I have used derogatory epithets in my life. The difference is, I realised when I did it that it was stupid and wrong, and I don't get paid massive sums of money to do so on tax payer funded TV.

Clarkson is a boorish right wing oaf. When he was talking about cars, he was at least entertaining, but on any other subject he hadn't a clue. He was the right wing Russell Brand.

And yes, he was racist, and in that awful, insidious fashion of those who don't think they're racist.
"it's just that nonwhite people are so clearly inferior it would be dishonest not to point it out. After all, Britain is so great, blah blah"

The worst part was, as @newtboy pointed out, he was so good at it, it felt like a caricature, and it was genuinely funny.

was in a fancy abbey in a small town in Britain last year and by surprise they were showing one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta

Taxing has no negative effects on the economy. Proven. Same with minimum wages increases.
Yes the UK needs to tax the shit out of London and the city.
The UKs problem with UKIP is due to an ageing population of racist tabloid reading dumbfucks who cry about 'their' Britain changing whilst quite enjoying cuts on hospitals, schools and jobs so long as it doesn't effect them or their lifelong pensions.

"The rich keep you fed enough that you bark at the intruders." - Some youtuber.

Yes he's a little out of his depth and he's so desperate to try and get people to understand that he's hurrying and nervous. Well, he's a comedian, he isn't used to public speaking, he knows how to make people laugh not convince them in an argument. But he's out there, putting his neck on the line when he doesn't even NEED to - because as the tabloids (controlled by who?) enjoy pointing out he's rich. At least he got rich through his ability to make people laugh, rather than tricking people into voting for him because he'd act in their best interests then selling their decisions to the highest bidder.

We are seeing politicians scrambling for ANYTHING they can to hold power and keep making money for a little longer. That anything is immigration and they're quite happy to let people convince themselves its the immigrants. Even if we are slightly overcrowded for our infrastructure in Britain, we wouldn't be if the money in the system was active and being used to build and be productive instead of sitting in the pockets of people who have everything they want and 8 figure bank balances. These people in charge keep telling us they're going to tackle all these problems, but they never do anything to close the loopholes being used by all the huge corporations who have been paying NO TAX WHATSOEVER during the times of extreme wealth and growth. Is it any wonder our countries are in a dire condition? Our tax system has been starved of hundreds of billions, possibly trillions, who really knows!? And why weren't they closed? Just look at the links between big business and and politics, the only reason we aren't all saying "what the fuck is going on?" is because they can distract people through their control over the media and their convincing oratory skill into going "it's your neighbour.. it's his fault. was he born here? why is he using your hospital?", meanwhile we lose out of BILLIONS because the post office was sold off on the sly! Only to be told next election THAT WE ARE SHORT ON OUR FUCKING BUDGET. You're ok with that happening?! Why is it ok for them to keep coming back having lost our money and asking for more, but if it was a man who came directly to our door to collect our money in exchange for services, we'd tell him to piss off? It's EASIER to blame someone who looks and speaks differently rather than the clever bastard with a gleam in his eye sitting in the pub silver tonguing his constituents.

We are not fucking short on productivity - how many people do you know that think they have a lot of spare time and freedom from work? But that productivity is not being directed appropriately, and if you don't believe that then you need to get outside and talk to people who are less fortunate than you... benefit of the doubt, maybe you just haven't had to see it. But all the money that went on bonuses could be going into improving schools, police, hospitals, public transport and roads and god knows what else. A bunch of people would go without a brand new range rover sport or yacht or champagne holiday for 30... in contrast, thousands less people would die - think of the old people dying in the cold each winter? or hospital beds and treatments for those with cancer or anything that the NHS can't afford to treat? All the freshly educated nurses and doctors thanks to our universities being given cash to improve their facilities and training.

The theory behind all this was trickle-down-wealth, the money will be distributed through society by paying those at the top a lot of money. It CLEARLY does not work, and anyone who suggests otherwise would surely be considered insane. It's not working, we see it not working, so why aren't we fixing it or getting angry and making those in charge fix it?

