Back when I was a Sixth Former, aged 16-18, one of my fellow male students happened to support Celtic, despite our college being in northwest England, where, in those pre-internet days, Scottish football shirts were hard to find. One day, the boy’s mother happened to be in Glasgow, so thought she’d try and buy him a Celtic shirt as a surprise – by going into the Rangers Megastore and asking if they sold any there. When told this story later, all the boys present laughed uproariously, understanding immediately why the mother was lucky to escape the shop with her life and skull intact, whereas none of the girls present so much as smiled except in bemused puzzlement, not understanding the implications of this particular sectarian sporting faux pas at all.
The allegedly “dangerous” – more on that word in a moment – stereotype supported by this tale is that females know absolutely nothing about football. This would certainly appear at first glance to be the opinion of Joey Barton, an ex-footballer from the men’s game (i.e., the real one), who has made headlines recently after criticising what he views as the excessive number of female commentators and pundits now being used in TV coverage of his old sport. In particular, he was condemned for a tweet made to his 2.8 million followers about two female ITV pundits, the ex-pros Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward, whom he mockingly called “the Fred and Rose West of football commentary”.
When ITV then put out a tweet of their own, lambasting his “vindictive remarks”, Joey stepped up and apologised, admitting that, “on reflection, I’ve been a tad harsh on Eni Aluko by comparing her to Rose West”. In fact, he said, rather than comparing her to someone part-responsible for merely a few innocent human deaths, he should “clearly” have really placed her in the “Josef Stalin/Pol Pot category”, as “she’s murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of football fans’ ears in the last few years” with her allegedly knowledgeless wittering.
A Dangerous Game
Joey has a new podcast series out soon, Common Sense With Joey Barton, to be hosted by Facebook/Meta, and some have speculated he may simply have been trying to drum up some free publicity for it by making deliberately provocative comments. If so, then another individual in the public eye apparently eager for free media attention was Labour MP Julie Elliott, who called Barton’s words “very, very disturbing”, as opposed to “mildly amusing and ultimately completely insignificant”, as I would have done, before a Commons Select Committee last week.
Elliott then asked Stuart Andrew, who is apparently the Minister for Sport this month, “What do you think can be done from a Government point of view to actually bring pressure on these social media companies not to support people who put out things that are so offensive and so disgusting as he [Barton] has done?”
Instead of answering, “Nothing, love, with attitudes towards free speech like that, it should have been you Joey Barton compared to Stalin, not Eni Aluko”, Mr. Andrew agreed that Barton’s posts were “dangerous comments that open the floodgates for abuse and that’s not acceptable”. He then added that he would “happily” speak to the social media companies hosting Barton’s tweets and forthcoming podcast, also observing that, under the new Online Safety Act, the media regulator Ofcom would in the near future be obliged to intervene and offer guidance on such matters. In other words, Andrew agreed to use both legislation and his own personal influence as an official representative of His Majesty’s Government to attempt to censor and shut down the opinions and jokes of a man whose opinions he personally – or, more likely, fashionable Establishment opinion in general – happened to disagree with.
To judge by subsequent reports, most mainstream media appeared to be basically on the MPs’ side here, not that of Joey Barton. Yet the framing through which Barton’s offences were reported seemed somewhat disingenuous in nature to me. For example, in what precise way were Barton’s comments supposed to actually be “dangerous”, as Stuart Andrew claimed they were?
Tokens of Disaffection
The basic idea seemed to be that, by cruelly criticising female pundits online, Barton was potentially opening them up to social media pile-ons, potentially impacting their mental health and well-being: words are harmful, as the Left continually now say (except when they’re hounding people online themselves, obviously). Furthermore, Joey was painted as promulgating a patronising and outdated stereotype that women were constitutionally incapable of knowing anything about sport whatsoever and should stick to their true home in the kitchen, not the sports studio. As the current Chelsea Women’s coach, Emma Hayes, put it about some of Barton’s earlier comments back in December, using several classic elements of contemporary woke-speak:
If you haven’t experienced systemic misogyny, like lots of us have, you can’t for one moment understand how detrimental some of these conversations are knowing that anything anyone says just enables an absolute pile-on, particularly on social media.
