Clarkson's Real Crime? He's All the Left Hates, Yet Succeeds

[Teddy Bear]

I've been aware of the fracas going on between Clarkson and the BBC, over his possibly striking one of his producer's and getting suspended, since it began, but wasn't really moved to record it. Especially galling was that the reaction by Top Gear fans spurred them to sign a petition for his reinstatement, which totalled over a million. Since there are MANY MORE SERIOUS issues that people have ignored in regard to BBC behaviour to get upset about, it shows what has become the underlying mindset of our society, and doesn't bode well for the future.

Also galling is that the BBC have no problem rehiring Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand despite their real insult to our society.

But reading this excellent article today in the Mail by Stephen Glover, he encapsulates very well some of my feelings about this episode.

STEPHEN GLOVER: Clarkson's real crime? He represents everything the Left hates yet is HUGELY successful

By Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail

When BBC executives suspended Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson last week, I doubt they had any idea how toxic the issue would turn out to be for the Corporation.

The truth is, they were driven by disdain and even vengeance, and these are dangerous guides in any under- taking. Whether or not he is guilty of the charge against him - that he biffed a BBC producer - he has a right to be treated fairly as a long-standing servant of the broadcaster.

The BBC’s first mistake was to pull the next two episodes of Top Gear. This was bound to irritate its millions of fans, who had every reason to expect that, whatever differences might have arisen between Clarkson and the BBC, the programmes would be shown as advertised.

This petulant ploy has served only to show how popular Clarkson is. A programme about the Red Arrows shown in the same slot last Sunday attracted only 1.3 million viewers compared with Top Gear’s normal audience of around 5.5 million.

In the meantime, while the Corporation’s investigation into what sounds like a pretty straightforward incident drags on, nearly one million people have signed an online petition calling for the presenter to be reinstated.

The BBC finally lost the plot when someone described as ‘one of the most senior Corporation executives’ told the Mail on Sunday that Clarkson was in need of ‘rehab’, and outrageously compared him with the sex monster Jimmy Savile.

Oisin Tymon, the young producer allegedly hit by Clarkson, was said by this executive to be under pressure in a ‘Savilesque’ way.

He added that the manner in which the Top Gear host had been defended by ‘high-level politicians’ recalled the arguments once made by such people on behalf of Jimmy Savile.

This comparison of Clarkson with Savile - which, unsurprisingly, has inflamed the petrolhead - is as unhinged as it is malicious. While the BBC is conducting its supposedly even-handed investigation (and why on earth need it take so long?) one of its executives is blackening his name.

Suspicion first fell on the former Labour minister James Purnell, who has found a £295,000-a-year berth at the BBC as its so-called head of strategy. (Shouldn’t that be the Director-General’s job?) However, Mr Purnell and the BBC have categorically denied that it was him.

Another suspect was Danny Cohen, BBC Director of Programmes, who is known to disapprove of Clarkson. Some say he is too circumspect to talk in such a way.

This is the same Danny Cohen who, as Controller of BBC1 in 2011, proposed a tribute to Savile despite rumours of his proclivities circulating at the BBC.

Maybe it was another senior executive, or someone further down the food chain, who spoke to the Mail on Sunday, repeating what he or she believed was executive orthodoxy. It doesn’t greatly matter. What is important is that someone at the BBC has been prejudicing the outcome of a supposedly neutral investigation by abusing Clarkson.

As it happens, the star is far from being my cup of tea. He often appears loud-mouthed, crude and philistine. I confess I occasionally watch his macho programme, which I suppose makes me a bit of a hypocrite.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think. The point is that Clarkson is fabulously popular. Internationally, Top Gear is the most successful programme the BBC has ever made, earning it tens of millions of pounds a year.

For the educated, Guardian-reading Lefties who run the BBC - men such as James Purnell, Danny Cohen and, I suspect, Tony Hall, the Director-General - Clarkson’s success is more than they can bear. Whatever qualms I might feel about his general oafishness are multiplied a thousand times in their minds.

He is seen by them as being insufferably Right-wing, politically incorrect and in favour of terrible things such as capitalism. He offends every canon of their caste. The worst thing of all - and the reason they have been forced to put up with him for so long - is that millions of people find him engaging and amusing.

As a result, Clarkson has become that extreme rarity in the BBC - a prominent non-Leftie who has been tolerated because he was too big to sack.

