Jeremy Clarkson

[Terence.H]

Some of you may be familiar with him, he presents Top Gear.

By the way he own's a holiday home in Cairns.

It's toung in cheek humour so don't take it the wrong way okay.... (some people have been a bit touchy lately) ask Polly.

Jeremy Clarkson....

quote...

Surely, after 20 days of trial by fire, the Australians must now realise that God never really intended this enormous tinderbox to be used for human habitation. Plainly it has created as a giant dustbin, a place far from civilisation where all His failed experiments could be left to their own terrifying devices. “Oh no,†said God on the fourth day, “I’ve gone and made a spider which can kill a man just by looking at him. I need somewhere to put it.†So on the fifth day He created Australia.

This then became home for all the horrid snakes and the bitey crocodiles and the baby-eating dingoes. And to make sure that man stayed away, He made the land itself completely infertile and filled the sea around its shores with deadly sharks and killer jellyfish. He even built an enormous barrier reef. Frankly, He did everything possible to ensure that humans never went there, short of putting up a sign saying “Trespassers will be eatenâ€.

Nobody knows what drew the Aborigines but we do know that the first white man to sail this way was the world’s most useless explorer, a Dutchman called Abel Tasman. In a three-year voyage he found Fiji, New Zealand and Tasmania, but in one of the most inept pieces of navigation ever he completely missed the big bit in the middle. That was discovered by Captain James Cook who stepped off his ship, sniffed the air and declared, “Yes. This would make a fantastic prison.â€

He was right, of course. For millions of years Australia had harboured all the world’s dangerous animals so why not use it as a waste disposal unit for dangerous people? And even when the transportation of convicts stopped, it was still a good place for people who couldn’t get on anywhere else.

Think about it. Nobody ever went to live in Australia because of the success they’d made of things at home. “I have thousands of friends, endless party invitations, a wonderful, happy family, a great job and even better prospects. So I’m off.†All Australians are descended from Billy No Mates.

You’d expect them to have some sympathy with the refugees from central Asia. But no. They’ve turned their former prison into a fortress and the doors are now firmly closed.

Australians stand on their porches with flames licking at their back door, telling us that life over there is peachy. “It’s always warm enough for a barbecue,†they say. Never mind that the most recent barbie was so enormous and so hot that it had to be extinguished by a fleet of helicopters.

They’re even using the wildlife as a scare campaign, telling the world what we already know: that the 10 most deadly snakes found anywhere in the world are all Australian. They run PR campaigns throughout Asia, showing pictures of boats used by refugees marooned on beaches with big fat crocodiles lolling nearby.

However, the reception from the indigenous wildlife is as nothing compared to the reception you’ll get from the locals.

It’s bad enough for a British person who’s only there on holiday. Every time you walk into a pub, you get the same reaction. “Backs to the wall everyone: there’s a Pom in the bar,†followed by: “Hide your wallet under the soap. He won’t find it there.â€

Not desperately imaginative but then what do you expect from a people who named a blue spotted ray that lives in lagoons “the blue spotted lagoon rayâ€, or a range of mountains with snow on them “The Snowy Mountainsâ€. And that’s before we get to “The Great Barrier Reefâ€.

Anyway, if we have a hard time, imagine what it’s like for Abdul. In a recent poll, 96% of Australians said they wanted the refugees out, dead, buried, eaten, anything. Last summer an advertisement appeared in one of the newspapers there asking people with a military background to join vigilante-style patrols.

Refugees who get caught by the proper authorities are sent to a fantastically remote detention centre near Woomera, where the British did their atomic tests in the 1950s. They can get out easily but it’s an 18-day walk to the nearest telephone box and that’s doubly hard when you’ve grown two heads.

So what sort of volume are we talking about here? Well, last year the number of people who arrived in Australia illegally from the usual refugee hot spots was 4,500. That works out at one for every 666 square miles. You could put the downtrodden masses from all over the world in the Northern Territories and not even know they were there.

Australia says that it took in thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian boat people in the 1970s and 1980s, along with most of Britain’s displaced trade union leaders who were no longer welcome at No. 10 for tea and buns. It won’t now fulfil the legal and moral obligations of other nations.

Well, Europe has a falling birth-rate and can take a few refugees. The Americans are dropping food parcels on their heads. Africa is hopeless and Asia is the problem, which leaves either Antarctica, which seems a bit anti-social, or the very place that was specifically designed to be home for misfits: Australia.

Here's the second instalment....

Jeremy Clarkson

Alarming news. It seems that all the world’s clever people have gone missing. We know where the stupid people are. They’re in the White House, or they’re on Big Brother, or they’re singing for Simon Cowell’s supper. But while we are absorbed with this lot, the rocket scientists and astrophysicists have disappeared.

Seriously. America claims that the huge influx of Mexicans is in no way compensation for George Clooney, who has moved to Italy, and Madonna, who now lives in Wiltshire. And that it has a net brain drain.

It’s the same story in Egypt, Iran, India, Russia, New Zealand and France. Germany claims to be in the middle of the biggest brain drain since the 1940s. Everywhere you look, governments are saying that while they’re up to here with housekeepers and swimming pool attendants, their graduates are all moving out.

