Seeing the tree for the woods

So, a few days ago, there was a nasty accident on a rollercoaster at Alton Towers, in which several people were injured.  It was very bad, and some of the injuries were quite serious.  It was also the first accident of its kind at a park owned by Merlin Entertainment ever.  Merlin, by all accounts, seem to have responded entirely appropriately, co-operating fully with the H&S executive, reaching out the families of all the victims in positive dialogue, and closing all similar rides at other parks until the cause of the accident was able to be identified.

A few days later, the CEO of Merlin Entertainment, in understandable demand from the media, appeared on Sky News to be interviewed by Kay Burley.

The 'interview' seemed to make uncomfortable viewing for all concerned, with the exception of Burley, who in her trademark blunt style repeatedly fired increasingly bizarre questions at Mr Varney, who to his credit took it all very calmly, and didn't ever step over from polite refutation and explanation into defensiveness - something which must have been incredibly difficult given the increasingly hostile and repetitive line of questioning, which included Burley repeatedly trying to get Varney to confirm details of the injuries to one of the victims (details not having been officially released by the family themselves) in spite of him politely saying several times that he had no intention of doing so.  This was less an attempt at journalism (exposing the facts of an incident of public interest) and more an exercise in emotive character assassination, attempting to fluster the interviewee and put words in his mouth, and becoming increasingly aggressive and repetitive as he refused to co-operate.

The interview caused somewhat of a storm on social media, with a petition starting (because these days we can't have anything vaguely controversial happen without there being a petition about it) demanding that Sky News immediately Sack Burley for the 'awful way she conducted her interview' and went on at some length to describe how she had been 'rude' and 'patronising' and all sorts of other terrible things which had been an 'embarrassment to Sky News'.

Now, first of  all, I am not sure how a news organisation like Sky News, which delights in muck raking at each and every opportunity, can be 'embarrassed' by one of its employees doing exactly what they no doubt pay her rather handsomely to do.  But that's rather by the by.  My main issue with this is what I might tentatively describe as the 'Clarkson Syndrome'.  Bear with me, because this one takes a little explaining.

Jeremy Clarkson has said, at various times, some pretty questionable and outright stupid things in his time as a broadcaster.  He has made comments which were racially inflammatory, comments which were blatantly mysoginistic and comments of a homophobic nature.  He has variously offended entire countries, communities and genders.  He is, by any measure, somewhat of an idiot.

Nevertheless, the constant and focused attention on Jeremy Clarkson in his years at Top Gear as the Most Evil Man in Television always somewhat bemused me.  Not because I agreed with the things that he said, nor the usual refrain of 'Ugh, it was a JOKE' that would peal loud and clear from the rooftops of every Jezza fan.  But more simply because Top Gear is a television programme.  Broadcast by the BBC.  That means, whenever he said one of these 'inadvisable' things on the show about truckers and prostitutes or gay people or Mexicans or women, there had been a whole crew - cameramen, grips, editors, producers, sound guys, directors etc etc, who had all seen him do it and said nothing, and then cut the show together and left it in, and then sent it to some programme controller at the Beeb to review before broadcast who had similarly said 'Yep, looks good to me' and passed it on.  ONLY when the inevitable backlash would occur would good old Jezza be hauled before someone at the Beeb and then delivered to somewhere to gurn his way through some half assed apology which one could always see he not only didn't mean but occasionally didn't really seem to understand and then all would carry on until the next time.

If you want proof of this concept, look at the whole 'N' word furore, wherein Clarkson allegedly mumbled the offensive word in a repetition of a nursery rhyme half a dozen or so times in a scene which was then cut, presumably because however unclear it was (and having listened to the tape myself many times over, it REALLY was) the people looking at it had the sense to go 'Hmmm, bit not good allowing him to say that word in any way'.  So it wasn't that the people involved in the making of the show COULDN'T recognise when a faux pas was made, it just seems that in many cases it was ignored.

So yes, Clarkson is a fool and an idiot and quite possibly a bigot, but focusing on him has the convenience of ignoring just how institutionalised his attitudes were, not only amongst the show staff and his co-presenters, but in the BBC itself.  Which to me is the far more salient and worrying fact to consider.  After all, if one middle aged presenter is a bigoted arsehole, you can sack him and solve the problem.  If the sort of casual bigotry he represents is endemic to an entire broadcaster, the problem becomes a little more difficult to address.

Which brings me back to Burley.  Yes, she is the one on the screen saying these things, but she is the front piece of an entire news broadcaster.  She doesn't sit alone making judgement calls at her desk on what to say, she's wearing an earpiece into which her director and producer and all sorts of other important folk who pay her wages can speak, and is in front of an entire studio.  At any point, if anyone at Sky had an issue with what she was saying (and if they in any way were shooting for a dignified and decent example of broadcast journalism then they bloody well should have) then they could have intervened.  They didn't, tarring them with the exact same brush which people seem happy enough to confine to Burley.  What she does on a regular basis (and let's be honest here, this is FAR from an isolated example of her style of 'interviewing') isn't right, but to simply target her as if to day 'get rid of her and the problem goes away' is wrong headed at worst, and naive at best.

