There's probably a lot more that went on behind the scenes to which we are not privy, conversations mostly. They might well have asked Clarkson to make an elaborate apology and he refused, for example.

Whoops. You're right, I was wrong, how lame.

Again, why would they do that? The only members of the "trucking industry" who stand to lose if trucks go automated are truckers themselves, but they can't possibly out-lobby trucking companies.

No. Wal-Mart will just contract with whoever can moves the trucks most cheaply. But they're not going to do the leg-work themselves. They'll just contract whoever has the self-driving trucks, after they do the lobbying.

Wal-Mart doesn't give a shit how cheap trucking is, only that they get it at the lowest possible cost, because they don't care what their prices are, only that they are lower than the competition.

You're assuming that there were not earlier events which led to this event, and also that the producer didn't say anything to exacerbate the situation.

Look, violence is not a wonderful answer to something other than violence or impending violence, but the anti-Clarkson force seems to believe that he just got the wind up his arse and started throwing fists. But since none of us were party to the conversation, and none of us know what was said, none of us knows how unreasonable violence was as a response.

As someone who was bullied in almost every possible way in school, including a whole lot of verbal abuse, I know that verbal abuse can be as painful as the physical kind. In fact, studies have shown that emotional abuse actually causes physical pain responses in the nervous system. That's right, words literally hurt. If the BBC were as progressive as they'll have you believe, they'd fire people for saying mean things to other people. And then it might well have been the producer who was out of a job, before he even got a chance to eat a fist.

So they cracked down on a shot to the jaw as a response to being soft on pedophilia?

Nobody really believes that "no excuse for violence" canard, do they? The world certainly isn't run that way.

I'm not turning away because of the lack of data. He-said, she-said, few-facts-available.

It's not just you. Watch any car review show, there are many to choose from and you can watch pretty much all of them on Youtube. The presenters will always talk about how much better the fit and finish are in the kraut cans, and will always talk about how they are a much "nicer place to be" than their American rivals.

People don't understand how to watch reviews. Reviewers who aren't nice don't get to do reviews, so you have to mentally turn down the nice on every statement. If they say that something is quality, then it could be a lot better. If they say it's better than the competition, then you know it's that.

And that fee is mandatory and difficult to escape, even if you don't have a tuner in your house. Which is what makes the BBC a government organization.

Uh, what? The McDonald's "hot coffee" incident was decided in favor of the customer. That's the opposite of not having merit. McDonald's served coffee at a temperature above their own published standards, which were set in part because they knew that the cups become inadequate at doing their job when used at those temperatures. The coffee was hot enough to cause substantial burns to the woman's flesh, which is not the case if they follow their own guidelines. The case might have been decided the way you imagine absent those guidelines, but it proved that McDonald's was aware that there was a legitimate danger.

Care to try again?

It's funded by a fee that's difficult to escape and which you're obligated to pay by default, it's a government institution.

What's new about reinventing Fifth Gear? You can watch that already.

It's interesting, the only times I've thrown fists at people, it's because I was being bullied... verbally. Of course, for me this hasn't happened since high school.

At what point do you imagine that will be? I think Clarkson's spine would give out long before then.

Clarkson is amusing precisely because he acts like a child. You think that's not amusing to children?

Captain Slow has been to racing school since the series began, and is probably faster than you.

Yes, and yes.

Internet car aficionados have suggested lots of possible credible competition to Top Gear. There's several highly popular Youtube car shows out there right now, and some of the people on them have more charisma than anyone on US TG.