Peter Hitchens writes:
Am I supposed to
rush to the aid of Jeremy Clarkson, cruelly suspended by the left-wing
politically correct BBC after a row about steak and chips?
After all, the BBC is left-wing, and it is politically correct to a fault, we are all (save vegetarians and vegans, of course) in favour of steak and chips, and Mr Clarkson is….well, what is he, exactly?
For many people, he is the embodiment of what they think of as ‘right-wing’.
He is full of machismo, he is noisily patriotic in a sort of ‘we won the war’ Dambusters way, he smokes, he is rude about foreigners and he goes on and on about cars and is (I believe ) responsible for the widespread, ineradicable belief that cyclists do not pay ‘road tax’ – a belief which encourages many drivers to treat cyclists as second-class citizens.
He was, I am told, invited to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. He is said to be a friend of David Cameron.
Well, I regard him and his opinions as a grave handicap to conservatism.
I have never seen any logical reason why roads, a vast nationalised state monopoly paid for out of heavy taxation, should appeal to free market fanatics. Nor can I quite see why motor cars themselves should appeal to this sector of society.
Mass-produced cars are barely profitable, the companies that make them often receive open or disguised state support.
They spend most of their lives depreciating expensively at roadsides or in car parks, their costly and elaborate engines sitting idle for at least 22 hours out of every 24. It's hard to think of a better example of inefficient use of capital.
They also make us utterly dependent for our main fuel on some of the most unpleasant and fanatical regimes on the planet, who get rich and powerful thanks to our car obsession.
I suspect that these wasteful, ugly machines appeal to individualistic ‘libertarians’ because they enable them to express what they call their personalities, allowing them to be noisier, faster, more dangerous and more showy than they could be if they were not sitting in the midst of a ton of steel, glass and rubber, protected from the world by heavy locked doors, airbags, antilock-brakes, side-impact-protection and seat belts.
Actually cars and roads destroy settled societies, wreck landscapes, divide and distort cities, by subjecting non-drivers to the needs of cars and abolishing the walkable, human spaces which existed before.
Once car ownership is general, it becomes obligatory.
Whatever this is, it is not conservative, any more than expressing contempt for other particular societies is conservative.
If you respect your own culture, and expect to be left alone to enjoy it, then the least you can do is to show the same favour to other cultures.
Patriotism doesn't consist of expressing contempt for other nations.
I know nothing about Mr Clarkson’s steak and chips incident, and I suppose we all have moments when we get angrily frustrated at the end of a long, hard day when a hoped-for pleasure is denied us.
I don’t really care whether Top Gear is transmitted or not.
But I really cannot see this as the liberal PC BBC versus the Free Spirit of the Right, Jeremy Clarkson.
If he is right-wing, then I am not.
After all, the BBC is left-wing, and it is politically correct to a fault, we are all (save vegetarians and vegans, of course) in favour of steak and chips, and Mr Clarkson is….well, what is he, exactly?
For many people, he is the embodiment of what they think of as ‘right-wing’.
He is full of machismo, he is noisily patriotic in a sort of ‘we won the war’ Dambusters way, he smokes, he is rude about foreigners and he goes on and on about cars and is (I believe ) responsible for the widespread, ineradicable belief that cyclists do not pay ‘road tax’ – a belief which encourages many drivers to treat cyclists as second-class citizens.
He was, I am told, invited to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. He is said to be a friend of David Cameron.
Well, I regard him and his opinions as a grave handicap to conservatism.
I have never seen any logical reason why roads, a vast nationalised state monopoly paid for out of heavy taxation, should appeal to free market fanatics. Nor can I quite see why motor cars themselves should appeal to this sector of society.
Mass-produced cars are barely profitable, the companies that make them often receive open or disguised state support.
They spend most of their lives depreciating expensively at roadsides or in car parks, their costly and elaborate engines sitting idle for at least 22 hours out of every 24. It's hard to think of a better example of inefficient use of capital.
They also make us utterly dependent for our main fuel on some of the most unpleasant and fanatical regimes on the planet, who get rich and powerful thanks to our car obsession.
I suspect that these wasteful, ugly machines appeal to individualistic ‘libertarians’ because they enable them to express what they call their personalities, allowing them to be noisier, faster, more dangerous and more showy than they could be if they were not sitting in the midst of a ton of steel, glass and rubber, protected from the world by heavy locked doors, airbags, antilock-brakes, side-impact-protection and seat belts.
Actually cars and roads destroy settled societies, wreck landscapes, divide and distort cities, by subjecting non-drivers to the needs of cars and abolishing the walkable, human spaces which existed before.
Once car ownership is general, it becomes obligatory.
Whatever this is, it is not conservative, any more than expressing contempt for other particular societies is conservative.
If you respect your own culture, and expect to be left alone to enjoy it, then the least you can do is to show the same favour to other cultures.
Patriotism doesn't consist of expressing contempt for other nations.
I know nothing about Mr Clarkson’s steak and chips incident, and I suppose we all have moments when we get angrily frustrated at the end of a long, hard day when a hoped-for pleasure is denied us.
I don’t really care whether Top Gear is transmitted or not.
But I really cannot see this as the liberal PC BBC versus the Free Spirit of the Right, Jeremy Clarkson.
If he is right-wing, then I am not.
Nigel Farage-who we now see is the only politician who believes in British jobs for British workers-is right on this. The fact the BBC is hopelessly Leftwing and politically correct, as Peter says, shouldnt cause us to Jeremy Clarkson's side in this.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the BBC is run by the kind of people who ran Labour's Rotherham council and offered girls (who complained about Pakistani networks abusing white kids) lessons in Urdu.
You can imagine the BBC doing that (it now even has Affirmative Action "quotas" for ethnic minority staff).
Faced with the BBC, some of us on the Right would take anyone's side against them. We shouldn't.