Jeremy Clarkson - What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

After much careful consideration over the festive season, Ive decided that God is almost certainly a German. He created the world and festooned it with all sorts of unusual creations, none of which he liked very much. So then he killed them off and started again. Then he didnt like that lot either, so he turned all the dinosaurs into birds and gave one of the apes opposable thumbs.

Geologically, hes never satisfied. Originally, he placed Scotland in the south Pacific, but he obviously thought the feng shui was wrong, so he moved it to a spot in the middle of what we now call the Atlantic ocean. Then he didnt think the world should have Scotland at all, so he buried it under what has now become South America.

And then he thought that actually England looked a bit lonely sticking out of the top of France, so he dug up Scotland again and placed it on the top of Northumberland, like a jaunty, lopsided hat. And then he decided that England shouldnt really be joined to France any more, so he created the English Channel.

Today, hes decided that the Himalayas should be a bit taller and that there really is no point to Greece, or any of those silly low-lying islands in the middle of the Pacific. And hes realized that the polar bear is so ugly and vicious that it has no place in his toy box.

He fiddles with the weather, too. At first, he thought it should be a hot and steamy planet but then he thought that, actually, it ought to be extremely cold. Hes still fiddling today, which is driving all the eco-loonies insane. Just as they think its getting hotter, the whole of Europe gets covered in snow.

Germans are the same. Give them a country and they want the one next door as well.

There is an upside to this, though. When a German creates something excellent, he does not go home to celebrate with a glass of beer. No. He goes straight back to his office so that he can set about making improvements. In Germany, being better than everyone else isnt good enough. You have to be better than yourself.

They even do this with their wine. Having created the liquid perfection that is Niersteiner Gutes Domtal, they went back to the drawing board and decided that the only way to make a better wine would be to add flecks of gold leaf. So they did. How brilliants that? Wine that glitters under the lights. Stunning.

Things are very different in Britain. Prince Charles, for instance, thinks the world would be a better place if all progress had stopped in about 1952. And every planning department is run by people who want Britain to look like the front of a Dorset chocolate box. If God were English, your route to work would be blocked every morning by a brontosaurus.

Red telephone boxes were a prime example of this. They were useless and smelt of urine, and you could die of hypothermia before the pips even began. But there was a huge furore when someone probably a German suggested they should be updated. Change? Here? In Britain? Are you mad? We are a nation that puts The Two Ronnies on every Christmas, even though one of them is dead.

This attitude really doesnt work and it especially doesnt work in the car industry. When the first Range Rover came along in 1970, everyone could see that it was very excellent indeed. So the team responsible for designing it was sent home and the model soldiered on, with almost no changes at all, until 1994. By which time it was a relic.

Theres a similar problem with the Land Rover. The car you buy today is pretty much the same as the car you could have bought after the war. Can you imagine BMW doing that? Designing a car and then keeping it in production for sixty years? Its inconceivable.

But when it comes to resting on your laurels, the crown must go to Alec Issigonis. He made the Mini, which in the late 1950s was an inspired design, and then he decided to leave it alone for ever. Occasionally someone would nail a bit of wood to the side, and they once changed the radiator grille, but, fundamentally, it just kept on rolling down the production line, powered by an engine that could trace its roots back to a time when Scotland was off the coast of South Africa. It would still be soldiering on today, had BMW not arrived on the scene and said, For you, Tommy, the warhorse is over.

Unfortunately, the Germans obsession with self-improvement is now starting to get a bit silly, because in addition to their original Mini, and the various derivations of that, we now have the convertible, which is fine, and the Clubman, which is fine too, providing you are impervious to its looks and dont want to see out of the back. But sadly we also now have the Countryman. And thats not fine at all.

First of all, it has four doors, seating inside for five and a large boot. This has been achieved by making the car much bigger. So its not really a Mini any more, is it? At 13 feet in length, its a third longer than the Issigonis original and should really be called the Maxi. Or maybe the Twinset.

Theres another problem, though. BMWs first effort looked good, and still does, whereas the Countryman looks absolutely stupid. Its like a Mini thats been putting on weight for a part. It doesnt look cool or interesting or practical. It looks fat.

Of course, you might not care about how it looks or what its called. Fine. But I bet you will care about the cramp it gives you when you drive it in traffic. Its the second Mini on the trot that has done this to me, come to think of it, and you will definitely care about how easy it is to stall, and how hard it is to get going again thanks to the stop-start eco-gadgetry that shuts down the engine whenever youre stationary.

To make matters worse, its not especially nice to drive. The rides not bad but the steering is nervous, the dashboard is bonkers and you feel like youre sitting on it rather than inside it. I arrived everywhere late, exasperated, looking silly and with a lightning bolt of pain in my left shin.

On the upside, the Countryman is available with four-wheel drive. Its a simple system that would be flummoxed by the weather we had recently but would get you up and down a farm track easily enough. The thing is, though, that the model I tested a Cooper S costs more than 22,000. And that makes it about 3,000 more than the similarly powered Skoda Yeti.

Dont be a snob about this, because the Mini isnt a Mini and the Skoda isnt really a Skoda. Its just a Volkswagen. More pointedly, the Mini is terrible and the Yeti is surprisingly good.

And on that note, can I just wish you all a very happy and exciting new year.

Well, there we are. Public transport was a very interesting social experiment, but after the debacle of last year, its probably in everyones best interests if we all agree it simply doesnt work.

Let us take the trains as a prime example. As we know, they all grind to a halt whenever it is too warm or too cold or too autumnal, but of course the problem is much bigger than that. A railway locomotive is extremely expensive. I dont know how much it would cost to buy one, but Im guessing that it would be several hundred pounds.

Then you have the rolling stock and I do know that each carriage costs more than 1m and the mile upon mile of track that need to be linked and monitored and governed. Just maintaining it costs 2 billion a year. The upshot of all this is very simple. Divide the total cost of the railway network by the number of people who want to use it, and the average price of a ticket should be about 4m. Soon, if what were hearing is correct, it will be.

I realize, of course, that in theory a high-speed train linking the north and the south of Britain is a fine idea. But since it needs to cross at least five Tory constituencies, it will never happen. And nobody would be able to afford to go on it, even if it did.