Except, if you actually look at what Barton has been saying, he has not just been handing out random sexist abuse as part of a pointless campaign of “systemic misogyny” at all. I can’t pretend to have read every single one of his tweets, and at times he does just seem to insult people for the sake of it – he’s Joey Barton, after all. Yet, examined in toto, there is a consistent underlying rationale to his arguments overall. Most media reports have misrepresented and obscured his overall point. But why might this be? Well, just look at the following (admittedly expletive-ridden) tweet Joey posted in further response to ITV’s criticism of his Fred and Rose West gibe:
Forget all the distractions about swearing and serial killers, it is those words about Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward being “under-qualified, under-prepared [and] tokenistic” that are actually what our current governing class object to the most. As Joey says, the “fucking idiots” at ITV expose viewers to Aluko and Ward’s words by “force”, not due to popular demand, as in his view there is no popular demand for them. General consensus (at least amongst the general public as opposed to amongst the media and political classes) is that they are tedious and simply not very good at their job. It is not necessarily so much that critics like Barton don’t want to see any female sports presenters at all, it’s just that they think those who do get employed should be chosen for their innate presenting skills or expertise at communicating knowledge, not for spurious social engineering reasons.
Joey therefore actually suggests such useless female presenters are serial killers like Fred and Rose West not simply as an arbitrary sexist insult, but because they are killing the game for viewers like him who want to see pundits and commentators chosen to front games on the basis of how interesting/well-informed/entertaining they are, not simply on the basis of how many woke boxes they happen to tick.
Media and politicians would prefer to paint Joey as a neanderthal sexist, rather than someone with a rational objection to general politically correct trends in society here. Then, they don’t have to address his actual arguments, which is very handy for them, because his actual arguments, once you strip all the obscenities out of them, happen quite often to be correct.
There’s No ‘DEI’ in Team
Barton is a consistent long-term critic of the current Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) mania currently being foisted upon society, as can be seen in another of his tweets, celebrating the recent highly pleasing removal of Claudine Gay from her post at Harvard University:
Like many critics, Barton feels Gay only got the job on the grounds of being black and female (and probably even her surname too, these days), something which apparently outranked her complete uselessness and unsuitability for the role – and that ITV’s employment of the similarly black and female Eni Aluko as a pundit proceeded on the same basic grounds. Here, in response to footage of a very poor shot at goal indeed from Aluko during an old training session, is Barton’s withering assessment of why he thinks she is really being employed by ITV as a pundit:
Just look at those disgraceful opinions: “DEI is a load of shit” which has only been imposed upon society “All off the back of the BLM/George Floyd nonsense”. Well, now we can see why his comments are really so dangerous, can’t we? DEI doesn’t work, and inherently meritocratic fields like sport and live TV broadcasting reveal the sad fact to the world for all to see, in a way which simply cannot be hidden – except by forcibly shutting up anyone like Mr. Barton who happens to draw attention to such awkward truths.
Disorder of Merit
Essentially, Barton’s argument is that all sports-related programming has had its former roster of pundits and experts replaced with athletic avatars of Claudine Gay. For example, the BBC’s long-running A Question of Sport show was recently cancelled after over 50 years of broadcasting, something Barton blames primarily on producers replacing the old presenters beloved of its traditional audience with new, more diverse (i.e., tokenistic) but less entertaining ones, who drove the audience away through sheer tediousness.
He thinks the same fate soon awaits the Beeb’s weekly Football Focus fixture-previews programme, which has been shedding viewers since its previous host, a white male named Dan Walker, was replaced by a black female ex-pro, Alex Scott. In Barton’s view, Scott got this job more for her genitals than her journalism, leading the show to degenerate into “Drivel and nonsense served with a side order of boring”. As he says: “Well done to all involved. Another flagship destroyed by The Tokens.”
Of course, Barton’s qualitative assessment of Scott’s presenting style is by definition subjective: maybe some people find her punditry fascinating. Yet, following Barton’s criticism of her, Scott seemed to let the cat out of the bag by ending coverage of a women’s match with the words: “Just before we say goodbye, to all the women in football, in front of the camera, behind it, the players on the pitch, to everyone that attends games, keep being the role models that you continue to be.”
But that attitude is the whole problem in microcosm, isn’t it? It is not the purpose of TV sports presenters to act as “role models”, demonstrating to all and sundry that persons in possession of XX chromosomes are indeed capable of fronting football shows: it is their job to inform and entertain viewers, regardless of whether they are black, female, male, white or whatever. If you think your primary purpose as a presenter is to be a “role model”, however, then your primary purpose on-screen is actually propagandistic, not journalistic. You are acting as a walking avatar of DEI.
