The Family Farm Tax and VAT on school fees are here to stay

The National Farmers' Union has decided to wind down its campaign against the imposition of inheritance tax (IHT) on farmland, reports Bio-Waste Spreader in the current Private Eye.

The union has concluded that its protests simply haven't worked, as the government has shown no sign of making any concession to its demands. More than that, the union has concluded that these protests have become counterproductive:

Demonstrations, particularly in Westminster involving hundreds of tractors, generated unfavourable headlines involving multimillionaire celebrities such as Jeremy Clarkson, who, as he stated in an article for The Times, bought his 1000-acre farm in Oxfordshire to avoid IHT.

Can we expect the Lib Dems to quietly forget their campaign against the Family Farm Tax too?

Meanwhile, opposition to VAT on private school fees has dwindled, as none of the dire consequences predicted (by the Lib Dems among others) for the move have come to pass.

I'm relaxed about our becoming the party of Middle England - it's where I've lived all my life - but maybe we're going to have to get better at choosing which battles to fight on its behalf.

The importance of disliking Jeremy Clarkson for the right reason

Jeremy Clarkson believes strikers should be shot in front of their families. Or so you will believe if you've been reading Twitter this week. The example above comes from a usually interesting left-wing account.

The truth is that Clarkson did say that, but for once someone really is being quoted out of context. Have a look at this video.

Yes, he was making fun of the BBC's insistence on 'balance'. Maybe the moral is that you shouldn't attempt irony on The One Show.

And Clarkson's politics are not always what people imagine. As I wrote here, he made the best case for Britain's membership of the EU that I have heard in referendum year, and Remain should have made more use of him during the referendum campaign.

I would have a go at Clarkson for taking up the role as spokesman for wealthy landowners, but my party's MPs seem happy to march shoulder to shoulder with him on that

So let me instead take issue with his strange ingratitude to the BBC.

I don't mean his disapproval of balance, but his "Typical BBC - you people" comment the other day when Victoria Derbyshire quoted his own words about buying land to avoid paying inheritance tax.

Because Clarkson and the BBC go back a long way. All the way back to 1973, when as a 13-year-old, be played Atkinson in BBC Radio 4 serialisations of the Jennings books.

Then he went to public school, his fees paid from his mother's business making Paddington Bear toys. And the BBC was Paddington-friendly even before the animations with Michael Hordern's voice, because Michael Bond was a cameraman with them. So you got exclusive Paddington stories in your Blue Peter annual.

And, then, of course, the BBC's Top Gear made Clarkson a millionaire. A little gratitude wouldn't come amiss.

GUEST POST Why am I a Liberal Democrat?

Simon Beard explains, with help from Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Clarkson.

It seems to me that Liberals have a peculiar obsession with self-justification. Keynes first posed the question "Am I A Liberal?" (he was) in 1925, and many have asked it, or something like it, since.

Indeed, Bertrand Russel felt called to provide two justifications "why I am not a communist" and "why I am not a Christian", while even Margaret Thatcher's favourite Liberal Fredrick Hayek wanted to explain to his readers "why I am not a conservative".

This is hardly surprising. Liberals are, after all, in favour of the individual, while Liberalism is a social movement. We are not natural joiners we Liberals, and so many of us feel the desire to consider ourselves apart.

Yet still, we recognise that what we believe in is worth believing, and what we fight for is worth defending. I think this may be part of the reason why so many 'ordinary people' claim not to know what the Lib Dems 'really believe’. It is not that we do not believe in things; but we feel slightly awkward about it and would really rather discuss something else.

So why am I a Liberal?

First and foremost, I think I am a Burkean. Edmund Burke is often held up as the grandfather of British Conservatism, but that is a load of piffle. Burke was a radical of his day who fought against empire and privilege. He simply did not accept the justification being offered for the French revolution, and that meant he was disowned by other radicals of his day.

Burke's philosophy is not easy to encapsulate in a few words, but let me try. Burke believed in government by agreement and consent; he was a proponent of the social contract. However, in contrast with the doctrine of the time, he saw this agreement as not primarily between the rich and the poor, that would be manifestly unfair. Instead, he proposed a contract between the generations.

