Thread: Why Britain is now a Third World country

Originally Posted by The Gentleman Scamp

England is an alright place to live if your earn shitloads of money.

Would you rather earn and live on the minimum wage in the UK (equiv 372 baht per hour from Oct 2008) or Thailand (average 175 baht per DAY from June 2008)?

Agreed. He's essentially a comedy writer. A quirky social commentator with a flair for humor.

It's a completely different world poking fun at people -- versus actually trying to form a consensus, convince people of ideas they're opposed to, or assuring people you have their best interests at heart.

He doesnt want to be PM as he can't afford the pay cut.

Jeremy Clarkson's 48 best quotes





Jeremy Clarkson is 48 today



11 April 2008

He’s been attacked with a custard pie, damaged his back powersliding a V8 and even has a Facebook group who want him as Prime Minister – Top Gear host and motoring megamouth Jeremy Clarkson turns 48 today. Vijay Pattni looks at the 48 greatest ever quotes of the UK’s most outspoken motoring expert.
(We’d just like to mention Mr Clarkson’s views and opinions in no way represent those of Auto Trader…)
1. [On the Enzo Ferrari] “I rang up Jay Kay, who’s got one, and said: “Can we borrow yours?” and he said, “Yeah, if I can borrow your daughter, because it amounts to the same thing.”
2. [On the Mercedes CLS55 AMG] “It sounds like Barry White eating wasps.”
3. “That [Pagani] Zonda, really! It’s like a lion in orange dungarees. Kind of fierce, but ridiculous all at the same time.”
4. “Speed has never killed anyone, suddenly becoming stationary... that’s what gets you.”
5. [On the Porsche Cayman S] “There are many things I’d rather be doing than driving it, including waiting for Bernard Manning to come off stage in a sweaty nightclub, and then licking his back clean.”
6. “Owning a TVR in the past was like owning a bear. I mean it was great, until it pulled your head off, which it would.”
7. [On the Alfa Romeo Brera] “Think of it as Angelina Jolie. You’ve heard she’s mad and eats nothing but wallpaper paste. But you would, wouldn’t you?”
8. [On paddle shift automatic gearboxes] “The thing is, it’s a gearbox, okay? It has one job to do! One job! Pull the lever… ‘Am I a pencil? Am I a cauliflower? Am I a nuclear power station – I’m a gearbox! Oh, heavens, I’m gonna swap some cogs around!’”
9. “The Ferrari 355 is like a quail’s egg dipped in celery salt and served in Julia Roberts’ belly button.”
10. [On the Porsche Boxster] “It couldn't pull a greased stick out of a pig’s bottom.”
11. [On the Enzo Ferrari] “Ferrari is so pleased with it they’ve named it after the founder of the company. They call it the Enzo. That’d be the same as Lotus calling their next car... ‘The Colin.’”
12. [On the Ford GT40] “Was this the greatest hypercar of them all? Well, that’s a question I’ve never really been able to answer, because the GT40 is 40 inches tall... and I'm not.”
13. [On the TVR Tuscan 2] “It’s supposed to be easier to live with, and easier to drive... so has it worked? Ohh... Oh, my God. No... no... no, no, no. No. No. No, it hasn’t.”
14. [On the TVR Tuscan 2] “You see, my wife loves this car. She loves the noise and the vibrations and the sense of danger and the way that when you over-rev it, the whole dash lights up like a baboon’s backside. Richard Hammond on the other hand, he pretty much hates it. He says it’s too difficult and too complicated and that all the stitching in here looks like the kind of stitching you find when someone’s tried to mend their own shoes.”
15. [On the Lotus Exige] “To get an idea of just how spartan this thing is, you just have to look through the rear window. Back there you’ve got chicken wire, bacofoil and tupperware. It’s kind of like peering into one of your grannies’ old kitchen cabinets.”
16. “Racing cars which have been converted for road use never really work. It’s like making a hardcore adult film, and then editing it so that it can be shown in British hotels. You’d just end up with a sort of half hour close up of some bloke’s sweaty face.”
17. “The highlight of my childhood – it’s the Ladybird Book of Motorcars from 1963, and as you would imagine it’s full of rubbish really. Just endless boring grey shapes, until you get to page 40, where you find the Maserati 3500 GT. Now this for me, when I was little, was kind of like Jordan and Cameron Diaz. In a bath together. With a Lightning jet fighter. And lots of jelly.”
