Jeremy Clarkson Anti-Green Stunt

[laptop]

Clarkson strikes back....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1622006,00.html

It will be engineers who bring an air-powered jet to fruition,

Engineers know how to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Clarkson should be refused his degree purely for this amazing display of ignorance. It certainly illustrates where he's coming from about technology - "hey boys, anything is possible!". No it isn't...

 

[lintin]

Really muddled thinking from Clarkson -- yet again!!

He seems to be confused -- he thinks that enviromentalism and engineering are somehow opposed ! In reality good engineering is essential to enviromentalism. Although I agree with him on engineering having a degraded status in the UK as opposed to Italy etc, where engineers are held in high esteem !

 

[laptop]

Thinking about it - for only a little longer than the boy racer merits - I think his understanding of "engineering" comes from adverts, and means "toy-making".

Not that wave energy devices aren't really cool toys - but he doesn't get to show off in one. Or. Maybe. Could he be persuaded?

 

[lintin]

Reading that article where he implies enviromentalism and engineering are opposites, I can understand why engineering sometimes gets a bad name.

Picking up on the last post, perhaps he would get a kick out of being strapped to a wind turbine in a high wind.

 

[FifthFromFront]

Really muddled thinking from Clarkson -- yet again!!

He seems to be confused -- he thinks that enviromentalism and engineering are somehow opposed ! In reality good engineering is essential to enviromentalism. Although I agree with him on engineering having a degraded status in the UK as opposed to Italy etc, where engineers are held in high esteem !

In germany can't engineers call themselves Engineer So-andSo like Dr so and so??

As you say engineering is the only way we gona get ourselves out of theis mess. We just need to focus our brains on more environmentally friendly stuff - like trolley busses (yes I have a one track mind) once we sorted out our energy supplies (ie renewable!).

FFF

 

[_pH_]

This means I’m in the same boat as Margaret Thatcher, who was snubbed by Oxford University for stealing milk or something,

 

[Bob_the_lost]

In germany can't engineers call themselves Engineer So-andSo like Dr so and so??

As you say engineering is the only way we gona get ourselves out of theis mess. We just need to focus our brains on more environmentally friendly stuff - like trolley busses (yes I have a one track mind) once we sorted out our energy supplies (ie renewable!).

FFF

I heard that somewhere, of course in europe the Meng degree takes five years (we do it in four, more intensive years).

He's amusing on Top gear, but he's not exactly my nominee for most unbiased person on the planet.

 

[pk]

 

[tw1ggy5]

Of course there is also the argument that it is very foolish to create a system where we depend on things that are bad in order to generate the tax that we need for public spending. After all, that way we lose while the taxation is ineffective and we lose again when it succeeds. And as usual the fat cats win every time.

Of course it is, but thats what were left with at the moment. They wont tax the corps what they should so the gap has to be made up by the general population somehow. Putting up taxes on things people have to have or have to pay for is unpopular, so they demonise certain things, then use that as an excuse to ramp tax on them to fill the funding gaps. Alcohol, fags, etc.

 

[Sasaferrato]

add the hgv gas guzzling monsters v rail freight eqaution and you'll be correct

The old BR lost a lot of freight traffic because of price and inefficiency ( downright bloody mindedness in some cases ) and it has never returned to the railways.

An illustration was the fish trade out of Mallaig, the railway refused to carry fish because it was too much trouble to clean the waggons, the result ( at the peak of the trade ) was a waggon leaving Mallaig every 20 minutes, day and night, up the single track road to Fort William. Not a problem now, they finally caught all the fish.

 

[_pH_]

The old BR lost a lot of freight traffic because of price and inefficiency ( downright bloody mindedness in some cases ) and it has never returned to the railways.

An illustration was the fish trade out of Mallaig, the railway refused to carry fish because it was too much trouble to clean the waggons, the result ( at the peak of the trade ) was a waggon leaving Mallaig every 20 minutes, day and night, up the single track road to Fort William. Not a problem now, they finally caught all the fish.

