Lineker gate, as luckily no one is calling it, has to be one of the dumbest scandals of our increasingly dumb times.
A high paid, low IQ ex-footballer decides to Tweet that our eco-socialist government, led by a Hindu Prime Minister with Indian parents, is somehow like the Nazis. The BBC says this may be a breach of their impartiality guidelines and that he will not feature on the upcoming episode of Match of the Day. Now his colleagues all refuse to appear, mass migrating away from the show on small boats of imaginary virtue.
Where to begin with this complex yet incredibly stupid saga?
Lineker’s initial tweet, stating that the rhetoric around the illegal immigration crisis was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s” is typical leftie celebrity drivel. But the question of why he would tweet it in the first place throws up some interesting possibilities.
The simplest explanation is that it is just high-status virtue signalling for the metro lib dinner party set. Speak to the average London-dwelling foot solider of ‘The Blob’ these days, and you realise they all hold such opinions. Talk to them about their area of expertise – liability driven investments, for example – and they will seem smart and reasonable. Then, out of nowhere, they will say something like “Jacob Rees-Mogg should be in jail”, with no explanation given, and you realise you are talking to an ideologue who is simply repeating the increasingly hysterical leftie groupthink of their workplace and social set.
Another possibility, and these can very much co-exist, is that Lineker is simply ready to graduate to somewhere like LBC, where he will be free to express the opinions he has already been expressing for years, without any annoying BBC pushback for emitting his complacent, predictable metro lib brain sludge. In other words, he is ‘doing a Maitlis’.
Far more interesting, and suddenly elevating Lineker to ‘4D chess’ status, is the theory that this all relates to Lineker’s £4.9m tax bill. As the Guardian has explained:
If Lineker wanted to avoid paying a large retrospective tax bill…he would need to prove that he was a true freelance worker who had control over his work life that went beyond that of a typical BBC or BT Sport employee…Lineker’s Twitter account, which has caused many headaches for BBC management with the former footballer’s strong views on Brexit and the Conservative government, could form part of the case that he was not a traditional employee bound by traditional rules.
“Lineker can argue that he is not subject to the same level of control as BBC employees given his apparent freedom to express personal and political views on social media.”
There is something brilliantly stupid about this argument. “Look at all this rubbish I’m tweeting about Nazis! I ask you, Your Honour, would a normal BBC employee do that? I must be free(lance)!”
If that is what Gary is up to, perhaps he is a little smarter, though even less moral, than one imagines.
Whatever Lineker’s motivations (and can we ever truly know the mind of this enigmatic anti-hero?) the reaction has been extraordinary.
Alastair Campbell immediately leapt to Lineker’s defence and claimed there was merit to his comments. Perhaps not too surprising, as Lineker’s production company funds Campbell’s podcast. Lineker then retweeted the praise, in what amounts to a kind of virtue signalling pyramid scheme.
Others referred to Lineker’s potential replacement as a ‘scab’, to the point where the term was trending on Twitter, thus drawing a fascinating parallel between miners struggling to feed their families and a man who gets paid over a million pounds a year to say “Leicester’s defence looked ropey at times, Alan?”
Danny Baker went even further, calling the hypothetical successor on MOTD a “f****** collaborator”, while Carol Vorderman invoked George Orwell’s “If liberty means anything at all” quote.
In one extraordinary exchange with Douglas Murray, Murray pointed out that a key difference between Nazi Germany and 2023 Britain is that in the former one did not get “showered with praise” for criticising the regime. Lineker appeared to counter this by claiming that was because they didn’t have social media back then, an epic display of idiocy that makes me suspect his accountant is the brains behind the operation after all.
I guess social media platforms were not so much of a thing in those days.
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) March 8, 2023
What Lineker’s fate should be remains an open, and much tweeted about, question.
Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron seems to believe it is a free speech issue, and has implied he will commence a devastating boycott of MOTD until Lineker is reinstated, while also invoking a version of the Libtard classic ‘I’m sure the Free Speech Union will get involved’ (a line that is snarkily used even when the Free Speech Union actually is involved, because feelings don’t care about your facts).
