On this week’s show…

[Puts on Jeremy Clarkson Top Gear voice]

A boat gets rescued
Batman consults his smartphone
A spider eats a mouse
A church is turned into a swimming pool
An amazing 3D printed sundial
An academic says not to worry about burning cars

…And Richard Hammond visits a brewery in Norfolk.

[comprehensively fails to punch an Irish producer]

Why Top Gear willl get into trouble, kumquat may

To quote this story, please use the hashtag #kumquatgate. 

I believe in freedom of speech, I just wish that those who have that luxury would use it sensibly. I fully recognise that they don’t have to – that’s what freedom of speech is all about – but that’s what I’d like.
Jeremy Clarkson is a good example. Sometimes Jeremy Clarkson gets in trouble for saying naughty things. Things he’s allowed to say, legally. Just things that you’d think he would have the sense to choose not to say.
But then again, sometimes I think Jeremy Clarkson’s previous actions in this regard have made Jeremy Clarkson into an easy target for people who don’t like Jeremy Clarkson. And it’s that sort of person who has complained about Jeremy Clarkson nicknaming the Nissan Qashqai (I’ve driven one, by the way: terrible), the Nissan Kumquat.

…one Top Gear fan complained to the BBC in February about Clarkson’s choice of words. According to an appeal made to the BBC Trust, the complainant, “said that Jeremy Clarkson was ‘pronouncing Nissan Qashqai as Nissan Kumquat and [he] would like to know why”. He said he had a car of this type himself and no one on the programme had explained why they were not saying the name correctly.

Fantastic. Not only does this waste time, effort and money, it also trivialises any legitimate complaints made about Clarkson, Top Gear, or indeed any other show on the BBC or any other media outlet.

But of course, things didn’t end there:

 BBC Audience Services responded a few days later, “explaining that ‘Kumquat’ was a nickname Jeremy had given the car, and had referred to the Nissan Kumquat for quite a few seasons”. The viewer was unhappy with the response saying, “his question as to why the car was given the nickname ‘Kumquat’ had not been answered.”

This guy is obviously a bit of a twat. And I thought long and hard (not really) about whether he might read this and find that offensive and I actually decided that I really don’t care either way. I suspect that the people at the BBC who had to deal with Mr Twat also share my feelings.

The BBC explained in a letter that: “It’s simply a nickname for the vehicle, a play on words. Obviously the two words share a phonetic syllable similarity thus like Jeremy does with literally countless car names, he jokingly substituted one with the other, the kumquat of course being an exotic fruit.”

Eish. Why does this need explaining to him? How is it that difficult? Well, at least that’s the matter sorted now, finall… wait… he’s not given up yet, has he?

No. No, he hasn’t:

In April, after two months of what the BBC described politely as a “high number and length of calls” made to the corporation, the viewer appealed to the BBC Trust. In its September appeals roundup the trust went into five pages of detail about the case, concluding that it had decided not to put it to appeal as: “Decisions relating to the use of a wordplay in how to describe a car, or which presenter should work on a programme were editorial and creative matters that rested with the BBC.”

[my emphasis]

This is the downside of free society. Yes, there’s Clarkson’s previous foolishness as I mentioned above, but then there’s this here Mr Twat who chooses to get offended at anything and everything (as is his right) and then write, phone and generally badger the BBC about it (as is also, unfortunately, his right).

Just as Jeremy Clarkson’s disappointing decisions regarding what should come out of his mouth regarding bridges, nursery rhymes and so on, does no favours for those fighting for free speech in these trying times (nor for the BBC), Mr Twat’s desperation to find offence in the mention of a small, orange, Asian fruit belittles those decrying genuine harassment, racism, this-ism and that-ism or whatever other stuff happens when people don’t understand the sometimes paper-thin divide between free speech and hate speech. And long sentences. They’re also bad.

I strongly dislike Mr Twat.

Top Gear Live – Cape Town

Last night we headed out to the Grand West Arena, which – in a fit of misnomers – is not particularly spectacular and lies to the east of here – to see the Top Gear Live Roadshow.  The tickets weren’t cheap, but were actually excellent value: what a hugely entertaining experience. Explosions, stunts, laughs, fun, even international Car Football, the Cool Wall and laps of the Top Gear track – it was actually like an episode of Top Gear… but Live.
I’m guessing that this is where they got the name from.