If Brand is advocating anarchy (and i'd like to know your argument for saying that, i could stand to be convinced), it's because he's exasperated at our inaction and wants to try and stir people to act. We're currently at the other extreme - watching it happen. People are criticising the crowd for being too into brand, too "leftist" or some nonsense. But those are the people that are having their lives drained by these leeches at the top, of course they're only going to come and cheer if someone is going to say what needs to be said. Any other night, it's just drones debating different ways to stack the odds against everyone.

Edited: Tried to make it nicer, more readable, sorry for the long post but he's really really got a great point and i can't understand why we are all ignoring what's going on. We seem to accept that big business WILL get away with not paying billions in tax like that's fine.. but it's not, we can change it, we just have to stop fucking ignoring it and hold these twats to account like Brand is trying to do. It's not like he's suggesting some wild and risky change, he's just saying STOP LETTING AND HELPING PEOPLE STEAL MONEY FROM US. They won't, and watch Farage go bright red when brand talks about his scandals and rich business partners. If they won't, we need to get rid of them. You may not like his demeanour but he is expressing democratic and egalitarian points.

Drink driving in Britain is social suicide too, for all but scumbags.

I'm guessing the BBC's coverage is pretty comparable to PBS's coverage you might see on Newhour.

What I don't get is why the private for-profit networks in Britain don't get in on the sensational fear mongering. It's got to be profitable; assuming they have their share of paranoid older conservatives.

He looks like Britain's version of an uglier, lesser-charismatic Chris Hardwick.

Erm... I have 2 mixer taps in my house that were installed by the builders who built the house to NHBC standards and last time I looked I was still in Britain. And we have a tank in the loft...

What sentiment? Cameron has hammered the poor and needy of this country, sold off the post office to his chummies at half price, raised tuition fees (thanks very much Clegg) and nearly ripped Great Britain apart. Fortunately he knew the right people to oil up and got major banks and businesses to pull out in the few days prior to the vote, scaring people into saying no.

Every single scot i've spoken to (and i speak to loads, my mum lives there) has said that they would let the north come with them if they could and they only want to leave because Westminster and the south are completely disconnected from the rest of the country. It's a different world, and the people running the system have absolutely no experience what life is like for the people that have to use it.

Even John Major came out and said that there are too many (something like 80%) rich background public schoolboys in government. Can you tell me with a straight face that you've been to places like Blackpool near where i live, had to use the buses or queue for unemployment, or had family members suffering with disabilities and/or cancer, and then tell me that you think people like Call-Me-Dave in any way represent their best interests or understand their problems, struggling day to day?

I don't want to sound aggressive, but i do have experience with things like that, and some people in this country are getting to the point of desperation but of course that kinda thing doesn't get on the national news and the majority remain oblivious. If we don't see significant democratic reform in this country, i predict a significant social uprising within a lifetime.

There was a stipulation when the Brits handed HK back to the Chinese that it remain highly autonomous for 50yrs. Does Beijing picking state approved candidates for HK not somewhat undermine this agreement?

Not that I am suggesting that the protests by the HKers is about an agreement made with Britain, just that I wonder if this is going to damage China-UK relations.

So many holes in your argument.

You're cherry picking the parts of Nazism to fit your anti-religious views. You even made the argument that Russia was dogmatically atheist, which isn't a true characterization of Russia then, either.

The simple fact of the matter is racial supremacy had what was seen as extremely scientific underpinnings with a foundation of Darwin, which then was applied to Social Darwinism, etc.

You had Nazi scientists who were going around the world literally measuring people's skulls, with the assumption that Germans had bigger brain pans, and that must explain why they're the master race.

Those ideas sure as hell weren't religious.

The simple fact of the matter is that there were secular and religious arguments against Nazism, as there also were secular and religious arguments in favor of it at the time.

It's very difficult to argue that the evil of Nazi Germany rose due to the level of dogmatic behavior within Germany. Prior to Hitler's rise, Germany was considered a Western European modernized, industrialized country, and for the time well educated, as was France and Britain. It was far more like Britain and France than it was to Russia.

An even better counterargument - who was the most modernized, secular, educated people in Southeast Asia, and therefore should have been the least likely to instigate war according to your logic? Japan, yet they became an imperial, aggressive power.

