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Clarkson Suspended by BBC
- Thread starter DelToro
- Start date
101toMR
Well-Known Member
Looks like the great man is staying.
Thank god for those stupid petitions.
And the thought of having your bollocks shaved in an abattoir as punishment for arguing over who's going to slip a Pigs throat?
Classic :-)
Thank god for those stupid petitions.
And the thought of having your bollocks shaved in an abattoir as punishment for arguing over who's going to slip a Pigs throat?
Classic :-)
101toMR said:Looks like the great man is staying.
Thank god for those stupid petitions.
And the thought of having your bollocks shaved in an abattoir as punishment for arguing over who's going to slip a Pigs throat?
Classic :-)
Much as I dislike Clarkson I was never going to leave BlueMoon because of him mate.
You worried unduly.
101toMR
Well-Known Member
chabal said:101toMR said:Looks like the great man is staying.
Thank god for those stupid petitions.
And the thought of having your bollocks shaved in an abattoir as punishment for arguing over who's going to slip a Pigs throat?
Classic :-)
Much as I dislike Clarkson I was never going to leave BlueMoon because of him mate.
You worried unduly.
Hey! If it works for you.
stonerblue
Well-Known Member
Courtesy of Dave Gorman,
Vox Political is grateful to the Internet entity calling itself Tisme’s Cares (are you male, female or what? It’s hard to tell from the title) for following up on yesterday’s article about HM Government e-petitions with a link to Dave Gorman’s show, Modern Life is Goodish, in which he discusses the same subject with more wit and incisiveness than Yr Obdt Srvt could possibly manage.
The show can be viewed online, in its entirety, here – but it won’t be available forever so here are a few appropriate moments from Mr Gorman’s monologue:
There is a government website that allows you to create an e-petition. It’s supposed to boost political engagement but personally, I have my doubts… as you can see, “e-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government”. Really? I’m not so sure that’s true. I think they’re an easy, personal way for you to pretend that you’re being listened to by the government…
If you get 100,000 signatures, your e-petition could be debated in the House of Commons. Am I the only one who finds the words “could be” leaping out at him? Not “will be” – “could be”, if they feel like it, if they’ve got the time.
When I checked the other day, there were more e-petitions that have been suggested and rejected than have ever been accepted, gone live and run their full course. So just for a bit of fun, I thought I’d show you three different petitions and we’d see what happened with them – see if you could guess which one was rejected. One of them was rejected, the other two weren’t.
One goes with “tax on foreign holidays”. Two goes with “poverty”. Three goes with “tax the rich!” Now the next stage is to write the body of your petition, and there are some guidelines… It tells you, “Keep your petition details short and to the point. You must say what action you want the government to take.”
Petition number one… has gone with this: “The government should have a tiered taxation policy depending on the number of foreign holidays a person takes in a year. If this stops people from holidaying abroad it is not our economy that suffers”. I think we’re all pretty clear on what they want the government to do there.
Petition number two… goes with this: “Poverty. Not really important? Actually it is. Poverty has been increasing imensivedely and we should do our best to eradicated it. It starts with you .at home not taking things forgranted but appriciating it.whats little for us is huge for them.so make it count”. End of petition! I don’t know what they want the government to do; I’ve not idea!
“Tax the rich” has gone with: “Tax the rich! They can afford to pay!”
There you go – three different e-petitions. You’ve seen them in all their glory. My question… is which one do you think was rejected?
I’ve misled you ever so slightly. Only one of these actually made it onto the website and went live. Two of them were rejected.
“Tax on foreign holidays” was rejected because “E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government.” Who knew that choosing what level of tax we impose on particular activities was outside the responsibility of the government? I thought that’s exactly what they did! But apparently not; that’s the reason that one has been rejected.
“Tax the rich”… has been rejected with the following reason: “It did not have a clear statement explaining what action you want the government to take.” That’s ALL it bloody had! Nothing else! It’s bloody obvious what they want you to do! That one was rejected.
“Poverty”… has gone live; it has been published. There… At any time between now and the 5th June next year, you can join Roberta, who is so far the only signatory, but if 99,999 other people sign it, the Parliamentary authorities are obliged to consider whether or not they should have a debate about whether or not we should try to solve poverty by all “appriciating” things more.
