[09x03] February 11th, 2007

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I'm going to grab a camera, fly to England, find a working class pub and whip out my "<local football club> sucks" sign.
I will then proceed to get my ass thoroughly kicked.
Then I'll rush back to the USA and tell all of my friends to cancel their UK holidays. "They're all soccer hooligans! Every one of them...except for the charming chimney sweeps...."
We'll laugh and laugh about the Brits...all bad teeth and shrinking empire.
 
Lalithster said:
What is going on here? First 5th gear turns shitty now TOP GEAR? I was expecting to see some nice cars but end up with huge waste of time. I wonder what would happen if I drove around london with Diana sucks cock on my car? Or the Queen is a whore? But on the bright side its the first time I have seen great sun shine on a TG episdoe. BTW most UK girls r as fat as that cow on the camero.
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Oh dear, touched a nerve did it? :lol:
 
Miatamon said:
Another American checking in here. I love Top Gear and watch as much of it as I can. Yes, I have to go through a great deal of trouble to download it and save it and all that jazz, but to me it's worth it. Our automotive shows here are complete rubish.

On to the point. Clarkson has always had some good points when he bashes the united states. Too many of our citizens ARE morbidly obese. Many of our cars ARE pieces of rolling garbage with a huge engine that makes about 1 horsepower per liter. However, there are bad things about every place. And there are good things about every place. The UK suffers from a plague of STUPID automotive legislation. Your weather is terrible except for 10 days out of the year. Brits have bad teeth...yadda yadda. Certainly not God's country, eh?

Americans who are not from the South make fun of the South constantly. It is the butt of many jokes. However, putting the slogans on their cars was downright dangerous. I don't think they realized what they were getting themselves into -- they really could have been killed. SURE, there is freedom of speech -- but there is precedent about "fighting words." What they did would easily be considered fightin' words. I'm sure there are many things you could write on the side of your car and drive through London that would get you killed.

I've been to England. I stayed for a long time. You definitely have the equavilant of our lowlife Southern losers. There are many places in your country I wouldn't dare tread without a police escort. It's like saying don't go to England because London slums are terrible. But I aso saw many beautiful places and met some nice people. I fully intend to return again some day.

The United States is an enourmous country and the deep South is certainly not representive of the rest of it. TG certainly searched out the worst possible place to create this film. I live here in the US and I would never go to the deep South.

However, I understand that what was done was done for entertainment's purpose. The slogans were a little over the top and dangerous, but all in all, the show had me rolling and of course I will continue to be a fan. Clarkson has always hated the US and he makes it no secret. Hammond, I beleive, is a bit of a fan. He loves his huge Dodge Charger, and had a ball rollin' along in his Dodge Ram.

Of course, you have to take these points with a grain of salt. Clarkson is obviously biased, but I hope TG takes the crew to a nice place in the US someday.
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Well said, I really do hope as well that TG go somewhere else in the States sometime this year. Possibly in the North. As for a police escort I would say that is useless I mean the Police in the UK(here) are useless. They just don't care any more you phone them and they come round at best in a few hours, usually around a few days.

As the minister who is in charge of policing said, if their is anybody in your street getting shouted at or beat up try jumping up and down and maybe shouting back at them they may go away. Seriously if you lay a finger on anybody in the UK or even say boo to them your in jail. e.g. a fight in the street, guy goes out to break it up they scampered when they seen him coming. The main guy who was had an ASBO(curfew) run back and hit the guy in the back of the neck killed him outright. yes murder and he got 3 years in prison. 3 years! Well I say that he was good inside so he got 18 months. That is the state of the UK just now it is completely out of its mind and nobody is willing to do anything. Oh yes the BBC interviewed the murderers and they said it was the guy's fault he died as he came out and split the fight up. Excuse my French but Jesus Christ the boy is a murderer and that is all you have to say.

You may be able to see the program @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6241815.stm and clicking view at the side of the page.

*Rant over*
 
fishmonger said:
Just to clear up some of the confusion about the car donation and the lawyer. She probably thought they were trying to cheat on their taxes.

When you donate to charity in the US you can deduct the money, or the value of a donated item, from your income tax. So if you would ordinarily pay $1000 in income tax, and you donated $100 to charity, you would then only have to pay $900 in tax. So the reason they got in trouble with the charity's lawyer is that overvaluing an item you're donating to charity is a common type of tax fraud. It can end up costing charities quite a bit of money, and if they get audited by the IRS they could loose their charitable status for letting it happen.