18. [Announcing the Top Gear Awards in December 2005] “Now the best gas guzzler of the year. And the nominations are: the Range Rover Sport which achieved eight miles to the gallon; the Bugatti Veyron which achieved four miles to the gallon; and Hemel Hempstead. That actually used up 60 million gallons of fuel and didn’t move an inch.
19. [When driving the Mercedes SLR McLaren through a tunnel] “When they debate as to what the sound of the SLR engine was akin to, the British engineers from McLaren said it sounded like a Spitfire. But the German engineers from Mercedes said ‘Nein! Nein! Sounds like a Messerschmitt!’ They were both wrong. It sounds like the God of Thunder, gargling with nails.”
20. [On the Corvette Z06] “As something to live with every day, I’d rather have bird flu.”
21. [While playing the video game Gran Turismo] “Aston Martin DB9 – that’s not a racecar, that’s pornography.”
22. “If you were to buy a [BMW] 6-series, I recommend you select reverse when leaving friends’ houses so they don’t see its backside.”
23. “There are signs directing you away from Birmingham but nothing enticing you in.”
24. [On Detroit] “God may have created the world in six days, but while he was resting on the seventh, Beelzebub popped up and did this place.”
25. [On the Porsche Cayenne] “I’ve seen gangrenous wounds better looking than this!”
26. “A turbo: exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens and you go faster.”
27. “In the olden days I always got the impression that TVR built a car, put it on sale, and then found out how it handled – usually when one of their customers wrote to the factory complaining about how dead he was.”
28. “I’d like to consider Ferrari as a scaled down version of God.”
29. “The Caterham may only have 250bhp, but you have to remember that it weighs about the same... as a J-cloth.”
30. “Telling people at a dinner party you drive a Nissan Almera is like telling them you’ve got the ebola virus and you’re about to sneeze.”
31. “The old Aston Martin DB7 was just a Jag in drag. It was an XJ-S in a party frock. This (the Aston-Martin DB-9) is completely different.”
32. “I’d rather go to work on my hands and knees than drive there in a Ford Galaxy. Whoever designed the Ford Galaxy upholstery had a cauliflower fixation. I would rather have a vasectomy than buy a Ford Galaxy.”
33. [On cars at a Max Power show) “Most of these cars will do 0-60 once....and then they’ll blow up.”
34. “What did the Morris Marina compete against? Walking? The bus?
35. “Whenever I’m suffering from insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I’m straight off.”
36. “Usually, a Range Rover would be beaten away from the lights by a diesel powered wheelbarrow.”
37. [On the Renault Clio V6] “I think the problem is that it’s French. It’s a surrendermonkey.”
38. “It costs Volkswagen £200 pounds to buy a set of four fuel injectors for the Golf diesel. Kia could probably make a couple of cars for that.”
39. [On Segways] “They’re made in America, of course, so fat Yanks can go to the fridge without expending any energy.”
40. [On a Chevrolet Corvette] “The Americans lecture the world on democracy and then won’t let me turn the traction control off!”
41. [On the Koenigsegg CCX] “I think Koenigsegg is Swedish for: Oh no, my head has just exploded!”
42. “If you have any thoughts or opinions on what you’ve seen in the last ten weeks, do please keep them to yourselves.”
43. “Biathletes need to eat 6,000 calories a day: six thousand! That’s the equivalent of two pounds of butter, 70 slices of bread, 112 eggs, 86 tabs of yogurts, 28 potatoes, 117 biscuits and 21 Twix bars. On that basis, I could be an Olympic biathlete!”
44. “This is a Renault Espace, probably the best of the people carriers. Not that that’s much to shout about. That’s like saying ‘Oh good, I’ve got syphilis, the best of the sexually transmitted diseases!’”
45. “Koenigsegg are saying that the CCX is more comfortable. More comfortable than what... being stabbed?”
46. “I’m sorry, but having an Aston Martin DB9 on the drive and not driving it is a bit like having Keira Knightley in your bed and sleeping on the couch. If you’ve got even half a scrotum it’s not going to happen.”
47. “The air conditioning in Lamborghinis used to be an asthmatic sitting in the dashboard blowing at you through a straw.”
48. “I don’t understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?”