And that leads me to another point - the way in which criticism is addressed to her.  I think to start this, it's best that I point you to this article

So, Eve Simmons thinks that we should recognise Kay Burley as some sort of Feminist Icon, and that the storm of criticism which has flowed forth against her in the last few days is sexist and wrong.  She cites examples such as Jeremy Paxman, John Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy in her comparative defence, asking why none of them were the subject of petitions for being sacked after, respectively, calling Ed Miliband a 'North London Geek', accusing Alex Ferguson of being 'Stalinist' and delving into personal details of previous battles with drugs and alcohol during an interview to promote a new summer blockbuster for kids.  She also cites perennial offender Eamonn Holmes for implying that a rape victim might have avoided her attack had she opted for a taxi home. Now, with regards to that last one, I suggest that you google the words 'Eamon Holmes, rape, taxi and see how many results come up, telling you all about how vilified he was, and how charities publicly demand he apologise for his remarks.  It being 2011 at the time, we weren't quite into the current phase of petitions demanding people be sacked for everything ever, but believe me, he didn't get off lightly from his idiotic comments.

Regards the other three examples, I am actually frankly staggered that Simmons thinks that these are in any way comparative.  Paxman has made a career out of patronising politicians - people who exercise power over every person in the UK and who in return have very little in the way of genuine accountability.  That there was an interviewer ready, nay eager, to puncture their collective sense of self-importance was to be welcomed.  Additionally, Paxman did not 'call' Miliband a North London Geek, he reiterated a popular phrase that had been doing the rounds in the media.  There are many reasons to dislike Paxman (and I do) including his latter love with his own legend and his all-consuming arrogance, but I think this example in no way comparative to the Burley interview.  I am not especially familiar with the Snow interview or whatever was happening when he made the comment, but again I would argue that a passing comment about the political ideology of a public figure is somewhat different from a sustained and aggressive interrogation of a private individual who happens to be the CEO of a company.  And the Downey Junior thing was ill-judgment on Guru-Murthy's part.  That he thought it appropriate to ask such questions in that environment, and then sought to defend it on the basis of C4 news 'not doing puff pieces' (I can't think why this would be your defence when you are blatantly sat there in a junket room with a tier one Hollywood A lister to ask them questions about their new summer popcorn flick). If Guru-Murthy wanted a serious interview with RDJ about his former issues, he should have requested one - this was cheap, lazy ambush journalism, and I think that the fact that he was not only savaged by RDJ himself in the press but also by most of the internet and the media was adequate 'punishment'.  There was in fact a petition for Channel 4 to apologise, but it got 16 signatures before closure.

The point is, Simmons actually raises a valid point, but does so in the most wrong-headed and ridiculous way imaginable. Because here's the thing - Kay Burley IS a woman in a prime position.  She's beaten the odds in more ways than one.  She's not from a privileged background, she is still working in a prominent position in her fifties and - shock of all shocks - she is a woman.  These facts on their own are to be lauded.  It isn't common or usual for a woman of her age to be in the position that she occupies, much less a woman from a less privileged background who has doubtless had to fight her way to get there.

And even more pertinently, at least some of the criticism that is noisily thrown Burley's way IS sexist in the way that it is couched.  For example, look at this video of 'Kay Burley's Worst Bits'

Between every segment (and at the beginning) we get a picture of Burley with the caption: KAY BURLEY: SKY NEWS OLD AND HAGGARD RESIDENT PIG.  I struggle to think of the last time that age was brought up as a criticism of Jeremy Paxman (65), Jon Snow (67), Eamon Holmes (55) or Robert Kilroy Silk (73) yet Kay Burley (54) is apparently fair game for being 'old and haggard'.  Come to think of it, I struggle to think of any of those male broadcasters ever being criticised in general for their appearance, let alone being called a 'pig'.

But if you comb through the comments on twitter and on the petition (as I have briefly done) there doesn't seem to be much of the sort of thing that one would normally expect to see whenever a woman dares raise her voice in public.  There are no sexual threats or comments on her looks (that I have seen) - to be clear, I am not saying that they don't happen, but they are clearly not all that prominent, most people just feel that she was 'rude', 'disrespectful' and 'bullying'.  If the argument is to whether people would feel the same had a man conducted the interview the same way, well that's an interesting theoretical, but unfortunately they didn't so we won't ever know.  The funniest bit of all is that Simmons starts her piece with an apology to Burley, for having done her own job in interviewing her a little while ago, following the 'brief' she was given to get some embarrassing revelation or comment from her.  Which sort of proves my whole point - Simmons clearly expects the reader to sympathise with her mea culpa because 'the editor made me do it' but seems either blissfully ignorant of happy to gloss over the possibility that perhaps Burley was under the same pressure to perform when she interrogated Varney, with a man (or woman) in her ear telling her to press harder and keep asking until he cracked, choosing instead to attempt to defend the interview on the basis of being 'hard journalism' rather than the car wreck of attempted emotional manipulation it so clearly was.

Perhaps this is the way that Burley has made her way.  Perhaps it all just boils down to her giving the producers and directors (and by extension the audience) exactly what they want.  Somehow, given her unapologetically 'feisty' persona and incidents like pinning a camerawoman to the wall by her throat because she had - horror of horrors - accidentally caught her in the face with the edge of her camera in a media scrum, suggest otherwise.  Burley is no shrinking violet.  She may be giving the people who run Sky News what they want, but it isn't, I suspect, purely done for a quiet life.  I would hazard a guess from her body language, her general demeanour and her twitter outpourings that she thoroughly enjoys herself in doing what she does.  I just think that if we all really thought about it, we'd realise that targeting her and ignoring the huge corporation, nay institution, that is standing behind her and driving all that she does is rather akin to attempting to putting up an umbrella in a hurricane.

Just a few idiots...

