In my column in this week’s Spectator I’ve written about the bust-up between Mark Steyn and GB News. For those interested, I also talked about it in London Calling and the Weekly Sceptic. If you haven’t been following this brouhaha, Mark had been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart attacks. When he was ready to return last month, GB News asked him to sign a contract which would have made his company liable for any fines imposed by Ofcom as a result of a “regulatory breach” unless he and his producers agreed to attend Ofcom training laid on by the channel and “incorporate Ofcom regulatory input” into the show. He refused and accused GB News of presenting him with a fait accompli that he couldn’t accept. Many people believe this is a free speech issue and the channel should not have asked Mark to give any such undertaking. But I’m not convinced – at least, not yet.
First let’s deal with the question of whether GB News has breached Mark’s speech rights. I should begin by saying I think Mark’s a terrific broadcaster. One of the things which makes him so good is his unwillingness to bend the knee to anyone – he is absolutely fearless. That’s why The Mark Steyn Show, which I sometimes appeared on, was such compelling viewing and regularly beat other news channels in its time slot. When it came to the most controversial issues of the day – Covid vaccines, the war in Ukraine, Net Zero – he didn’t just challenge the prevailing orthodoxy; he beat it to a pulp and then tossed it out with the rubbish.
Great television, but not always Ofcom-compliant television. Which created a bit of a headache for GB News. The regulator is investigating complaints about two of Mark’s shows, one from April in which he claimed that some statistics published by the U.K. Health Security Agency showed the triple-jabbed are more likely to die from Covid than the unvaccinated, and another from October in which he interviewed the American author Naomi Wolf, who described the rollout of the vaccines as “mass murder”. If those complaints are upheld, GB News could face significant fines. In 2008, for instance, Ofcom fined ITV £5,675,000 for breaching the Broadcasting Code. Even more seriously, Ofcom could withdraw GB News’s broadcasting licence if it concludes the channel isn’t taking the code seriously, as it did Russia Today’s.
It’s understandable, therefore, that GB News took steps to mitigate those risks. It wasn’t asking Mark to indemnify it for any losses arising from the ongoing investigations – just from future investigations if he and his producers didn’t follow the advice of the channel’s compliance officer. I don’t think making this a condition of Mark’s show continuing, given the regulatory environment it’s operating in, was a breach of his speech rights.
What about Ofcom? Is it, as James maintains, trying to suppress dissent? I thought the “coronavirus guidance” it issued in March 2020, which cautioned broadcasters about giving too much air time to critics of the Government’s public health guidance, was censorious, and the pro-free-speech organisation I run tried to challenge that guidance in the High Court. A judge refused our application for a judicial review, but I like to think we stayed Ofcom’s hand, making it more tolerant of sceptics than it would have been. Yes, it’s investigating complaints against Mark’s show, but it hasn’t tried to stop GB News drawing attention to vaccine injuries or featuring guests who robustly challenge the dominant narrative about Covid. For instance, it received dozens of complaints about an interview Dan Wootton did with Andrew Tate in which the controversial TikTok star played down the severity of the disease, but declined to investigate.
It may be legitimate to criticise Ofcom for holding GB News to a higher bar than other broadcasters. It hasn’t upheld any complaints about, say, the BBC for failing to challenge guests making misleading claims about the efficacy of the vaccines when they were first rolled out. But it hasn’t upheld any complaints against GB News either, so it would be premature to accuse it of double standards. There may yet be a fight worth having about that, but we need to wait and see what Ofcom does before taking up arms.
Worth reading in full.
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Tell me again what Mr Lineker said about people who chose not to “get the jab”… I forget.
White Lives Matter
Black Crime Matters
White Civilisation Matters
Bodily Autonomy Matters
Rejecting State Fascism and Rona-ism matters
Open borders and UK cultural destruction matters
Economic migrants here to suck on my tax teat matters
NHS failure matters
etc.
Don’t see any such tweets from the BBC or its paid religious like Lineker.