He thrives on having a go at just about anything and anybody. Whilst I don't agree with what he says I do find him entertaining.

“Whenever I’m suffering from insomnia, I just look at a picture of a Toyota Camry and I’m straight off.”

LoL.

Originally Posted by jandajoy

48. “I don’t understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?”

I like this one.

He makes his money writing controversial pieces like this that get printed and posted on the internet all around the world. It's hardly even controversial outside of the tabloid reading market, most sensible people can see it for exactly what it is and dismiss it accordingly.

Originally Posted by jandajoy

Originally Posted by jandajoy

48. “I don’t understand bus lanes. Why do poor people have to get to places quicker than I do?”

I like this one.

Yeah.....but the answer is because they probably work for a living..

^^ yes, but he does come out with some amusing one liners sometimes.

Don't knock the UK.... it's the only place you'll have to go when your Thailand Option Runs out on you.

Originally Posted by Itchy

it's the only place you'll have to go when your Thailand Option Runs out on you.

Errr. No, not really.

Originally Posted by melvbot

Think he lives in Chipping Norton.

He do! Dat close to my place?

Originally Posted by Gerbil

Why Britain is now a Third World country (From Jeremy Clarkson)

As with all satire, there is much truth.

Originally Posted by Itchy

Don't knock the UK.... it's the only place you'll have to go when your Thailand Option Runs out on you.

I'd have to exhaust the Mogadishu, Peshwar and Pyongyang options first.

I think its somewhere in the Cotswolds, I used to drive through there and someone with me said he had a house there. CN the only place I know there.

Clarkson has been a lightening rod for many Brits who came to realise that Blair's NuLabour vision for Britain was no more than a tarting up of the welfare state in glad rags of spurious multiculturalism, political correctness and a naive belief that government is responsible for one's longevity.

He's good at it and generally hits the mark although reading a collection of his works can diminish one's appetite for his take on satire which of course is what he is all about.

Typically, a few doltish posters here have yet again missed the point.

The British addiction to the welfare state and its benefits is the country's undoing but, like communism, the culture will inevitably die and hopefully the current financial hiatus will be its knell.

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by melvbot

Think he lives in Chipping Norton.

He do! Dat close to my place?

He splits his time between there and the Isle of man.

Originally Posted by Gerbil

(From Jeremy Clarkson)


BRITAIN is a rich and civilised country with many trains, a rule of law, benefits for the needy and much public transport.



Unfortunately, none of it actually works any more. Not the weather. Not the Government. Not even our useless national football teams. And it gets worse.

Want a passport? I did recently and it took three trips to London before they finally decided what forms I actually needed.


Small wonder half of Somalia has simply moved here without bothering to apply.

Mind you, I bet Mr Njomo is now wondering if it was worth the effort.

You phone a bank to get some trivial detail about your account and after half a day you finally get through to a human who slams the phone down, and calls the police, because you call him a dingleberry.


They are repairing a bridge on the A40 into London. Work started in March 2007 and will not end until February 2009. That’s nearly two years. You could mend a solar system in less time than that.


Three months ago, I ordered a new sofa from Spain. And despite the fact that everyone over there has many cows to stab and many donkeys to hurl from various tower blocks, it was here in a fortnight.


But I can’t use it yet because the cushions are being made in Britain. And they haven’t arrived.

How can this be? Even I could make a cushion in three months and I drive a sewing machine like I drive a car. Badly, and with a lot of shouting.


I can only assume the people at the cushion factory are so busy ensuring their carbon footprint is low and their jackets’ visibility is high that there’s simply no time left in the day to actually make any soft furnishings.


Meanwhile, the roads are jammed up with white vans doing a million miles an hour. But despite this, they never actually get to your house.


Seriously. When was the last time someone arrived when they said they would. It never happens. And we accept this is normal.


Same as we accept late trains, jammed roads, useless banks, a baffling tax system and schools where the kids have to be fat to prevent the knife wounds from reaching any major organs.


A couple of weeks ago, I landed at Heathrow and had to sit on the apron for half an hour because the girl who switches on the parking aids for the pilot had not turned up.


