It's just intellectual fascism, nothing more, nothing less. This is what we think, therefore this is what you should think.
Agree 110%. Transport 2000 are urging people to "tell the BBC to get Top Gear off the box". They have thoughtfully provided the links for people to "urge the BBC" on their press release.
Follow the links on the site and read their reasoning. If you disagree, you can always use the links to tell the BBC that you actually don't want it pulled.
I like Top Gear myself.
|
|
|
Got to wonder what's wrong with 'em!!
For a good giggle though, go and read their message board... nearly everyone likes Top Gear!!!!
Personally it's one of my favourite show's - much better than when Quentin & Tiff were on (although I do enjoy Fifth Gear too).
It's the same kind of people who complained about Jerry Springer the Opera, obviously got nothing better to do with their miserable lives, so try and take some of the pleasure away from others.
|
a new programme promoting ?sensible driving in sensible vehicles?
Now that WOULD be great viewing ... I can't wait.
Just imagine the fun of watching "An ordinary person in a reasonably priced car". Obviously they couldn't film them on track - that's a bit reckless. We could watch them on the Guildford ring road instead.
And to encourage public transport, Jeremy could race to the south of France on a bicycle while Hammond & May get to use the train. Oh, err, the South of France on a bike would probably kill Jeremy so perhaps they could race from Transport 2000's offices to 10 Downing Street instead.
|
Ooh -- look:
... In an infamous episode, Jeremy Clarkson tore up on camera information from Transport 2000?s website presenting the dangers of speed
So, they're not at all miffed about that, are they? I do hope they didn't take it personally...
Can anyone actually remember this "infamous" episode?
|
|
|
Maybe they don't like the fact that when you pitch the private car against public transport for most journies the car wins hands down? TG has shown UK PT to be the abomination that it is. Most of the T2000 fans are lentil eating sandalistas so wouldn't have the strength to protest anyway ;-)
Perhaps TG should do a 'shutdown Transport 2000' I'd know who my money would be on....
teabelly
|
|
|
|
Mr P, I dont think Guildford has a ring road.
|
Mr P, I dont think Guildford has a ring road.
Oh, err, well it's about time it did. Heaven knows it needs one.
Dorking, then. Surely that's got one?
;-)
|
|
|
|
|
Cheers Chris, I hadn't noticed the messgaeboard. There is 1 person who agrees with this campaign on there, and it appears to be the author of it!
|
... Through its recurring 'macho' themes of speed and power, it fails to include the interests of most women in its programmes.
Trinny & Susannah's "What not to wear" has recurring 'girly' themes that fail to include the interests of most men.
I find this most distressing. It must be taken off the air immediately.
|
|
I have just sent an email to stephen(dot)joseph(at)transport2000(dot)org(dot)uk, Executive Director of Transport 2000, enquiring how this statement aids their credability.
|
I have also just written to that messageboard, asking the author of the rpess release to explain the difference between censorship, and shutting down a programme because you disagree with its views.
Had I thought it through, I would have copy/pasted it into an email to that gentleman too, but I didn't. Hope it makes it through moderation, otherwise I've lost it altogether.
I wrote it perfectly politely, but I get the feeling it might be deleted since one of their ground rules is:
All comments must respect the ideals of sustainable transport and the need to protect the environment and quality of life of communities.
Nothing like disallowing a point of view to get a healthy debate going. Mind you, I do respect those ideals - I just don't think their aims have any hope of achieving it.
|
I wrote
"Oh dear!
You've fallen into the trap! Instead of beating Top Gear by argument you want to ban it. And what a hornet's nest you have stirred up!
Any chance you may have had of persuading your opponents that you are reasonable people who are prepared to argue sensibly is gone.. probably for a long time.
The last refuge of the desperate who are failing to win an argument is either to slag off their opponents or try to silence them!
I don't watch Top gear . I consider it childish and extreme. I doubt many viewers take a lot of it as other than entertainment. Now you have made it virtually impossible for the BBC to tone it down or close it as if they do they will be accused of pandering to pressure groups.
Well done! You've achieved an own goal!"
madf
|
If Top Gear was a program promoting irresponsible drinking (rather than irresponsible driving), I doubt it would have so many people defending its right to be broadcast.
But if it is to remain on air, maybe it should be balanced by a program teaching people how to crash things into parked cars (rather than parked trees), and how to force speeding drivers off the road? Neither is very responsible, but why one withiut the other?
|
If Top Gear was a program promoting irresponsible drinking (rather than irresponsible driving), I doubt it would have so many people defending its right to be broadcast.
Who says it promotes irresponsible driving, apart from these car-hating fools?
It is an entertainment program, not a documentary. Did brookside promote murdering your husband and burying him under the patio?
