Top Gear: Argentine ambassador calls for apology

[EX500rider]

Source: BBC

The Argentine ambassador to the UK has called for the BBC to make a public apology following the row over an edition of Top Gear filmed in the South American country.

The stars and crew of the show had to leave Argentina amid angry protests - reportedly over a number plate that appeared to refer to the Falklands War.

The team, including Jeremy Clarkson, had been filming a Christmas special.

Executive producer Andy Wilman has denied the number plate was a "stunt".



Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29706449

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The show's cars had to be abandoned by the roadside and the crew escorted to the airport after being pelted with stones.

"Furthermore, the Argentine ambassador deeply regretted Jeremy Clarkson's entirely false accusations of alleged resentment against British citizens in Argentina."
You know, if you overlook the whole rock throwing thing....lol

[Travis_0004]

1. I honestly believe it was not intentional

In argentina liscense plates are issued to cars, not people. I know top gear likes pranks, but I dont think they set out to look for an offensive plate, hoping all along it wasnt on a vw bug. Then they would have had to find the plate and convince the owner to sell the car.

Or to put it another way. If the plate was offensive why was it on a car for years before top gear filmed the segment. Unlike america, you dont request a new plate when you buy a car, the plate comes with the car you just bought.

If im wrong and top gear sucesfully requested a new vanity plate, then the DMV should have the paperwork to prove it.

[alarimer]

6. I do too.

It seems like just an unfortunate coincidence.

[Applan]

10. It looks like a British number plate

And by the letter "H" at the front (1990 to 1991) it looks like it fits the age of the Porsche 928 in production from 1977 to 1995.

[mwooldri]

15. Yes, it's a UK number plate.

Number plates issued in Argentina are the same size as license plates issued in North America.

[Scairp]

24. I made this very point when I heard about it

They totally overreacted, like a mob often does.

[PuffedMica]

2. The Argentinians called out Jeremy Clarkson.

That has the potential to be a bad move on their part. The Top Gear show is popular all over the world. I can see Clarkson's snide, arrogant, condescending and insulting comments deriding Argentina for years to come over this. The country might even supersede Clarkson's dislike for American automobiles for a year or two.

[EX500rider]

3. Yeah I agree....Top Gear has over 750 million viewers worldwide..

....bad PR move on the Argentinians I think.

[alarimer]

8. He is an asshole, but they were not responsible for this.

I can't stand him, but I like the others.

[CBGLuthier]

4. Clarkson is a racist who has been caught using the n word, calling mexicans lazy

and calling asians slopes. How anyone can support such a racist tool on a progressive board is quite puzzling. I guess it is because cars are cool and go vroom vroom vroom.

[EX500rider]

5. Actually he rags on every country..

...Americans included. (or more especially) And Mexico is a country not a race. And saying someone on a scripted TV show is a racist makes as much sense as saying Carroll O'Connor was one because of Archie Bunker. And the n word fracus was from a deleted scene that never aired because Clarkson himself wanted it deleted because he said it sounded like he said that, not that he did. And if someone points to a homemade poorly built bridge and says upon its completion, "That's a proud moment, but there's a slope on it", and Richard Hammond added, "Yeah, right. It's definitely higher on that side", I wonder who the racist is?

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. The racist is Clarkson. He writes his lines. He's not playing a character to be held up to ridicule

He's saying what he wants to say. If you think Top Gear is like All In The Family, then you don't understand fiction. Or reality.

In this Argentinian case, I suspect it really was a coincidence (as said above, the number plate does fit the age of car, and it's a pretty obscure thing - "H982" doesn't make me think of 1982, and people don't particularly bring up the year of the conflict when talking about it, in Britain anyway), but since Clarkson has the history of being purposely offensive, it's hard for him to be convincing in his defence.