Each of us, in turn, takes the place of a dependent child, an independent adult and a supportive elder, and Burke thought that we should view society in this light. He also believed that what the social contract was fundamentally about was building and maintaining institutions that allowed people to get along. However, ultimately, these were only means to the end of a fully flourishing society. As he wrote:

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

When the state takes it upon itself to disregard these institutions and reorganise society around one big idea (as the French revolutionaries tried to do) Burke believed that the social contract was violated and society would fall apart. Now, of course, we might make the same point about our stewardship of the environment, and I think Burke would have agreed.

Finally, Burke believed that when we engage in politics, we do so person to person, not thought to thought or idea to idea. Thus, we should choose MPs who we trust to act wisely, not those who would merely represent some pattern or ideal that we share.

Burke was not quite a Liberal in the modern sense of the term, but he certainly was never a Conservative. He was a passionate social humanist, and one of the most profound thinkers our country has produced.

To Burke, I owe my distrust of those (like Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn) who seek to remake our country according to their own designs and who view the institutions we have built up as mere obstacles to be overcome.

Secondly, I am a utilitarian. In my heart and soul what I most believe is that any policy, any choice, must be justified on the grounds that it will benefit the people affected by it, by making their lives fuller and better and contributing to their wellbeing.

However, I am a utilitarian of the school of John Stewart Mill, who saw so clearly that happiness could not be bought or sold or counted or controlled, but had to be cultivated. Our joy, he wrote, will 'come like the air that we breath', but only when we are liberated, supported and empowered, with good health, education, work, a nourishing environment, social connections and a flourishing culture.

I was part of the Federal Policy Committee on Wellbeing and Quality of Life, and one of the things I wanted to say in our report was that government has a huge role to play in supporting people's wellbeing, but that so often people's experiences of the state where that it made them unhappy, by forcing them into a social straitjacket or failing to deliver on its promises.

To the utilitarians, and especially to Mill, I owe my belief in an empowering and enabling state whose job it is to provide people with education, healthcare and financial support, but also to allow them to be who they most want to be. A state that cultivates everyone's garden, but allows their flowers to bloom as they will.

The Liberal Democrats are consistently the party who plan to give most direct support to the poorest in society - while the Conservatives choose to ignore them and Labour focus on implementing their grand schemes - that is as it should be.

Thirdly, I am a Georgist and a Social Liberal. Power, as well as wealth, is distributed incredibly unequally throughout our society, and in so far as we need reform, it should be primarily aimed at removing the blockages built up over centuries to preserve this status quo.

The philosophy and economics of this get terribly complicated; even I struggle with the level of cultishness that can surround them (and that's before we get to the School of Economic Science, an actual cult).

However, two key points are 1) that we pay far too little attention to the distribution of the ownership of land (nature) and its implications on how our society is structured and 2) that corporations are given the same, if not more, protection in how they act than ordinary people and are allowed to get away with massive corruption, even though are without emotions, social connections, family ties and love for humanity and the world around them.

This is not merely about redistribution; it is about calling out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that lie at the heart of government policy, making it serve the interest of a tiny fraction of the population. Every classical Liberal, from Smith to Mill, envisioned a market of free individuals trading fairly, while every new Liberal, from Green to Beveridge, understood that the distortions of land and corporate power meant this had never been realised.

Yet, somehow people still feel able to describe the deregulation of markets as if it made them freer, rather than more totally controlled by a few special interests.

To the New Liberals, I owe my support for the voices of the small, for small business against big business, for renters against landlords, and for communities against developers. I also owe them my commitment to introducing Land Value Taxation and stronger restrictions on corporations.

These things matter even more than redistributing money, yet they are routinely overlooked by other parties. I think this is also why I am so glad the UK still manages to maintain a third party of national significance and wish we would introduce an electoral system that did not reduce everything to a binary choice, because there is always another perspective on any argument and it needs to be heard.

Fourthly, I am a supporter of human rights. In that old Liberal phrase, I believe that everyone is created equal and endowed with inalienable rights, and I mean everyone and I mean inalienable. Asylum seekers, single mothers, convicted criminals, disabled people, even straight, white, older men, all have the same fundamental rights.