So where are they going? Could it be, I wondered, that all the Tefalheads have come to Britain? Certainly, we seem to have so many scientists that there aren’t enough serious projects to go round. On Thursday, for instance, two Manchester doctors announced that they’d been studying dinosaurs and found that the T-rex had a slower top speed than Frank Lampard. Wow.

Further evidence came to light on Thursday with the GCSE results. Every 16-year-old in the land, except those who have recently been shot, had scored at least 415% in advanced Latin and applied maths.

Yes! I thought. Britain is pinching all the Russian billionaires, the American singers, the French chefs, the Egyptian doctors and the German businessmen. We may not be the happiest nation on Earth or the richest. But we are the brainiest.

And then came the latest migration figures, which showed that while Britain received 5.4 billion west African pickpockets last year, we lost what the Daily Mail calls 196,000 British citizens. White, middle-class families who have moved abroad.

These figures would lead us to suggest that like everywhere else, Britain is suffering from a brain drain. That all our well educated, well spoken young professionals are being replaced by Borat.

Unfortunately, this argument fails to hold any water when you look at where these middle-class people are moving to. Australia is the No 1 choice, apparently, with 1.3m British emigrants living there.

Fine, but in the whole of human history, nobody has ever woken up and thought, “I know. I have a wonderful family, lots of money, a great job and an active social life. I shall therefore move to Australia.â€Â

Australia is where you go when you’ve made a mess of everything. That’s why the 1.3m Brits who live there are known as whingeing Poms. Because they’re all failures.

Another popular destination is Spain, which is home these days to 761,000 Brits. Are they all brain surgeons? Inventors? Did Sir Christopher Cockerell invent the hovercraft and then move to Puerto Banus? No. Spain is where you go when you’ve sold your taxi.

What about America then? We imagine that the Brits living there are successful and bright, like David Beckham and, er, Kelly Brook. But mostly, I suspect the people who move from Britain to the States do so because they are interested in guns and murdering.

Twice I’ve bumped into expats while in America and both times they were wandering around in woods carrying preposterously large guns and wearing combat fatigues. One was chewing tobacco which, when combined with his broad Birmingham accent, made him appear to be the stupidest person in the world. He probably was.

The fact is, I’m afraid, that anyone who emigrates from Britain, no matter where they end up, is a bit of a dimwit.

I mean, why leave? Because you have no friends? Well, what makes you think it’ll be easier to make friends somewhere else. Because of the weather? Oh, come on. Sunny days work when you’re on holiday but when you’re stuck in an office, you need it to be 57F and drizzling.

Maybe you’re fed up with the crime in Britain. What, and you think California has fewer murders than Bourton-on-the-Water? You think there are no syringes on Bondi Beach?

Public services? Puh-lease. Even if you can convey to the chap on the other end of the phone that you are up to your knees in raw sewage, he will still take two weeks to dispatch some walnut-faced thief who’ll make everything worse and charge you £800.

Maybe you fancy a tax haven? Great, you save a few quid but you end up with a bunch of other ingrates in a cesspit like Monaco. Seriously, would you rob a bank knowing you could keep the money but that you’d have to do some time? No. Well, don’t be a tax exile, then, because it’s the same thing.

Honestly, every single expat I’ve ever met is the same; hunched at a bar in a stupid shirt, at 10 in the morning, desperately trying to convince themselves that they are not alcoholics, that the barman really is their friend and that it’s only 11 hours till bedtime.

And then, when they clock your accent, they launch into a slurred tirade about Gordon Brown and the British weather and how their prawns are the size of Volkswagens. And then they ask if by any chance you’ve got a copy of The Week.

Anyone who fails to realise that this is how they’ll end up is monumentally idiotic and we’re better off without them. So go and we’ll see you back here when you need some brain surgery.

Edited November 9, 2008 by Terence.H

[MarcK]

I guess the Aussies dont even want Jeremy Clarkson --- but does he own a holiday home in South Africa???

[Terence.H]

Beat's me Marc he has always been opinionated and got in trouble for it many times in the past, that certainly won't go down well in Aus

[calibrated]

hahaha. i love clarkson. says it how it is.

[Terence.H]

Yeah me too!! and I love top gear even though I am not a car fanatic!

[calibrated]

Im going to see clarkson and hammond in sydney in february

clarksons in trouble again for his "murder a prositute" remark from last weeks episode. some people in britain have no sense of humour...

[K'moerse trek]

Terence,

There is a great one from Clarkson on South-Africa as well, maybe you can find it for us.

On Top Gear Australia: It's pathetic, I can barely watch it.

Edited November 10, 2008 by K'moerse trek

[calibrated]

Terence,

There is a great one from Clarkson on South-Africa as well, maybe you can find it for us.

On Top Gear Australia: It's pathetic, I can barely watch it.

http://www.topgear.com/content/features/st...ories/01/1.html

[Terence.H]

Thanks for the link calibrated, I not sure where these articles were being published, now I know....

[KarinaPer]

Hi Terance

That was hilarious!!!

Thanks