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James May, former Top Gear co-host and current presenter for The Grand Tour, wrote a compelling piece for DriveTribe as a solution for motorcycle theft. May’s proposal is that “we must deal with the problem of bike thieves at its source, by killing them.”
His article comes across as equal parts sincere and satirical. He’s an avid motorcycle enthusiast and he’s passionate about the issue of thieves “nicking” (British slang for stealing) bikes. His logic is that since bikes continue to get stolen, that must mean the police are unwilling or unable to enforce motorcycle theft effectively. The next logical step for May is capital punishment for anyone caught nicking bikes.
In May’s words; “It’s just that the law isn’t being enforced. The police seem unwilling or in some way unempowered to deal with it, the aggrieved people are unable to convene courts to try the perpetrators even if they could be caught, so they’ll just have to be killed. That way, they won’t nick any more bikes.”
May gets political in a few places stating he’s “like any civilised person, am vehemently opposed to capital punishment and any other form of state-sponsored murder.” He goes on to say he’d be okay with a desperate person stealing his coat because he has the means to just buy a new one.
His compassion ends there as he gets back to the topic of killing motorcycle thieves. May says that bike thieves “are just wankers nicking bikes for profit, so we should kill them.”
What do you think? Does May make some good points or is his proposal as crazy as his hats?