As we are all petrolheads here, I hope you won’t mind the cross-post. There was an article in the mail about Richard Hammond’s accident and Topgear in general, with calls by the author for TG to be banned.
In response:
There is an online petition gathering support for Top Gear’s continued existence : Petition Online - Petition Online has been retired
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�Every parent of teenage boys knows how easily�they are imbued with Top Gear’s yobbish ethos.�
That just hurts !!!
And the rest of the stuff, well that’s just bullshit, 2319.
David
2974 Me thinks William needs therapy before he tops himself!
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There are actually some very interesting points made in the original article and I think some of them need addressing - racing around a track is one thing - significant speeding and hanging the tail out on public roads (TG is not the only show to do this at times) is another.
I also find it distasteful that JC turned it into a save TG campaign when Hammond was still lying in Intensive Care.
Maybe the accident was nothing to do with Hammond driving but should he really have been in the car in the first place?
Steve
I must have missed the bit where JC turned it into a save TG campaign… are you sure ?
Also… Richard Hammond is an intelligent, educated individual with plenty of experience of speed and motor vehicle dynamics. I’m pretty sure he was doing this with his eyes wide open and in the spirit of adventure and thrill seeking. For people (anybody not just do gooder journo’s etc) to try and connect this back to how TG encourages yobbism is plain silly… TG entertains and helps some of us imagine a wee bit of our dreams (its not just petrolheads who like it). Richard Hammond (god love him) had a chance to live the dream and he went for it… plain and simple, lets not turn it into a crusade for anything.
I’d say ploughing up the countryside polluting the groundwater systems in a 4x4 is much more degenerating
Steve
I must have missed the bit where JC turned it into a save TG campaign… are you sure ?
Quote from his piece in The Sun:
"Somehow I doubt it though. The campaign to have us taken off the air � sparked curiously, by the BBC�s own news website � will now be ramped up, fuelled by the environmentalists and spearheaded by muddle-headed road safety campaigners.
Richard is winning his fight. And now mine begins. To make sure that he has a show to come back to.
I am not defending the detail of the anti TG brigade - I watch TG every week, even taping it so I can watch entertaining bits again, but some of what they have done has been questionable.
Here’s a couple of quotes:
“Former world land speed record holder Richard Noble, who once survived a 300mph accident, said drivers often did not understand the dangers of jet-powered cars.”
"People with beards and dirty fingernails are now saying he should never have been in that car, doing that kind of speed. They make out it�s all terribly complicated and that you need years of practice.
Rubbish. From what I understand, you sit there, you push a lever to light the afterburner and you then push another to shut off the fuel supply � it runs on heating oil � and deploy the parachutes. A hamster could do it. In fact, a hamster did."
Who do you think is better qualified to comment?
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…hanging the tail out on public roads…
I don’t really recall tail out road action on TG, 5th Gear (back tomorrow BTW) on the other hand! Just because our licence fee doesn’t pay for it doesn’t make a jot of difference.
I also find it distasteful that JC turned it into a save TG campaign when Hammond was still lying in Intensive Care.
People tend to do exactly what they feel the injured/deceased person would want. Alternatively he could have reacted without his normal passion and people would have said he was displaying guilt.
Maybe the accident was nothing to do with Hammond driving but should he really have been in the car in the first place?
Now that I agree with. The car was built as a pair, and I understand the other one crashed a while ago at Santa Pod, sadly killing the driver. Also, the designer of the vehicles apparently died at Pod in a jet car accident. The lack of armco almost certainly saved Hammond’s life. Jet cars are just too dangerous to mess about with. 300mph is also just too dangerous to mess about with, at ground level with short distances it’s well outside of controllable engineering. The programmes producers should be ashamed of themselves and I’m confident they won’t do it again.
Apparently James May had been down to drive the car (which I’m sure would have made me laugh!) and a clash of diaries lead to them switching a fortnight before.
But I’m an adult and don’t want to be nannied about what entertainment I can and cannot watch! If TG gets chopped so should every sex scene, glimce of a gun, low-profile tyre, violent video game, ISP, etc
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Ian
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Ian
Much better to go here and donate:
Who says I or any of the other 15,000 (currently increasing at about 1,000 an hour) haven’t?
I don’t quite get your point, surely these aren’t mutually exclusive acts? I’d find the suggestion that people who enjoy Top Gear cannot be charitable as rather more distasteful than Mr Clarkson and rather insulting.
Come to think of it, who do you think has made those payments? I’d suggest it is almost exclusively lovers of Top Gear. Triggered by what may have been TG’s most pertinent road safety message in years - 'Becareful out there, accidently happen, we know"
Ian
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I love the quote from Richard Hammond in hospital after being told he’d been in a car accident: “Was I driving like a tw*t?”
Ian - calm down
I responded to you because you were the last posting - nothing personal - and wanted to bring the Yorkshire Air Ambulance issue to the attention of anyone who wasn’t already aware - nothing wrong with that is there?
I agree it is not a mutually exclusive act - my posting was not supposed to suggest it was. As I said previously I am an avid watcher of TG!
My original point was that TG is not without some issues; and whilst the journo who wrote the original article may have an axe to grind and may not be 100% correct, the counterpoint by Mr Clarkson is not exactly the best/most eloquant or indeed honest defence either.
Indeed, if some of the other websites are to be believed, there were people inside the TG production that had concerns.
All I am suggesting is that an mature debate over the future of TG should not descend to a shouting match/ hurling of insults but an open examination - which may throw up a number of things that could be done better, perhaps should not have been done at all.
JC is perhaps his own worst enemy and definintely not the best advocate for the programme.
In adopting this approach, I think that there is more chance of keeping the programme on the air - which is after all the point of the petition?
Well I think we’re actually on the same side with the same opinion (and I’m less grumpy today) so I shall climb down off my high horse and doth you my cap.