If only Clarkson were a more respectable Tory! (By the way, it was idiotic of his friend David Cameron to jump to his defence.) But he is what he is.

We must defend him on principle - not as someone to whom we are necessarily drawn, but as a victim of discrimination whom BBC executives are trying to stab in the back before they bundle him into a sack and drop him into the Thames.

Of course, the BBC will deny this. They always do. Sometimes, as was the case with Mark Thompson, Director-General from 2004 until 2012, they admit to some long past, historic bias against the Right. But, of course, it doesn’t happen now!

I could supply dozens of examples, but let me give you one from this week. On Tuesday night, BBC2 showed a programme called Suffragettes Forever in which the historian Amanda Vickery suggested Margaret Thatcher had let down the feminist cause.

In a reference to the 1982 Falklands War, she claimed Thatcher ‘did not shrink from personally ordering the sinking of an [Argentinian] troop carrier with the loss of over 300 lives’.

This was a reference to the Belgrano, a cruiser rather than a troop carrier, which was sunk because, in the opinion of British naval commanders, it presented a danger to our ships.

There was immediately a shot of Mrs Thatcher saying: ‘Just rejoice at that news, and congratulate our Forces and marines.’ We were invited to conclude that she had heartlessly said this in response to the sinking of the Belgrano.

But the truth is she spoke these words a week earlier, after British Forces had retaken the island of South Georgia without the loss of any British lives.

One Argentinian died, though Thatcher did not know this when she asked the nation to rejoice at the recapture of British territory which had been illegally seized.
Even if Jeremy Clarkson survives, he’ll be a marked man

In other words, that great hate figure of the Left, Margaret Thatcher, has been traduced once again by a supposedly reputable historian.

Will Amanda Vickery apologise? Of course not. Or Danny Cohen and Tony Hall? Not a chance. I’d like to see them submit to a Clarkson-style investigation, but they will sail blithely on.

The BBC will never change as it is presently constituted. From now until the election we will see it ludicrously pretending to be even-handed while regularly kicking the Tories under the table.

That is why I support Jeremy Clarkson, unlikely hero though he may be. He has been arraigned on what sounds a relatively trivial charge, and while he is notionally being investigated in a fair way, many will feel the BBC has already found him guilty as charged.

The only consolation is that the Corporation has revealed its true colours. Its bigotry has trounced the interests of a large number of licence payers. More people will see that the BBC is not an even playing field.

In 2008, Jonathan Ross and that daft anarchist Russell Brand were temporarily banned by a reluctant BBC after they had made an obscene phone call (later broadcast) to the actor Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter - surely a more egregious offence than anything Clarkson has done. But both have been indulgently rehabilitated.

My guess is Jeremy Clarkson will be more ruthlessly punished. Even if he survives, he’ll be a marked man. The simple truth is that he is too Right-wing.

[Teddy Bear]

Though Top Gear has never been my cup of tea, I like that Clarkson is everything the BBC hate.

STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING: JEREMY CLARKSON DELIVERS UNCUT APPRAISAL OF BBC BOSSES

by SIMON KENT
He has a face like a dropped pie, infuriates the righteous political left, is followed by millions of people around the world and remains a constant cause of upset and rebuke at the BBC: what’s not to like about Jeremy Clarkson?

That depends on who is doing the talking.

Clarkson, 54, has been suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation into allegations that he punched Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon because he failed to deliver a hot dinner after a day’s filming. Ever since the story broke it seems Clarkson has been on the defensive and next week we will know for sure if he is to be consigned to the dust bin of television history.

Not that he’s going gently into that final good night.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the Top Gear host used a London charity dinner Thursday to brand BBC executives “f—— b——-” and hinted that he expects to be sacked over the current row. He blamed the furore on the corporation before adding: “The BBC have f—– themselves…. It was a great show and they f—– it up.”

Well of course they did, Jeremy. The BBC has never really known what to do with you since day one. You are the rare sort of thing the public broadcaster will never be: a success. You have taken the BBC brand around the world and reached places it could never have imagined, all based on the simple premise of doing something people like to watch.

Who knew that would work? I mean, just fancy the BBC produce a show that people really wanted to watch? Not only that, Top Gear thumbed its nose at plenty of precious elites and remained steadfastly normal in a world constrained by political correctness and a desire not to offend.