Among these are the right to exist, publicly and as themselves, to pursue their own lifestyle and to play as full a part as possible in society. We must give prisoners the vote; we must give asylum seekers a decent level of support; we must allow gang members to express themselves culturally; we must ensure that everyone can walk the streets safely at night and that people can have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away with making mistakes.

Why? Because we are all human, we are all persons, we fundamentally have more in common than what divides us. And at heart, as those who first codified human rights after the second world war realised, these rights are ultimately protections against the power of others, and in particular the power of the state.

Rights should always stand outside the law and hem it on all sides. From these thinkers, I take an instinctive horror of anyone who sets up groups in opposition to each other, or who adopt dehumanising language for anyone – be they terrorists or billionaires.

Finally, I am an internationalist. Of course, that means I believe in nations, in groups of people who share a culture, a social ideal and a way of life. The hard-straight lines of the state must always be made to bend around the people it claims to serve.

However, it also means I believe that the boundaries of nations and peoples are flexible and fluid and that we realise the best in ourselves when we are open, tolerant and diverse and when we work with others to form a closer international union.

I understand that for many, we need to stay in the EU for economic reasons, for its social and environmental protections, or for peace and security; and I value all these things. However, ultimately, I am with Jeremy Clarkson, of all people, who said:

Whether I'm sitting in a railway concourse in Brussels or pottering down the canals of southwestern France or hurtling along a motorway in Croatia, I feel way more at home than I do when I'm trying to get something to eat in Dallas or Sacramento. I love Europe, and to me that's important.

I love Europe too (though I also love America), and I love what it stands for. I love my village, and my county, and my nation, and my country but I also love that 28 countries have joined together and are trying to form something bigger than themselves. I cannot give up on loving that, and nobody has any right to tell me to do so. Our party cannot give up on loving it either, and that is why I love it too.

This recent election really got me down; not just because of the result (though that was terrible) but because of the way everything seemed to get lost in the question of who could win or who could stop Brexit.

Please Liberal Democrats, do not forget who you are and why you are like that. Do not give up on your history and values and fall into the lie that this was simply a numbers exercise in tactical voting.

We are Liberals, and we have every right and reason to be so. Jeremy Corbyn is not, nor is Nicola Sturgeon. That does not make them bad people, but when it comes to fundamental questions of politics, philosophy and economics, I think it makes them wrong and I feel perfectly justified in saying that!

Simon Beard has a PhD in philosophy and works at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He has twice stood as the Lib Dem candidate for Dartford and tweets @simon_beard.

Let's leave "gammon" off the menu

Let's say we get our way and there is a second referendum on Brexit.

Could we win it?

Maybe not, because so far we do not appear to have learnt the lesson of Remain's defeat in the first one. All we have done so far is to turn Project Fear up to 11.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post that cited various pieces of psychology research and concluded:

The implication of all this, I suspect, is that if we want to persuade people who are tempted to vote Leave to vote Remain, we should frame our arguments in terms of concepts like patriotism and the continuity of British history and not laugh at them and call them "fruitcakes" - as this blog is prone to doing.

Since then we have seen the demise of "fruitcake" and the rise of "gammon".

Gammons, we all know, are red-faced, racist and ridiculous. You see them participating in Question Time and leaving comments on the Daily Mail website.

Above all, gammons are what we Remainers are not like.

So the existence of the concept does wonders for our self-esteem. It's just that I do not believe it does anything to encourage anyone to vote for us.

If there is another referendum we need to do things like give Jeremy Clarkson a central role and make a concerted effort of engage older voters. 

No, we have to tell them, this is not the world you grew up in and it is not one you feel particularly at home in. But it is the one your grandchildren have taken to and shouldn't you think of them too when you vote?

Some will remain convinced that the good old days were better and believe that they can bring them back for those grandchildren, but some will be convinced by these sort of arguments.

Calling them "gammons" will not convince one.

But could Remain win a second referendum?

We Remainers hope for a second referendum on British membership of the European Union.