Why is that?
The FSU, as admiral as its intentions may be, seems to have misunderstood two key points. 1) An employee of the BBC has their salary paid by the public, and the BBC is a very special case of providing a public service. Its very remit is to be impartial – it must be as it’s supposed to represent the people. If you don’t like that part of the contract, you don’t sign. Simple. 2) We will never change anything by playing nicely with these people. They will take your help then spit in your face when you’re no longer needed. If you think you can appeal to their better nature, you are mistaken. There is no compromise with these people. We need to understand that.
It’s a war and we’re very late to the party. It’s time we started behaving accordingly, and that’s not treating these people like they’re our friends or that we have anything in common.
It’s not about playing nicely, just that rules brought in for ostensibly good reasons can and will be easily abused. I don’t care what Lineker tweets, I care that the BBC behaves like the media arm of New Labour, and has been doing so for decades.
The BBC cannot be impartial, it just needs to be broken up into little pieces and sold.
The FSU is playing nicely. That was my point. Mark Steyn would have been a better target for their legal help. As for Linekar: Linekar IS the BBC, you cannot separate the two, so if you care about the BBC being impartial then you understand that the BBC and Linekar are intrinsically linked. Anyway, we’ve disagreed on this before, not much point doing that again. I respect your opinion, but do not agree with it.
I agree the FSU should have offered to help Mark Steyn
The FSU should be hounding OfCom.
Indeed, though they are just doing their jobs. They should not exist, at least in present form. The state has no business regulating broadcasting content.
Ironically, I’ve just read an editorial in a German football paper about this which claimed that the Lineker affair would clearly demonstrate that the BBC isn’t really impartial but just the media arm of the Tories and that the BBC had lost its moral compass because – while it bigottedly made some noises about the world cup in Katar – it would treat (implied comparable) human rights issue in the UK so much differently. Lineker’s statements, including the Nazi-reference, had been entirely appropriate as clear statement in support of human rights and against the dubious political trajectory of Brexit Britain.
https://www.kicker.de/causa-lineker-die-bbc-hat-das-groesste-eigentor-ihrer-geschichte-geschossen-941738/artikel?fbclid=IwAR1OtQ75M5cWxz7Dv4DKdHaPuhdyKIyUNh0-tkk_kuY9deXMaMhe5KVbWLc#fb
[German]
But I guess that present-day professional football isn’t really about sport but more about woke virtue signalling isn’t really news.
How very depressing
I can highly recommend ‘The Parasitic Mind’ by Gad Saad. Here is one relevant quote from this book:
“Angela Merkal’s astounding open border policy granting close to a million Muslim immigrants entry into Germany could be seen as self-flagellation for Germany’s historical transgressions. Laced with typical progressive lunacy, what better way to make up for the Holocaust than by admitting “refugees” who frequently exhibit genocidal hatred of Jews.”
“Angela Merkal’s astounding open border policy…”
Looking back this was actually one of the more blatant examples of the rolling out of the Reset agenda. Virtue signalling has nothing to do with it. And virtue from Merkel? Crikey.
Yes, it was. Apparently no one smelled a rat when she said Germany could take in 1 million Syrians every year for 20 years – did she believe the war in Syria was going to last more than 20 years? The fact that we switched, without any explanation, from Syrians to anyone who could climb into a boat was another clue. Never hear a word about Syrians these days, other than that they didn’t get nearly as much attention or relief as Turkey during the recent earthquakes. So much for helping those in need.
Here is Angela on the anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall. Not sure she knew which way the wall worked.
“No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high… that it cannot be broken down.”
And here is the BBC commenting on the difference between Hungary and Germany on the 30th anniversary of the Pan European Picnic.
“Theirs are two very different views of the European project.
One liberal, seeking to incorporate outsiders who can contribute to Europe’s future, the other the more nationalist, eager to erect barriers and to stress the continents traditional Christian outlook.”
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience” – Adam Smith
Great quote.