Your second point mystifies me. While I disagree with you in a lot of cases, your arguments are usually well though-out. Not sure about that one.
|
Who says it promotes irresponsible driving, apart from these car-hating fools?
Do you think that crashing a car into a mature tree is responsible? Or breaking speed limits all the way to the South of France?
It is an entertainment program, not a documentary. Did brookside promote murdering your husband and burying him under the patio?
I don't remember everyone standing around on-screen and cheering after that episode.
Your second point mystifies me. While I disagree with you in a lot of cases, your arguments are usually well though-out. Not sure about that one.
It was a quick thought on how a program could balance the car-mad irresponsibility of Top Gear by offering a similar degree of yobbishness from a different angle. It wasn't intended as a programme proposal!
|
>> Who says it promotes irresponsible driving, apart from these car-hating fools? Do you think that crashing a car into a mature tree is responsible?
No. But having watched it, I also don't think anyone would be tempted to go out and do the same with their own car - therefore it is not 'promoting' it.
>> Your second point mystifies me. While I disagree with you in >> a lot of cases, your arguments are usually well though-out. Not >> sure about that one. It was a quick thought on how a program could balance the car-mad irresponsibility of Top Gear by offering a similar degree of yobbishness from a different angle. It wasn't intended as a programme proposal!
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that press release is referring to when it describes JC's 'yobbish image'. Perhaps it is that he wears *gasp* jeans?
|
If JC is a yob he's a middle class, public school educated, widely read one.
Why don't T2000 come up with their own Top Bus or equivalent programme and let the viewers decide? I thought this latest press release was an april fool and someone had dated it 11th April instead of 1st April by mistake....
teabelly
|
Teabelly,
Yobs aren't exclusive to the state schools.
For the record, I withdraw all negative comments I have expressed about TC and JC on this site. I defend their right to produce a programme such as TG. Still hate the deck chair shirted one though.
|
Oh NW please. Top Gear is entertainment. It no more encourages people to go out and break speedlimits than,,, well err People Making cars look like the General Lee, or the A Team van, or even The Starsky and Hutch stripe.
( ring ring - Yes RF here, They did what? )
|
Oh NW please. Top Gear is entertainment.
So you'd approve of entertainment focusing on the same territory, but coming from another angle?
|
Of course I would. If T2K want to produce and air a programe made and billed in an entertainment guise thats fine,
As is my right to turn it off if it bores me.
|
So you'd approve of entertainment focusing on the same territory, but coming from another angle?
Happens all the time, NW. The best humour provokes the viewer to some extent.
It's one of the many aspects of a free press. To see T2000 come out against that is illuminating.
|
|
'It does not focus enough, if at all, on responsible driving, ?greener? cars, road safety or the need to cut car journeys and use alternatives where possible.'
Can you imagine this happening.
Here is the new Ferrari Enzo which costs squllions of pounds. As we know cars pollute so we suggest leaving the car in the showroom and taking the bus! Yeah right.
|
There is a place for Top Gear -- in the children's television slot.
I hate to agree with Transport 2000 -- I really do -- but we desperately need a serious motoring programme. That need not be at the expense of Top Gear.
TG attracts ?6 million viewers at peak, some of whom are, with good reason, coy about watching it. What about the other 24 million motorists?
|
|
Errr I am afraid veiwing figures indicated that we dont want a new serious motoring prog. Thats why they disapeared.
|
I know I'm not the only cynic here, so why does everyone accept the given viewing figures as gospel?
They're about as accurate as a newspaper poll - not very.
|
Its these sort of politically correct do-gooders that will eventually completely ruin Britain.
I do not think for a minute that Top Gear encourages people to be irresponsible, it is just an enjoyable bit iof automotive based entertainment with an element of harmless schoolboy fun thrown in.
These guys at Transport 2000 should shut up and stay in their own little sandle-clad salad-munching self righteous world !!!!
|
I think top gear should be taken off.
And those gardening programmes where vegetables are murdered.
And those party political broadcasts where lies are told.
And those programmes where derelict houses are modernised.
And those programmes where 2 women clean up dirty houses.
And those violent cartoons.
And The Simpsons, very poor parenting.
And the news, too much violence.
And the weather forcast, always wrong.
And scrapyard challenge, too inovative.
And --- Oh I,m going for a drive.
|
Anyone who claims JC or anyone else would have as much fun driving a bus as they would driving a Ferrari has obviously never driven a car in their lives.
What a sad bunch.
|
And --- Oh I,m going for a drive.
Mind you don't go too quickly, now.
|
There is a place for Top Gear -- in the children's television slot. I hate to agree with Transport 2000 -- I really do -- but we desperately need a serious motoring programme. That need not be at the expense of Top Gear.
Don't worry about it, you haven't agreed with them. You didn't suggest banning anything. Very restrained of you ;)
|
Transport 2000 really annoy me to the point were I get very angry. They seem to have an overall goal for the sake of having a goal. By it's very nature that means it has to be the complete opposite of what everyone else thinks.