Have you any proof of that? Because it sounds like pro-Tory anti-pre-privatisation-BR propaganda to me.

 

[Roadkill]

The old BR lost a lot of freight traffic because of price and inefficiency ( downright bloody mindedness in some cases ) and it has never returned to the railways.

The railways have always been ambivalent towards fish traffic: perishable freight is expensive to handle and a pain on the network because it usually needs the same priority as a passenger train. That's pretty much always been the case, so fish is a fairly poor example.

Price - and the regulation of prices by government under BR - was one reason for the railways' loss of freight traffic. Others were beyond their control, such as the decline of heavy industries which depended on the railways and the reluctance of newer light industries to use them, although this is beginning to change. Moreover, in the 1950s and 1960s the railways were obliged by law to act as 'common carrier' and handle any freight offered, even if it was loss-making. They were also obliged to publish a scale of charges. All of this gave road hauliers an inbuilt advantage. Effectively, the denationalisation of road haulage in 1953 freed lorry operators to act in their best interests, whilst the railways were saddled with legal obligations dating back in some instances to the first world war.

Road hauliers, and the car lobby as a whole, are a powerful and well organised lobby group, who effectively have had everything they want from the government (freeze on fuel duties, larger lorries, light regulation), whilst public transport - passenger and freight - has been neglected. Railway fares are rocketing (I'm not now going to Strawberry Fair because the price of a ticket has doubled since last year), service is improving very slowly, bus transport is still crap and most cities still prioritise car use.

Meanwhile, most of the car lobby seem to me to have a persecution complex. On the road I live on, a new crossing was set up last year. A taxi driver grumnbled to me about how the council 'hates motorists' and put it there solely to annoy drivers on the main road. Granted, it does block one lane: on the other hand, as I pointed out to said cabby, the junction it's on used to be very dangerous (I saw more than one accident there) and it also makes life a lot easier for pedestrians. He didn't seem to think this mattered. As if anything could be more important than saving drivers two minutes waiting at lights!

 

[isvicthere?]

Clarkson = even more of a twat than before. Utter utter wanker.

 

[IMeMine]

"The environmentalists are always getting on at us for not featuring energy efficient transport and we agree with them. So tonight we have on the show a green car, and here it is (Camera pans to a pea green Lambourghini).

 

[HarrisonSlade]

I feel that it does have to be picked up that there is a poor, vindictive and counter productive attitude towards motorists form the Councils. It is a great source of revenue to fine motorists, and it is now turning from being a penalty for dangerous driving and inconvenient parking to just on the spot tax. No one is actually being fined for guzzling loads of gas or for driving dangerously. People are being fined for going 55 in 50 lanes on motorways straight after they have past 70 mph zones they are not ready for passing. The law is now there to pick up people who are convenient to pick up, and letting people go if it were to cause to many problems.

As for the car versus public transport arguement. The car is simple, you don't have to pander to the kind of obnoxious twat who drive buses, pay extortionate prices on the trains, and you know for a fact that the only delays you will get will be in traffic jams with other motorists; of which have not been helped with the increase in public transport at peak as well as off peak time.

In a Country where many are ready to accept that there isn't something wrong with the Transport system at present, it is refreshing that we have a man who is willing to shout at the people who make the laws, and it is interesting to hear such individualist of which I have heard voice such dissapproval at such protest.

 

[IMeMine]

Public transport is often an unpleasant experience.
Work towards making the buses, taxis and trains safe and enjoyable for people before you go around telling people to ditch their cars. The first step would be putting conductors back on buses to keep order, this would make the 3pm to 4:30pm timetable bearable at least. Sheppards leave the gate open before they direct the sheep into the pen.

 

[editor]

Public transport is often an unpleasant experience.

Getting a faceful of stinking fumes from a traffic queue predominantly made up of single occupant drivers is often an unpleasant experience.