There’s no consistency about the way they run this site. This petition, for example – “Apple should open a store in Leeds” – this one was rejected, and I understand why – with good reason, obviously. Because it says, “E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government.” That makes sense.
But if that was rejected, why was this – “Open a TGI Fridays restaurant in Hull” – accepted? This was published! “Imagine the amount of tourists we are going to have in the city having recently being voted the city of culture 2017 and we can’t even offer them the sumptuous taste of a Jack Daniels burger! So come on everybody let’s get this out there and bring TGI Fridays to Hull!!!!” As far as I’m concerned, if 100,000 people signed that, they should take the bloody ‘City of Culture’ away from them!
This is basically an online wishing well… You toss your idea in and you won’t even hear a splash but you’ve had your say.
Instant, easy communication isn’t always better.
Agreed.
Vox Political is grateful to the Internet entity calling itself Tisme’s Cares (are you male, female or what? It’s hard to tell from the title) for following up on yesterday’s article about HM Government e-petitions with a link to Dave Gorman’s show, Modern Life is Goodish, in which he discusses the same subject with more wit and incisiveness than Yr Obdt Srvt could possibly manage.
The show can be viewed online, in its entirety, here – but it won’t be available forever so here are a few appropriate moments from Mr Gorman’s monologue:
There is a government website that allows you to create an e-petition. It’s supposed to boost political engagement but personally, I have my doubts… as you can see, “e-petitions are an easy, personal way for you to influence government”. Really? I’m not so sure that’s true. I think they’re an easy, personal way for you to pretend that you’re being listened to by the government…
If you get 100,000 signatures, your e-petition could be debated in the House of Commons. Am I the only one who finds the words “could be” leaping out at him? Not “will be” – “could be”, if they feel like it, if they’ve got the time.
When I checked the other day, there were more e-petitions that have been suggested and rejected than have ever been accepted, gone live and run their full course. So just for a bit of fun, I thought I’d show you three different petitions and we’d see what happened with them – see if you could guess which one was rejected. One of them was rejected, the other two weren’t.
One goes with “tax on foreign holidays”. Two goes with “poverty”. Three goes with “tax the rich!” Now the next stage is to write the body of your petition, and there are some guidelines… It tells you, “Keep your petition details short and to the point. You must say what action you want the government to take.”
Petition number one… has gone with this: “The government should have a tiered taxation policy depending on the number of foreign holidays a person takes in a year. If this stops people from holidaying abroad it is not our economy that suffers”. I think we’re all pretty clear on what they want the government to do there.
Petition number two… goes with this: “Poverty. Not really important? Actually it is. Poverty has been increasing imensivedely and we should do our best to eradicated it. It starts with you .at home not taking things forgranted but appriciating it.whats little for us is huge for them.so make it count”. End of petition! I don’t know what they want the government to do; I’ve not idea!
“Tax the rich” has gone with: “Tax the rich! They can afford to pay!”
There you go – three different e-petitions. You’ve seen them in all their glory. My question… is which one do you think was rejected?
I’ve misled you ever so slightly. Only one of these actually made it onto the website and went live. Two of them were rejected.
“Tax on foreign holidays” was rejected because “E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government.” Who knew that choosing what level of tax we impose on particular activities was outside the responsibility of the government? I thought that’s exactly what they did! But apparently not; that’s the reason that one has been rejected.
“Tax the rich”… has been rejected with the following reason: “It did not have a clear statement explaining what action you want the government to take.” That’s ALL it bloody had! Nothing else! It’s bloody obvious what they want you to do! That one was rejected.
“Poverty”… has gone live; it has been published. There… At any time between now and the 5th June next year, you can join Roberta, who is so far the only signatory, but if 99,999 other people sign it, the Parliamentary authorities are obliged to consider whether or not they should have a debate about whether or not we should try to solve poverty by all “appriciating” things more.
There’s no consistency about the way they run this site. This petition, for example – “Apple should open a store in Leeds” – this one was rejected, and I understand why – with good reason, obviously. Because it says, “E-petitions cannot be used to request action on issues that are outside the responsibility of the government.” That makes sense.