I will never forget that time I was watching the news and for some bizzare reason got BBC London where they were interviewing Vicky Cann who, incidently, doesn't drive. Basically, she sat there with a straight face and said that more speedbumps should go in even to the detriment of ambulances. She had a blasé attitude about the ambulance passengers as long as the tiny amount of people that would be saved by their proposals were alright.
I'm amazed she never said if was the patient's fault for having a heart attack and needing the ambulance. Manbe she did and was too implicit for me to notice....or I was too stupid.
An organisation that would seem content if we uninvented the wheel.
--
Adam
|
Who pays for Transport 2000?
tinyurl.com/3nlhv
Objects A) TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN MATTERS RELATING TO TRANSPORT AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT, SOCIETY AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY; B) TO CARRY OUT RESEARCH INTO SUCH MATTERS AND TO DISSEMINATE THE RESULTS OF SUCH RESEARCH.
Who Children/Young people
Elderly/Old People
People with a disability/Special Needs
People of a particular ethnic or racial origin
General public/Mankind
|
Transport 2000 and other anti-car treehuggers are exclusively urban usually London based where public transport at least exists, dangerous though it is to use, if they could impose a muggers levy they could double profits.
But when we are all taxed out of our cars what will happen in areas where there simply is no public transport?
Hate Top Gear loathe Clarkson but will be forced in to sending an email in support. My enemies enemy is my friend...
|
Will transport 2000 and Petrolheads Anonymous still be battling it out when fossil fuels are prohibitively expensive and in short supply and British conservationists have stopped rapeseed for biofuels being grown in the steppes of Mongolia because they don't like the thought of all that yellow stuff being grown in a country they're never likely to visit.
Who's going to say "I told you so"?
cheers, SS
|
|
more stuff of irrelevance removed. Again, apologies if you were unfairly caught out.
|
Honest John asks the $64,000 question: who funds these people?
The answer turns out to be (at least in part) the cash-rich bus companies, pushing their own agenda on a diet of public money!
Now there's a surprise.
And who is "Transport 2000" anyway? How many people does it actually represent? Where does it come from? Who's behind it? And why should anyone take any notice at all of its opinions?
Transport 2000 and similar lobby groups thrive because a lazy, story-hungry Left/Eco-leaning media (notably the BBC), accepts spoon-fed "stories" from single issue pressure groups and automatically endows them with a spurious credibility. Journalists will run a "story" from any group with a self-important title, barely stopping to ask what possible relevance their opinions have beyond the fact that what it is saying will make an easy, eye-catching headline and, with luck, suit the newspaper's or the channel's overall political agenda.
The next time you see a headline like "Mothers call for radial tyre ban" don't forget it could be three women with an attitude problem and funding from the last crossply manufacturer on Earth.
|
Once again, trying not to be boring, the BBC and for that matter most media organisations are London based and seem to think that buses ply their trade all day and all night through rural Norfolk as they do through central London.
Incidentally I took a night bus from the centre of London to Richmond two weeks ago, thank god I was drunk, it was more scary than Somalia!
I say lets have puntive levies on hooded sweatshirts to subsidise law abiding car drivers.
|
Maybe Top Gear could do an item similar to their races.
Take all the heads of Transport 2000, dump them in the middle of countryside- I would suggest Dartmoor- and see how long it takes them to get back to their offices- using public transport only.
Doubt would be much speeding involved.
|
|
Or leave them in a Northamptonshire (not a particularly rural county) village and tell them to wait for the bus...
|
And then the ones with young children can demonstrate how to do the weekly shopping without using a car- in both rural and urban areas.
Again, am fairly confident this would be very informative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Transport 2000" ?
They sound well out of date. At least 5 years, I'd say.
|
Name change required?
How about Transport 3500 turbo Ghia
or
Transport 2.2 DCI Dynamique
or
Transport Hybrid?
|
Name change required?
How about "Transport 2000 used to operate from these premises until it realised it was time to give up"
|
Transport 1724. That's the year they appear to be in anyway.
--
Adam
|
|
|
Name change required?
How about tinyurl.com/4c2gt
|
How about tinyurl.com/4c2gt
Very well done and very funny. You know who won't get it though.
|
That's uncanny. Ignore my last comment then!
--
Adam
|
That's uncanny. Ignore my last comment then! -- Adam
You were a good 74 years out anyway ;)
|
|
|
|
>> Name change required? How about tinyurl.com/4c2gt
Which website is the real one?
I'm all confused now.
|
Believe it or not, I never actually read the URL at the top about banning Top Gear. I got to incensed about Transport 2000 that I just went on a rant.