In a similar vein:
‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’ – C.S. Lewis
That’s certainly neither relevant to me reporting something about a Kicker editoral nor to the Lineker issue. It seems pretty much run-of-the-mill German bashing by the so-disposed, always only 3.5″ away from the next Holocaust or Nazi-reference. At times, they do sound like a seriously ancient broken record.
You are correct – it cannot, nor ever will be impartial. Sadly, however much Rees Mogg and other Tory MPs give the impression they oppose the licence fee the best that the Tories will offer is to promise to reform the BBC if you give us your vote.
For me hitting them in the pocket by being a licence fee refusenik is the best hope of bringing the BBC to its knees.
Indeed. Don’t give them your money and don’t rely on the Tories doing anything about the BBC. They have had plenty of opportunity regarding that and many other issues on which they sometimes talk a good fight but don’t take action – NHS reform, freedom of speech, law and order, illegal immigration, woke nonsense in education and the civil service etc.
If you don’t like that part of the contract, you don’t sign.
Technically Lineker is not an employee of the BBC – he is a freelancer. We don’t know the details of his contract but the Independent thinks it is ambiguous about his use of social media and the BBC would probably lose if it took him to court.
The irony is that if the BBC and the government had ignored his tweet hardly anyone would have noticed.
“In a follow-up tweet, Gary Lineker said he wanted “to thank Tim Davie for his understanding during this difficult period”.
He added: “He has an almost impossible job keeping everybody happy, particularly in the area of impartiality. I am delighted that we’ll continue to fight the good fight, together.””
The part in bold says it all. The “good fight” is not providing excellent entertainment, great football punditry or whatever, the “good fight” is reshaping the world as they think it should be. The BBC is on a mission.
The TV licence has got to go. It’s that simple. The BBC are dragging their feet replacing it in the belief that Labour will walk the next election and give them another decade. The Tories need to be all over the BBC licence now and insist on a replacement with subscription by the end of this year.
Ultimately, little will alter if the BBC is a subscription service. Most people will continue to pay the subscription, the ones refusing to pay the licence will refuse to pay the subscription, the people watching without paying will no longer be able to watch. The BBC isn’t for everyone, so let’s stop pretending that it is.
The BBC will not be got rid of no matter what government says. It wouldn’t matter if nobody paid the licence fee the BBC would remain, funded by our taxes. The BBC is the State Propoganda Service and as such too valuable to any executive.
We will always be lumbered with the BBC or its replacement.
In the last hour, Rees-Mogg made the same point, and suggested that the beeb’s revenue is now a lot less than the likes of Sky, and Netflix.
People who trust the BBC will tend to have been multiply jabbed.
That cheers me up.
An excellent point. Some will undoubtedly be on God’s shortlist.
Not a great demographic for TV license future revenue streams.
Oh stop wining and just pay up!
It’s the envy of the world!
?
Whether such a free-speech policy is consistent with the BBC’s special commitment, as the licence-fee funded national broadcaster, to be (and appear to be) impartial is another matter.
That is surely the central issue, and why I must differ from the FSU line. Unlike any other employing body, the BBC’s identity is defined by (1) an aspiration to impartiality and (2) a commitment to others (the public at large) having the right of free speech. Impartiality in the sense of neutrality entails balanced and objective reporting of events and issues, and discreet silence – self-restraint if necessary – by front-line employees when not speaking in an official capacity. To that extent, the issue of free speech is a special case. If front-of-stage employees (incl. tax-dodging freelancers), being left-wing in ideology almost to a man, claim the unfettered right of free speech to express their political views, they are violating the commitment to be ostensibly and actually impartial.
The distinction between political and sports commentators is hardly relevant: in the BBC they are all part of the same elite, and perceived as such by the public.
A decent post but intentional or not I must point out Lineker is NOT a “freelancer.” A chancer, yes but definitely NOT a freelancer.
There are always at least two sides to every story.