To me, the BBC’s chastising of Lineker actually is a rare instance of them showing some backbone, standing up for all the staff who have to follow impartiality guidelines while Lineker flaunts his special status all over Twitter. The fact that the BBC continues to extract a licence fee from the public puts their employees in a different situation from other broadcasters, and the good people of this country who effectively pay Lineker’s wages should perhaps not be subjected to his open hatred of many of them via Twitter.
Still, we can argue about whether the BBC should get to control Lineker’s Twitter output simply because he is a sports presenter on the channel. Since to me it is a question of BBC policy rather than free speech, I’m not that arsed either way about whether he keeps his job, or whether someone else has to step in to say “Was VAR at fault here, Ian?”
What is infuriating, however, is the sudden discovery of free speech amongst the media classes now that Saint Gary is under threat. They have consistently ignored actual free speech issues, yet they are desperate to jump on the bandwagon of the Lineker pseudo free speech question. As Brendan O’Neil puts it in the Spectator:
The shamelessness of the British chattering classes never ceases to amaze me. In the past couple of hours, the kind of people who stared at their feet as JK Rowling was threatened with rape and death for saying ‘men aren’t women’ are running around like modern-day Miltons, shouting ‘Free Gary!’ on a loop. Folk who say ‘Well, free speech has consequences’ in a cavalier way whenever an ex-Muslim is blacklisted for ‘Islamophobia’ or a TERF is cancelled for ‘transphobia’ now decree that free speech should not have consequences.
To the sane person, the Lineker spectacle is a deranged outpouring of virtue signalling and fake oppression. A high tax, Net Zero mad, woke-appeasing, conservative-in-name-only government is actually trying to tackle the difficult problem of illegal immigration, and meeting all kinds of resistance from shrieking libs who are safe in their wealthy communities, and will not face the consequences of unchecked immigration of the legal or illegal kind.
Meanwhile, in the world of the terminally online media metro lib, a brave freedom fighter is taking a stand against a brutal Far Right government, and is doing this by tweeting inane things while also presenting a football highlights show.
I’m sorry, I tried to ‘steel man’ their position, but I am struggling to put myself in the mindset of anyone this thick or disingenuous (it’s never quite clear which it is).
Wherever you stand, arguing about Gary Lineker is certainly easier than solving the ‘small boats’ crisis, and perhaps that is why we are spending so much time on it.
At the time of writing, MOTD is set to go ahead without a presenter, pundits and several regular commentators.
In my opinion, they should also remove the football. Like John Cage’s 4’33, MOTD tonight should just be a duration of time. A conceptual space in which a football highlights show could theoretically exist, but never will.
It would not be any more absurd than the rest of the Lineker ordeal.
Nick Dixon is Deputy Editor of the Daily Sceptic. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack.
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The BBC has a ready made like for like replacement in the shape of the Duke of Sussex.
No doubt he’ll receive short shrift from the HMRC. A bonus for the Chancellor, and the Home Sec as well. In the meantime, we could watch Mark Dolan’s dark humour alternative tonight!
Why don’t we just ring fence London and all the London tw*ts like Linekar and treat it like the cancer it is? Job done. Sorry, Toby, Nick etc, but the capital is a problem.
Agreed.
Lineker (and/or his handlers) is not thick – or of low IQ. His attitudes and viewpoints are carefully sown and offered in a timely manner to his audience of impressionable people. They appear plausible and appear to say what the ‘spirit of the BBC’ cannot but would like to if they could. Look, the BBC is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Lineker tweets that ‘They did not have social media in the 30s’. The author finds this risible and perhaps it is, but this hardly matters. Only his audience matters. His audience will find it highly persuasive, possibly because these seemingly off the cuff, ‘silly’ responses have been crafted, perhaps even run by a focus group or Football focus group. None of this is off the cuff stuff. Nor are Musk’s or even Trumps pronouncements – however they are shaped to appear.
4D chess may be involved and Lineker is perhaps only a pawn, but he’s certainly a change agent required to set his shoulder to the tectonic plates of UK politics, which are being set in motion to usher in the long hot days of Starmer. Conservatives must be increasingly painted as resembling Nazis, or Clowns, and the poor BBC portrayed as hamstrung but quietly agreeing with Lineker but he must be punished and the people think he’s the Man in the Iron Mask, the man walking in front of the tank, Robin Hood. So brave, so much one of us…
It’s all a bit nauseating. And this sportsman promotes a hideous obesity inducing product for millions. My hero.
