Amazon Sign Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May

I've fought this battle for a long time. It seems for most it's just a way to speak of their grievances against a company they don't like. It's just pointing their finger at the company saying they obviously are an evil corporation because they choose to take advantage of stupidly written tax laws that are totally legal yet I choose to define them as something only bad people do. Despite the fact they likely use similar "loopholes" in their own taxes and justify it in some way.

Almost certainly it was illegal, yes, certainly highly dubious process which at one point threatened to being down the European Commission president. The European Commission is investigating eg see [1] and Amazon have stopped doing it. Oh and Amazon's head of tax was Luxembourg Honorary Consul to the Seattle are, hum.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/15/amazon-lux...

Tax systems are complex. There are deliberate loopholes - a company can register for VAT, for example - and there are unintended loopholes.

Amazon, Google, Starbucks etc engage in very aggressive tax planning. They say it's all legal - they're not trying to evade tax, just avoid it. But because their schemes are so aggressive it might be illegal. We don't really know because the cases would have to go to court. Sometimes tax authorities will investigate, and will persuade a company that their aggressive tax plannin was unlawful, and then get some repayment of the missing tax. This usually means that the company avoids the court case and doesn't have to repay the total tax they avoided.

No-one expects them to pay all their tax burden. People in the UK recognise that tax planning is a useful important activity.

What we don't like is companies taking the piss.

And as to why they should pay tax: they get the benefits from society that flow from taxes - educated workforce, police, road infrastructure, healthcare, etc etc. They should pay their share.

Finally these companies will sometimes mention other taxes. So they'll talk about VAT or PAYE. But VAT is a tax the customer pays. The company collects it, but it's collected from the customer. And PAYE is (apart from the employer's contribution) a tax that the employee pays, again collected by the company. It's a scumbag move to reduce your tax payments to the minimum you can and then talk about the tax other people pay as if it's tax you pay.

The tactics that some companies (I don't know about Amazon) use verge on abusive. I remember hearing about Vodafone being subject to a tax investigation regarding billions they had in accounts in Luxembourg. They hired key people in the investigation to hamper progress. E.g.

http://www.accountancyage.com/aa/news/1774186/top-taxman-dit...

I think in the end the HMRC took a deal on Vodafone's terms. Nothing illegal but I think you could vilify that behavior.

> I don't understand why their apps for other platforms is so bad;

I assumed it was to push people to the FireTV.

> Not to mention the people who could use it legally but refuse to subscribe to Amazon.

Is that any different than those who refuse to subscribe to Netflix, HBO or Showtime, etc...

Agreed, Top Gear is not enough to warrant an Amazon Prime subscription for a majority of people.

How do you square these claims with the public outcry over a brief glimpse of Jannet Jackson's tit? There are plenty of examples of similar controversies in the U.S. media.

"This show was tested on animals. They didn't understand it."

> singing a song he didn't want to sing

The scripts are written by the cast & the script editor (Richard Porter).

> made to drink profusely as part of a show stunt

It's well known that Clarkson is a fan of the booze to the point where you could reasonably categorise him as a functioning alcoholic. He recently publicly announced after the death of Charlie Kennedy that he was giving up. So I'm pretty sure that no-one was making him drink..

He likes to paint himself as the last bastion of free speech, innocent victim of the facist Big Brother Corporation, and a lot of other things inbetween; but the reality is that he's just that embarrassing Uncle who you have fond memories of when he used to let you smoke his cigarettes and drive his car around the block when you were 10, but now you're all grown up, going through your contacts, deciding who to invite to your wedding; you just skip past because you just know he'd end up shitting in the font and asking anyone with a tan what weddings are like where they're from.

He assaulted a co-worker. I'm sorry but he only has himself to blame.

I genuinely don't understand why people think his sacking was part of some grand BBC conspiracy. He was good for ratings, they paid him well, it was in both parties' interests to keep him around as long as possible. Remember we're talking about the most popular TV show in the world here.

Unfortunately he put them in a situation where they really had no other choice.

> Both incidents the BBC have him for he was coerced into situations

There are many more than two incidents!

> They were looking for reasons to cancel such a popular show because it had such a disparate budget from the rest of their shows and that was upsetting parties within the BBC.

Surely they could have just pointed to the money it made back? "We give it huge budget because it earns more money for us than anything else we produce".

The BBC has a history of poor management of talent. See eg Chris Evans getting sacked from the Breakfast Show after making demands.

Indeed you could. There's more than enough evidence to bear it out.

I don't think racial slurs are Top Gear's primary appeal. They're just slipped in by the hosts (and clearly with the approval of the production team in some circumstances) as a (quite sinister) wink-and-nod to appear chummy with viewers who "think like them". It validates their behaviour and views.

It should come as no surprise that there's a huge segment of society whose stance on racial slurs is 'more, please.'

It's fine for people to tell offensive jokes.

Is it fine for me to call Roy Chubby Brown lazy and stupid and unfunny because of his bad jokes?

Is it fine for me to ask people providing me content to try harder to be funny, rather than just flinging shit and calling it a joke?

I must assume you consider it a non-issue because you didn't see a clip of, e.g., the "slope" incident, which is unmistakeably a racial reference. The shot in question makes no sense otherwise. Allowing "clever" references like this continue to signal that it's A-OK to use these terms casually.

It is not a non-issue. And I suggest you would not consider it a non-issue if it were the word "nigger".

It's well known in the UK and in that article that he ~ambiguously~ mumbled the word "tigger" in a nursery rhyme.