On the one hand migrants coming to the UK shows that they see our country as a safe haven and one which they can better themselves and something UK citizens should be proud of.
If they are asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression, they should be lauded and helped.
However, if they are economic migrants (often men of fighting age) coming originally from a stable country and land in the UK illegally where they immediately destroy all their documentation, we as a nation do not know who they are and whether they pose a criminal or terrorist threat to the country. They may be coming from France, but they may have moved through many other safe European countries to arrive here.
The UK government has to have the manpower in place for the sheer number of illegal migrants coming to UK shores and the correct protocols for dealing with them effectively.
Lineker is just another woke liberal luvvy who is the epitome of virtue signalling.
The BBC impartial when, did I miss something.
The Do gooding lefty Lineker makes me want to f-ing puke!
The Holier than thou, moralising, pedestal sitting, judgmental, box ticking, egotistical, popularity pampering, multi millionaire A-hole does not speak for me, and I guess, the majority of right minded common sense british people!
There! Glad that’s out my system!!
As for the Lineker loving cowardly downticker,..are you sure your on the right forum?
“He said it again!”
Goal hanging, big eared, crisp flogger!
Wow, we should all pay attention to what this twat has to say!
I don’t recall those fleeing persecution in the 1930s and 1940s going towards Germany. In addition, why would anyone ‘flee’ towards Great Britain if we are like 1930s Germany.
I can only repeat a quote from Peter Hitchens
“When I was a Revolutionary Marxist, we were all in favour of as much immigration as possible. It wasn’t because we liked immigrants, but because we didn’t like Britain. We saw immigrants – from anywhere – as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties. Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people – usually in the poorest parts of Britain – who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly “vibrant communities”. If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots.
When we graduated and began to earn serious money, we generally headed for expensive London enclaves and became extremely choosy about where our children went to school, a choice we happily denied the urban poor, the ones we sneered at as “racists”. What did we know, or care, of the great silent revolution which even then was beginning to transform the lives of the British poor?
To us, it meant patriotism and tradition could always be derided as “racist”. And it also meant cheap servants for the rich new middle-class, for the first time since 1939, as well as cheap restaurants and – later on – cheap builders and plumbers working off the books. It wasn’t our wages that were depressed, or our work that was priced out of the market. Immigrants didn’t do the sort of jobs we did.
They were no threat to us. The only threat might have come from the aggrieved British people, but we could always stifle their protests by suggesting that they were modern-day fascists. I have learned since what a spiteful, self-righteous, snobbish and arrogant person I was (and most of my revolutionary comrades were, too).”
You’ve lost me Toby. I renewed my FSU membership recently. I won’t be renewing it again. Or contributing to the Daily Skeptic. Goodbye.
What’s happened?
This is not a free speech issue. Lineker would have us believe it is. Apparently Toby agrees. I don’t.
I for one would be sorry to see you leave, you’ve wrote some brilliant stuff while I’ve been on here, I like earthy input like yours
You’re very kind to say so. My father and grandfather (on my mother’s side) were tradesmen. My grandfather was a joiner (carpenterj. He went to work in dungarees and a shirt and tie every day. What you might call the salt of the earth. Luckily his daughter my mother had the good sense to send me to a decent school and later university. I hope I inherited some of their working class common sense.
I’m a carpenter and my dad was a coal miner in Nottinghamshire so I know where the f your coming from.
The sceptic has a lot of very educated and intelligent people but that’s why I like it, I like to learn. Most of this lot make me look wanting, but where else would you get to voice your views in this sh#@*ole of a world? I don’t do any social media, none!
I’m sure you can guess from my name how old I’m and I’m guessing by your passion and politics your roughly the same?
Sleep on it, common sense people seem to be the minority at the moment, so we need all the level headed people like you we can get!