Spot on
It also reveals much about why the left keep beating out the right.
Bridgen makes a comparison to the Nazis and his own colleagues label him an anti-semite and throw him.under the bus.
Lineker makes a comparison to the Nazis and the left rally behind him to defend him.
The left believe their own nonsense wholeheartedly.
The right are afraid of what they believe in and try to apologise for it all the time.
This way, the right is just going to get hammered badly.
“The right are afraid of what they believe in and try to apologise for it all the time.”
I agree that’s probably true. Truer of the “rank and file” of the right. Bridgen’s former colleagues pretend to be of the right, but are they? Or are they just in it for the votes? Or are they as cowed as everyone else by the conditioning that the left have managed to inflict on everyone for so long? I suspect maybe a mixture. There’s too much niceness in the world and not enough disagreeableness. Trump had some of the right instincts but was simply too flaky. I can think of very few unapologetic public figures on the “right”, certainly in UK mainstream politics. Someone like Swayne seems to have the right instincts but is still far too ready to accept that his colleagues and opponents have good intentions.
“A high paid, low IQ ex-footballer”
I don’t agree that Lineker has a low IQ. Why would anyone think that? Just because he’s a footballer? Does that mean Matt LeTissier has a low IQ too? I don’t think so.
Not sure if it necessarily follows, but he left school with 4 O Levels.
I repeat my post made about this on the News Roundup:
The Lineker business is a big blow, IMO. Firstly he is entitled to express his views publicly. The problem is not him expressing his views, the problem is the existence of a state broadcaster that people are forced to pay for. A politically neutral or even balanced broadcaster is an unachievable fantasy, and the BBC is a living demonstration of that. Making him step back just allows the BBC to perpetuate the fantasy that they are unbiased, whereas as we all know it might as well be the media arm of New Labour, Stonewall etc etc. The BBC needs to be destroyed or privatised, Lineker is just a distraction.
Well it is a problem. He has a contractual obligation (according to the BBC and not challenged) to avoid bringing the BBC into (even more) disrepute. In business such obligations are routine, apply to remarkably los levels of staff as well as at the top, and they are enforced.
I am a Free Speech Union supporter (financially, to a small degree), and have supported The DS (formerly LS) since it started, but every so often I have doubts on the ‘free speech’ thing.
The Jeremy Clarkson thing – I’m not a Megan fan, but the thing said about her was vile. Yes, i was really shocked, and, no, like most people actually, I’d never b___ seen ‘Game of Thrones’, as if the fact it came from that made it all OK). Again, in the past, it would have been expected for a columnist saying such a thing to lose his job, but here we were on this site saying that that he shouldn’t. A petition was launched.
I don’t agree with Lineker at all, and his language is ridiculous and inflammatory. ‘Nazis’ FFS? But…it’s his personal Twitter account,and his employer should not be interfering, as it’s clear to most people that Lineker is not representing the BBC in his tweets, but only himself. The ‘impartiality’ rules were surely put in place for the BBC’s political/current affairs reporters and programme-makers (although as we know not followed of course!).
Although I usually agree with Nick, I’m afraid that this article puts us squarely, and, to my mind, deservedly, in the firing line for those (including Lineker) who have said that those shouting loudly for free speech shout far louder for some people than others. I’m not saying it’s a FSU issue – Toby has explained why not and I understand that. But I don’t think it’s as ‘nuanced’ as Toby says. It is now seeming to me that the DS and the FSU are somewhat choosy as to what ‘free speech’ they’ll defend and what they won’t. I think we could do with a bit more consistency, some logic.
I do think we should be supporting Lineker.
I expect a few downvotes.
I tend to agree. The FSU offering to support Lineker could be a smart move. Never interrupt an idiot – let everyone see how captured the BBC is.
I genuinely respect your view, particularly as you know it goes against what will be the popular opinion on this site. I don’t, however, agree. This is my take on it:
What Clarkson said was unnecessarily unpleasant, but GOT was important context. Without that context what he said changes meaning. Context is important here. I’m not saying that it makes what he said ok, but it does make it more ok. People should be the judge here as they are not in control.