Will we get one? I doubt it.

But there is a more fundamental question. If we got one, could we win it?

Or, in other words, what has changed about Remainers since June 2016?

The weakness of our campaign then was that it made little effort to talk to older people or to those in the regions. We told people they were doing well from the status quo and should not put that at risk. But a lot of them weren't doing well and felt no compulsion to vote for the status quo. 

And the campaign failed even among those who are doing well. The most striking thing about the results was not that Sunderland and South Wales went for change. It was that swathes of comfortably off Southern England voted Leave too.

If there were a second referendum we could fight a better campaign - and not just because there would be no David Cameron, George Osborne, Will Straw CBE or Ryan Coetzee.

We could find someone who can talk to older voters with credibility - Vince Cable would be a good choice - and admit that the modern world is not one that they grew up in or feel comfortable in. But their grandchildren are very different and it is them we must think about when we go to the ballot box.

We could choose figures who support British membership of the European Union but reach out beyond the Guardian-reading classes.

Jeremy Clarkson is a good example of this. He did appear towards the end of the referendum campaign, but he should have been central to it.

We could do all this, but would we?

Since the referendum there has been a hardening of attitudes, with Remain and Leave becoming more significant allegiances that the old party labels.

In the Remain camp we constantly remind ourselves how good we are and how evil and ridiculous Leavers are. (Leavers do the precise opposite of course.)

If insulting Leavers were the key to victory we would have won the first referendum. But we didn't and there is no reason to believe that calling people "gammons" will help us more than calling them "fruitcakes" did.

This division of British voters into two camps is bad news. Bad news, certainly, for us Liberal Democrats, who are still a long way from re-establishing ourselves as the third party. But also bad news for decent politics more generally.

Maintaining the Leave identity helps the right wing of the Conservative Party, because it means they have a chance of rallying 52 per cent of voters behind the changes they want to make to British society after Brexit.

Some of these will be social gains like maternity leave, but they have more fundamental ambitions. Expect the European Convention on Human Rights to be next in their sights, and God knows would they do after that.

It is probably all too late, but remember that you do not win close contests by insulting your opponents or reminding yourself how wonderful you are.

Jeremy Clarkson, Mitch Mitchell and Jennings

You may know the radio quiz The Unbelievable Truth, in which the panelists try to smuggle facts past their fellow contestants in the middle of an apparently comic or nonsensical talk.

It's enjoyable enough, though those taking part are generally drawn from the Radio 4 blokey comedians list. The chair, inevitably, is David Mitchell.

Embed from Getty Images

The other day I spotted one of the facts: Jeremy Clarkson had taken part in radio adaptations of the Jennings books when he was a boy.

I was sure that I had featured it here as a piece of trivia, but it seems it has not.

A BBC News profile of Clarkson tells the story (and also has a photo of him with Anthony Buckeridge from this time):

Clarkson first worked for the BBC aged 12, playing the role of Atkinson in the radio adaptation of the Jennings novels, Anthony Buckeridge's tales of life at the fictional Linbury Court preparatory school. The role did not last long. 

"Why did it come to an end?" Top Gear co-host Richard Hammond once asked in an interview on LBC Radio. "He will have done something stupid, obviously." The truth was actually more prosaic. Clarkson's voice broke. Uttering schoolboy slang like "wizard" and "blinko" did not work in baritone.

The photograph above is taken from an earlier television adaptation of the books. Jennings (on the left) is played by John Mitchell.

As we have seen before, he grew up to be Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Embed from Getty Images

No, Top Gear did not win the referendum for Leave

Embed from Getty Images

The New European has an article arguing that Top Gear paved the way for Brexit.

I've not read it - "To read it would be to condone it," as F.R. Leavis said when he was challenged over a book he had dismissed - but I suspect it is wrongheaded.

First, because as I blogged during the referendum campaign. the best case for Remain was made by Jeremy Clarkson - if you don't believe me, see the quotes from him in that post.

Second, because I fear that it as an example of the tribalism of liberal politics in Britain today.

In 1975, Britain voted by two-to-one to remain in the European Economic Community.