Nigel Farage is often to be heard on television and radio bemoaning the fact that it's only the poor loves in UKIP that get picked on by the establishment.  'Every party has a few idiots' is a refrain that we hear so often from the man that I am beginning to suspect it's either tattooed on his eyeballs or was implanted directly into his brain via sophisticated hypno-indoctrination.  The tireless way that he trots it out again and again after each messy incident just suggests that it can only be pure reflex, some Pavlovian response to the stimulus of yet another one of his party doing or saying something stupid.

This week's candidate was UKIP Parliamentary candidate for Eastleigh, Patricia Culligan, who yesterday tweeted the following:

The link was to a Daily Mail article, which I have saved you all the trouble of having to read.  It essentially was the story of Liberal Democrat candidate for Liverpool Riverside Paul Childs, who has revealed as he prepares for his election campaign that he is HIV positive.  The article details statements by Mr Childs to the effect of how devastating the diagnosis was when it came 'I never expected it to happen. I remember being at work, sitting in a corridor and bursting into tears' he is quoted as saying.  It's a brave admission for a parliamentary candidate to make, in a society which still exhibits a certain amount of ignorance of and prejudice towards people with the condition - a state of affairs which Nigel Farage sought to exploit with his comments about 'health tourism' and HIV sufferers coming to the UK to get free NHS treatment in the televised leaders debate a few weeks ago. Indeed, Mr Childs says that it was those very comments that motivated him to come forward and speak out against what he calls Mr Farage's 'scaremongering'.  You will note that so far, there is no indication in what I am saying that Mr Childs 'deliberately became HIV positive' and that is because there is none.  The article (coming from a tabloid in the worst traditions of the word) saw fit to mention Adrian Hyyralainen-Trett, Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall, who revealed on buzzfeed that during a 'troubled phase of his life' he had contemplated suicide many times, attempting it on more than one occasion, taking drugs and getting involved in various self-destructive scenarios.  Eventually he settled on attempting to contract HIV.  His comments 'I thought "perhaps if I can make myself so ill, get the worst strain possible, that would be one way of getting rid of myself" illustrate just how much he was suffering at that time.  His additional comments, that when he was diagnosed with HIV he realised that he did not want it at all, and it had all been an attempt - no doubt borne of his struggles - to 'annihilate' himself, speak to just what a tragic set of circumstances these were.  His bravery in not only turning his life around to the extent that he is now a Parliamentary candidate, but also speaking out about his experiences, are to be applauded - they are true examples of the resilience of the human spirit, of a man who endured extreme mental health issues and overcame.

However, what Patricia Culligan saw first and foremost was a point scoring opportunity.  She didn't think to properly read the article.  She didn't allow herself to be affected in any way by the human issues that it reflected.  She simply saw what her political credo told her to see and she ran with it. And why should we be surprised, given the example of her party leader on national television?

As you might imagine, twitter responded, and today she saw fit to tweet the following:

This has to be one of the least convincing 'apologies' I have ever seen.  An apology involves accepting wrongdoing or mistake and offering contrition. It involves, bluntly, taking responsibility for what one has done.  When it is offered with any qualification, such as 'due to a mis-reading', then it is not meant.  It is the difference between 'I'm sorry I did this thing' and 'I'm sorry I was caught'.  An attempt to deflect the true nature of the act.

There was no 'mis-reading' of the article that could have possibly motivated any decent human being to gleefully point to it in the terms used.  To say that a second Lib Dem Candidate has revealed he deliberately became HIV positive and incite the 'v costly' free care on the NHS is to take two utterly separate issues and attempt to conflate them.  The NHS and it's free treatment of either gentleman is not covered at all in the article, save to repeat and comment on the remarks of Farage himself.

This then, is the core philosophy of UKIP at work.  A story of the tragedy, bravery and resilience of two extraordinary young men, twisted and contorted into a point-scoring exercise.  No warmth, no regard for the humanity of either of these men.  No acknowledgement of the struggles they face.  Just a Victorian freak show mentality of pointing at the 'other' and exclaiming how disgusting they are.  Whether the 'other' is an immigrant, or a homosexual, or a man with HIV, they are all fair game.  I advance that Ms Culligan is not sorry for her 'unintended offence' - she is sorry that she was caught out.  Someone with even an ounce of sensitivity towards potential upset would not have tweeted what she did, even if the report HAD said what she thought it had.

That's the take home message for me - never mind calling UKIP supporters racists and homophobes and swivel eyed loons.  Never mind all the pro-Farage rhetoric about his 'plain speaking' and 'no nonsense' and 'honest common sense'.  The reality is much more mundane.  UKIP doesn't care.  There is no sense of compassion or decency to anything that they say or do, merely a drive to say and do whatever is necessary to get attention and cause a fuss.  I desperately hope, for the sake of the nation as a whole, that their act is seen through by the electorate before it is too late.

Clear as Mud

As we approach the 2015 General Election, here is a quick sample of the sort of person that is currently in charge.  I note the following key points from this interview, which is admittedly a couple of years old:

"We do not have 'work for your benefit' or workfare schemes in this country" - Official statement by the DWP in response to a petition to abolish workfare in the UK.

"Benefit is not paid to the claimant as remuneration for the activity." - DWP statement in response to a FOI request.

"People who are doing work experience which is US ALLOWING PEOPLE TO CONTINUE TO EARN THEIR JOBSEEKERS ALLOWANCE.." - Iain Duncan Smith on what he feels 'work experience' is. (My emphasis)

"She was paid for it! What do you think the taxpayer was paying her for God's sake, Jobseekers Allowance!" - Iain Duncan Smith in response to the observation from James O'Brien that a woman who was stacking shelves was happy to do so, but would like to be paid for it.