A mark of that Clarkson style was again evident at the charity dinner. According to the Telegraph, Clarkson was happy to offer his services to drive anyone around the Top Gear track.

Clarkson said: “I’ll drive somebody around in whatever I can get hold of. I’m sacked so it’s probably an Austin Maestro. So who knows? But anyway it will be my last ever lap of the Top Gear track.”

He added: “There was an 18-year waiting list to be in the audience of Top Gear, but the BBC has f—– themselves. It was a great show and they’ve f—– it up. Tonight’s the night when you have the opportunity.”

So more strength to you, Jeremy Clarkson. May you keep offending and stimulating and rocking the establishment’s chauffeur-driven limousine.

I for one would hate to see you disappear. I don’t always agree with Top Gear but I like to be challenged as much as I like to be amused. The thought of backing somebody who upsets the carpet strolling management minions of the BBC is even more appealing.

BBC director general Tony Hall will announce his decision on Clarkson’s fate next week.

[Teddy Bear]

This article spells it out pretty well.
(Numerous links available in article itself)

The dogmatic liberal elite have finally kicked out Jeremy Clarkson. I hope they're happy
The PC brigade's clamour to sack him from Top Gear was never about his alleged fracas with producer Oison Tymon, but his willingness to challenge a craven consensus

By Brendan O'Neill

I don’t watch Top Gear. I’m not particularly a fan of Jeremy Clarkson’s humour (for PC-ridiculing laughs, give me Joan Rivers, Peace Be Upon Her, over Jezza any day of the week).
And yet, I’m gutted to hear that the BBC has given Clarkson the big heave-ho over his fracas with that producer who didn’t have his dinner ready on time.

Why? Because it’s further evidence of the Beeb’s self-emasculation, its sheepish, apologetic jettisoning of anything that might rile right-thinking viewers or make Hampstead-dwelling licence fee-payers choke on their Ovaltine.

With the elbowing aside of JC, we are witnessing not simply the sacking of an employee over a scuffle, but the willingness of a scandal-stung, crisis-ridden BBC to ditch anything that has the whiff of controversy and to bend its knee to the bland, larks-free worldview of the right-on.

In the oceans of ink that have been spilt over Clarksongate, or Punchgate, or whatever gate this is, the least convincing commentary has been that which tries to convince us this is just a workplace disciplinary matter.

Just as you or I would be sacked if we walloped a co-worker, especially someone below us in the pecking order, so Clarkson deserves the boot too, says his army of haters in the media and on Twitter.

Please. If this were a simple punishment-for-physicality issue, why has so much of the Clarkson-baiting commentary obsessed over what Clarkson thinks and says?

The focus hasn’t been on what he allegedly did with his fists in that hotel, but on what he does with his brain and his mouth the rest of the time: agitate the PC; annoy the eco-friendly; spout values that We — as in that infinitesimally small number of people who work in politics and the media — consider to be toxic and wicked.

Witness how seamlessly all the “Sack Clarkson” commentary moved between saying “You can’t punch your work colleagues" (which is true) to slamming Clarkson for his “xenophobic remarks" (that is, his off-colour jokes) and for "pushing the boundaries of… political correctness”.

They pose as caring protectors of BBC staff from physical abuse, but in truth the Clarkson-bashers are pursuing a culture war, a moral crusade, against the presenter they love to hate and against the words and ideas he projects from the TV into the little people’s heads.
Their glee with Clarkson’s sacking is deeply dishonest. Under the cover of supporting the stamping-out of workplace harassment, they've actually instituted a media kangaroo court trying Clarkson for joke crimes.

Their main interest is not in protecting a BBC producer’s face from Clarkson’s fists — it’s in protecting the public’s ears, and our allegedly putty-like brains, from Clarkson’s words, from his consensus-pricking, fast-car loving, two-fingered salute to modern liberal orthodoxies.

They want him off the Beeb because they think he pollutes it, and by extension the British public, with unacceptable ideas. And now, cravenly, like a hostage reading from a script written by his captors, the BBC has capitulated and got rid of one of the jewels in its crown, the man who made it millions of pounds and won it millions of viewers around the world.

What gobsmacking idiocy. The BBC had already, in recent years, offered up its cojones for a public kicking, becoming an increasingly wimpish, risk-dodging sorry excuse for a public broadcaster.