That means that lots of people who voted Conservative, liked fast cars and were known to make jokes at the expense of foreigners voted Remain.

If today we make support for Europe part of a bulky package of right-on policies and dismiss anyone who does not accept every item in it, then the forces of light will lose every time.

On that bombshell, I'll end this post.

The best case for Remain has been made by... Jeremy Clarkson

Embed from Getty Images

Here are some paragraphs from the best case I have seen for Britain's continued membership of the European Union:

In 1973 my parents held a Common Market party. They’d lived through the war, and for them it seemed a good idea to form closer ties with our endlessly troublesome neighbours. For me, however, it was a chance to make flags out of coloured felt and to eat exotic foods such as sausage and pasta. I felt very European that night, and I still do. 

Whether I’m sitting in a railway concourse in Brussels or pottering down the canals of southwestern France or hurtling along a motorway in Croatia, I feel way more at home than I do when I’m trying to get something to eat in Dallas or Sacramento. I love Europe, and to me that’s important.

And:

Isn’t it better to stay in and try to make the damn thing work properly? To create a United States of Europe that functions as well as the United States of America? With one army and one currency and one unifying set of values? 

Britain, on its own, has little influence on the world stage. I think we are all agreed on that. But Europe, if it were well run and had cohesive, well thought-out policies, would be a tremendous force for good

Can you guess who wrote them?

Of course you can. I have pasted a photo of him above.

But this column by Jeremy Clarkson, published in the Sunday Times on 13 March of this year.

It's support for full-blown federalism will scare some off - I am not its greatest admirer itself - but it captures an enjoyment of our European identity that has been wholly absent from the Remain campaign.

That campaign has concentrated on pointing to the disasters that may befall Britain if it leaves the EU and pointing to the contradictions in the Leave case. Its arguments are right, but are unlikely to inspire anyone.

So why hasn't Jeremy Clarkson been up front and centre of the Remain campaign? He would appeal to great swathes of voters likely to have so far remained untouched by it.

Maybe he was asked and said no, but it is hard to resist the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the leadership of the pro-EU campaign does not consist of the best and brightest who could have been found.

Incidentally, Clarkson's article is lodged safely behind the Sunday Times' paywall, but I found the full text of it on a Top Gear bulletin board.

It was a little like stumbling across a site devoted to a fetish you do not share. I was not so much surprised as puzzled.

No, Clarkson's views are not mine, but I do admire the easy flow of his prose as a columnist. From that point of view, a young writer could do much worse than adopt him as a model.

And what I always objected to was not so much Top Gear itself so much as the BBC's absurd promotion of it.

Six of the Best 498

Suddenly, Britain is disappearing from the world stage, says Anne Applebaum.

Stephen Glenn looks at the long career of James Molyneaux, who died earlier this week.

"The jury’s verdict casts a huge shadow over musical creativity and takes what should be familiar elements of a genre, available to all, and privatizes them." Kal Raustiala and Christopher Jon Sprigman are worried by the Blurred Lines verdict.

"All of these pitiful excuses for an abject performance in a tournament England had cleared the decks to prepare for, resulting in a 5-0 Ashes whomping that accelerated the end of the international careers of Graeme Swann, Kevin Pietersen and Matt Prior while doing terrible damage to several others was presented as if it were something entirely beyond the ECB's control." Righteous indignation from Dave Tickner occasioned by England's abject exit from the World Cup.

 Deep down, did Jeremy Clarkson really want to go on doing Top Gear? Paul Walter turns psychoanalyst.

Curious British Telly remembers Feet First, a football-based situation comedy by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey.

Nigel Farage to take on Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam?

There is a rumour going round cyberspace this evening that Nigel Farage is planning to stand against Nick Clegg at the next general election.

[Later. I now know where this rumour came from.]

I don't believe a word of it.

Research on this month's local elections showed that UKIP polled badly amongst graduates. And Sheffield Hallam is one of the constituencies with the most graduate voters.

But I do think I know what is behind this.

In 2008, before the last general election, I blogged about a rumour that Jeremy Clarkson was to be the Tory candidate in Hallam.