It seems that, when it comes to TV coverage of our national game, our broadcasters have increasingly chosen to replace professional footballers with professional victims instead. And, if you choose to stand up and criticise this lamentable trend, it now appears Ofcom and the Government stand poised to try to intervene to stop you from doing so.
Stuart Andrew MP and Julie Elliott MP apparently consider Joey Barton’s online antics to be “dangerous” and “disturbing”. Personally, I think it’s the official response to them which is far more deserving of having those particular words applied to them. But what do you expect from our increasingly censorious political class these days?
Forget Fred and Rose West, Stuart Andrew and Julie Elliott are nothing more than Fred and Rose Westminster.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
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“Black Political Commentator Calvin Robertson”
Ah, but you see Robertson ain’t black:
Biden: “you ain’t black”
So he wouldn’t count towards the Church’s diversity scores and in fact it would be racist to give him the post. All conservative promoting actions are racist.
Tucker: Inflation is proof the people in charge are reckless and stupid
Biden can talk!
“He ain’t President!” He told us himself that is Kamala Harris.
She talks more gibberish he does.
Everyone makes lousy speeches during their lifetime, god knows I’ve delivered some howlers but, whilst they barely raised a titter, they at least made sense.
Harris, perhaps even more than Biden, just leaves people bewildered.
You talk crap all day every day on here!!
And now he’s facing a backlash from you with your deep and insightful and well argued observations is he? Err… that would be a no from me.
I am devastated not to have your total backing
I’m sure you are and rightly so.
She was not well-known and “popular” for her speeches.
And that shows that the church of England is no longer Christian, commies I suggest!
Maybe, if you’re referring to the Bishops. The laity is far from being communist.
“Ah, but you see Robertson ain’t black”
True: he’s mixed race.
I see you’re using the same definitions that the apartheid era South Africa used.
Is it inaccurate to call him mixed race?
Would you describe someone with one black and seven white great grandparents as black?
“Would you describe someone with one black and seven white great grandparents as black?”
To whom, the police?
Why is it wrong of me to call him mixed race when he clearly has both sub-Saharan African and European ancestry?
How do you know that? based on his appearance he could be an Arab.
He’s called Calvin Robertson.
That strongly suggests he’s not an Arab.
As does the fact that he’s described as black.
Err… He’s not called Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu either.
Why are people who are half-white labelled ‘black’ instead of ‘white’?
Could be ‘racism’? Default towards the currently dominant model?
It isn’t
Would you describe me as “mixed race”? Or would you describe me as some irritating commenter on the Daily Sceptic, named after the hero of an Anglo Saxon poem?
I have absolutely no information about your ancestry, so why would I use any racial term to describe you?
Precisely, but apparently you have complete access to Calvin Robinson’s DNA.
My DNA indicates that I have English/Irish/Welsh/Scottish and Norwegian ancestry. So am I mixed race or do you judge race by skin pigmentation only?
“Precisely, but apparently you have complete access to Calvin Robertson’s DNA.”
No, but I have his appearance and name.
All I can tell about you is that you’re not very bright and not very well read (you think English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish are 4 distinct ethnicities, FGS.)
His name means nothing. Is Eddie Murphy from Dublin? And regarding his appearance, he looks like he could be the Egyptian actor Emad Hamdy’s son.
As for your rebuke questioning my IQ, and the depth of my reading, are you claiming that blond-haired blue-eyed Norwegians are ethnically identical to the Celts? Clearly you’re not or you would have said “…you think English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Norwegian are 5 distinct ethnicities…”. The late Chancellor of the Third Reich had his doubts, like you, and the very fact that a DNA test is able to identify genetic traits that are not common to the four home nations and to the Norwegians supports that view.
I await your next insult.
NB You wrote: “He’s called Calvin Robertson.” Well, no he’s not, his name is Calvin Robinson. I guess you haven’t read widely enough to know that.
Wow, two downticks for correctly pointing out Nearhorburian’s obvious and inexcusable mistake of referring to Calvin Robinson as Calvin Robertson.
Six downticks now. I wonder if the conviction of some you on here that Calvin Robinson’s surname is actually Robertson has anything to do with a jam manufactures logo and a barely supressed racial prejudice?