Lately it has issued craven apologies for everything from accidentally showing a picture of Prince William with a penis doodled on his head, to Holly Willoughby’s decision to wear a dress with a plunging neckline during an episode of The Voice, to a radio skit in which the comedic presenters joked — joked! — about curing Clare Balding of homosexuality.

In 2013, it apologised, and scrubbed from its public record, a Comic Relief sketch in which Rowan Atkinson, playing a bishop, compared One Direction to Jesus’s apostles, after 2,000 people complained about it.

In this era of ostentatious offence-taking, where everyone complains about everything and arrogantly expects to be taken seriously, the BBC has become better at producing apologies than it has at producing culture. And the Savile scandal hasn’t helped, having the effect of making the BBC super-sensitive to every sting of criticism that comes its way.

Now, to top it all, it has ditched its one remaining purveyor of non-chattering class views; its last, and best-known, offence-giver and etiquette-spurner. Well done, liberal elite. You've won. You've made the Beeb as bland as you are.

I won't miss Clarkson on Top Gear, because I didn’t watch him on it. But millions and millions of people, here and abroad, will miss him. And all of us, Clarkson fans or not, should be worried that the BBC has finally been completely colonised by the dead, dogmatic, fun-free outlook of a minuscule, if hugely influential, section of British society.

[charmbrights]

It was interesting that ITV shares went up as soon as his sacking was announced. Watch for new contract announcements soon!

[Teddy Bear]

I read somebody conjecture that this 'incident' came very close to the time when Top Gear's contract was due for renewal, and may have been done purposefully to free them up to seek elsewhere.
Time will tell.

[charmbrights]

I hear (on BBC ad nauseam) that Clarkson's contact expires on 31 March and the "sacking" is actually non-renewal.

[Teddy Bear]

Another scathing view, this time by Janet Street Porter, on the BBC mindset reflected within the Clarkson dismissal, and the paucity of programmes produced for those she sees as 'beneath' the way the BBC elite view themselves.

Arrogant, smug and sneering: JANET STREET PORTER, who spent years as a senior BBC boss, excoriates the incestuous luvvie clique who run it

By Janet Street-porter For The Daily Mail

Proof that the people who run the BBC live in a precious world of their own was supplied this week when Alan Yentob — whose title at the corporation is ‘creative director’ — told Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis that ‘there are quite a lot of programmes which reach out to audiences which are C2s, DEs, which aren’t the metropolitan elite’.

In other words, he seemed to be saying that Jeremy Clarkson may have been sacked by the BBC ‘but common people will still find something to watch’.

How simply outrageous! And how very, very kind of the BBC to make a few programmes ‘reaching out’ to the non-metropolitan elite (as if they live on Mars) — those downmarket low-earners who live in places outside London and the South-East.

Anyone listening might have thought Yentob was talking about a vanishing tribe or a special needs group, instead of those millions of ordinary people who (unlike him and his pals, with their trendy artworks and minimalist designer sofas) live in normal homes and want to watch decent TV programmes.

People who live in small houses and flats, who don’t drink Terroir Series Malbec wine from Argentina and eat tapas.

People who don’t holiday in Tuscany or rent nice houses in Devon and Cornwall. But people who manage to be happy, despite living outside sought-after Islington and Notting Hill postcodes, where most of our political leaders, media chiefs and the chattering classes seem to reside.

In his hamfisted way, by talking about social classes ‘C2s, DEs’, Yentob was referring to the large majority of Britons — the kind of people the BBC top brass and most politicians tend not to mix with on a daily basis, unless they are partaking in a rare public meeting.

With Clarkson heading off into the sunset, taking his millions of male and female fans with him — probably to a new home at ITV, who must be ecstatic — what evidence exists, apart from Yentob’s patronising remark about the lower social classes, that the BBC has any idea how to engage with these millions of licence fee-payers?

Having spent nearly a decade working as a top executive at the BBC, I can vouch that it’s run by a bunch of smug, self-satisfied, over-educated types (nearly all graduates of the same universities) who communicate in an opaque language and conform to a very limited set of beliefs.

These Polenta People (as I like to think of them, since they enjoy eating the fancy Italian cornmeal) embody Left-wing Hampstead talking to trendy, Left-leaning Barnes. Everyone else seems to be excluded.