This is also part of the reason the guys had trouble buying cars for less $1000 from a dealership. It?s usually better for a dealer to donate the cheaper trade-ins for the tax write-off, rather than try to sell them.
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Aaah no wonder, I felt really negative towards Americans after hearing the whole legal action thing. Still she wanted $20,000, why not just correct the paperwork?
 
JosefCarlin said:
Oh and thanks for the gift of the broken down pieces of junk.
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I was thinking the same. I guess a car wreck goes well with their collapsed houses.


It was good to see a show without studio bits though. I enjoy the studio segments and they have to stay, but that doesn't mean that every episode should have (the same amount of ) them.
 
Did anyone else keep thinking, after the presenters kept talking about how much they loved their cars, that they'd ship them back home to the Uk?
 
paulbeattie87 said:
Well said, I really do hope as well that TG go somewhere else in the States sometime this year. Possibly in the North. As for a police escort I would say that is useless I mean the Police in the UK(here) are useless. They just don't care any more you phone them and they come round at best in a few hours, usually around a few days.
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Honestly, I'd like to see them visit some areas of the South that aren't hillbilly reservations. The Triangle region of North Carolina, northern Virginia, middle & eastern Tennessee, Central and NW Arkansas, Austin, etc. We have history (that doesn't revolve around plantations and civil war nostalgia), cuisine, diversity, art, music, interesting people... I guarantee there are just as many backwoods hillbillies in California or Michigan as there are in Alabama.

The north not scary? You've never been to Detroit my friend. South Boston? Brooklyn? Atlantic City? DC? No thanks, buddy. I'll take ignorant but relatively harmless rednecks ANY DAY OF THE WEEK over the crowds I've witnessed in those places.

And while we're painting in broad strokes, what if I characterized Chapeltown in Leeds as "quinticentially English"?

There are bass-ackward places the world over, and to characterize an entire nation based on an unsavory few only compounds frightful nationalism and xenophobia.
"People are people..." said Depeche Mode. Learn from the New Romantics! :p
 
I was really letdown that they didnt have the 2 quintessential US rural white trash cars in the episode...

The mid 90's Chevy Beretta and mid 90's Chevy Corsica
 
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mitchellknight said:
I was really letdown that they didnt have the 2 quintessential US rural white trash cars in the episode...

The mid 90's Chevy Beretta and mid 90's Chevy Corsica
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There's a good reason for the Beretta not being there: whoever had it would have killed themselves halfway through the 800 mile roadtrip. It's the most uncomfortable car I'll ever drive. We used to have one and I couldn't stand being in it for a half hour, let alone all day.

I'm surprised they had that much trouble finding cars. I know of tons of them around here for less than $1000, and they appear to be in better shape than what they had on the show.
 
hahaha!!! I loved that episode! Funny thing is, I just went to Alabama yesterday and the restuarant I went to had chicken gizzards, frog legs, and liver & onions on the menu. Made me think of road-kill. Luckilly for me, I wasn't chased by any hill-billys
 
rubberbrush said:
I'm going to grab a camera, fly to England, find a working class pub and whip out my "<local football club> sucks" sign.
I will then proceed to get my ass thoroughly kicked.
Then I'll rush back to the USA and tell all of my friends to cancel their UK holidays. "They're all soccer hooligans! Every one of them...except for the charming chimney sweeps...."
We'll laugh and laugh about the Brits...all bad teeth and shrinking empire.
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True thats what I was saying. It all depends on the situtation.

Though it was nice of TG to show the Katrina stuff. I live in the US and was unaware the situation was still that bad. It must have to do with discrimination of blacks or the city planing there. I ve lived in florida and went through 5 hurricanes in one year and had no problem. The goverment was very helpful with providing money for rebuilding on the other hand our house in Sri Lanka has received no aid after the tsunami even though there was record amounts aid given.

Living in near orlando I see alot of tourists from UK and though (being jeremy for a sec.) the people from london are ok. People from the rest of UK are very rude, and they still think they own the colonies.

About the comment on their empire shrinking. I know how Britians like to say the US is Fing up Iraq but I got say we are taking a page from the British Empire. The Brits were responsible for the fighting in Pak/India, Kashmire, SL/tamils, many countries in Africa and the Middle east. oh and the best Palastine/Israile.

Im not pissed at TG for depicting the US in this matter as they need ratings and the US seems to be a good target enlight of the IRaq war.
 
I'm American and my friend and I LOVED this episode. We definitely can laugh at our country, but please, we're not all rednecks and fat people. :)
 
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