Linekar is not an ordinary employee, he is the employee of a publicly funded corporation whose remit is to be impartial. If you sign for the BBC pound you also sign away your opinion. If you believe your morals are more important than financial incentives, then you don’t sign; what you can’t do is have your cake and eat it, raising a middle finger to at least half those people that pay your wages. The people fund the BBC, so the BBC has a legal obligation to appear impartial, so the Linekars of this world need to find different employment.
I agree with you that everyone has the right to free speech, but a critical part of that right to free speech is a choice about knowingly signing it away for the ££.
GOT was important context to understand what he meant, but not important in free speech terms. I think we have to stand by the right of people to say “hateful” or “unpleasant” things, regardless, because “hateful” is in the eye of the beholder and more importantly the definition is controlled by whoever is controlling everything, and free speech exists to stop people hanging on to that control by suppressing opposing views.
I think the BBC must be privatised or destroyed because I think the state has no business owning and running a media empire, but I think that is a different debate. A lot of people have probably signed employment contracts that envisage sanctions if they publicly post things that the firm deems damaging in some way, which these days could be absolutely anything. I think it has to stop,
Maybe, but probably not knowingly. That’s the key difference – if you sign for the BBC you know 100% that a key part of your contract is to be impartial. It has to be as the public is paying your wages and the public hold different opinions. You are signing up to being a servant of the people and that should be typed in bold in the contract. If you don’t like that part of the contract, you don’t sign. Simple.
Anyway, now off to watch the rugby. Hopefully I’ll have something to smile about for once!
Knowingly or not, I think clauses of this nature are abused and should be illegal.
I despise Lineker and everything he purports to stand for, and I don’t want to be forced to pay his wages just because I want to watch TV, but I don’t care what he says as a private individual as this is completely his affair. What is infinitely more important is that the BBC is irretrievably captured by the woke left and is effectively the media arm of New Labour, and that they do this using our money and with the stamp of “officialness” to give them credibility. The BBC restraining him a bit allows them to continue the charade that they are impartial. They are not impartial, and cannot be.
Sadly not…. Unless you were supporting France.
Only if you are French and were at Twickenham
@ Deborah T: Agreed. And it’s interesting hearing people talking about it spontaneously in shops, talking to complete strangers about it, etc, actively relishing how the other BBC presenters are “striking” over it, etc, and using the word “solidarity”.
Because if Lineker doesn’t have the right to express his personal views on social media anymore because of his employer/job ….
… it’s as if people are beginning to connect the dots about the gradual incursion of state into personal/private freedoms …
… a sort of last straw event? That begins to wake the mass of people up?
PS,. I’m not familiar with the Clarkson/GoT incident so not responding to that.
Flashpoints are very often confused/contradictory, garbled/nonsensical things, which seem stupid and/or trivial to anyone who’s been observing and thinking about things already, but for whatever reason they capture popular imagination/speak to the garbled contradictory nature/condition of most/many people’s existence/thought-processes and may represent an important turning point/watershed moment, when previously inarticulate/unarticulated distress/anger catches fire.
Happy to confirm your expectations.
Deborah T, this is not a free speech issue. Nobody is saying that Lineker should not be allowed to express his political opinion, the issue is whether he should express his political opinion while he is “the face of the BBC” (the BBC’s most highly-paid presenter) to whom we are all forced to pay a licence fee even if we only want to watch GB News, and therefore the BBC is supposed to represent everyone impartially, not just Labour party supporters.
Would you say that BBC News and current affairs presenters need to have their right to free speech defended (e.g. by the FSU)?
Whether or not Lineker is in a different position from BBC news and current affairs presenters is debatable, but it’s not a debate about free speech.
Absurd. So calling everyone a Nazi and Hitler is ‘free speech’, but if I criticise a Tranny, the Muzzies, Toby’s fav the multi-cult, the Muslim sex slaving gangs, I go to jail?
Nice standards.
Free speech does not exist in the UK. Or did you miss the past 20 years?
Lineker should get what the rest of us get – jail time.
I am only surprised the BBC had enough backbone to get rid of him for a time. That is the main story here.
I absolutely support Lineker’s right to virtue-signal and spout nonsense. But he can’t remain working for the supposedly politically impartial BBC which is funded by what is effectively a Poll Tax whether or not you watch it.
“Virtue signalling pyramid scheme…” – totally stealing that!