So to reiterate, we absolutely categorically do not pay benefits to claimants in return for them doing work, nor are we holding their benefits to ransom on the basis of them doing these jobs.  But we DO consider, when asked why they can't be paid for this work, that they ARE being paid, by way of the benefits which we are ALLOWING them to claim by doing it.  Clear as mud eh?

Now, I used to work (briefly) in the benefits system and have once claimed JSA myself, and this fantasy land that IDS speaks of in this interview, of masses claiming benefits whilst just sitting at home before he and his took charge and made it all better, never existed in my experience.

In order to claim JSA back in 2002, I had to continuously visit the Jobcentre, proving that I had applied for jobs, answering as to why I hadn't got any and being all but marched to apply for others.  And I wasn't being precious about what job to take either - as a recent Law Graduate, my first job on leaving uni was working on an assembly line for a plastic filters company, earning about £6 an hour.  Then I went on to the heady heights of a solicitors office, where I was paid £8k a year as an administrator.  It wasn't until I went on to work as an administrator for Peverel, a retirement homes company, that I reached the sheer indulgence of a five figure salary.  The point is, IDS would like you to believe that until he and his lot got in and started 'acting tough' on this stuff, the benefits system was overrun with people claiming king's ransoms in benefits whilst sitting on their arses doing nothing.  I can tell you that there were odd instances of that happening (I met one myself), but I can also tell you that they were by far the minority.  Most of us were just hoping that we would manage to eke out the roughly £70 per fortnight we were allowed to claim.  I'm also pretty sure that the people who were abusing the system then are still doing so now - it's always the honest that are caught out by each new swingeing bunch of 'measures'.

In three months working for the DWP as a JSA administrator (or 'talking pencil' as we were told to think of ourselves) back in 2009, I spoke to literally hundreds of claimants. In that time, I spoke to one person that I would describe as not having a fully legitimate reason to claim JSA, and that was because that person was unable to work (due to being a recovering drug addict) and had been told that their sickness and disability benefit was to be cancelled and they would have to apply for JSA (incorrect, as I had to advise them).  The vast majority of claimants were people literally at the end of their tether and with no place else to turn, and some of those, some of the truly deserving who I would happily have given money to, were told no by the computer.

I honestly avoid telling anyone how they should vote - politics is a personal and divisive subject.  But I would ask anyone who is of voting age and reading this to think very carefully about this one small snapshot of a person at the centre of the current government - a government which has promised an additional £12 billion in cuts if it gets another term but categorically refuses to say in any detail where these cuts will fall.  My suspicion, based on the last five years experience, is that they will fall on the most vulnerable members of our society.  I am lucky enough to be able to earn my own way and not have to panic about where I will find the rent money or how to buy my next meal, but that doesn't mean that this sort of thing doesn't or shouldn't concern me.  I have voted Tory once in my life (and that was more because I was fed up of Blair and wanted to vote for someone who might have a reasonable chance of ousting him - oh how young and naive I was) but I can't honestly bring myself to do so ever again, especially when people like this are part of that party and it's policies.

Read all about it

I don't buy a paper, and rarely pay attention to what any of them have to say.  The day before yesterday, I was confronted with a perfect example of why, upon seeing the Daily Star front page, which was running a headline about the Germanwings crash.

'PILOT HAD A DEATH WISH YEARS AGO' ran the headline in huge bold letters, proclaiming in one short sentence the incompetence of the airline, the prior warning signs shown by the pilot who appears to have decided to kill himself and take a whole bunch of innocent people with him.  And then underneath the main headline, this:

'On gay website before flight'

If you bothered to read the article (I skimmed it, so horrified was I by the headlines) it elaborated that upon searching through the pilot's recent internet history, investigators had found that he had been visiting many sites with 'disturbing content' surrounding death, suicide etc, as well as some 'perverse' sites.  It also elaborated that he had been taunted by various people since his last long term (female) partner, nicknamed 'Tomato' (in reference to the fact that although most people think of Tomatoes as vegetables, they are actually a fruit - the level of sophistication is astounding,, obviously).

The fact of his being bullied - perhaps even by co-workers - may be relevant in informing why he was at a point that he felt he no longer wanted to live.  His internet history flagging up various sites full of disturbing content may also have some relevance to his state of mind.  But the Star chose to run, as it's secondary headline 'On gay website before flight'.

What are the implications of those two lines read together by any passing man, woman or (more importantly) child, without any of the accompanying context?

- That the pilot was surfing on gay websites literally minutes before takeoff.
- That maybe his self loathing at being (or thinking he might be) gay caused him to do what he did.
- That his being gay, or choosing to look at gay websites in any way was of relevance to his killing of all those people.

I was horrified.  I wasn't 'offended'.  I wasn't 'getting my knickers in a twist'.  I was literally and genuinely horrified.  I've waited two days to even write about it because I was hoping that MAYBE I would read or hear somewhere that the Daily Star had been somehow censured for what I see as blatant homophobia, and encouragement of hatred based on sexual orientation.  I was confident that this would occur, having seen the firestorm of criticism that brewed around the tabloids portrayal of mental illness and their choice of words like 'madman'.  Everyone sure jumped on that bandwagon to make sure that those suffering from mental illness were not unduly discriminated against by the media.  And yet the Daily Star said this, and I see nothing.  Go ahead, google Daily Star Headline Tuesday 31st March.  See how many returns you get of articles, blogs posts, hell ANYTHING discussing this.

Homophobia isn't an issue in this country?  I wish.