But if that was rejected, why was this – “Open a TGI Fridays restaurant in Hull” – accepted? This was published! “Imagine the amount of tourists we are going to have in the city having recently being voted the city of culture 2017 and we can’t even offer them the sumptuous taste of a Jack Daniels burger! So come on everybody let’s get this out there and bring TGI Fridays to Hull!!!!” As far as I’m concerned, if 100,000 people signed that, they should take the bloody ‘City of Culture’ away from them!
This is basically an online wishing well… You toss your idea in and you won’t even hear a splash but you’ve had your say.
Instant, easy communication isn’t always better.
Agreed.
I agree with Gorman's point regarding the futility of e-petitions in Government thinking, and in fact all petitions on any issue whether electronic or not, but he makes his point badly. The two that were rejected were rejected for common sense reasons - what he actually seemed to do was find one that was falsely accepted but instead of using that as the thrust of his argument that they were accepting TOO MANY, he spun it around as a rhetoric device and showed rejected ones in comparison to the accepted one.
Ironically, it's a rhetoric device that many politicians and especially the print media use in spades too. He took his examples and twisted them to meet his point by comparison rather than using them to support his point.
In regards to the UK Government's e-petition site, it isn't really there to effect change but instead is there to get a specific reply to a question from the relevant Government department for which you only need 10,000 signatures. If the reply doesn't satisfy and the signatures grow to 100,000 they will pass it to the relevant department for consideration.
There's a group in Parliament called the BackBench Business Committee which gives an opportunity for any backbencher to submit potential debates into the Commons. This is where e-petitions go and why it's not an automatic thing that goes straight through to the Commons. The Committee has a set amount of time per week and they can't promise that they debate everything that has possibly passed, though most e-petitions get there.
The system is one prong of influence to get your agenda on the floor of the House and not a one stop solution. That's fine, it's healthy in our democratic process to have things like this even if most of them are a bit daft.
Ironically, it's a rhetoric device that many politicians and especially the print media use in spades too. He took his examples and twisted them to meet his point by comparison rather than using them to support his point.
In regards to the UK Government's e-petition site, it isn't really there to effect change but instead is there to get a specific reply to a question from the relevant Government department for which you only need 10,000 signatures. If the reply doesn't satisfy and the signatures grow to 100,000 they will pass it to the relevant department for consideration.
There's a group in Parliament called the BackBench Business Committee which gives an opportunity for any backbencher to submit potential debates into the Commons. This is where e-petitions go and why it's not an automatic thing that goes straight through to the Commons. The Committee has a set amount of time per week and they can't promise that they debate everything that has possibly passed, though most e-petitions get there.
The system is one prong of influence to get your agenda on the floor of the House and not a one stop solution. That's fine, it's healthy in our democratic process to have things like this even if most of them are a bit daft.
101toMR
Well-Known Member
It did have some say in the Evans case though in as much as it brought pressure on any club wanting to sign him.
People are using these petitions to point at numbers and say we have xyz amount of people behind us even if the xyz are a tiny tiny minority of people.
People are using these petitions to point at numbers and say we have xyz amount of people behind us even if the xyz are a tiny tiny minority of people.
101toMR
Well-Known Member
crooky said:When I saw "Evans" mentioned above I jumped forward to thinking Chris Evans could be the new presenter...
Heheheheheheh :-)
Without Clarkson the Top Gear program wouldn't be what it was and I'd hazard a guess and say it wouldn't be any where near as successful, it's successful because it pushes the boundaries.
Eccles Blue
Well-Known Member
SWP's back said:You didn't really think that one through did you.chabal said:Damocles said:I know that this is a heavily popular show worldwide, watched by hundreds of millions of people, but Im so self important that I believe any entertainment that isn't personally to my taste should be immediately scrapped. I understand that entertainment is subjective but my tastes coincidentally happen to be correct
As a licence fee payer I do believe I have the right to express an opinion as to how my money is spent.
The BBC makes real profit from Top Gear (unlike most of its programming).
There is an argument the license fee would be more expensive without it.
But Top Gear can continue without the said personage. The BBC own the programme (having paid him millions for it).