A very apt term, which seems to be borne out by Gazza receiving support from Danny Baker. Is this the same Danny Baker that was all but lynched because of a photo he posted showing how thoroughly ridiculous all the secrecy and suspense was concerning prince Hazza’s firstborn? I don’t remember whole members of the BBC refusing to do their overpaid jobs until he got reinstated, so quite why he feels the need to stand up for the self-important Lineker is mystifying.
It is not an issue of free speech – thanks to Elon Musk, the childish, low-intellect rhetoric of luvvies like Lineker, who create a world they only know about in theory but that others have to live in, Lineker can say what he wants. To the best of my knowledge, the police have not been knocking at his door.
These days I would assume that virtually all companies have a clause in the employment contract relating to the employee’s behaviour on social media. People who bring their employer in disrepute on social media face consequences, it’s not difficult to understand why. If Lineker is not subject to such a clause, or something else in the contract referring to his conduct in relation to rules at the BBC, he has a case to be tried under employment law, not human rights. If there is such a clause, he is likely in breach, simples.
The simpering outrage of the BBC luvvies is sickening – not because of Lineker as such, but where were these sanctimonious pricks when people were being kept away from friends and family, forced to wear filthy rags over their mouths, coerced into getting poison injected in their veins and when minimum wage careworkers were kicked out of their jobs? They only stand up for free speech and human rights when multi-millionaires are involved? Wanquers.
“These days I would assume that virtually all companies have a clause in the employment contract relating to the employee’s behaviour on social media. People who bring their employer in disrepute on social media face consequences, it’s not difficult to understand why. If Lineker is not subject to such a clause, or something else in the contract referring to his conduct in relation to rules at the BBC, he has a case to be tried under employment law, not human rights. If there is such a clause, he is likely in breach, simples.”
Probably the same mechanism Sky used to get rid of Matt Le Tissier. And the same mechanism your employer could use to get rid of you – because “disrepute” is in the eye of the beholder. Certainly your views on covid were and probably still are out of step with what is “acceptable”. You have the luxury of posting anonymously. I suppose Lineker could have chosen to do this but it’s unlikely he would have avoided discovery.
I think we need laws to protect speech of employees when they are speaking in a personal capacity.
I’m self-employed, something Lineker is apparently also claiming to be.
If I went around saying something that reflected poorly on clients I work for, they could neither fire me nor silence me, but they could (and would) absolutely opt to no longer work with me.
Employees do have protection, there is whistleblower legislation to protect them if they say something detrimental to the employer but in the public interest – an area of law that does indeed require further reinforcement. There should also be freedom to speak about issues not relating in any way to your employer or its business. But surely you can understand that if an employee of, let us say, a random chain of fast food establishments makes posts on social media saying the food is total crap and overpriced and no one should eat there, while his relationship with his employer is listed on his social media, that this would most likely be a sacking offence and rightly so.
The situation with Lineker is not that clear cut, but one could argue that his social media profile is vastly boosted by his BBC work and the two cannot be seen separately. If he is indeed subject to certain regulations regarding impartiality or the like as an employee, he made the choice to contractually commit to these regulations, presumably with the help of a top solicitor. If he wishes to claim he has not breached such regulations, he has the funds to challenge this in court, contrary to the vast majority of people.
If he is self-employed, as he claims to be, then the BBC can tell him to get lost if they believe he causes more aggro than he’s worth; if this is in breach of the contract for services he has with the BBC, he can, again, take the matter to court.
He is not facing criminal prosecution, he is not being prevented from posting what he likes, nor from seeking work with a broadcaster that will let him have free rein. He is merely embroiled in a dispute with an employer/client, for which he can seek remedy in the civil courts.
I think his claims to be self-employed are a bit tenuous though I guess in his line of work the lines are blurred.
He is not rubbishing his firm’s own product, just criticising the government. Any employee should be allowed to do that, without fear of reprisal, by law. He can afford to sue the BBC – that’s not really an option for Joe Soap who works on minimum wage for some huge corporation with fancy lawyers.
I certainly agree that any private individual is free to choose from whom to buy their products and services, on a whim. It’s hard to stop corporate clients politically vetting the contractors or firms that they buy from, but let’s imagine that you service mainly corporate clients in your work, and as all know all big firms are now woke and they find some social media posts of yours they don’t like, and you are left with no clients – game over. I don’t know what the answer is to that, other than to defeat woke ideas or hope that some firms realise it’s not a smart move, but justifying the muzzling of Lineker is not IMO the place to start.