This is an example of Calder's Fourth Law of Politics: The more extreme a person's views, the more certain he or she will be that the majority of voters share them.

The fruitcakes, whether they are Conservative or UKIP activists, hate Nick Clegg. So, despite his 15,000 majority, they reason that everyone else must hate him too. And that all they need do to win Hallam is put up someone who shares their views.

If Farage stands anywhere, it will be somewhere like rural Lincolnshire not in sophisticated Sheffield Hallam.

There is nothing "Lefty" about Jimmy Carr

Discussing the furore over Jeremy Clarkson's appearance on The One Show, Damian Thompson complains of double standards. Jimmy Carr makes offensive jokes about people with Down's syndrome:

What is it about Down’s syndrome that tickles the funny bone of Lefty comics?

But is Carr at all left wing? Left-wing politics is based in a belief that things could be better. Carr's schtick, by contrast, is to imply that he is wiser than us. Life is shit, and he has seen through it.

I don't see much hope there.

But then a lot of comedy is like that now. Thompson names Ricky Gervais as another "Lefty", but it is hard to see why. Though The Office offered occasional glimpses of hope, his trademark is that his shows have pauses so you can cringe, not so you can laugh.

You can say that all situation comedy relies upon the characters being trapped - Harold Steptoe was never going to escape his father - but this failure of any sense of the possibility of a better world does seems particularly characteristic of modern comedy.

Future generations will watch Outnumbered as a key text on the uselessness of early 21st century parenting. And even a likeable show like Rev ultimately leaves us thinking how hard it is to be good in the modern world. It all seems very conservative.

In defence of Jeremy Clarkson

I find Top Gear irritating and the way it is relentlessly promoted by the BBC doubly so. I don't share Jeremy Clarkson's politics, though if you want to learn how to write a newspaper column, he is one of the best people to study.

But today's row over his comments on The One Show is a complete nonsense.

Read the transcript. Clarkson remarks how pleasant London was because of the strike - no traffic, empty restaurants. He then goes on to say, with slightly forced jocularity, that "we have to balance this though, because this is the BBC".

So he goes on to present a ludicrous anti-strike view - that strikers should be taken out and shot in front of their families.

Yes, it was a  joke. Maybe not a very good joke, but a joke.

The same people who were expressing outrage today would be delighted if Ian Hislop had scrunched up his face and made the same joke on Have I Got News for You.

At least this ridiculous affair has proved one thing. Those calling for Clarkson to be sacked or prosecuted have proved that, in its heart, the left still hankers after a society where the state controls the views that citizens can express.

Calder on Air: Jamie's Dream School

My column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

This was going to be the last word on modern education - and Jamie Oliver's project in particular. Somehow it never happened and I had to fill up the column with other things.

I can claim to have been one of the first to compare Top Gear to Last of the Summer Wine.

In their Dreams

According to Save the Children, over 72 million children are growing up today without an education. In Britain we have the opposite problem: many teenagers are obliged to attend school when they clearly have no wish to be there. At least that was my conclusion from watching the first episode of Jamie’s Dream School (Channel 4).

As I have pointed out before, nothing is real on television and this series seems particularly contrived. When Gareth Malone did something similar last year he taught in a real school – even if we ultimately learned nothing more than that primary school boys respond well to a charismatic male teacher. But Jamie Oliver’s students were recruited through press advertisements, which suggests they may be more interested in fame than education.

And his teachers may be “brilliant”, but such people rarely make good teachers. I remember from my chess-playing days that grandmasters had no idea how little we club and county players knew about the game compared to them.

Not that anyone could teach this lot anything. Stripped of their traditional weapons of sarcasm and physical violence, Jamie Oliver’s celebrity teachers can only make despairing and largely unsuccessful appeals for fair play. It is a good thing you can’t believe anything on television, because as a picture of a generation this was deeply depressing.

You could say that these teenagers would be better off at work: let them come to education later in life if they want to. Certainly, I would like to see money put into adult education to give those who were too lazy or unhappy or stroppy to do themselves justice at school a second chance. This would be a better use of funds than abolishing university tuition fees.