1958. As far as politics goes, I don’t feel so much passionate as betrayed. By the establishment that I was brought up to defer to and respect. All those institutions that we thought we could trust, Westminster and politicians, the BBC, Academia and science, the judiciary and courts, the police, the NHS and medical profession. All corrupt, self seeking, self absorbed treacherous charlatans. Taking taxpayers’ money and spending it like water on causes that diminish the taxpayers and weaken and undermine the nation.
Then your in the right place here!
The vast majority would totally agree with you, including me. It’s very disheartening to watch a once proud and fair nation degrade into the shyte show that it has become!
Apparent the downvoter thinks that I don’t have the right to decide how to spend my money.
That’s his/her/them/they/…oh god you just get so sick of all this walking on eggshells!
That’s their problem, I’d sooner read your imput!
With power comes responsibility!
Those with fame and power tend to forget this, they end up believing their own importance! Lineker and the bbc will have a day of reckoning! It comes to us/them… its call retribution and it comes from somewhere but not the rich ,famous, or our mortal leaders! Just a whisper I can’t put my finger on, but its powerful!
So endeth the lesson
I suppose some good might come from this shameful backdown. Lineker may well be emboldened by this ‘victory’ and see fit to carry on as before which will surely rile a large chunk of the population. Another case of wait and see.
Given that the Beeb are clearly acting on government orders (or Billy’s even) I cannot accept that the decision to allow Lineker to insult his employer and de facto his real employers – the public paying his wages – was taken solely by Tim Davie. This decision has Downing St all over it. A guaranteed way to stoke the rage of decent taxpayers which seems to be the modus operandi these days.
Lineker may well have the right to free speech but if he does so to do millions of public servants. Where was the right to free speech for those medical professionals who did bravely speak out during the abuses of the last three years and for those who lost their jobs as a result?
As someone who spent some years in the Civil Service I can absolutely guarantee that speaking out so publicly on a political issue would have guaranteed a P45. Yet again the law being used based on perceived social standing.
The decision of the FSU to support this toe-rag is therefore worrying. The FSU readily admits to picking its fights and so I can see no reason why it could not have sat this one out. Lineker has rubbished his employers and got his own way, upsetting many people in the process. There is no gain in this for the FSU.
A disgraceful little episode featuring a scammy public figure who is so full of ego he sees fit to undermine his country and his countrymen simply to satisfy his own grotesque self-importance.
What a long way this nation has fallen.
I don’t understand why the BBC didn’t use the opportunity to get rid of Linker. He’s a contractor, so there’d be no redundancy, and it would have sent a strong message to the others to stay in line.
Sure, there’d have been lots of sports presenters who would have ‘gone on strike’, but I’m sure they could have taken the opportunity to get some junior presenters, or perhaps some from local radio, to do the broadcasts instead — it would have added some variety to their output and also helped younger talent get a foothold in their career. I’m sure that it would have been at least as good as Linker’s pontification.
This missed opportunity will only serve to make their other ‘superstars’ (who appear to be quite average to me) even more insufferable.
They commentate, ‘analyse’, pontificate and postulate about grown men kicking a ball across a field. Who gives a phlying phuck. Seriously?
Nice, your still with us!
During the half time interval a band used to march up and down the pitch to entertain the crowd for 15 mins! Why do we need Pundits? Why?
Yes I have a few days left of my most recent contribution. I won’t be renewing it.
Completely agree – a massive missed opportunity, unless, as per my post…
A DM article said the BBC would lose a lot of money for breach of contract. Quite possible, but not a good enough reason not to do it. It would indeed have sent a message that both employees and contractors have certain obligations to their employers/clients. It would also have been a good opportunity to review why Lineker got such a great, iron-clad contract. This is partly why I agree that the FSU has no need to offer their services to Lineker, I’m sure he had and has the best legal representation his money can buy. Supporting, on principle, his right to free speech does not mean you have to fight his battles for him, there are undoubtedly far more worthy cases out there in need of the FSU’s assistance.
“there are undoubtedly far more worthy cases out there in need of the FSU’s assistance.”
Precisely. Damned stupid of the FSU to get involved. It smacks of wanting to join the club.