No One Man is Bigger than the Show

I've been keeping quiet these last couple of weeks. There are a number of reasons for this that I won't go into in any detail here - suffice it to say that occasionally, I am wont to become a little more isolated and introverted, and to merely observe the passage of the world around me. But now, having watched the drama that has unfolded around surely the most high-profile case of gross misconduct in the workplace in the UK EVER, I feel moved to comment.


Yes, I'm talking about Jeremy Clarkson. I'd rather not be. Days after he decided that punching his producer was the correct response to being offered cold meats instead of steak and chips, the greatest genre author this country has ever produced, and one of my all time favourite human beings, Sir Terry Pratchett, passed away, and I am still reaching for the words that would describe adequately the massive void his passing left in the universe. But that's for another time and another blog. Today, I am going to talk about Jeremy.


If you are expecting any kind of extreme point of view here, I'd suggest that you stop reading now. I am here neither to decry the man as Beelzebub, nor defend him as a Really Great and Misunderstood Bloke. I'm here in fact, to deconstruct a lot of what I have seen said about the man, and attempt to pull the needle of truth from the haystack of hysteria.


Let's run through a few basics first - Clarkson (as far as I can see) was not 'sacked'. He wasn't 'fired'. He didn't 'lose his job'. Clarkson was on a contract, the same way as every other 'major star' at the BBC, and just like the rest of them, his contract had an expiry date. As it happened, that date was around about now, which would have meant I imagine that negotiations about the renewal of said contract were well underway by the time he mistook his producer's face for a punching bag. The decision of the enquiry, as reported by EVERY MEDIA OUTLET, was that his contract would not be renewed. This isn't being sacked. It wouldn't show on a CV as a sacking, and in fact if it wasn't for the fact that Mr Clarkson was so famous, it is unlikely that the facts of what had happened would ever have emerged. The distinction may seem trite, but to me it is very important, especially when you consider it with the language used by Lord Hall in the statement announcing the decision, which expressed that he had 'not taken the decision lightly' and that it should 'in no way detract from the extraordinary contribution that Jeremy Clarkson has made to the BBC (I'll assume he's talking monetary there but we will get to that). This wasn't the language of a man sacking an employee who had finally pushed their luck too far - this was the weasel words of a man who had picked the absolute least resistant path and was still apologising for it just in case anyone wasn't happy - which is sort of a metaphor for the way that the whole of the BBC is run these days when you think about it. I mean, talking about Clarkson's 'sacking', Lord Hall said:


"For me a line has been crossed. There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations"


Yet think back to 2008 when Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made 'that' phone call to Andrew Sachs about his granddaughter and the BBC Trust described the incident as:


"a deplorable intrusion with no editorial justification"


Interestingly, despite many calls for it to happen, Ross was never sacked either, despite the much stronger language used by the trust to describe the incident. Brand resigned, and Ross carried on, eventually reaching the end of his contract and electing not to renew it.


So Clarkson wasn't sacked. Now, to go on from that point, this wasn't Clarkson 'reaching his last warning'. It is interesting to me that he himself made such a particular point of telling the press after his last 'incident' (apparently muttering a racially inflammatory word in a nursery rhyme, dug up from an outtake never meant for broadcast) that he was 'on his very last warning' and that 'one more incident' would see him gone. I can't imagine that he was telling people this out of a sense of shame, or because he in any way cared what was thought of him - indeed his whole career has been about constructing a persona which is very much about NOT caring what anyone thinks of him - so I can only see it as a deliberate move. As someone who still watched Top Gear (with an increasing amount of unease as time went on) it seemed to me for at least the last two years that we were no longer watching an overgrown child boorishly having fun with his mates on camera, but rather a tired old man who just wanted it to be over. I couldn't help but feel, as he gurned for the camera each week, trotting out one of his 'Jezza-isms' about the Greens/Liberals/Women/the BBC/etc. that he was just swinging wildly about, trying to find something he could say for the sake of it that would make the BBC cry enough and get rid of him. I have no idea why this might have been the case, but increasingly that was the impression I got.


Regardless, the 'straw that broke the camel's back' narrative that the media saw fit to run (and run) with was misleading in my opinion. This wasn't another example of Jeremy bringing the corporation into disrepute by expressing one of his 'hilarious' opinions about women/climate change/foreigners/homosexuals/etc. This was him punching a man in the face. Screaming at said man that he would be fired. In public. Over not getting the hot food he had asked for. This is what would be described in any workplace environment as gross misconduct. When one is found guilty of gross misconduct (as he undoubtedly was, seeing as how all parties agree that he did in fact lamp the poor producer) then unless there are extreme mitigating circumstances (which would therefore downgrade it from gross misconduct) then that person will be fired, regardless of whether they have a previous record of being an absolutely model employee or whether they are Sweary McLoonyRacist and have been spouting nonsense and getting verbal and written warnings for years. That's just the way that it is. The fact that he wasn't even sacked, merely 'didn't have his contract renewed' speaks to the lie in Lord Hall's statement that nobody is above the rules, regardless of position or popularity. Example - imagine that said producer had punched Jeremy or Richard Hammond or James May in the face, then make a rough estimate of how long he would have been employed afterwards, and whether there would have been the same dance around words and phrases such as 'contract will not be renewed' being used. Yeah, I imagine that you reached the same conclusion that I did.
If it sounds as if I am gunning for the man as much as most newspaper columnists have been lately, it's time for the balance. Jeremy Clarkson is not the devil.