The trouble is that the problem with these teenagers is not their lack or qualifications: it is their inability to listen and unwillingness to accept that anyone can know more than they do. And that makes them unemployable too.

******

It is a cliché to remark on the parallels between Top Gear (BBC1) and Last of the Summer Wine, but they are remarkably close. There is the tall one who likes telling the others what to do (Jeremy Clarkson/Foggy Dewhurst), the quiet, sensible one (James May/Clegg ) and the small one who is made to risk his life in dangerous contraptions (Richard Hammond/Compo).

Roy Clarke’s whimsical style of writing has never been to my taste, but Summer Wine did have an appealing sadness in its early days: the sadness of retired men reduced to the status of naughty schoolboys because they have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Years, decades before the series ended, that pathos was to be found only in its theme tune. But it went on and on, becoming increasingly contrived.

I foresee a similar fate for Top Gear. Their insulting of the Mexican nation was widely attacked as unpleasant bullying, but no one asked why they had to import an American prejudice unless they were running out of ideas.

Recent BBC advertising campaigns have billed the presenters as “boys” or, absurdly, “the kids on the street who never miss a beat”. But I can see them still on the air, 30 years from now, when that “we’re not middle aged: look, we’ve got really shaggy hair” act is not going to fool anybody.

******

What have they done to MasterChef (BBC1)? It is now a cross between X Factor and The Apprentice with a bit of vegetable preparation thrown in. It has lost the audience participation that made the early rounds interesting. We could all take the invention test and decide what we would have cooked if faced with those ingredients.

And then there are all the tears and emotion. If you want to be a chef that much, go to catering college. You don’t have to win a television contest to do it.

Top Gear is the new Last of the Summer Wine

I have been known to complain about the BBC's habit of describing the ageing presenters of Top Gear as "boys".

The week after I last did so the programme's trailer ludicrously implied that they are "the kids on the street" who "never miss a beat".

I was having my hair cut this morning and the barber's shop had TVs showing the Dave channel. As I gather is usual, it was running an old episode of Top Gear.

And it suddenly struck me where I had seen the characters before.

Three ageing men who, unencumbered by women or families, and with lots of time on their hands, get involved in increasingly contrived adventures. It's Last of the Summer Wine.

Even the characters from that programme's heyday fit:

• The tall one who likes telling the others what to do - Jeremy Clarkson/Foggy Dewhurst
• The quiet, sensible one - James May/Clegg
• The small one who is made to risk his life in dangerous contraptions - Richard Hammond/Compo

There is only one way in which the parallel breaks down: Top Gear sometimes makes you laugh.

The Top Gear presenters are not boys

This time last year I complained that the BBC kept calling the presenters of Top Gear "boys".

In this year's the trailer they are played by boys.

Why is the BBC so determined that we should see Jeremy Clarkson, the little one and the other one as lovable scamps?

Britblog Roundup 203: Live from my new laptop

My old machine expired over the Christmas holiday, but I have a new one working in time to present the first Britblog Roundup of the new year.

Gaza

Being without a computer for a few days has left me unable to comment on the story of the week, but others have spoken up.

Amused Cynicism writes on proportionality and how some commentators have tried to devalue the concept.

Charles Crawford looks at the historic failures of Western diplomacy that have led to the current impasse.

Back in London, Stop Gaza Massacre and Not a Sheep offer contrasting views of the anti-war demonstrations.

2008

The F Word names her top 10 UK feminist moments of the year.

Obsolete nominates the most disappointing and worst music of 2008.

2009

This year will see elections to the European Parliament. Is There More to Life Than Shoes? looks at the likely Labour manifesto.

It has already seen Ros Scott take office. Ros Scott? She is the new Lib Dem President - and she's been shopping.

J. Arthur MacNumpty looks at Scottish politics in the coming year and Ruscombe Green looks at prospects for the environment. Apparently, we are all doomed.

Feminism

The Daily (Maybe) looks at the struggle for abortion rights in Iran and The F Word looks at Facebook's decision to remove pictures of breastfeeding mothers and its wider implications.