I thought we were choosing our battles.
..the reality, which people like Lineker don’t want to admit, is that the kind of migrants they talk about, are nothing like the migrants we have….they aren’t fleeing anything like war, or poverty, or disaster…most of them say they are leaving ‘modern slavery’ whatever that means….but Lineker and his ilk don’t care…it’s just empty, pretend faux-empathy….
“In a Freedom of Information requests conducted by Migration Watch UK, the Home Office has revealed that over half (51.1 per cent) of those identified or claiming to be potential victims of modern slavery who entered the UK by small boat in the first half of 2022 came from Albania; a significant increase on 2021 when Albanians made up 11.2 per cent of those referred as possible victims of modern slavery.”
(also 9 out of 10 Albanians arriving are young men..not families or children and women…)
Albania is not a ‘war torn’ country, and even if it were migrants need to travel through several countries such as Serbia, Hungary and Germany to get to France…all of these are safe countries…
What these overpaid arseholes do par excellence is virtue signalling, they don’t do common sense or any sense of giving a shyte about the places where these people end up, nor the residents that have to live with it…I hate them all with a fiery passion…
Empty, pretend faux empathy – indeed it is.
Lineker believes the borders should be open to all refugees – does that mean without any limit? Let us set aside the argument that the majority are neither refugees nor by the time they come to the UK (or NL for that matter) in an unsafe country. Let us assume they truly are desperate refugees – the world is filled with people living in dreadful circumstances – I could argue that every woman in Afghanistan and Iran should be granted refugee status – that alone would tot up to around 60 million. China’s Uyghurs, Kurds, Mexicans living in areas run by drug cartels – on and on. It is simply impossible to take in every person who deserves a better and safer life. To argue a simple reality is not fascist and it is time that point is driven home.
More importantly, if a country does take in people, it should only do so if it can actually offer them a better life than they left. Housing, education, health care for non-contributors, most of whom will either never become contributors or will only do so after years (mainly through their children) costs money – tax money. The same tax money that our Gazza wants to keep in his pockets. Empty, pretend faux empathy indeed. If he really believed what he said, he would not fight his tax bill and would cough it up willingly – you know, to help the refugees. Never was put your money where your mouth is more apt.
Nailed it.
The Left is built on lies
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Lineker is ofcourse very naive. But he is entitled to be. — It isn’t so much his point of view that is the problem, because he is entitled to it, just as everyone visiting The Daily Sceptic is entitled to theirs. The problem is that he is a high profile presenter on BBC, and the BBC, being the state broadcaster is supposed to be impartial. Oh dear what to do what to do.————- So if Lineker is reinstated and is free to spout his left wing world view than right wing views must also be allowed otherwise left wing bias will still exist on BBC. So can we now expect BBC presenters to be seen saying things like “This whole climate change dogma is like communism in the old Soviet Union “——Eh I don’t think so. —–What we would all like to know is, what agreement has been reached between BBC presenters etc and the BBC regarding their views on social media on controversial and politicised issues? Apparently, staff were not supposed to say anything that brought the BBC into disrepute. So what changes have the BBC made to those rules? This idea that Lineker can get away with saying things that bring the BBC into disrepute because he is freelance is a bit dodgy. Let’s imagine that the person reading the 6 o’clock News is freelance, how would it look if he was telling us all on BBC News about covid and climate but saying the very opposite on social media? This would be absurd and hard for the BBC to explain away.
The very fact that Lineker has been continuously employed by the BBC since first commencing work in television is proof that he is “contracted.” He is not freelance and his Saturday job for Walkers is just that.
Lineker is and always has been a BBC employee.
Not content with insisting on an open borders policy this Next Tuesday thinks he can avoid making any contribution by refusing to pay tax.
This despicable piece of shyte belongs alongside Bozo and Co – treasonous barstewards.