They make simple — and arrogant — assumptions about what viewers and listeners will enjoy, based on their own narrow experiences.
Yentob: Jeremy Clarkson sacking not about political correctness

Alan Yentob — whom I love dearly, despite his failings — has never worked anywhere else apart from the BBC, starting as a trainee in 1968.

Is there any other billion-pound business with such a narrow gene pool at the top?

In typical corporate-speak, BBC executives talk of ‘delivery’ and ‘accountability’, and worry about ‘programme reach’.

But outside work they inhabit an incestuous world, cocooned away from this target audience.

They congregate at weekends, swapping in-jokes over bottles of Waitrose wine at kitchen suppers (that epitome of the chattering-class meal).

Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values.

They loathe people such as Clarkson — a rare beacon of political incorrectness — which makes it even more remarkable that he lasted so long at the BBC.

Just how inward-looking BBC bosses have become was illustrated this week with the fallout from the Top Gear debacle.

The story of Clarkson’s sacking was the lead item on the 5pm news on Radio 4, ahead of the plane crash in the Alps in which 150 people died.

How predictable that, in the rarefied atmosphere of the BBC, a millionaire TV host is deemed more newsworthy than a major aviation disaster.

As part of a PR damage-limitation exercise after the BBC had sacked one of its most popular presenters, Yentob popped up on several programmes, from Steve Hewlett’s Media Show to Radio 4’s PM and BBC2’s Newsnight, talking about his ‘pal’ Clarkson and what a shame the whole story was.
Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values

Surely, if this BBC nabob had been more honest, he would have admitted the real disaster for the BBC was that the Clarkson episode had exposed its management as dangerously out of touch with a huge section of the people who fund them: licence fee-payers on lower incomes.

For anyone on the minimum wage, paying the annual TV licence represents a far higher proportion of their weekly budget than it does for someone living in a nice flat in Primrose Hill or Notting Hill.

The truth is that the BBC has increasingly, over the years, represented the metropolitan elite (and become blander in the process).

However, Top Gear was a rare example of a format which appealed to the sort of audience the BBC cannot afford to lose — viewers who are switching away from BBC1 and watching more programmes on Sky and Channel 5.

The tragedy is that it is not only BBC top brass who live in this out-of-touch bubble. The same applies to our political leaders.

David Cameron, with his well-heeled pals in the Cotswolds (who, ironically, include Clarkson), knows no more about white van man and ordinary women than his nemesis, Ed ‘Two Kitchens’ Miliband, who lives in a £2 million home in London.

They might talk about ‘hard-working men and women’ — political code for ‘C2s, DEs’ — but they don’t know any.

No wonder a survey of voters this week found that the three attributes they thought best described Cameron were ‘out of touch’, ‘smug’ and ‘arrogant’. Miliband was ‘weird’, while Nick Clegg was also ‘out of touch’.

What’s more, there is an unhealthy nexus between politicians and influential figures at the BBC and in other parts of the media.

For example, there was Ed Richards, a quintessential New Labour man who was an adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before becoming, for 11 years, the head of the media watchdog Ofcom.

Let’s not forget former Labour minister James Purnell, the BBC’s so-called head of strategy who was alleged to have been behind an odious smear against Clarkson in which he was compared to serial paedophile Jimmy Savile. Purnell strenuously denied being involved.

Then there is Ian Katz, who left The Guardian to run Newsnight. Not far away in Islington lives Tom Baldwin (married to an heiress, living in a very posh house), who quit The Times to work for Ed Miliband as his spin doctor.

They are typical of the metropolitan crew who claim to know about social deprivation and the working class but don’t have a clue how real people live.
The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time

When I worked at the BBC, I was the only person in management without a university degree. I was also the only one with an Estuary accent — and things have changed very little since then.

This week, a new quiz started on BBC4 which sums up the problem. Called The Quizeum, it’s chaired by Mr Smug, Griff Rhys Jones, and broadcast from a different museum each week.

I watched the first episode. There wasn’t a studio audience to give the show any life. As one critic observed, ‘perhaps no one wanted to come’.

With all the will in the world, I can’t imagine any Darrens from Doncaster tuning in to such a programme.

Nor would they find much in common with the horribly precious historian Lucy Worsley (queen of the simper) who presents programmes about royal palaces.

