nanoflooder
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2009
- Messages
- 5
[h=1]Jeremy Clarkson: argue with today’s youth and they’ll call you a racist — then start blubbing[/h]
Over a lovely lunch on my holiday this year, one of the “old people” around the table said that Britain’s super-slack immigration policy means we are letting an army onto our shores. Well, the mood couldn’t have changed more quickly if she’d said: “I’ve just murdered 14 tramps.”
One of the young people began to sob. Actually sob. And another fixed the old person with a stare made from rage and bile, and explained that everyone from anywhere should be allowed to live wherever they like. And between mouthfuls of padron peppers, I agreed with this, saying that I’d love to live in George Clooney’s house on Lake Como.
This went down badly, so, as the lovely lunch was turning into a bit of a disaster, I changed the subject and began to speak about the hot summer in England, which turned into a debate about global warming, or climate change or whatever it’s called these days. Only the other day, the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell said that to deny man’s involvement in this should be a crime and it seems he has full support from those who are under 25.
They certainly hadn’t got the science worked out, with many believing that the purply grey fog that sits over Los Angeles and Geneva has something to do with carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere and that everything would be better if people didn’t drive diesel cars.
Like I said. Twaddle. But my attempts to provide some kind of enlightenment fell on deaf ears. They were right and that’s that. Cars are bad. Central heating is bad. Donald Trump is very bad. Kale is good. And I should shut up because it’s not my world any more. I’m simply a guest who’s outstayed his welcome.
I agree with them on this. When I was sort of their age I’d had enough of old people banging on about the Goons and whippets and industrial action and warm beer and “bloody foreigners”. I knew they’d lived through rationing and bombing and rickets but I didn’t care. Yuppies, in my book, seemed to be having a much better time so I moved to Fulham and got a GTI. And I figured out quite quickly that if I worked hard and eschewed society in favour of individual effort, I could go to St Tropez for my holidays in future, and not St Austell.
My generation came up with a whole new type of comedy and a whole new type of music. We had interesting hair and didn’t use braces simply to stop our trousers falling down. We loved Gordon Gekko. Asset stripping meant thousands would lose their jobs but that didn’t matter because, hey, it meant we could party harder that night in Annabel’s.
Other people? They didn’t matter. You could laugh at the homeless and the weak, and if anyone was offended, you could laugh at them too. I used to make detours to laugh at the lesbians chained to a fence at Greenham Common and earned a living by thinking up similes for Arthur Scargill’s hair. It wasn’t hard.
Our parents would explain, in much the same way that Martin Sheen explained in Wall Street, that we were building a house made from straw, but just like Charlie Sheen in the same movie, we paid no attention. We were convinced of our righteousness. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? It’s not like any of us were going to catch Aids.
Of course, not all of us thought the same way. I had friends who reckoned Michael Foot’s jacket was an acceptable garment at the Cenotaph. And others who said that disco produced nothing of any value. Ben Elton and me? We were on different roads but we were going to the same place. And that, emphatically, doesn’t happen now.
Maybe it’s because young people live in a social media world of cyber-bullies who do not allow anyone to stray from the party line, but whatever, people under 25 have become as different as milk bottles. They have a hive mentality about all things. They know that tramps should be called homeless people, that cycling is good and the NHS is better. Oh and of course, they all know for sure that everything anyone says is racist.
In a debate about transgenderism the other day, I wondered out loud how sport would work if people were allowed to choose their sex before kick-off, and I was called a racist immediately. Then there’s Boris Johnson, who learnt to his cost while I was away that it’s racist to comment on how another culture dresses. Which means I can’t say that a German beer enthusiast in leather shorts looks idiotic. Because that’s racist too, and possibly homophobic.
You are not allowed to disagree with any of this, obviously, because then you’re being judgmental, which means you are a racist, and that’s before we get to the concept of #MeToo, which means I can no longer ask the tea lady at work to get me a cup of tea.
I’m as confused by it all as my dad was when I asked him to listen to Tubular Bells.
But what does it matter what I think because I’ll be dead soon, and so will you, and our children will have the baton. If they choose to run off the course to lick Jeremy Corbyn, or free a hen or smash up a patio heater, that is their right. It is not our course and it is not our baton. We did not own Britain. We just lived here for a while.
Of course, the problem all the young people have is that next year we will leave the EU. I can’t see that working out very well. Maybe that’s why they all like an immigration free-for-all, so that they can move to Ibiza when the time comes.
Sadly, of course, that won’t be possible. They’re stuck here, on their non-judgmental rock in the north Atlantic. And that’s their fault because on referendum day none of them could be bothered to go to the polling station.
