Government + Sense of Humour = Um…

August 19, 2008 by upyourego

A while ago a petition was launched on the number 10 petitions website that saw nearly 50,000 people call on the Prime Minister to make Jeremy Clarkson the … well Prime Minister.

There have been some pretty surreal petitions on that site - many of them involving Jeremy Clarkson but this is the one that gained the most notoriety.

Basically the petition calls on the Prime Minister to make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister - it says “Jezza is legend and deserves a chance to run the country.”

Now I agree that Jezza is a bit of a legend, he’s funny, speaks his mind and has created a brilliant caricature of himself that allows him to be what he likes in private - while presenting this loud mouthed, slightly outrageous, un-pc personality in public.

Anyway the petition led to Facebook Groups, newspaper articles and even the Sun and Times (Jeremy writes for both) to publish their Clarkson Manifesto - based on previous columns.

What’s funny, well I say funny - I mean mildly humourous is the way Number 10 have dealt with the petition. You see they have a commitment to respond to petitions with more than a certain number of signatures - and this more than met that number.

The introduction to the video is “We thought long and hard about the request to make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister and in the end we put our thoughts down in a short film on YouTube.”

They basically published a video to their YouTube channel - I’m not going to explain what’s in it - this is the whole new internet I can just embed it:

As you can see they’ve had a go at being funny and I think it’s brilliant that they’ve at least tried to take it in the light it was originally intended.