I think free speech advocates should defend him, and indeed encourage the BBC to reinstate him and continue spouting his drivel, so that no-one is left in any doubt that the BBC is far from impartial. The sooner they are exposed the better.
I guess we differ on the focus here. I don’t see him as being muzzled – if only
I see him as having a choice to make, and rather than make that choice, he seems to be taking the piss. As Free Lemming says, he agreed to do XX for ££ – he either does so, or leaves and seeks solace elsewhere (on the assumption that he is indeed subject to some kind of regulations regarding what he says to a large public following).
We don’t know on what grounds he was suspended. If it was on direct orders from the government, then I’m with you, totally wrong.
But it is quite possible that he has been warned on several occasions before that he’s in breach of the impartiality rules and that the BBC finally had to take action. What if the BBC took action on the basis of viewer complaints? They are the ‘customer’, if a large number of customers are complaining, a company has to take note. I stopped watching BBC news and current event programmes years ago because of the outrageous and not even hidden bias. Ditto for a number of BBC soaps that went increasingly ‘woke’, just stopped watching.
If he were the crisp lady pouring out cups of crisps in the canteen, I’d have more sympathy, but it is also unlikely that in that capacity he would have faced any action. Like Scott Adams, I assume old Gazza has enough dosh to say screw you if freedom of expression is so important to him.
I believe that “impartiality rules” that sanction speech done in a personal rather than professional capacity are a bad idea and should probably be made illegal, because they can and will be adapted by the powerful for their own ends. Most restrictions on speech start out with virtuous-sounding or reasonable-sounding intentions, and the slide down the slippery slope begins and here we are.
It’s misleading to compare Sky getting rid of LeTissier and Lineker getting into trouble with the BBC. The whole issue here is that we are forced to pay money to the BBC if we want to watch television and therefore the BBC has to either try to be impartial or stop forcing us to pay them money. We are not forced to pay for Sky, so Sky doesn’t have to try to be impartial.
The BBC cannot be impartial. I don’t think any broadcaster realistically can be, and the BBC certainly can’t – not now, not in my lifetime. Trying to bully Lineker into stopping his silly tweets isn’t going to change that – in fact it will perpetuate it. I do not agree with employers sanctioning their employees for things they say or do in a private capacity. He’s not even in news and current affairs (not that I would approve of sanctioning for example a newsreader). Why does it matter what they say as individuals? It’s the work that matters. It’s a joke – Lineker is singled out but the entire edifice of the BBC has been engaged in a political/”social justice” campaign to influence society to be reshaped as they think it should be, for decades. Lineker is just a distraction.
I agree that the BBC is not and cannot be impartial, but aiming to be impartial is not an all-or-nothing aim. The problem is that we are forced to pay £159 per year to the BBC if we want to watch TV, even if we hate the BBC and don’t want to watch it. So would it be fair if all BBC presenters told us to vote Labour at every election, and gave up trying to be impartial? While we are forced to pay the licence fee, the BBC has to try to be impartial.
We need to privatise it or close it down
It cannot be fixed
This just prolongs the agony
Excellent post.
Ta.
Demos went off pretty much without problems. The farmers demo was peaceful, nought happened as far as I know.
The xtinct rebels demo was blocking the motorway into The Hague, were told to leave before it got dark and when they hadn’t left by 5 p.m. got watered. But the water canons were on shower mode (contrary to when they blasted that poor lass at a corona demo straight into a wall) and they were given dry clothes (why?) and checked over for injury. I suspect Rutte had the water canons at that demo to make it look like he has some sympathy for the farmers and is not totally 100% green (I’m sure he’s not, he’s 100% opportunist though). I just heard he’s going to be a guest on a very popular footbally like talk show (never watch it, started out about football, now I think it’s just bla bla) on Monday evening – 2 days before the election! He’s obviously not up for election to the First Chamber, but still – he/his party should not be given that type of positive exposure 2 days before the election.
Many thanks for the update and glad nobody hurt.
I once bought some fruit and veg from the Lineker family stall on Leicester market.
Once.
