Clarkson on political correctness

Thanks to the example set by the increasingly powerful Health and Safety Executive, staff at BBC Radio Sheffield have been given booklets on how to boil a kettle: “Under no circumstances empty the contents over your head”

Four separate pieces of legislation – on age, sex, race and disability – mean that if British Nuclear Fuels wants a person to monitor the reactors at Sellafield, it is duty bound to consider someone whose CV reveals them to be a hormonal Afghan school-leaver with a keen interest in Middle East politics, a degree in chemistry and epilepsy

Who are the busybodies who say that we can’t smoke foxes or smack our children? The nitwits who say that we should have a new bank holiday to celebrate traffic wardens and social workers? Where do they meet? Who pays their wages?

When I was at school, teachers spoke with pride about how a little island in the north Atlantic turned a quarter of the world pink, but now all teachers talk about is the slave trade and how we must hang our heads in shame

In the past, crying only happened abroad. No more. We were ordered to weep like Americans when Diana died, and no local news report is complete today without some fat oik sobbing because his house has fallen over

A question. It’s addressed to all the equal opportunity, human rights, diet carbon, back room, bleeding heart liberals who advise the government: “I am English. Why is that a good thing?” I bet they don’t have an answer. And until they can come up with one, chances are we’ll never win at football again

The Met Office, spurred on by the chance for a bit of bossiness, agrees that we should stay at home whenever it’s windy, and possibly move to the cellar with some soup until the all-clear is sounded

Mention the war and you’ll be told by an outreach counsellor that we must empathise with the Germans, who are coming to terms with their mistakes of the past. “And you know, children, it was actually the British who invented concentration camps...”

Jeremy Clarkson