Waiting ages to cross the road while cars roar by is often an unpleasant experience

Hearing the endless roar of cars thundering by while you're in the countryside is often an unpleasant experience

Seeing great chunks of the landscape destroyed for a new bypass is often an unpleasant experience

Being held up by massive traffic queues when you're in a bus is often an unpleasant experience

Need I go on?

 

[oryx]

Public transport is often an unpleasant experience.
Work towards making the buses, taxis and trains safe and enjoyable for people before you go around telling people to ditch their cars. The first step would be putting conductors back on buses to keep order, this would make the 3pm to 4:30pm timetable bearable at least. Sheppards leave the gate open before they direct the sheep into the pen.

I think you & editor are both right.

I've just started using public transport to get to work after years of driving & apart from a few Oyster card nightmares, & the overland train resembling the poster for "Shaun of the Dead", I've found it surprisingly OK. (So far).

However, public transport is often dangerously overcrowded (luckily my journey doesn't involve the Northern Line), late (all my colleagues who get the Jubilee were coming into work cursing one day last week!), & unbearably hot (which buses blow hot air out on hot days - is it the bendy ones?).

I think it's got better since I last regularly went to work on public transport in 1991, especially the buses. It needs to improve further before more people will use it more willingly as an alternative to a car. I have noticed that the majority of the people getting the Tube at overcrowded times are mostly young-ish & look fit. Elderly people & mums with pushchairs would have a nightmare on the tube at rush hour.

 

[Dante]

Public transport is often an unpleasant experience.
Work towards making the buses, taxis and trains safe and enjoyable for people before you go around telling people to ditch their cars. The first step would be putting conductors back on buses to keep order, this would make the 3pm to 4:30pm timetable bearable at least. Sheppards leave the gate open before they direct the sheep into the pen.

Conductors aint going to happen. The role of the conductor is increasingly being subsumed by the driver, and the phasing out of the old "jump-on-jump-offs" mean that there is no role for them beyond the tour market.

Intersting to look at the figures for the Bendy Buses where the Driver's role is purely that of driving the bus. no ticket check, board wherever you want. That seems to be common in a lot of continental services. and is a model that should be adopted.

A better plan to keep order during that school run time would be school buses. no? dedicated services perhaps? provided free to all children. at all schools?

The bus companies all have gone through a period of rationalisation (lay-offs) so the only employees left are managers, drivers and engineers. so they wont introduce a policing (small p) service as well. besides of course, the differential between boisterous behaviour and violent.
when i was teaching this year, the transport police had to put a couple of uniforms on the trains to deal with the kids (there was only so much i was prepared to do.) but since they have no other way of traveling... perhaps the dedicated service is best... thread perhaps for a different forum.

Black cabs are safe, at least as long as you dont want to go south after midnight...

 

[Dante]

Given that 80% of the price of road fuel is tax, all this talk of increased vehicle taxes based on engine size is silly.

The tax on fuel is already a near "perfect" tax with every incentive to buy fuel-efficient cars:

If you drive a car that does 20mpg then you pay twice as much tax as you do for a car doing 40mpg.

If you drive everywhere, using your car when you could have walked or taken the bus, etc, then you pay more.

If anything, they should get rid of the "tax disc" and raise the equivalent sum from fuel tax - its fairer. I mean, if you have a car, but only use it when you REALLY need to, you are producing less pollution that if you drive 20,000 miles a year, so why have the fixed price tax on haivng a car? Put it all on fuel, makes far more sense. Also, its pretty hard to evade paying fuel taxes, so they could get rid of the whole bureaucracy and admin cost of chasing non-payers, sending out reminders, queueing in post offices for tax discs, etc, saving more money and effort.

Giles..

yes, but an engine size tax would further penalize the SUV 4x4. perhaps it needs to be a city road/engine size tax.

but whilst the larger the engine the larger the fuel payments, the larger the tax etc. its a bout polution. persuade people it is not economical to run an SUV when they could get a Volvo, and then, there we are, less polution. which is the aim.