The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time.

There’s Michael Portillo and his train journeys. Clare Balding walking around Britain. Stephen Fry presenting everything from quiz shows to documentaries.

The BBC should reflect the diversity and richness of British culture — not just the tastes of those who read The Guardian, drive eco-friendly cars, despise Clarkson and make their own sourdough bread.

[Teddy Bear]

An excellent piece by James Delingpole on just who inhabits the BBC at present, with little or no expectation it will change.

WHY LOSING CLARKSON IS THE BBC’S BIGGEST MISTAKE SINCE KEEPING JIMMY SAVILE

This isn’t so much a piece about Jeremy Clarkson as about all the other celebrities the BBC employs who aren’t Jeremy Clarkson.

I call them the “Wankerati.”

Here are some examples:

Ian Hislop; Dara O’Briaiaiaan; Brian “PermaSmile Astro Boy” Cox; Bill Oddie; Russell Howard; Simon Singh; Noel Fielding; Marcus Brigstocke; Jeremy Hardy; everyone else on the News Quiz; the unfunny has-beens from the Now Show whose names I can’t be bothered to look up; Chris Packham; Rick Edwards; Graham Linehan; Lenny Henry; Emily Maitlis; Ian Katz; David Mitchell; Russell Howard; Bill Bailey; Jo Brand; Monty Don; Simon Schama; Russell Howard….

As you can see, the list is by no means complete because it needs to include more or less everyone at the BBC who isn’t Jeremy Clarkson. Some of you may be concerned at the fact that Russell Howard doesn’t appear nearly often enough for one so lame and annoying. Others may be perturbed by the presence of presenters they admire – such as, maybe, Ian Hislop who, I’d quite agree, is really, really good at fronting programmes on Victorian hymns, World War I or railway timetables.

But this isn’t about talent – or lack of – it’s about personal politics. Everyone on that list ranges in outlook from the nauseatingly bien-pensant to the rabidly left-wing, to the point where you could fairly confidently predict their position on any number of topics from Nigel Farage, Israel/Palestine and global warming all the way through to mildly racist jokes, foxhunting, bankers, positive discrimination and the European Union. Oh, and Jeremy Clarkson, of course. Few, if any of the people on that list would be able to find much good to say about Jeremy Clarkson. Which, of course, is one of the reasons why the BBC’s sacking of Clarkson is going to turn out to be such a massive mistake. He was the one major talent in the entire organisation who wasn’t like all the others…

And till Clarkson’s nemesis BBC Controller of TV Danny Cohen came along, the BBC appears instinctively to have understood his value. Not his commercial value (the BBC likes to think it’s above such vulgarities) but rather his propaganda value. Top Gear was the BBC’s equivalent of a Potemkin Village or – a bit of Clarksonesque bad taste here, why not? – those films the Nazis used to make of jolly, well-fed Jews playing in orchestras and sitting in cafes near their delightful new living quarters in the Warsaw Ghetto. Any time unhelpful people started banging on about the BBC’s entrenched left-wing bias and maddening political correctness, all the Beeb had to do was point at the self-evidently not left-wing and not PC Top Gear as proof of the contrary.

Till the BBC sacked Clarkson, my view was that they were going to get away with this game for many years hence. But now I am not so sure.

Over a million people signed that petition urging the BBC to reinstate Clarkson. A fair proportion of them, I suspect, will belong to precisely that demographic the BBC finds most embarrassing: white, obviously; probably Thatcherite in outlook, but quite fond of Nigel Farage; highly sceptical of “global warming”; petrolheads, again obviously; not averse to telling the odd racist joke when they’re with their mates, not so much because they have anything against “coloured” people (as they probably call them, not knowing the correct term) but more as a reaction against political correctness; might not have gone to “uni” because they could tell it was a complete waste of time. People who – at least in the BBC’s Weltanschauung – are pretty much beyond the pale.

Unfortunately for the BBC, however, these disgusting, frightful people, very few of whom live anywhere civilised like North London or have ever knowingly eaten cavolo nero, represent a much larger percentage of the population than any of the worthy groups it would prefer to cater to (the “Asian” community; gay people; disabled people; Roma; environmentalists; activists; etc). While Top Gear was on – the modern equivalent of “bread and circuses” – this mob were kept at bay. But with Top Gear gone, they may incline to feel that they have been cheated – like a serially abused child whose one and only toy has finally been snatched away from him by his prissy, unloving, perma-stubbled, tofu-eating stepfather.