[EX500rider]

17. He's a racist just because you say so or do you have some proof of that?

I've seen all 21 seasons more then once and can't think of any racist comments. He makes fun of many nationalities but those aren't races.
And the ones he makes the most fun of are the Americans, the Germans and the Brits...are you saying he doesn't like caucasians?

And he didn't say anything about the Mexicans, that was Richard hammond.

Clarkson has the history of being purposely offensive That is true but does not equal racism.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. The 'slope' 'joke' (nt)

[Adrahil]

9. He is a racist tool.... BUT...

I think getting upset over that number plat is a real stretch. If it was deliberate, it was VERY oblique.

[Historic NY]

7. Kind of cheeky on his part...

especially if this wasn't a real assigned license plate.

[Travis_0004]

11. That plate has been on the car since 2001.

If its offensive, why was it on that car for 13 years.
And as much as I think Top gear sometimes does have too much time on their hands, I don't think they searched out an offensive plate, then tracked down the owner just to buy that exact car, for a joke that would probably go over a lot of peoples heads anyway.

[T_i_B]

13. If it's a UK licence plate

Then it will have been in the UK, where we aren't quite so touchy about references to the Falklands war.

[EX500rider]

18. And the Argentines shouldn't be too touchy about losing a war they started perhaps...

[Heywood J]

14. Seriously?

The plate on May’s Lotus contained the number 646, which Juan Manuel Romano, an official in the province of Ushuaia, suggested could be a reference to the 649 Argentinean dead in the Falklands conflict. He noted that Hammond’s Ford Mustang had 269 in its plate, close to the 255 losses suffered by the British.

Their argument is that numbers are close to other numbers?

They don't seem to be nearly as offended by sheltering 5,000 Nazi war criminals, from death camp doctors to SS captains. I didn't find any newspaper reports of former Nazis being stoned to the airport as they were forced to flee the country, where the Argentine ambassador came out to denounce them. I did, however, find that the inventor of Nazi gas vans was described there as a "prosperous businessman".

[Nihil]

30. Mountains out of molehills are useful ...

... especially to hide the mountains of 100% validated crimes that the Argentinian
government are desperate to keep out of view ...

Clarkson is an arse and, in some ways, it is indeed fitting for his apologies & claims
of innocence to be ignored as a result of the "Cry Wolf" effect but the only people to
bear any blame on this occasion are the Argentinian muck-rakers ...

[Nye Bevan]

16. If this was intentional, then this would be exactly the kind of reaction Clarkson was hoping for.

It would have been far better to simply ignore it.

[happyslug]

19. More on this controversy.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/not-intentional-top-gear-producer-responds-to-argentina-number-plate-incident/

The truth is the first time we realised the plate could be a problem was on the third night of our shoot in Argentina (19 September, I believe), when Jeremy was scrolling through Twitter and spotted a comment on one of the auto fan sites, next to a photo of the plate. I remember his surprise and concern.

There are other witnesses to this fact. In fact, one of them – a mechanic we were using for the first time – has written to the Telegraph Letters page stating he saw Jeremy’s reaction and that it could have been nothing but genuine. (Weirdly, although he’s chased them, the Telegraph has so far not bothered to print his letter.)

Knowing this could be a problem, our office spoke to the local authorities in Ushuaia, the town where the war issue was most sensitive, and where we would end our trip in ten days’ time with a massive game of car football. We agreed with those authorities that the plates would be removed before we entered the town, and it was at this point – not before we left London – that we decided to get the BE11 END plates made for Jeremy’s car for the football match in the town.

Before we entered Ushuaia we duly removed the H982 FKL plates from the Porsche. For a day or two, the plate on the back said H1 VAE (the plate left there, underneath H982 FKL, from when one owner had privately registered the car). An advance party of our guys had been in there for a few days already, prepping the football game with no problem whatsoever. The local ski resort was looking forward to us filming there too.

http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2014/10/10/top-gear-in-argentina-what-really-happened/

It looks like the plate was issued in Britain for a British car. Top Gear purchased the car for the sole purpose of flying it down to Argentina to shoot this "Christmas Special". Argentina indicated that the importation was legal and had indicated no problems with the plate at the time of importation.

