The agenda against him comes from BBC's new director of television, Danny Cohen.

Allow me to preface this with the fact I think anyone using the term "leftist" as an insult is a blithering idiot and distrust conservatives as a general rule but if applies to one person, it's Cohen. He's been on a concerted campaign to get rid of people like Clarkson from the BBC and doesn't seem to care what gets harmed in the process. He's implemented a policy at the BBC saying that all panel shows "must" have at least one female presenter and something tells me a token female presenter on Top Gear wouldn't go down too well with him.

However like you said, there are two sides to this and I think there will be fallout from this for months to come. Clarkson will shortly have no reason not to slag off the BBC and reveal the internal machinations and Clarkson isn't exactly the kind of person to keep his opinions to himself.

Actually Top Gear makes about US$225 Million for BBC Worldwide (which gets funnelled back into the BBC as they're the only shareholder). That's about £150 million or 10% of what BBC worldwide makes. Out of the £5 Billion the BBC makes, it's about 3%. If 3% of your budget goes missing, you're going to notice. In a year, without the hosts the Top Gear brand will be next to worthless and just about anyone could pick it up for 45p.

But how this is really going to hurt the BBC is when they go to renegotiate their other contracts. Because they've messed around with the delivery of the last few episodes of Top Gear they've lost faith with other networks. Even extremely popular shows like Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing (Dancing with the Stars) will be affected, less popular shows like Antiques Roadshow will be decimated.

I think Danny Cohen is going to be out of a job in 12 months or so.

The producer is Andy WIlman.

Fifth gear already exists for us car anoraks, we don't really need another (I will say Tiff and Jason do a fantastic job, but cant stand Vicki Butler-Henderson). I'm pretty sure that James May, Richard Hammond, Clarkson and Wilman will come as a package deal for whoever wants to pick them up.

Rumour is that Netflix is looking to pick them up. I kind of hope they do as all other commercial networks are beholden to advertisers and would eventually force the show to become more "advertiser friendly". Half the stuff Clarkson and crew got away with was because the BBC didn't have to answer to Vauxhall (General Motors) Renault or Citroen when the TG presenters slagged them off and I'm pretty sure Clarkson has had nothing nice to say about any Vauxhall. A major part of the appeal Top Gear had was that it was so irreverent, an irreverence that they'd never get away with on a commercial network.

No they aren't.

They're taking a stand against a law they do not support.

it really ticks me off how the right has characterized the ability to be openly racist, sexist, misogynist, transphobic, and homophobic as "freedom and liberty. absolutely disgusting.

This.

My country protects speech, it does not protect hate speech however. I'm not even sure the US would protect hate speech as an inalienable right.

If the KKK or ISIS came into your print shop and asked for some hate speech to be printed up, you'd be within your rights to refuse the job because the job is borderline illegal and distasteful, beyond this, it's also harmful to your business. Its a similar story if someone asked you to print off a large quantity of their own hardcore pornography. The porn is legal, the job is legal, but you do not want your business to become known as a purveyor of adult literature because that would scare away many customers.

Whilst it's not illegal for people to be arseholes, there is no law stating that we have to facilitate their ability to be arseholes.

Since when were the KKK protected?

Same as if the Black Panthers or ISIS came in and asked you to print up some hate speech. You can refuse service as the job they're asking you to do is borderline illegal.

I cannot refuse to serve a Muslim or black person on account of their skin colour or religion, but I can refuse to serve someone for being unruly, disruptive, drunk, argumentative or would harm the good name of my business. That last one is important, refusing to serve people with ginger hair would harm my businesses reputation, not refusing to serve the grand pooba of the KKK would have the same effect.

Its the same with signing up to things that ask for an email address that isn't for verification.

If there really is a Blah@blah.net he fucking hates me.

As someone who did tech support for Macs many years ago, I cant buy them being more robust or reliable.

And this was back in the early 00's where suggesting a Mac had a problem meant Apple sent hired goons to your office. You didn't complain that it took two weeks to get a PSU for an Imac... because it was just better (TM).

Pretty much anything you can get from a Mac these days can be gotten from another manufacturer for less money... Except the wank factor of course.

Welcome to modern society.

The banks addict them to using a card (gotta get those points) but they act all hurt when the merchant raises prices because of credit card fees. Allow all kinds of draconian laws to be created to fight "teh terr'sts" but act like its the end of the world when this is used to curtail something they enjoy.

Hypocrisy isn't just in fashion, it's become a way of life.

This is my complete lack of surprise.

I took one look at the permissions the app needed on Android and figured out that they were collecting data wholesale.

I dont expect them to be nearly as meticulous as the likes of Google in anonymising it. They probably give out your phone number as part of the package and offer to determine your home address for a nominal fee.

Sucks if you're already an Uber fanboy and have given them all your details.

I dont have a speed limiter and have no trouble keeping my speed in check. As such, I've never understood this excuse.

How long does it take you people to check your speedo, for me it's a fraction of a second. This is for every car I've ever been in.

Also, if you spend all your time with your eyes glued to the road in front of you, you're driving horribly wrong. You should be focusing on multiple things, mirrors, instruments, blindspots. If you're not checking your mirrors every 10-15 seconds you're dangerous. Same if you change lanes or turn without checking your blind spots. As for your instruments, well your car may not overheat every day, but when it does you want to know about it long before it reaches the red and you need a new head gasket.

I check my speedo every 10-15 seconds, same with my mirrors. It hardly changes unless I move my right foot. Realistically if you need more than half a second to read a speedometer or cant keep a consistent speed for 10-15 seconds, you need to hand in your license and admit this driving thing is beyond your capabilities.

Its not exactly a secret that Cambodia is a poor nation with lots of opportunistic theives, what made you think it was safe to play with your smartphone in public.

I've lived in Thailand and the Philippines which are pretty much the same, using a phone in the open is practically asking for it to be stolen.

Whilst I agree with your point, Greenpeace isn't one of the more hard-line environmental movements.

Sure their one of the most active and prolific, but they're quite moderate, rejecting violent methods of activism. They're nowhere near as bad as the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front who have no compunction about being violent against the organisations they oppose (the kind of people who set fire to diggers and attack laboratories to liberate the animals). Even PETA is more extremist than Greenpeace.

Couple of mitigations

Which wont do a damn thing to prevent theft.

The thief wants the hardware (which is valuable) not your personal information (which, lets face it, is completely worthless).

The first thing a thief is going to do is sell it to someone who will first reset it to factory settings so they can sell it. Your data actually makes the device worth less than a blank one.

I dont even have a password on my Android phone. The absolute worst thing a thief can do is spam from my Gmail account and Facebook. Seeing as I can simply go to the nearest Telstra shop and get my phone number back by flashing my drivers license, even if they reset my password it's only temporary. However chances are, they wont even bother looking at whats on there and just flog it.

Phone theft may sound rare, but it isn't uncommon, and thieves know that they can just grab the phone, stuff it in a tinfoil envelope, let it sit for a week or two until the battery dies, disassemble it, then sell the screen, case, and other parts for a good amount of cash.

If they're going to sell the phone for parts, why wait for the battery to die? Beyond this, why not simply just remove the SIM card instead. Like a lot of ./ers you're over-thinking things to the point where you've completely ignored the obvious solution, relevent XKCD

Getting the phone wiped isn't a problem for a phone thief, they dont care about your personal data. They want to sell the hardware to make a buck. So they simply take it to a pawn shop run by someone who will get the phone wiped. They want a blank phone to sell.

Even IMEI blocking is useless as you can just sell it over the border and anyone unscrupulous enough to steal a phone wont think twice at selling a phone that doesn't work (and no, there will never be a shortage of suckers).