Yes - he is a man who has made a living out of 'being offensive'. Now, I tend to take the Ricky Gervais approach to offence, which states that you can only take offence, you can't give it. This rather glib turn of phrase actually makes an important point - when you think about it, ALL humour involves laughing at someone, and mostly it involves laughing at misfortune, whether self-inflicted or otherwise. We laugh at Christians and 'chavs' and Americans and that's ok, but should we laugh at fat people, or women, or Mexicans then it all gets a mite more complicated. There is an argument (and a persuasive one at that) which suggests that the reason for these distinctions, which may seem so arbitrary on the surface, relates to the relative empowerment of any given group - Americans and the Church are quite big and ugly enough to look after themselves thank you very much, whereas women and the obese are already disadvantaged in society and therefore require defence from such mockery, which serves only to undermine them further. It's a good point, and it makes logical sense. Where it tends to fall down on closer examination is that we are attempting to objectively quantify a subjective experience - i.e. the theoretical upset/embarrassment/humiliation that the target of the humour feels. We are then weighing this against their relative empowerment and establishing an arbitrary scale of measurement which tells us some arcane magical formula allowing one to be ok and the other not. This feels a little nonsensical to me - if we can ask some people to 'have a sense of humour' then why not all? If we must strive to 'protect' some people/institutions from being mocked, are we not, in some odd way, actually contributing to the view of them as 'lesser'?


I digress. Clarkson says stupid things. He says them (I suspect) because they cause a fuss, which leads to publicity, which leads to higher ratings/sales figures. But often I think those things are blown out of proportion. When he made a joke about truckers murdering prostitutes, it was tasteless and crass. When he and his co-presenters 'hilariously' described a Mexican car as probably sharing the national characteristics of being 'lazy' and 'feckless' and 'flatulent' they were being arses. But watch any Frankie Boyle DVD and count how many instances there are of jokes about AIDS. Cancer, Kerry Katona being sexually promiscuous, Scottish people being fat and alcoholic and useless. Boyle is controversial, sure, but I don't think the same narrative of 'evil' has been put forward about him. Of course, the counter is that Clarkson is more popular and as a result has more influence, particularly amongst young men (the default target demographic of Top Gear the last ten years) and there is again a valid point there to a certain extent. But again, are we really attempting to quantify offence here? If a man makes a sexist joke to his friends, is he really being less objectively offensive than a comedian who makes the same joke to a whole audience? It's the same joke, just told to more people. Is that the basis of judgement here? The reach of what is said? Because to me that rather seems to be missing the point.


He's also sometimes quoted out of context. Remember the infamous 'all teachers should be shot' remarks that saw him vilified? Well when you took the whole interview, and not just that one soundbite, then the comments took on an entirely different shade. Perhaps not as funny to some as others, but far from the malicious evil that was implied in the press. For those who missed it, it went something like this:


Interviewer: What do you think of the teachers strike Jeremy?
JC: I think it's brilliant! I drove through London this morning and the roads were totally clear. However, as this is the BBC, in the interests of balance I also think that they should all be rounded up and shot obviously.


Hardly swiftian wit, sure. But also not what he had been accused of. There was the infamous nursery rhyme thing as well, wherein if you listened really closely to the outtake that was never intended for broadcast, he might have muttered the 'n word' as part of a nursery rhyme (because those were the actual words). Now, I have seen many people say that the fact the clip wasn't meant for broadcast is irrelevant, because it showcases the fact that he is a racist. Perhaps it does (I doubt it personally but there you go) but if it does, it indicates only that he might *think* racist thoughts, and once we go down the road of regulating what people are allowed to think then that is a whole different kettle of fish. Regulating what people say is fraught enough with danger, but if we are to vilify a man and call for him to be sacked on the basis of what he *thinks* regardless of what he actually says and does, then we are all already living in Orwell's 1984.



And then there was the Falklands incident, wherein the whole programme was accused of deliberately taking a car to Argentina with a number plate that may or may not have referred to the Falklands war (because it read H982 FKL). Now, leaving aside that this may either have been a giant coincidence or another 'hilarious' Top Gear jape, let's look at the reaction, caught on camera. An entire film crew chased for miles by a convoy of people, most of whom were not even alive when the conflict in question took place, throwing rocks at vans, threatening the lives and safety of complete strangers. On the basis of some letters on a number plate that one might vaguely link to a war that happened over 30 years ago. Clarkson and his production team may be a bunch of cretins, but I personally don't see the issue here at all. But let's put it down on the litany of bad stuff that Jezza did because it fits a narrative eh?


For my money, there is ample evidence to suggest that the entire production team, film crew, editors and everyone else associated with Top Gear has been deliberately courting controversy for years. They were all sensible enough to not risk broadcasting a bit of footage in which Clarkson might have mumbled an unintelligible sound which still sounded vaguely similar to a racially inflammatory word that rhymes with 'digger', yet they didn't think that him pointing to an Asian man on a bridge and declaring 'There's a slope on that bridge' might be a little bit off? Or that the whole team spouting off about 'lazy feckless flatulent Mexicans' might get them in hot water? Or Clarkson's comments on truckers and prostitutes, or homosexuals, or women might be a little much? Of course they did. They knew well enough that they were putting out 'edgy' content, and they counted on it causing a fuss and therefore providing more attention to their brand and their star, and when it went too far, well, they could all point to Jezza, who was just a big oaf who didn't know any better.


