I stopped buying TopGear magazine a while ago.
Discussion
Two tiny saplings for one giant tree a thousand years old 
On a sensible note I know some of the activities closer to home may be well intended. But how do you know where the pulp for the magazines comes from? The areas of the world with the largest forests are not exactly known for being well managed.
Besides for the recyling chain to work it would require every person reading a paper to put it back into a recyling bin when they have finished. This does not happen.
On a sensible note I know some of the activities closer to home may be well intended. But how do you know where the pulp for the magazines comes from? The areas of the world with the largest forests are not exactly known for being well managed.
Besides for the recyling chain to work it would require every person reading a paper to put it back into a recyling bin when they have finished. This does not happen.
k-ink said:
Two tiny saplings for one giant tree a thousand years old
On a sensible note I know some of the activities closer to home may be well intended. But how do you know where the pulp for the magazines comes from? The areas of the world with the largest forests are not exactly known for being well managed.
Besides for the recyling chain to work it would require every person reading a paper to put it back into a recyling bin when they have finished. This does not happen.
It does in my area at least, by law. We've got four wheelie bins, one of which is for paper.On a sensible note I know some of the activities closer to home may be well intended. But how do you know where the pulp for the magazines comes from? The areas of the world with the largest forests are not exactly known for being well managed.
Besides for the recyling chain to work it would require every person reading a paper to put it back into a recyling bin when they have finished. This does not happen.
It's also worth pointing out that, as a renewable source, paper is fairly eco-friendly. Not only is a great deal of it recycled (even the glossy stuff - it doesn't all have to look rough these days), but planting a sustainable forest for paper production (not the rainforests you describe, but deliberately commercially-planted paper-mill logging plants in Europe) is more eco-friendly and transparent (chop a tree down, plant another, it's not hard) than the intense mining of rare-earth minerals to fuel the world's appetite for yet more mobile phones, computers, and variations thereof. Most of those come from mines in China, are running out at a rate of knots, cannot be replaced merely by planting some more trees, and are often extracted using similarly eco-unfriendly methods and, this being China, very unethical working conditions.
Unfortunately they don't print this on the backs of iPads. You do, however, find information in newspapers and magazines showing you which group of commercial forests they came from, links to their sustainable logging policies, information about how much recycled paper is used, and the company's general commitment to sustainable sources.
I wonder how many people ditching their current iPads for iPad2s this next year, who will bang on about how 'ethical' it is not to buy paper things, will bother to check where Apple's rare-earth minerals come from? They're as bad as Prius-drivers.
alephnull said:
NorthernBoy said:
alephnull said:
Whats the verdict on EVO? I personally love EVO and pretty much never buy TG....Its just a shame EVO does seem to focus heavily on very un-obtainable cars...(not that TG is any better)
I can't see much point in me reading reviews of base-model Astras and the like. For one thing I'm never likely to buy one, but, if I did want to, I could just pop along to the showroom and try a selection out. I could then drive it exactly as it was meant to be driven (i.e. sedately in traffic, well within the limits of adhesion), and know what it was all about. When I bought my RS4 I did find a place with a demonstrator, but learned relatively little about it in a test drive around South London. Something like Evo gives me some extra information.For me reading about quotidien cars would be like listening to music played exclusively on affordable instruments, or going to an art gallery to look at reasonably priced watercolours; close to pointless.
k-ink said:
Colonial said:
k-ink said:
It's also a total waste of trees. Almost as bad a buying a newspaper.
I do both. Deal with it.
On the off-chance that you are not completely immune to reason, though, magazines are made from wood grown for that purpose, and which is re-planted after it is harvested. And no, it's not in Brazil where once stood rainforest...
NorthernBoy said:
alephnull said:
NorthernBoy said:
alephnull said:
Whats the verdict on EVO? I personally love EVO and pretty much never buy TG....Its just a shame EVO does seem to focus heavily on very un-obtainable cars...(not that TG is any better)
I can't see much point in me reading reviews of base-model Astras and the like. For one thing I'm never likely to buy one, but, if I did want to, I could just pop along to the showroom and try a selection out. I could then drive it exactly as it was meant to be driven (i.e. sedately in traffic, well within the limits of adhesion), and know what it was all about. When I bought my RS4 I did find a place with a demonstrator, but learned relatively little about it in a test drive around South London. Something like Evo gives me some extra information.For me reading about quotidien cars would be like listening to music played exclusively on affordable instruments, or going to an art gallery to look at reasonably priced watercolours; close to pointless.
velocemitch said:
NorthernBoy said:
alephnull said:
NorthernBoy said:
alephnull said:
Whats the verdict on EVO? I personally love EVO and pretty much never buy TG....Its just a shame EVO does seem to focus heavily on very un-obtainable cars...(not that TG is any better)
I can't see much point in me reading reviews of base-model Astras and the like. For one thing I'm never likely to buy one, but, if I did want to, I could just pop along to the showroom and try a selection out. I could then drive it exactly as it was meant to be driven (i.e. sedately in traffic, well within the limits of adhesion), and know what it was all about. When I bought my RS4 I did find a place with a demonstrator, but learned relatively little about it in a test drive around South London. Something like Evo gives me some extra information.For me reading about quotidien cars would be like listening to music played exclusively on affordable instruments, or going to an art gallery to look at reasonably priced watercolours; close to pointless.
k-ink said:
misinformed rubbish
As others have said, paper comes from well-managed plantations and can be recycled afterwards.The open cast mined rare-earth minerals used in the touch screens are expected to run out in the next 20 years at current usage, if everyone had one it'd be considerably sooner than that. I'll stick with the managed forestry thanks.