The problem was the plate was put on twitter where someone said it was a plate for the Falklands (Malvinas) war. At that point a new plate was request and shipped from England. The New Plate was put on the car BEFORE the rock throwing incident (And Top Gear found a third plate, that had been "Stored" under the rear plate in controversy).

Why did England start to use the Letter "F" on its plates in the early 1990s? Was it a coincident with the Falkland war or something else (i.e. pick F for the Falklands for some letter had to be first and F was as good as any other as opposed to being the letter after E when E filled up). Someone with knowledge of English plate may be able to explain why F was picked as while as the A and K, all COULD indicate Falklands (and could be just the next letter to some formal procedure to pick those three letters).

[Nihil]

31. Thanks for posting that.

> Why did England start to use the Letter "F" on its plates in the early 1990s?
> Was it a coincident with the Falkland war or something else (i.e. pick F for the Falklands
> for some letter had to be first and F was as good as any other as opposed to being the
> letter after E when E filled up).

The number plate in question was "H982FKL".

As stated elsewhere, the first letter in that style of number place determines the year of
registration (excludes I, O, U, Z & Q) so H = August 1990 through July 1991.

The numbers are pretty sequential (officially 21-999 but with a few exceptions).
The only significance of "982" is that it was later in the sequence than, say, "289".

Of the last three letters, the last two determine the place of registration.
"KL" = Maidstone, Kent (along with several others: KJ, KK, KM, KN, KO, KP, KR & KT)

The letter "F" has no meaning in that style of numberplate: it was effectively an extra "number"
as far as the registration system was concerned.

So, although it would be possible to request & buy a number plate with this specific combination
and subsequently re-register the car under that plate, that information would be not only obvious
but traceable. Unless there is evidence to suggest that Clarkson (or others in the team) did that,
this whole thing is a bag of pointless blather being used to hide the far more heinous crimes of
the Argentinian government.

HTH!

[FLPanhandle]

20. Clarkson is an equal opportunity insulter

I love when Top Gear has American specials, he really rags on Americans, but, then again, I have a sense of humor.

Pity the Argentinians don't have one.

[jakeXT]

22. I remember that one

[FLPanhandle]

25. The American South Challenge!

That was my favorite!

[EX500rider]

23. As a commercial truck driver I loved this one:

[FLPanhandle]

26. LOL

Change gear, change gear, change gear, murder a prostitute, change gear.

I'm sure he received a lot of hate mail over that one.

[T_i_B]

27. Lots of outrage from the then MP for Ipswich...

...as it was a reference to a series of murders that happened in Ipswich in 2006.

However, I don't remember any lorry drivers getting hot under the collar about that one. It was also inaccurate as the man who committed those murders in 2006 was a forklift driver, not a lorry driver.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Some drivers did complain

In a stinging letter to BBC chief executive Mark Thompson, the Road Haulage Association (RHA) called for him to take action over the 'gratuitous insult'.

The United Road Transport Union said it had been inundated with complaints from its 17,000 truck driver members.

Spokesman James Bower said: 'We received dozens of phone calls from many members to say how disgusted they were about the comments.

'We would absolutely condemn what he said about murdering prostitutes. It beggars belief that those words can be broadcast on TV.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082712/Ofcom-clears-Clarkson-jibe-truck-drivers-murder-prostitutes-BBC-receives-500-complaints.html

[T_i_B]

29. Well, then and now....

...I have a lot of dealings with lorry drivers and I've never heard any of them say anything about that episode. Even the ones from Ipswich.

Although the furore over that comment has had an effect as whenever that episode is repeated on "Dave" that comment is edited out.

You're far more likely to get complaints from lorry drivers about working hour regulations or the fortunes of local football teams.