They seem to be claiming he is “freelance”. ——-Sounds a bit dogy to me but I have no problem with what Lineker is actually saying on political issues. He is as entitled to his opinion as you and I. ——-But he is a high profile person on the BBC who will not allow certain issues like climate, immigration, vaccines etc to be discussed. They try to control the narrative on all of that and have a world view all to the progressive left. But not all license payers are Liberal progressives. You and I are therefore having to fund our own brainwashing by forking out for a license. But my main point is this——If Lineker gets away with spouting his social justice, then right of centre opinion must also be allowed. If Lineker and therefore other presenters and BBC employees can spout social justice then they must also be allowed to spout Right Wing opinions. You cannot just have free speech for liberals only.
I’m so looking forward to the lefty luvvies who “came out” for free speech in support of Lineker, doing the same for the likes of me when I say that a man in a frock (regardless of which dangly bits he does or doesn’t have) can never become a woman.
Oh …. and white lives matter just as much as black ones.
This issue of course isn’t one of free speech at all. It’s about a State Broadcaster which we are to all intents and purposes forced to pay for on the grounds it is politically impartial, being so such thing.
Scrap the BBC’s Telly Tax and the problem goes away …. as will a large number of people currently forced to pay for it.
100% correct.
If you criticise black crime, the tranny’s, the Muslims, the invading enrichers or the economic migrants who all look to be young males, you could elicit a visit from the police.
But Lineker can call anyone a Narzee and all is fine and even applauded.
He can even say the unstabbed like myself should be imprisoned or worse and the BBC has no issue with it.
This is where our once great nation, with a parliament, legal system, history of tolerance, national broadcaster and sporting heritage that were once the envy of the world, has got to. A football pundit who owes the treasury millions in back taxes can take down the national broadcaster by flouting the requirements of his contract on social media, while invoking nazi germany in a critique of government policy and new legislation aimed at solving a problem that the majority want to be solved. Meanwhile a woman is arrested for standing silently near an abortion clinic and saying precisely nothing. And another woman has to apologise for the childish behaviour of her children to a Muslim kangaroo court in the presence of senior police officers while the Muslim officials make threats of violence, and the children have their police records indelibly marred with a hate crime endorsements. That sounds about right fir a country where the leader of his majesty’s loyal opposition can’t define what a woman is, but if he could, she could have a penis, while taking a knee in memory of a drug addict with a history of violent crime who died of a fentanyl overdose in another country thousands of miles away.
That was quite a tirade. It is just utterly pathetic that it is all true.
And therefore probably a hate crime.
Please don’t leave Boomer! Your the ipitome of common sense!
A rather accurate appraisal.
And still therefore probably a hate crime.
What does it mean for the BBC to be impartial? It gets attacked from left and right.
The government definition of impartial seems to mean supporting the government line. If Lineker had tweeted in support of the government policy I don’t suppose there would have been any criticism. The important thing is not that the BBC pursue some meaningless concept of impartiality but that it is independent (as far as possible) of both government and commercial interests and is factually accurate. It has achieved this rather well over the decades but in the last 10 years the government has eroded that.
I’m wondering how the millionaire football pundit in tax arrears would have hypothetically invoked nazi Germany in his hypothetical pro government immigration tweet. I’ll wait.
I can’t watch someone as opinionated as Lineker who is obviously so thick, his opinions are of little value. The UK has large numbers of legitimate immigrants, many for valid reasons of persecution, but no country can afford to take hoards of people breaking borders illegally and thus become responsible for their housing and upkeep. We have enough of our own poor who are suffering because too many of our resources to support them are being used to keep illegal immigrants in hotels. These people are coming from France where, although France wants to be rid of them, they are not being abused I think it’s reasonable for broadcaster employers to restrict public broadcasts as abusive as Lineker’s was. Lineker gets a salary way beyond his worth, and perhaps the BBC should limit the salary level of contract not directly employed workers so that if they do pay them at crazy high levels they must be directly employed. I’m sure with the group of directly employed BBC sports presenters, there are equally or more competent presenters.