“is actually trying to tackle the difficult problem of illegal immigration”
No they’re not: they want to be able to say “We tried our best but nasty foreign judges stopped us.”
Does anybody know what happens to all of the dinghys that bring them here?
They send them back for the next lot at a guess.
My suspicion.
And then there is Fiona Bruce.
The more Lineker’s friends weigh in, the more the impartiality of the BBC is exposed.
And to think after all these years he still read an autocue
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
The easy way to fix this is for the BBC to announce that forthwith it’s a subscription service, ending the neutrality requirement. Licence fees will be honoured until expiration, after which it’s a subscription instead. All you have to do is type your licence/subscription number in when you get a new TV. Most people will carry on paying it. Non-payers will carry on not paying and no longer need to be chased by Capita.
Perhaps this is the opportunity presenting itself for meaningful reform.
Exactly. If Lineker was working for Sky, his tweets criticising the Conservative government would be no problem.
The root of this BBC mess is that we are forced to pay for the BBC even if we only want to watch other channels.
Very rich man with enormous income for doing nothing very demanding mouths off against the policies of his employder.
Doh!
Nothing at all demanding?
Just like his earlier employment as a fruit n veg salesman.
“Stop whining about your 12 year-old daughter being gang-raped by three 20 year-old Albanians pretending to be 15. The average number in an Albanian rape-gang is 5.”
I wonder what the reaction from the BBC and the wider public would be if Lineker was saying what many of us and amongst the wider public were and are saying :
Stop the immigrants now, round up all the illegals and send them back to somewhere like Afghanistan?
It amazes me how much credence grown adults give to celebrity opinions. Who cares what Lineker thinks. Its like asking the Postman what he thinks about the Minsk Agreement. The only issue where a BBC employee is involved, is that we have to pay their bloody wages. That is the ongoing issue, not what he thinks. The Telly Tax is outmoded and out of time.
Genuinely couldn’t give a shit about Lineker and Clarkson’s comments. Both are dumb for saying anything inflammatory being in the limelight and knowing how utterly shit the populous can be… Beyond that though, I do think the FSU should offer support as it would go a long way to make the Twitter blob stfu and showcase how steadfast we should be on free speech.
Secondly, the video “refugees are not criminals”. Well, some of them must be a criminal, statistically… So the statement is a lie, if being a pedant. But also, I’m extremely sympathetic towards families, women, children etc escaping hellish conditions and I offer as much support as I can to such refugees…
However…the vast, vast majority of dinghy travellers are fighting age young men, not families…
The thoughts of Lineker are akin to an empty potato crisp packet blowing across a car park. Not many tweets from Lineker, Wright, Shearer et al, when they hopped aboard the Qatar gravy train.
Just as common sense isn’t very common among so called ‘celebrities’ it is usually replaced by hypocrisy and wilful blindness when money comes calling
I think Nick nails it when he points out that it is easier to voice an opinion about Lineker than to voice an opinion about the solution to the small boats issue. Any ramp off is welcome relief for politician or commentator.
The Government has got involved because encouraging discussion about Lineker’s virtue-signalling twaddle has nicely diverted a lot of attention from Handcock’s WattsApp messages, particularly on TalkTV which pitches itself at Sun/Daily Mail readers.
Giving any weight to Lineker’s views on history is as relevant as asking a Professor of Modern History from Oxford University to present MOTD. Which was much more enjoyable last night without the presence of the talking heads. When you have “Weapons of mass destruction” Campbell weighing in on your side then you should realise the game is up.
‘Gary Lineker to step back….” ‘Step back’ as in, just taking a hissy-fit moment to reflect before taking a ‘step forward’ back into the comforting arms of his well-paid position – phew! Probably when no-one is noticing.
Brilliant article, Nick.
Imagine if Lineker had tweeted in support of the (alleged) proposed government clamp down on the economic illegals? The Politically Correct BBC wouldn’t have wrung their hands for days before “suspending” him, they would have fired him in a nanosecond, there would be zero controversy in the MSM and none of his buddies at the BBC would have gone on strike in support of him.
I enjoyed the 20 minute match highlights this morning without the inane post-recorded “match commentary” and dumb punditry. First time in months I’ve watched MOTD. Goals, saves, crowd noise. What more could a footy fan want?