In short, for many years the BBC has been living a lie. It has pretended – as its Charter requires of it – that it’s for everyone when really it has continually and ruthlessly shut out any presenters, programmes or opinions which don’t fit into its narrow, metropolitan, left-liberal narrative. And what the Clarkson sacking has done is brought this issue to a head. Also – a bit like Gamergate did for gamers – it has woken large numbers of people who hadn’t hitherto thought of themselves as particularly political into an appreciation of how badly they’ve been conned and abused by a narrow, self-selecting and very political elite who despise them.

The BBC – and its defenders – are currently excusing themselves with the fig leaf of due process. (You know the line: “In any business where a staff member was assaulted by another member of staff….” yadda yadda). But what this excuse ignores is that the BBC has been itching to rid itself of the turbulent Clarkson for years and if it hadn’t been the punching incident then it would simply have been something else.

There’s a feebler, second line of defence which goes on the lines of “Well I never thought he was that good” or “he was past his sell-by date” or “he was a frightful bully”, all of which again contrives to miss the point. This isn’t really about Clarkson. It never was about Jeremy Clarkson the man. It’s about the things he represents: puerile humour, laddish banter, irresponsibility, political incorrectness, smoking, drinking, driving fast cars and enjoying them, admiring the military, kind of half wishing you could be in a war so you could test your mettle, practical jokes, taking the piss, saying things you’re not supposed to say, public school japes, calling one another by your surnames, bad hair cuts, not worrying about fashion, thinking Margaret Thatcher was great, thinking foreigners are funny, “racist” stereotypes, chauvinism, and so on.

Lots of people still think that way, even though they’re not supposed to. Now Clarkson’s gone there’s no one at the BBC – literally NO ONE, for the BBC has always been good at purging such people or making sure they never get a look-in in the first place – to speak for them.

[Teddy Bear]

This is perfect inasmuch as I've no doubt it will really show just how lacking the BBC are now in making programmes that people want to watch. They think just because they take a show that was highly successful, they can switch the presenters that made it so, and it will continue to be highly rated. I predict that the first show to be aired with the presenters they have in mind will be watched by many, simply to see how bad it is, then it will be history.

You can decide for yourselves when you read just how a PC gender driven agenda will attract viewers. There are some female comedians that I could imagine would do a very good job at maintaining interest, but I don't think the BBC will ever discover who that might be.

BBC MOVING TO REPLACE JEREMY CLARKSON WITH A WOMAN

by ANDRE WALKER

BBC bosses are determined to replace Jeremy Clarkson as presenter of Top Gear with a woman. Senior executives have already been accused of talking up Clarkson’s fracas with a producer because they wanted to dump him as he is “blokeish and arrogant”.

Sources at the corporation told the Daily Express the favourite to succeed Clarkson is Great British Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins. But BBC executives have also discussed model Jodie Kidd, who has made a number of successful appearances on the show as a guest.

The producers of Top Gear are said to be keen to find a presenter with a different style to “loudmouth” Clarkson. He was sacked last month after a dispute with a member of production staff, Oisin Tymon. The two ended up in a heated argument that got physical after Clarkson discovered the dinner service at his hotel was over by the time he arrived back after a day’s filming.

Shortly after Clarkson’s sacking his two co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond chose not to renew their contracts at the BBC. All three only had a few weeks left to run on their contracts, so parting company with the BBC proved relatively simple.
According to The Sun the three are now believed to be working together to bring a new TV show to the internet streaming channel Netflix. The departure of the presenters has enabled BBC executives to change the show into something more in line with the culture of the rest of the organisation.

When Clarkson first left there was some talk of the Radio2 presenter, Chris Evans, taking over. He is a well-known ‘petrol head’ and has an extensive collection of cars. Evans was quick to dismiss the idea saying it would “never happen”.

Readers of the Guido Fawkes website launched a petition to reinstate Jeremy Clarkson, and over a million people signed it. However, the senior BBC executive, Danny Cohen, is said to have been desperate to get rid of Clarkson.

Cohen had tried to remove Clarkson before, but was overruled by Lord Hall. He is described as “cerebral, metropolitan and painfully right-on”.