Ministry of Truth takes on Mad Nad (aka Nadine Dorries MP) for questioning the Guardian reader's article of faith that sex education reduces teenage pregnancies.

Me and My Army offers the diary of a hairy young lady.

Culture

Starting with the BBC, The Whited Sepulchre looks at the future of the licence fee. And The Daily (Maybe) finds the corporation putting its standards aside again. The case involves [pause then drop voice an octave] Jeremy Clarkson.

Quaequam Blog! attended a festival of nine carols and lessons for godless people - which sounds a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it. Oh, and some people want to hoist Richard Dawkins into the vacant throne.

My London, Your London reviews a book on the cathedral of the railway age: St Pancras.

Bad habits

Heresy Corner argues that the government does not have the evidence to justify its scare campaign on childhood obesity.

And The Devil's Kitchen looks at the way the government ensures that public consultation on the sale of tobacco products produces the results it wants.

Crime and punishment

A Very British Dude suggests a policy to make prison work.

Harpy Marx is worried by government plans to give the public more say in the punishment of minor crimes. On the same question, The Daily (Maybe) suggests flogging may be the new vote winner.

Chris Coltrane's Blog looks forward to a court case: Simon Singh, the eminent scientist, is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Civil liberties

Quaequam Blog! hopes the state's assault on our freedoms will begin to reverse in 2009.

Harpymarx reports that:

Jacqui Smith isn’t just desperate to trawl and nose through your emails she along with NL want to snoop in your bedroom to see what you get up to in the sack.

And Heresy Corner looks at government plans to spend (count 'em) £12bn on a giant database of all our telephone calls, browsing habits, e-mails and internet searches.

Jeremy Clarkson to stand against Nick Clegg?

The Pink News conference blog reports an intriguing rumour circulating at the Tory Conference in Birmingham:

a rumour was running ... round the room like wildfire. Nothing as exciting as a resignation, unfortunately.

Just the frankly bonkers idea that Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter who is some sort of god to middle aged heterosexual men, will be standing as a candidate for the Tories. Against Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

Wiser heads pointed out that Mr Clarkson's stance on the environment is unlikely to endear him to the Tory leader.

No, I don't believe it either. But it is worth noting, as Lib Dem Voice has, that Cameron's commitment to green policies has been played down of late.

Will the BBC please stop calling the "Top Gear" presenters "boys"?

Jeremy Clarkson, the little one and the other one are not boys. They are men.

This matters.

Thank you. I feel better for that.

Dave Hill on the BBC

Quite:

The BBC makes heroes out of big babies like Jeremy Clarkson, bigheads like Jonathan Ross and big bullies like Chris Moyles - Grown Men Behaving Badly at our expense.

Getting the hump

The Tories' issue of the day is road humps. They have put down an amendment to the Road Safety Bill calling for them all to be removed within two years, although in his media interviews Tim Yeo has been taking a softer line. The Guardian reports:

"Our policy is not to construct new speed humps," he told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"As far as the removal of existing speed humps is concerned, we want to examine the arguments, the costs and so on, to see whether it is an effective way of using resources to improve safety.

For a laugh see the press release on the Conservative Party's own website:

Mr Yeo said: "We have taken a rational, evidence-based approach to the Road Safety Bill and have asked the Government to make available evidence on the effectiveness of road humps, and to have an open discussion.

In other words they have decided on their policy and then asked to see the evidence afterwards. That's a funny sort of "evidence-based approach".

No doubt the Tories think they are on to a winner, but I hope the other parties will stand firm.

When the Market Harborough bypass was opened we had all sorts of traffic calming installed in the town. There was a big fuss in the local paper and a vocal campaign was set up to have the humps removed. Their mascot was a camel called Humphrey - because they wanted a hump-free Harborough. Geddit?!!?

Yet when I went canvassing in the local elections the only people who mentioned traffic calming as an issue wanted it installed in their road too. I suspect there are fewer votes in this Jeremy Clarkson politics than the Tories hope.

The way urban streets are monopolised by the motor car is one of the chief causes of the impoverishment of social life in our towns and cities. It is time we fought back.