to work in Pakistan to work one of the 'issues' I was anticipating facing was that of no alcohol. It being a Muslim nation I thought that perhaps there would be a slight to zero chance that there would be any chance of getting a drink on my three month visa turn around. How wrong I was.

Beer has been brewed in Pakistan for a long time with the brewery due to celebrate 150 years of production from their original brewery in the Murree Hills above Islamabad. This article covers the Murree Brewery in Rawalpindi and the only thing I take exception to is the authors comment re there being "a couple of gloomy premises in five-star hotels". None of the hotels I stayed at or visited were in the least bit 'gloomy'. If anything they were vibrant and fancy places. Not only does the Murree Brewery they produce beer, they also produce a passable whiskey; one three year old distillation carries the 'Vintage' title and they have also produced a twenty year old malt which could be interesting IF you were able to get it outside of Pakistan. One day perhaps... alternatively I will just have to pay the country a visit at some point in the future.

At the moment, there is a lot of unrest in the country which is a shame. The people I met there are truly decent, hard-working, and simply ''nice'. It was not how I imagined the country to be and the areas I visited should be on any tourists destination list. Taxila, an area to the northwest of Islamabad, was positioned adjacent to several important trade routes including the Grand Trunk Road and has a long history preceding Alexander the Great with some fascinating architectural sites that are well worth a visit.