May and Hammond are no better - look at the way each has reacted in recent weeks. May - long sold as 'the sensible one' of the trio, said that 'what ought to have been a small incident easily sorted turned into something big'. Yes, because when one man punches another in the face for not having their hot dinner ready as per their demands, we should all just shrug shoulders and move on eh? And Hammond had this to say on twitter: "Gutted at such a sad end to an era. We're all three of us idiots in our different ways but it's been an incredible ride together." Not 'I'm really gutted that some poor crew member got decked by my mate for no good reason', not 'I wish that Jeremy had behaved a little better', just 'Boo hoo, I don't get to hand around with my mate doing stupid stuff for money anymore.'


For what it's worth, I sympathise fully with Oisin Tymon for being punched in the face, and even more for the raft of abuse and death threats he's had thrown around about him for 'ruining Top Gear', but as he himself says, he has worked on the show for ten years and always enjoyed a positive working relationship with Jeremy. So for ten years he has been part of a whole show which has belittled various ethnic minorities, mocked homosexuals, women, foreigners, liberals, green campaigners and basically anyone who isn't a 'lad' who wants to drink beer and drive fast cars. He's been an integral part of a culture that has allowed a (non live) show to continue to be broadcast with various stupid, insensitive and crass remarks being made and, let's not forget, he wasn't even the one who reported Jeremy for punching him.


That last point is interesting. Clarkson's defenders cite this as a prime example of the man's robust integrity - that he effectively felt guilty enough about the incident to own up and take his punishment. His detractors similarly hold this up as an example of his self-serving nature, of playing the victim and attempting to look the bigger man. I think both are wrong. The timing of this incident is suspicious - does anyone *really* believe that Jeremy just happened to lose his rag and punch a man within a couple of weeks of the end of his contract? When he himself had repeatedly told the media in the last six months that he was on his absolute final no other chances warning with his employers? When he has been quite obviously deliberately saying whatever crass and pointless thing that he can on each and every show for two years now? No. I think that this was simply his ticket out. He'd slung around comments about 'slopes' and prostitute murder and lazy feckless foreigners and god knows what else for years on what was supposed to be a light entertainment show, and he'd never got so much as a suspension, or a docking of pay. All he got was an increasingly ridiculous series of toothless 'warnings' from Auntie to be on his best behaviour in future. In some instances, they had even defended his stupidity, only relenting to criticise him (and even then mildly) when they literally couldn't get away with not doing so.


Even now, after he has literally physically assaulted a colleague, they can't actually bring themselves to sack him and openly criticise him - hell, Alan Yentob, creative controller at the BBC was on record within hours of the announcement saying that this wasn't in any way closing the door on Clarkson returning to the BBC in future. Add that to today's news that the 'Top Gear Live' shows that were booked to be done this year will now continue, re-branded as 'Clarkson, Hammond and May Live' and part funded by the BBC, and this looks less like a 'sacking' and more like a mutually beneficial arrangement all round. I'm sure that Clarkson will be fending off offers of employment, and that he will take the other two with him to keep riding the gravy train, and I'm sure that a more commercial TV station will be able to double whatever money they have been on with the BBC. The corporation itself, meanwhile, gets the benefit of looking like they are 'tough on their stars' (how often have you seen the phrase 'nobody is bigger than the show' in the last few weeks?) and that they have listened to public opinion on a controversial star. In actual fact, all they have really done is save themselves the salary of three of their top paid presenters (and all the money that they must have been spending sending them around the world, buying all the stuff for challenges etc) without looking like the 'killjoy BBC' (we HAD to let him go, he punched a man). No wonder Clarkson has looked so relaxed throughout the whole thing, and no wonder he was able to offer his 'heartfelt' support to poor Oisin for all those Top Gear fans picking on him.


Clarkson isn't a monster (not even a dinosaur, as his painful Sun Column on the whole affair tried to paint him). Neither is he stupid or oafish. He's actually an incredibly savvy businessman, who took a show that nobody much cared about either way and turned it into a brand that the BBC has marketed worldwide with ever increasing success for a decade. He's also a deeply cynical man, willing to say whatever it takes on TV to get a bit of controversy stirred and boost attention. He plays the oaf and the old man stuck in his ways, and the people of the UK lap it up, either praising him as a saint of straight talking common sense or demonising him as a racist, mysoginistic right wing fascist who will bring about the fall of civilisation as we know it. The truth, I fear is rather more mundane. He's simply an intelligent man prepared to play the part of a neolithic arsehole for cheap laughs. The tragedy with Clarkson is that with all the intelligence and on screen charisma, he chose to leave whatever principles he might have had at the door in order to make a buck.


I hope (in my optimistic fashion) that maybe he really was trying to get fired because he saw no other way out. Part of me wants to think that he will return as a completely different onscreen entity, freed from the 'Jezza' persona which seemed to be compulsory and increasingly tired and cynical as time went on in Top Gear. I hope that he and Hammond and May will prove all the naysayers wrong and do something different that takes us all by surprise. I hope too that the BBC will take the opportunity to rebrand Top Gear into something that can be fun and irreverent for a wider audience - a show that draws in all sorts of people and includes them in the joke instead of making them the butt of it. But given that all those editors, producers, sound engineers, cameramen and everyone else have been putting together the same show for the last ten years of controversy and silliness, I suspect it won't be the case. Nobody there will be under any illusions - they all know that Clarkson wasn't sacked, they have all read the statement that he may well return in the future, they all see him carrying on with a rebranded live show part funded by BBC money which springs off the back of the very TV show that they all put together. They know that all they need is a few new faces and the same old formula and everything will be absolutely fine.


Ultimately, the story of Clarkson and Top Gear isn't the story of one evil man and his power crazed crusade of bullying, violence and terror. It's the rather more sad tale of a whole bunch of people who corroborated to make an increasingly toxic TV show for the sake of the ratings and money, and who even at the stage of actual physical violence visited on an employee, will do everything that they can to minimise the damage done to themselves and the perpetrator, rather than in any way do the right thing.