Oh, and the rainforests are mainly being cut down in Brazil for settlement and farming. Partly due to their stupid infatuation with biodiesel, actually.
john2443 said:
soad said:
arfur daley said:
Practical Classics is a better magazine.
That's a good read, always liked it. The content is always balanced though - the current issue features all Triumph TRs from the '50s through to the '80s, I profiled a restored 1968 Morris rally car and there's a big feature on a Morris Minor Traveller, so it's not all ''80s retro'!
Top Gear the TV program became popular when it started to show on TV the kind of stories that Car magazine wrote about in the 70s and 80s.
Top Gear magazine is trying to catch the passers attention so it is picked up and bought but it lacks the kind of quality writing that we saw from the great writers of that time.
LJK Setright is dead, Sandor Balagio went out of writing.
Cars are like art and just because they are mass produced doesn't mean that you can't appreciate the feeling that they give us. That is after all why we are enthusiats.
The quality writers are able to play on those feelings and draw you in further.
Classic car magazines have an even harder job to do as they are writing about cars that have been written about time and time before.
Top Gear magazine is trying to catch the passers attention so it is picked up and bought but it lacks the kind of quality writing that we saw from the great writers of that time.
LJK Setright is dead, Sandor Balagio went out of writing.
Cars are like art and just because they are mass produced doesn't mean that you can't appreciate the feeling that they give us. That is after all why we are enthusiats.
The quality writers are able to play on those feelings and draw you in further.
Classic car magazines have an even harder job to do as they are writing about cars that have been written about time and time before.
oobster said:
Still, it is good for a 10 minute read when sitting on the throne.
^this.TGM has become perfect bog-fodder.
Yes, when I've just bought a new issue, I'll be drawn immediately to the article on the new 911 GTS, because it's a new Porsche and it's all lovely and all that and will enjoy it for all it's worth.
But then, a week or so down the line, when I'm perched on the khazi at 0400 in the morning, I will pick up the magazine and be inevitably attracted to the bit about the Ibiza 1.2 TDI that I hadn't read before. And I'll probably enjoy reading it.
I, for one, quite like the fractured nature of the new TGM layout; it allows you to dip in and out of it as you fancy.
Top Gear on telly is not trying to be "Newsnight". Top Gear the magazine is not trying to be "The Economist".
Twincam16 said:
john2443 said:
soad said:
arfur daley said:
Practical Classics is a better magazine.
That's a good read, always liked it. The content is always balanced though - the current issue features all Triumph TRs from the '50s through to the '80s, I profiled a restored 1968 Morris rally car and there's a big feature on a Morris Minor Traveller, so it's not all ''80s retro'!
It's not what it used to be in my view, but if they can attract a newer and younger audience and make a profit then good for them.
k-ink said:
Colonial said:
k-ink said:
It's also a total waste of trees. Almost as bad a buying a newspaper.
I do both. Deal with it.
That because of the cost associated with rainforest timber, most is sold on the black market for being used in furniture, that which is left is burnt.
That the cost of shipping rainforest timber for use as pulp for the prodcution of paper is uneconomic?
That pulpwood plantations are one of the most environmentally sustainable crops around (hint, that is where they get the paper for magazines, by and large)
That the majority of breathable air is actually produced not by rainforest, but by algaes and the like?
Now, step down from your moral high horse before you spout any more nonsense.
k fest and right up its own arse, the same every issue!aw51 121565 said:
Twincam16 said:
john2443 said:
soad said:
arfur daley said:
Practical Classics is a better magazine.
That's a good read, always liked it. The content is always balanced though - the current issue features all Triumph TRs from the '50s through to the '80s, I profiled a restored 1968 Morris rally car and there's a big feature on a Morris Minor Traveller, so it's not all ''80s retro'!
It's not what it used to be in my view, but if they can attract a newer and younger audience and make a profit then good for them.
Edited by Twincam16 on Tuesday 4th January 12:24
Manks said:
Funnily enough my first issue showed up this morning, and I was not especially looking forward to reading it. But it's got some good short articles in in - the FS1E, Escort Mexico etc.
But the 911 GTS article is woefully lazy.
I had a flick through a mate's copy. Funnily enough the article I enjoyed most was James May on the Lada Niva (which is now available new in the UK again. He rather liked it as a budget alternative to a Defender.But the 911 GTS article is woefully lazy.
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