Just because he happily plays the prat doesn't mean that he is always wrong. If you can extract the tongue-in-cheek crap that he most often spouts, you will find that he can be quite a good serious Journalist. Away from Top Gear he has a very good record with documentary's and books on Engineering, History and The Services. His Engineering journalistic work has resulted in his being awarded Honorary Doctorates. Hardly someone who should always be ignored on principle.
Yes, he can be. BUT He can also be very funny, (a worthy attribute) and very entertaining. Even when he is being a twat, (And I agree that's most of the time ) he's mocking the Political Correctness Codes, so I just have to enjoy. I believe nearly one million people signed the on-line petition to have him reinstated to Top Gear, so I'm not alone.
For me, he's one of the funniest guys on TV. He has me in tears sometimes with his un PC comments and put downs. Top Gear has died a death since Clarkson, Hammond and May left. Get them back BBC!
It's going to be weird and quite dangerous when electric cars are the norm, I bet there'll be a large and permanent spike in traffic fatalities on pedestrians who didn't hear the car or who didn't judge the distance right. People who live next to main roads will be onto a winner though in terms of sound pollution anyway.
I just think there'll maybe no real difference in the overall number of fatalities when cars are all electric. Humans are quite good at adapting. The difference will be the cause of deaths. More pedestrians knocked down maybe, less fatalities from burns, etc. Anyone getting knocked over from wearing earphones and not paying attention are just Darwinists anyway. Nature's way of reducing stupidity in the gene pool.
Your last paragraph could refer to kids though, the most vulnerable and the least likely to pay attention. When the time comes that all cars are electric, kids are going to have to be drilled to **** about road safety and judging by the fact the stupid twats are still playing chicken I don't think they take it as seriously as they should. Having silent missiles zipping about near to pedestrians will certainly be more dangerous than ones that loudly announce their presence.
Wonder if they've mentioned this idea to the chancellor. In 2012 , tax and duty from fuel amounted to about £38 billion (7% of tax revenue). That's a big paycut for the treasury, add on corporation tax from the petrol companies, and income tax from employees no longer needed throughout the oil/petrol industry -- at a time when 10 new power stations need to be funded - and our national debt will probably still not be cleared. Watch out for a different electricity price from the charging points - loaded with ''electricity duty''
In this interconnected World we live in, changes usually have far reaching side effects. In addition to the one you mention here in The UK, most other countries will be going along the same path. So the demand for Oil will drop. Many countries will fall into the poverty well. Think what happened recently when the price of oil dropped from over $100 a barrel to around $40. Some South American and African countries face a huge drop in income. Even Saudi Arabia had to go in for some belt tightening. The Lady up North even stopped wittering on about squeezing The Oil Companies. I suspect that there will be drop in Arms Sales to The Middle East, so there's a plus. In time everything will find it's level, but this won't be a win-win no cost to humanity solution.
Maybe we'll also have to find some foreign aid to send to Saudi, UAE etc !! Well if I'm still here then, I won't have to worry about the situation for long.
Sunderland might be going to Wembley again by then, by train so it won't affect us . . . . I am a berk hehe.
With a bit of luck our Celtic Cousins will have had an Independence Referendum that said Yes by then, in which case the first stopping off point for any cash we might have left will be Edinburgh. HOWEVER, as your earlier posting highlighted, we may be a bit pushed ourselves.
Wind and tidal power sound great in theory but they are a variable and not a constant. Things are and will get better but I think Hybrid cars should be given a chance to run their course. Why dont they ban planes? Apparently our skies are almost at saturation point (this is b*llocks by the way) so they have to be one of the biggest polluters.
Isn't it odd how there are currently more people than ever reaching the age when HM sends them a birthday card. A higher percentage of the population is living to over 100 year. I don't doubt that people are suffering, but I do doubt that it's got worse over the years. Getting rid of coal fires made a massive difference to air quality. I see that bit of legislation being a significant factor in achieving this. I don't see this latest idea making such a difference. No that this can be an excuse to do nothing. Of course here in Sunderland it's easy to underestimate the problem. The sea breezes might be unwelcome on occasions, but they do clear away polluting air.
You can google the scientific facts easily enough regarding vehicle related deaths/illness directly related to pollution. Regarding planes, I would certainly like to see the number of journeys massively reduced.. They certainly are massive polluters..
This thread has interested me enough to delve into the situation before motor cars became common. Then most local transport was done by horses. Horses produce between 15 and 30 pounds of manure daily. In New York they were clearing over 1200 tons of the stuff a day from the streets. No doubt a similar amount was moved from stables. London, then the biggest city in the World, will have had even more. Including disposal, what was the effect? For a start a huge stink. Flies. Carcasses regularly left rotting. Then the 'accidents'. Horses, as anyone who has ridden one will know, can be awkward sods. Run-aways were common enough, and if a person meets a horse a full gallop there can only be one winner. Not many survived being run over by carriages either. Less serious were the minor accidents like being trodden on, but in the unhygienic streets even this could be fatal. The banana skin, much loved by Mr Chaplin, was just a polite way of describing the effects of slipping on the manure. The solution was a call for The Horseless Carriage to be developed. As the motor car, or the bus and lorry, became more common, so public health improved. The car was not perfect of course, but it has probably saved many more lives than it has taken by replacing the horse.
China India and Russia are the biggest polluters in the world, unless they get their act together, any measures we make will only hurt our economy to the benefit of those countries,then there are all the volcanoes spewing out massive amounts of pollutants ?
Earlier in this thread the term 'Climate Change Denier' was used. While I don't doubt that human activity is accelerating global warming, I'm not at all convinced that this is the only cause. Geologically speaking the Planet is still exiting from an Ice Age and has been for 2.5 million years. During that period there have been swings in the temperature due to changes in the Earth's orbit, geological factors and changes in solar output. The earliest record of this being noticed (as far as I've discovered) goes back to the mid seventeen hundreds, BEFORE The Industrial Revolution, when a Swiss Geographer noted from the distribution of large rocks that Glaciers in Alpine valley's had extended much further in the past. In other words the glaciers were shrinking. There have also been 'mini ice ages' in recorded history. Dickens writes graphically of the cold winters and The Thames being frozen over for weeks on end. This also occurred in the middle ages when fairs were held on the frozen Thames. All of this makes me wonder if humanity isn't trying to turn back the tide, Canute style. A look at the coast line will show that places where Roman fleets once landed are now six miles inland. Other villages from those times are under forty feet of water. We live on an ever changing Planet and any attempt to freeze these changes to any one point in time are, in my view, doomed to failure. However, stopping the dumping of millions of tons of pollutants into our atmosphere is a worthy enough thing in itself, I just don't see it making a lot of difference to global warming.
