Listening to Radio 2 today listening to Jeremy Vine.
They'd trailed the fact that Clarkson would be on today, discussing the trip up the mountain in the new defender.
I thought this should be fun, what I wasn't expecting was the single most unreasonable chap Vine has ever managed to find.
This guy was plain rude and liked the sound of his own voice even more than Jeremy Vine does.
Anyone else hear it, even Clarkson, who's used to ramblers (of whom he refers to as members of the new Communist party:-)) was a little lost for words.
Probably, in real life, a most excellent chap, but in this interview he did more to put people off ever listening to environ MENTALISTS ever again .. ;)
The programme is on BBC Radio 2 website, Jeremy Vine, Tuesday, about 30+ minutes into it .. Well worth a listen to.
Brilliant - Clarkson is a bit of a pillock at times (he doesn't like motorbikes) but 'George' did appear to be a complete loony and showed up the ramblers for the kill-joys they are.
On or around Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:20:17 +0000 (UTC), "Alan Mudd" enlightened us thusly:
George wossisface did come over as a complete tit, I have to say. Clarkson made the point that the mountain in question is private land, and as such, I daresay they did nothing illegal, unless it happens to be an SSSI or something.
Trouble is, I actually agree in principle with a lot of what the environmentalists are saying, except that they say it in such an extreme, biassed and generally stupid way that the majority will dismiss them as idiots. The bloke in question hasn't done anything IMHO to further his cause, he just comes over as a rude pillock who's not listen and who results to personal insults to try and make his point.
And it's all very well to spout about fuel efficiency and fossil fuels and so forth, but the plain fact is that if you banned the use of fossil fuels in cars and lorries today, society as we know it would collapse overnight and doubtless about half the world population or more would soon be dead from one cause or another. The problem is, as environmentalists point out, huge, but as such it takes a huge investment of time, effort and money to solve. You can't do it by spouting on about wind power, fuel-cell cars and other crap, because none of these alternatives, all of which are valid to a point, are anything like large enough scale to solve the problem. If you covered this country with windmills, thereby buggering the fragile environments on scottish mountains pretty comprehensively, you'd still not reliable generate enough power to allow removal of the existing fossil and nuclear power generation systems.
There was a website I found a bit back, which discussed the possibility of converting the US road transport entirely to Hydrogen. disregarding the amount of fresh water you'd have to supply to crack into H and O, to produce enough electricity to electrolyse the water would at the time have required something 3000 sq. miles of solar panels, wind generators covering 2 medium-sized states, or one largeish nuclear power station.
George Monbiot - mental environist, writer and columnist for which national newspaper? No prizes, it's the ...
GRAUNIAD!!!
Nuff said. In any debate, manners are important, and letting your opponent say his piece is part of the game - hence the need for Dimbleby on Question Time. Mongliot just made a couple of cheap c*ck jokes and then shouted Clarkson down (not an easy thing to do) time after time. In my book, the guy lost the argument there and then. And Jeremy Vine was a lousy referee.
The man, who is an outstanding self publicist, is undoubtedly nearly a lunatic. The border between genius and lunacy is pretty insecure and George is obviously just the wrong side of it. Perhaps he can't help it because he had cerebral malaria at some stage in his life. Then again I don't know him personally so maybe he has always been a loudmouthed opinionated pain in the arse who adds two and two to make half a dozen.
A very sencible set of comments Austin in your posting. I also agree, that I'm all for the principles of 'greens' and 'environmentalists', but they are almost without exception, a load of prats.
Unfortunatly they are spoiling the quality of life for so many. I'm now a retired green laner, however I can remember when I was 19 or 20 riding down many green lanes. I did not know what a BOAT was other than for floating on the water at that time but there was no real damage done and no anti-folk about.
fossil and
Also at the same time (when I was 17- 24) I worked in the nuclear industry and it was, and still is, one of the safest industries to work in. Nuclear power is the cleanest fuel and is what drives all solar panels and wind generators, if you think about it!
But driving a 'car of the year', with it's petrol and electric motors is what these folk want, as the elecrtric motor does not produce polution like our Landys do. But they forget that moving two motors about, increases the weight and hence the fuel used. It also generates more polution to charge their 'clean' battery, remember output from a battery is always less then the input. The car will also cause more polution to manufacture.
Absolutely! I still think nuclear fission is, at the moment, the overall best power source available to us, with the only real problem the used fuel pellets.
As for wind farms... on a small scale I think they're useful, but large-scale... have the environmentalists not considered wind patterns? What happens if we take too much energy out of the major wind channels? Same with wave power - what happens if we take too much power out of the gulf stream?
Not quite right. The battery is charged when braking (and thus assists the slow down reducing wear on the breaks) and also when the petrol engine is cruising i.e. running at its most efficient. When the petrol engine is pulling hard, especially at start off and is running at its most inefficient the electric motors assist. Hence the overall energy consumption is diminished. There is no external charging of batteries required AIUI.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.