Over a lovely lunch on my holiday this year, one of the “old people” around the table said that Britain’s super-slack immigration policy means we are letting an army onto our shores. Well, the mood couldn’t have changed more quickly if she’d said: “I’ve just murdered 14 tramps.”
One of the young people began to sob. Actually sob. And another fixed the old person with a stare made from rage and bile, and explained that everyone from anywhere should be allowed to live wherever they like. And between mouthfuls of padron peppers, I agreed with this, saying that I’d love to live in George Clooney’s house on Lake Como.
This went down badly, so, as the lovely lunch was turning into a bit of a disaster, I changed the subject and began to speak about the hot summer in England, which turned into a debate about global warming, or climate change or whatever it’s called these days. Only the other day, the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell said that to deny man’s involvement in this should be a crime and it seems he has full support from those who are under 25.
They certainly hadn’t got the science worked out, with many believing that the purply grey fog that sits over Los Angeles and Geneva has something to do with carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere and that everything would be better if people didn’t drive diesel cars.
Like I said. Twaddle. But my attempts to provide some kind of enlightenment fell on deaf ears. They were right and that’s that. Cars are bad. Central heating is bad. Donald Trump is very bad. Kale is good. And I should shut up because it’s not my world any more. I’m simply a guest who’s outstayed his welcome.
I agree with them on this. When I was sort of their age I’d had enough of old people banging on about the Goons and whippets and industrial action and warm beer and “bloody foreigners”. I knew they’d lived through rationing and bombing and rickets but I didn’t care. Yuppies, in my book, seemed to be having a much better time so I moved to Fulham and got a GTI. And I figured out quite quickly that if I worked hard and eschewed society in favour of individual effort, I could go to St Tropez for my holidays in future, and not St Austell.
My generation came up with a whole new type of comedy and a whole new type of music. We had interesting hair and didn’t use braces simply to stop our trousers falling down. We loved Gordon Gekko. Asset stripping meant thousands would lose their jobs but that didn’t matter because, hey, it meant we could party harder that night in Annabel’s.
Other people? They didn’t matter. You could laugh at the homeless and the weak, and if anyone was offended, you could laugh at them too. I used to make detours to laugh at the lesbians chained to a fence at Greenham Common and earned a living by thinking up similes for Arthur Scargill’s hair. It wasn’t hard.
Our parents would explain, in much the same way that Martin Sheen explained in Wall Street, that we were building a house made from straw, but just like Charlie Sheen in the same movie, we paid no attention. We were convinced of our righteousness. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? It’s not like any of us were going to catch Aids.
Of course, not all of us thought the same way. I had friends who reckoned Michael Foot’s jacket was an acceptable garment at the Cenotaph. And others who said that disco produced nothing of any value. Ben Elton and me? We were on different roads but we were going to the same place. And that, emphatically, doesn’t happen now.
Maybe it’s because young people live in a social media world of cyber-bullies who do not allow anyone to stray from the party line, but whatever, people under 25 have become as different as milk bottles. They have a hive mentality about all things. They know that tramps should be called homeless people, that cycling is good and the NHS is better. Oh and of course, they all know for sure that everything anyone says is racist.
In a debate about transgenderism the other day, I wondered out loud how sport would work if people were allowed to choose their sex before kick-off, and I was called a racist immediately. Then there’s Boris Johnson, who learnt to his cost while I was away that it’s racist to comment on how another culture dresses. Which means I can’t say that a German beer enthusiast in leather shorts looks idiotic. Because that’s racist too, and possibly homophobic.
You are not allowed to disagree with any of this, obviously, because then you’re being judgmental, which means you are a racist, and that’s before we get to the concept of #MeToo, which means I can no longer ask the tea lady at work to get me a cup of tea.
I’m as confused by it all as my dad was when I asked him to listen to Tubular Bells.
But what does it matter what I think because I’ll be dead soon, and so will you, and our children will have the baton. If they choose to run off the course to lick Jeremy Corbyn, or free a hen or smash up a patio heater, that is their right. It is not our course and it is not our baton. We did not own Britain. We just lived here for a while.
Of course, the problem all the young people have is that next year we will leave the EU. I can’t see that working out very well. Maybe that’s why they all like an immigration free-for-all, so that they can move to Ibiza when the time comes.
Sadly, of course, that won’t be possible. They’re stuck here, on their non-judgmental rock in the north Atlantic. And that’s their fault because on referendum day none of them could be bothered to go to the polling station.