"In a race against colleagues using public transport and plane, Clarkson drove a Ferrari more or less non-stop from London to Switzerland, regardless of fatigue, and was stopped by police for speeding on the way."
He got stopped for speeding and still won!
The world is a dangerous place and I can guarantee you there are a lot more dangerous influences than Top Gear. Based on this, I have followed suit and outlined my own list of things to ban using T2000's (wasn't that a Terminator?) guidelines.
1 Let's ban CNN - seeing soldiers in Iraq is far too influential. What if I decide to form my own military cell and give them M16s?
2 Let's ban Vauxhall from ever making cars. They make cars over 1.0l which quite clearly are more polluting than a bus or G Reg Fiesta Bonus. It's perfectly plausible that I may use the whopping 1.2 litre engine of the Corsa to propel myself in a wholly dangerous manner from 0-20 in 17 seconds.
3 Let's ban higher education. Far too influential on an impressionable mind such as mine. While we're at it, better ban high schools and primary schools? Just too dangerous. Ban them as well.
4 Let's make a program called "We're the ones who made the country into such a nanny state." It could discuss pressing issues such as the correct way to board a bus or how to safely mount a bike.
If it wasn't so ridiculous it would be funny. Never in my whole life have I wanted to live somewhere else as much as I do now....
...Uzbekistan sounds like a nice free dictatorship.
--
Adam
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's just intellectual fascism, nothing more, nothing less. This is what we think, therefore this is what you should think.
As a wise person once said:
"Nothing enrages some people more than the sight of others enjoying themselves"
|
Thought people might be interested in sniffpetrol's view of this story. I especially enjoyed the last line of their article.
I'm going to attempt here to put a non-link pointer to the page, as it dies have some (a lot) bad language. If this turns into a link, I'm sorry mods - can you please fix it:
www.sniffpetrol.com
|
|
Funnily enough I've already posted this in the Moderators' lounge..... ::smirk::
|
I'd love to see a 'sensible motoring' programme. We all know that a Pagani Zonda can leave a trail of tyre smoke a mile long. It's a fair guess too that a VW Polo will probably take longer to sink to the bottom of a pond than a Land Rover Defender.
Motoring magazines often have a light hearted spot on the back page. TV motoring programmes tend to consist mostly of 'back page' content.
In a motoring programme I want to be informed about the cars or see transport topics examined. There is too much presenter intrusion.
I wouldn't ban tests of performance cars, but I don't like the way perfectly adequate cars, the sort most of us drive day-to-day, are dismissed grudgingly as something for the peasants.
Motoring journalism has always had its share of egobitionists - (the press as well as TV) but there are too many 'car DJ's' on the scene.
Cheers, Sofa Spud.
|
As stated higher up the thread, whatever your personal opinion is on TG and the way they do things, there are two main points that Transport 2000 should consider:
1) If they believe their 'third gear' idea to be so wonderful, they should produce it themselves, and watch the money roll in from such a popular format.
2) Their suggestion that Top Gear should be taken off the air because they don't agree with it is nothing short of attempted censorship, however much they dress it up as something else.
|
Has Transport 2000 realised it's 2005 now?
I keep one foot in the environmental camp and one in the motoring one, and anything that brings the two closer together without anyone losing too much, the better.
A few years ago there were one or two cars available that would top 200 mph. Now there are several. The Bentley Flying Spur 4 door saloon will almost reach the double ton and there are 'road' cars that will do 250 mph - Bugatti Veyron etc.
Occasionally irresponsible drivers try out the Porsches etc at 140 mph on motorways - presumably someone will try the same with one of these 250 mph hypercars.
cheers, SS
|
I can imagine Transport 2000 buying up and refurbishing all the old Citroen 2CV's they can find, to sell to unsuspecting greens of the "if I could do without a car I would, but I have to have one" persuasion. Nobody would realise that virtually all diesel hatchbacks made in the last 10 years are as economical as a 2CV!
cheers, SS
|
God save us from this bunch of humourless woad daubed neo-Leninist Trotskyite bunny hugging nanny state eco-warriers with chips on their shoulders and class envy in their hearts. I've complained before that TG can sometimes be a bit dull, but I am sure that it is miles better than the proposed Reverse Gear (into the year 1000 AD or earlier).
Who pays for Transport 2000?
HJ
Would that be Stagecoach?
Would that be train companies?
Would that be other groups who like the above obviously have no interest in pursuing a distinctive form of fascism to line their own pockets?
Kind of discredits them doesn't it.
The safety reports in Fifth Gear are rather good and entertaining too. As are the car tests, both fast and day to day. If only the eco-fascists would realise that people can enjoy watching JC hurtling round a track in a fast car, or down a French motorway, at high speed, and not feel the need to do the same. Do children watch Tom and Jerry then rush out and smash a frying pan against their friends heads?
Leif
|
|
|