Local guest host Sasha Martinengo wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as I expected – probably because he was playing third fiddle to Jeremy and Richard, while ringleader Clarkson was his irrepressible best. The Stig didn’t feature much, but the stuff – or rather the THING – that he did do was spectacular.

Since they asked nicely, I lent them a couple of my runabouts for the evening…

I’m not hugely into cars – I can’t give you the list of engine sizes that the latest Mercedes SLK is available in or anything like that, but there were some lovely machines out there: Bentleys, Porsches, Aston Martins, Audis (over-rated: Audi Fanboys being to motoring what Mac Fanboys are to computing – irritating and blinkered) and that orange Lamborghini. Nice. 

After the show, we went on the Paddock Tour – more nice cars and some BMWs, plus a chance to see a Pagani Zonda up close, the Audi R8 being revved by a middle-aged car salesman (didn’t sound that great – and neither did the car) and a host of rather dull Chevreolets. Mrs 6000 ordered her Porsche 911 Carrera GT3 and I squeezed myself into a perfectly lovely Mini Cooper S JCW which I almost took home in my pocket.

All in all –  a brilliant night’s entertainment and if you have the chance to go and see the show in Jo’burg, Sydney or Auckland, I would highly recommend it. A couple of beers before you go in will certainly help, but then aside from perfoming brain surgery, that probably goes for most things.

Top Gear Live – Jan 10 set on flickr.

There’s talk of emigration in the air

Remember when we used to hear that at all the dinner parties, the braais, on the television and in the papers?
The ZumaRumas™. The dangers of another ANC government. Chasing the whites out of the country. Murdered in our beds. How South Africa was going to become “another Zimbabwe”.
I never did get a firm date for any of those unfounded scare-mongering stories.
When I asked, I usually just got a hard stare over my wors and some mumbled excuse about needing another Castle Lite.

Sure, South Africa does have its problems. Many of them, in fact. Which is surely all the more reason for not adding more silly ones that you made up on the way to the party.
But why the exceptionalism? Because nowhere is perfect and everywhere you go, you’re going to face challenges. The grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the fence. And if it is, it’s probably because of all the s**t that’s around over there.

So – back to the talk of emigration in the air:

There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket.

That’s Jeremy Clarkson in this week’s Sunday Times. He’s fed up with the UK – particularly the way it’s being run – and he wants out:

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.

The rest of the piece is a wonderful rant about the amount of control and red tape that is exerted over those in the developed world. And a highly amusing list of the problems with each individual country that he considers emigrating to. And – while it is, of course, written with tongue firmly in cheek – at least Clarkson acknowledges that it doesn’t matter where you go, things won’t ever be perfect. Because that’s really not how life works.

I often think that immigrants to a country are better at seeing the good in it. I certainly think that I have a much more positive opinion of South Africa than many of those who have lived here all their lives. And that goes for a lot of the other ex-pats I’ve met here, too.
I’ve done my best to educate myself on the substance behind the stories, taking opinion from all sides – like The Political Analyst and The Guru amongst others – and I’m finding it easier and easier to recognise nonsense emails and stories earlier and earlier, because – like all lies – they really don’t stand up to any degree of scrutiny. I now regularly have friends emailing me with stories of crime and politics and the ANC, with online petitions and the like, asking me if they are true.
And they never are.

And while I’m happy to set records straight, I find it sad that people still willingly believe all that they read in their inboxes and in the newspapers. And sadder still that there are individuals who will prey on this gullibility to push their agenda across. Thabo Mbeki did some things right and he did some things wrong (and this really isn’t a post about that), but he hit the nail on the head with this line:

It seems to me that the unacceptable practice of propagation of deliberate falsehoods to attain various objectives is becoming entrenched in our country.

Ironically, it now seems that he was behind some of the propagation of those deliberate falsehoods, no matter how unacceptable he found the practice. But it’s still a great quote.

What I’m saying here is that you can’t allow yourself to be dragged down by only seeing the negative side of things and you have to make the best of what you’ve got.
Because you’re never going to have it all.
A lot of people in South Africa fall into that negativity trap and their lives, their outlook and the mood of whole country in general are detrimentally affected because of it.
Positivity costs nothing and it makes you feel a whole lot better.

As for Clarkson – his column has now been removed from the Sunday Times website – probably something to do with his plan to strap Peter Mandelson “to the front of a van and drive round the country until he isn’t alive any more”.
Fortunately, I got there first and have a nice small (35kb) PDF of it for you to read. Enjoy!