Then, a few days later, we sat on the Tarmac for two solid hours, unable to take off because there was a thunderstorm over north London. So what?


The next day, I landed in Vietnam in the middle of a fully fledged village-killing typhoon.


No fuss. No drama. And only a tiny bit of wee came out as we landed in the sort of raging torrent that you normally only find in The Bible.


In the following week or so, I took eight flights in Vietnam and Cambodia. Every single one arrived ahead of schedule. Every single one was met, immediately, with steps, fore and aft, and on every single occasion our bags beat us into the terminal.

And we think they’re living in the Third World. There’s more. If I wanted a suit making here, it would take eight weeks and cost £3,000. Over there, I had one run up overnight, for £60.


And when I spoke to the girl in the shop about how she copes with rising fuel bills, she explained that to keep her moped topped up, she’s now working 14 hours a day, 28 days a month. For £600 a year.


Here, people are dealing with the credit crunch by saving money. Cutting corners and cutting their own hair.


There, they are dealing with rising prices by working harder. The Dunkirk Spirit, it seems, has emigrated to Da Nang.


In Saigon, I needed a doctor for a savage bout of mouth ulcers caused by winning a chilli-eating competition with my son.


“This’ll be good,” I muttered darkly to my wife, expecting a wizard to come through the door with a saw. But it was good. Within 20 minutes, I was visited by a doctor and a nurse who got the local chemist to bike over the medication. All for £32.


And she explained on the way out that by far the best way of never getting mouth ulcers is to eat a guava fruit every day.


I’ve suffered for 40 years in the First World. Ten minutes in Saigon and I have a cure for life.


The level of service you get in Indochina is genuinely incredible.


At one hotel, reachable only by boat, my daughter lost Flat Toy, her soft dog. We checked out, with her in floods of tears, and set sail for the mainland.


And when we arrived we found the chambermaid, having come over in a speedboat, waiting with Flat Toy.


The next day, another hotel’s laundry ruined the same daughter’s new shirt. Did we get an apology? A denial? Nope. They simply went to the market and bought her a new one.


When you spend some time over there, in what is fast becoming the workshop of the world, you begin to realise that we, in the West, haven’t got a hope in hell. They hustle and they bustle while we get fat and whinge.

For too long we’ve sat in our ivory towers buying sofas on the never-never and cars on credit.


And imagining that if we don’t bother turning on the airport parking lights all will be well so long as we are wearing our hi-viz jackets.


It’s been the same story in government. They’ve squandered the proceeds from the good times on idiotic, unnecessary and extremely expensive schemes to reduce global warming. Gordon Brown even sold off most of our gold reserves when prices were at rock bottom. Sitting in a Jacuzzi of cash, it was almost like he didn’t care.


But he will do soon. We all will. Because the world is a see-saw and it is inevitable that we shall sink into the pit of poverty as fast as the Far East rises.


For us, not having a plasma television is the benchmark of poverty. For them, it’s not having a pig. But soon, mark my words, it’ll be the other way round.


The London Olympic Games will be the first major example of this. They will be healthy and safe and environmentally friendly.


But compared to what the Chinese managed, they will also be utter crap.

Cheers for that post (or Rant) but it's the best read I have had for a while and made me laugh!
Despite the fuc.ing moans I have about this place, it reminds me why I left the "good old UK!"
Last time I went back, (see my old lady and kids from a previous marital disaster - I honestly couldn't wait to get on the plane back out - February, snowing, arrivend Manchester, needed to get to Newcastle, no cash, only a credi card, and the pinheads had changed the system...you needed to enter a PIN no. to use your card...boy were the railway jobsworth bastards helpful!)
Then a 20 minute taxi cost me nearly 2000 Baht....and the ammount of Eastern Europeans..we (my son..half Thai came with me) took a train from Manchester to Newcastle, kept asking me, Daddy...are they speaking English? The whole carriage was full of fucki_+ Serbs or whatever, on their cellphones.
Thank god am not stuck back there.

Originally Posted by Missismiggins

Cheers for that post (or Rant)

You're welcome but you didn't need to quote the whole fukn thing.

Why not? wasn't it worth a second read?

Originally Posted by Gerbil

Why Britain is now a Third World country

I'm surprised it came Third.

Seemed familiar on the second reading...