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January 2nd, 2008

Links from the Times and my various reactions to them

Link from the Times that made me mildly annoyed

Jeremy Clarkson: Unhand my patio heater, archbishop

Link from the Times that made me really quite cross

Matthew Parris: What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?

No-one takes Jeremy Clarkson too seriously, so his rant against the Archbishop and environmentalists caused a brief frown and then… nothing. But I found the Matthew Parris article quite disturbing. Like Methodist Dave I think the writer “should be investigated by the Police, he should be fired by The Times who should print a significant apology and retraction of these remarks and make a significant contribution to cycle advocacy.”

Update:
Matthew Parris: …an apology to the cycling community
42: Lame apology
BBC NEWS | Wales | North East Wales | Cycling fury at beheading ‘joke’
Comment is free: Parris, je ne t’aime pas

8 Comments »



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8 Responses to “Links from the Times and my various reactions to them”


  1. Sam says:

    I really hoped that the answer to Matthew Parris’s question was “Jeremy Clarkson”…

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:36 am
  2. Phill says:

    The Jeremy Clarkson article did annoy me slightly as well. I know no-one takes him too seriously, but just read some of the comments. Still, it’s probably not going to convince anyone who wasn’t already an atheist…

    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:57 am
  3. Gareth says:

    Parris’ article may be tasteless and tactless, but if you must respond to it, try not to display a sense of humour failure yourself.

    Both Parris and Clarkson employ the same shock tactics successfully, to elicit a priggish response rather than an engaged debate. It makes their targets look ridiculous.

    Don’t walk into it.

    January 3rd, 2008 at 10:51 am
  4. joe says:

    I generally think The Times is best ignored. Parris is a wind-up merchant.

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 am
  5. Rhys says:

    Ah, they’re both highly entertaining writers, whatever you make of their arguments.

    It’d be highly churlish for me to poke holes in Jeremy Clarkson’s statistics at this point, wouldn’t it. So in the best traditions of Tim Worstall, I’ll do just that.

    From Clarkson: ‘…750,000 more people went online shopping on Christmas Day than went to church’.

    From the Times on Boxing Day, which I presume is what Clarkson read over his cup of Nescafe and bowl of Shredded Wheat: ‘More than 3.5 million shoppers – 770,000 more than attended Anglican church services – racked up total online sales of around £53 million in what was retailers’ busiest Christmas Day ever.’

    Now I don’t know whether it was Clarkson himself, or a sleepy sub-editor, that mangled the statistics to remove that pesky word ‘Anglican’ from them. But it’s fairly clear that if you add on to the C of E figure people who attended Catholic services, and other assorted Protestant services, then more people went to church on Christmas Day than went online shopping. God 1, Mammon 0.

    I wonder what sources he used for his other stats?

    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
  6. Dave says:

    Rhys, I’ll take your word for the fact that Matthew Parris is normally highly entertaining as I don’t normally read the Times. But it seemed to me that he’s missed the mark on this occasion in a fairly big way.

    Gareth, my lack of engaged debate was largely due to laziness and/or tiredness, but yes, I should have been more creative. I just think that encouraging murder, even as a joke, crosses some sort of line as to what is acceptable given that attacks of the sort he advocates do happen. The whole rant is also based on a nonsensical premise as most cyclists don’t carry ‘cans of high energy drinks’ bottles as they don’t fit in a bottle rack.

    January 3rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
  7. Jason says:

    I had to laugh at the name of the person who made the first comment on the Parris article (preumably not their real name).

    Happy New Year!

    January 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
  8. jody says:

    grr

    yes, I think the ‘lynching’ idea is just slightly (!?) past the point of any kind of humour.

    I admit to being slightly biased as my husband is a cyclist (lycra clad and everything, and cycled the amateurs’ etape this year…..)

    he most definitely has a plastic drinks bottle that returns with him and is not deposited in any kind of hedgerow

    January 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm