CLARKSON : A GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN ?

The replaying of and poring over the events of 11 September 2001 continues relentlessly. Interviews with the then children who were sitting in a classroom with President Bush when he was told of the second tower being hit for example, on BBC Radio 4. What possible light can that throw on the matter ?

It might be worth looking at just how this event ‘that changed the world’ as we are continually told, (in what way precisely is not so often explained) and other terrorist attacks in the last ten years compare with the more prosaic everyday calamities such as car crashes.


The bare facts are that in this country over the last ten years there have been 56 deaths as a result of terrorist attacks. These were in London in 2005.

Since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York there have been no fatalities in the USA in the last ten years as a result of terrorist attacks. Fact.


Compare this with recent figures for deaths caused by hit and run drivers in London over the last 12 months with 15 killed and many injured. That is just the figure for hit and run drivers in one year. I do not know the precise figure for London ( for some reason it was not published in the piece in the Evening Standard where the hit and run statistics were given ) but the annual total number of fatalities in the UK caused by traffic accidents is around 2000 each year. It is usually noted that this figure is on a downward trend, but that means it has been consistently higher over the preceding ten years. Even if it were possible to reduce this to a figure of 1800 random violent deaths on the streets each year if they were caused by any events other than car crashes this carnage would be met with a hysterical reaction and calls for be strong actions to be taken. I know it is not just a matter of figures but the attack on the Twin Towers, by far the biggest single terrorist attack claiming in the order of 3000 lives, is equalled in number every one and a half years on the roads in Britain. Heaven knows how much higher the figures are in the USA. I seem to recall that on average someone is killed on the roads in the USA every three minutes.


As opposed to one big spectacular event the so-called ‘accident’ when a car or lorry kills someone is rarely reported as news, quickly cleared away, barely recorded and almost invisible, unless you happen to be on the scene or personally involved. I heard some comic fool complaining, in an attempt to be funny, that they now stop traffic on the motorway for too many minor mishaps whereas it should only be closed after major pile ups involving death and destruction. There is a whole other language and attitude to car crashes which seems to accept it as par for the course and just a fact of life : it is in point of fact random killing by stupid actions that endanger the lives of others, much like terrorism.


The national broadcaster the BBC using my licence fee makes a large budget programme (Top Gear) exclusively devoted to the promotion of what is, in the end, simply another consumer product, not particularly durable, which are manufactured for commercial profit : cars. For this one, potentially lethal product, all the ideas of the BBC not being a commercial channel promoting any particular product are suspended. There is a continual emphasis upon speed for its own sake, the idea that you could ever kill someone, or in fact yourself, (not that I would be upset if the chief presenter did top himself in one of the absurd expensive cars that he promotes), is never touched upon.


Back to Ground Zero. Exactly what is the point to endlessly repeating these images of chaos and destruction that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre ten years ago ? It is like doing an advert for terrorists everywhere : if you get it right you will get endless free advertising on national media for ever. What is to be gained or progressed by interview after interview, replay after replay, of every bit of recording, no matter how bad, how shaky, how meaningless, of everything that happened to be recorded on that day ? I could trip over going down a flight of steps and film it on a mobile phone and it would look very much the same as much of the sort of material that is often shown, and it would be about as enlightening. And it does not alter the fact : yes, in the case of the attack on the World Trade Centre, a very bad thing occurred, but it is an extremely rare event but which, by repeating the images over and over again is made to seem familiar rather than exceptional and occurred on one singular day in America ten years ago.


The most recent programme I have heard being promoted on BBC Radio, just before the news at one, to get maximum exposure, is about the day before the attack, that is the day before ‘the world changed’ in some indefinable way. Utterly ridiculous. After such an event it still all comes down to certain powerful people being seen to act and making certain decisions, for good or ill, and in this case, in my opinion, for ill. The world did not change. There was a terrorist threat before 9/11 and there is one still, but without being a statistician nor a ’Security Expert’, which seem to heavily outnumber active terrorists these days, it would appear that the chances of being mowed down by a speeding car or reversed over by an artic delivering to Tesco Metro are considerably more likely to be the cause of my or indeed your death than an act of terrorism. My next door neighbour, an alert and active lady of 80 died after just such an incident. The driver said there is no way to see anything to the rear of the vehicle he was driving. That is how the vast majority of articulated lorries still operate : with no way of the driver seeing what is directly behind : be afraid, be very afraid. Fitting cameras is too expensive, they say, the price of beans would inevitably go up.


Whether David Cameron should send an SAS Team to capture Jeremy Clarkson dead or alive is a moot point. I think, on balance, yes. Desperate times call for desperate measures.