So please stop telling me that no one person is more important than the show - I'm afraid that it just doesn't wash.

A lesson learned

I'm 34 years old and I am still learning.  Ask me six days ago and I would have told you that the attackers in Paris 'weren't Muslim', as if that pronouncement somehow explained the whole sorry situation.

It is not for me, or you or Barack Obama or David Cameron to pronounce what is and is not 'Muslim'.  It is a source of much debate among various scholars the world over just what is the true way to embrace Islam as a faith, and these are people who are brought up in the faith, who study all of its texts and traditions.  It is not for me to spend a few minutes on google, or watch a video by one person claiming to represent Muslims in Britain, or Europe or wherever and weigh in with a definitive view on who is getting it right.

There are Muslims killing Muslims the world over, because of the various iterations of opinion.  This is an inescapable fact.  The jihadists/Islamists/terrorists are certainly not representative in their actions of the majority of Muslims who live in Europe and America - that much is patently obvious.  But to dismiss them as simply 'un-Muslim' is rather to miss the point.  They represent the radical and scary end of a whole spectrum of interpretations of a book and some pronouncements by various clerics throughout history.

There do however seem to be one or two unifying factors of interest amongst the extremists:

1. They are led by men (and it seems to exclusively be men) who are NOT scholars.  These men are not stepped in years of study of the faith and the Qu'ran.  They are not philosophers or clerics as you and I would understand it.  They are doctors, lawyers, scientists.
2. These leaders, much like the men that they lead, seem mostly to have embraced Islam either from scratch or certainly to a more dedicated degree much later on in their lives.  Anjem Choudary is a prime example - a former lawyer who spent a lot of time partying and taking drugs back when he was known as 'Andy' studying the first year of a medical degree which he never completed (he went on to study law and became a solicitor) Now one of the leading figures in extreme Islam in the UK.
3. These men, when confronted with anything or anyone which contradicts their world view, will simply deny and/or dismiss it.  If you have time, go to YouTube and dig out any interview of Choudary being interviewed.  Watch how he attempts to derail every question put to him.  Watch his refusal to answer a straight question such as 'do you believe that apostasy should be met with the death penalty'.  He doesn't speak like a man possessed by a fanatical faith (to whom the answer to that question for example would be 'yes' - under Sharia law, which he himself says repeatedly he would like implemented the world over, apostasy is a capital offence), he speaks like a lawyer, obfuscating and circling around the actual point so that he cannot be legally held to account for anything he says later.
4. Additionally, watch Choudary being interviewed by a woman, and see how dismissive his tone, gestures and words become.  This is a man for whom women are second class citizens, who should be shut quietly away and not allowed to voice opinions, particularly opinions which question men.

It is uncomfortable, even unfathomable for us who have grown up in a liberal western democracy with a dominant religion which is - relatively - tolerant of those who don't follow it, to conceive of men who are willing to kill for their faith.  Obama declares that 'no religion condones murder' which simply proves that he didn't study his history all that closely. People have killed, and continue in many parts of the world today, in the name of religion.  It is one thing to say that those people are wrong, it is quite another to arbitrarily wall them off and deny the fact of their religious beliefs because they don't fit your own world view of what a religion should be.

Yes, I know plenty of Christians who are appalled by the idea of killing done for any reason, much less in the name of their faith.  Interestingly some of those same people have no problem in declaring that they don't approve of gay marriage (or indeed of gay people at all), despite not one of them being able to point me to where exactly in the new Testament Jesus says 'and love thy neighbour, unless he or she happens to be gay, in which case cast them out and harangue them'.

People do shitty stuff.  Sometimes they do it in the name of their religion.  If they believe that they believe, then me denying that they are part of that faith is no better than them telling me I'm deserving of death or will go to hell because I do not share in teir belief.

The point is this (yeah, I will get there in the end).  In spite of what the radicals and their preachers tell you, there isn't a mass movement of jihadists living in Barking or Dagenham or Winchester all waiting to rise up and kill the infidels.  Radical Islam is an issue, no doubt, and a major one at that.  There are areas of the world where these fanatics are great in number, even running countries, and they are doing unspeakable things on the name of their own interpretation of their faith.  But here, in a part of the world where freedom is much more prevalent, and in which it is easier for Muslims to embrace a different and more liberal interpretation of their faith, there are far fewer fanatics.  They still exist, and they are still an issue, but one that can be dealt with by the nature of the very society on which we live.  If we allow fear and extremism to dictate our behaviour, and we meet radicalism with radicalism, then we will exacerbate a small issue into a major one.

But most importantly, if you take anything away from reading my waffle here, let it be this - there are many different types of Muslims in the world.  Just because the only ones that you see on the TV are either preaching hate and Sharia and the end of western decadence, or else expressing that Islam is a religion of peace and love and that all they want is to be friends with everyone, don't make the mistake (as I did, which I freely admit) of believing that it's a binary system.  Basically, remember that Muslims are people too, with all the myriad possibilities for loveliness and humility as well as wickedness and arrogance which that condition allows for.

Because it is lack of extremism which allows me to learn.  To change.  To admit that I may have been wrong before.  The fanatic must by necessity deliberately blind themselves to any evidence which may sway their fanaticism.  They exist as a fixed point, incapable of learning or growing.  It is this fact, alone above all others, which will ensure that the future never can and never will belong with any permanence to the fanatics.