The rise of Nazi Germany is something I studied quite a bit of, and boiling it down to how dogmatic the people were is not only overly simplistic, it's not remotely historically accurate. It completely factors out the god awful mistake the Treaty of Versailles from WWI was, the common particular disdain for Jews at the time (some due to religious conflict, for Nazis it was more about race), the dependency of Germany on US loans, which dried up when the Great Depression began, the scientific trends in thought at the time, etc.

Those all converged.

And the reality is that "Muslim" countries are more likely to subject women to numerous horrors simply because more Muslim countries have not modernized their economies yet. Hey, just like every other religion. The reason we treat women well is we've had an industrialized economy far longer, and even then, the speed of it was often circumstantial. Women's rights in the US took a quantum leap forward because of women being needed for labor in WWII (same reason the Civil Rights Movement started so relatively soon after WWII as well).

I got recommended to read Atlas Shrugged by a friend of mine. That friend turned out to be a beret-wearing high-art-snob ponce, but i didn't know it at the time.

I managed to finish it and whilst there were reasonable ideas in there that i think in some way we have paralleled in reality - whilst i find that most of her characters are sociopathic to some degree, i can very much sympathise with the idea of being led by the least capable in society who abuse the system of power that they shape and build to implement bad ideas badly.

I like the idea that the world would grind to a halt if the morons in charge did not have the ordinary, hard working people to keep things afloat... but that's about all i like about it. And i think we genuinely can see it happening in the world today in a less exaggerated fashion - the recent recession clearly demonstrated that the people in charge of money and property do not understand what they're doing and ignored the warning signs for years. Furthermore, our feckless leaders have done nothing about it, property bubbles continue to grow and bonuses for the upper echelons are still outlandish whilst the lower workers are struggling to get by in the recession. And then the expenses scandal of the MPs in Britain literally stealing money from the public pocket to have their moats cleaned (that actually happened) and such. Yesterday the watchdog looking into the scandal has decided that the investigation will take place in secret from the public and punishments will also be kept secret. Et voila, two clear instances of those in charge having no clue and no moral compass swept under the rug and forgotten about.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand is a very small minded individual who thinks that everyone in the world must think like she does. That is the only reason i can think of for the approximately 30 pages i read about the female lead character's personal sexual obsession with being taken aggressively by a man and made to feel defiled and used, and how all women feel that and all men wish to dominate and use a woman in turn.

But i think she got it spot on about how being led by those least capable morons will bring the world to its knees, and it won't require the hard workers to quit either. It just requires them to let it happen. And there's no little paradise to run off to, there's just Earth.

@artician - that's exactly it. The characters have no human empathy in Atlas Shrugged. I don't understand why it has to be all or nothing for most people - all conservative or all liberal. Why not the best of both? It IS possible to be ethical, productive and innovative at the same time.

Sadly HK is a totally different deal altogether. When Britain returned it to China, people there were used to a certain way of life and they were given a pretty unique status as being semi-separate to China but still part of it. They're currently trying to take away the right for people in HK to choose their elected official (or perhaps refine the choice to China-favourables).

The people there are very sensitive to getting trampled on. They're so different and separate in many ways to mainland China... i don't see how the Chinese can force their mainland rule onto HK without a complete uprising on their hands. Imagine taking the vote away in a western country.

The EDL (represented here by the driver) certainly seem to be pretty horrible shits.

However my own liberal live-and-let-live inclinations definitely face a problem when confronted with radical Islam and other toxic memes.

How does such a liberal philosophy deal with an opposing philosophy which will fundamentally not live-and-let-live?

It's the pacifist versus the warrior, and moral victories are a bit useless when they are posthumous.

Of course none of this is helped by the moneyfuckers led by the United States and Great Britain, who are more than happy with this fire while they are selling fuel and firefighting equipment.


Oh look a honking cat! Heeheehee!

Which America are you talking about? It may "legally" be allowed, but anyone doing anything as simple as spit on the ol' stars and stripes would get you lynched (figuratively in some areas, literally in others). It's not just nationalism, it's worship and it's everywhere.

The only time you see the Australian flag come out everywhere in Australia is during Australia Day (aka Strayaday) or some world sporting/competition event, and you'll find that pretty typical of other countries. Not even Britain (who has/had an actual empire) is obsessive with their flag like America.

America, like your flag, respect your flag, just tone it down a bit. K?