Would he be from the Swiss Family Robinson by any chance?
I don’t believe that he’s featured in any Disney movie, why do you ask?
I’m new to this. But to me you sound like a silly, shallow, self-absorbed, arrogant, posturing dimwit. Of whatever colour or ethnicity. Mine is a ”mixed race” family and it’s people like YOU who are the root of all divisive evil in this present world from which families like mine may suffer.
No. I think the word ”plonker” springs more readily to mind. Or even ”tosser” if you think it more appropriate. (You may have to look up the word ”appropriate” – it’s nothing to do with ”heroic”, by the way.)
Why would anyone want to work for the current “Church of England” ?.
Is it even a Church any longer? What does it actually believe in ?
What is even ‘English’ about it?
How long before it changes its name to the ‘Church of Diversity Training’?
I do respect Calvin Robertson but isn’t his wish to become a C of E vicar just nostalgia for something that no longer really exists – as this blocking of his ambition so clearly illustrates?
“Schism” used to be a useful resort to allow and project differences of religious interpretation – its return to fashion is long overdue and Calvin might find himself among like minds rather than in permanent conflict with the Woke.
Britain is not ‘racist,’ but those who claim that it is often are!
What does it actually believe in ?
Marx worship
Does it even believe in that ?
No, the CofE’s principal beliefs are:
Perhaps he has an ambition to restore it to its former glory.
‘Archbishop of Canterbury, Calvin Robertson’ has an attractive cadence.
It does indeed.
just nostalgia for something that no longer really exists
That could apply to people joining todays Conservative & Labour parties to become MPs. Both husks of their former selves.
Heaven forbid – Bishop Robertson is, it is claimed, married to a Mr. Mohan Sharma.
Archbishop Calvin Robinson would sound much better, what with him actually being a Christian, unlike the Canadian heretic, Kevin Robertson.
And perhaps he doesn’t aspire to those heights. Perhaps he just wants to make a difference. Or doesn’t the idea of honour and decency register with you?
Perhaps there are some noble people who still think they might save it. Perhaps that’s to be admired – or is there nothing left in this world that is admirable and selfless? Is everything and everybody corrupt and selfish?
Robertson!!!??? This whole article is a micro aggression!!!
YJCMTSU
“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that Britain is institutionally racist.”
I have been saying for two years now that the Church of England is finished and that Welby will be the last Archbishop of Canterbury.
Unless Welby comes to new wisdom, this is it.
Well, we are told that miracles can still happen. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
A shoe-in by the Deep State…. no ” new wisdom” possible.
The one before him was nearly as bad – Rowan Williams wasn’t it? He was a Blair appointment…..
I suspect that Welby is from the wef….. a traitor brought in to bring down what is left of the CofE. He is doing rather well!
I was once a Vicar in the Cof E but left because a divorced woman was consecrated bishop in direct defiance of St Paul’s instructions. It led to 10 years on the dole but I have never regretted it. I am now, like Bishop Nazir Ali, a Catholic and relish the faith, the brotherhood and the sacramental life.
Nice to hear from someone of principle.
Mmmmmmmm, not sure that this displays principles? Hasn’t Stroflex displayed the Groucho Marx maxim, “if you don’t like my principles then I have others!”
He’s left the CofE over one issue & joined another who have quite a pile of fundamental differences to the Cof E.
I hold no brief for the CofE but he did. I’m not saying he was wrong to swap but it wasn’t over a principle.
The Church of England is dead, dead and rotten. We need a new church, a church for Christians. Calvin Robinson is pointing the way.
Well said, Annie.
Black political commentator, and white bishop. Why is the colour of someone’s skin their defining attribute? It’s incredibly divisive.
The CoE is making it a race thing, not Robertson.
Why would a Church have a ‘race policy’?
I was thinking more generally, concerning comments in the MSM such as ‘the first black … this’, or ‘the first black … that’, or so-and-so ‘… is a black actress …’. In fact ‘black’ is a euphemism for ‘non-white’. No wonder racial tensions are increasing in society, if in fact they are.
They definitely are. Straight white men have had enough of all this crap
The CoE seems to have forgotten Christs teaching about forgiveness and restitution.
What sin cannot be forgiven..? What soul cannot repent..?
What doesCalvin Robinson need to repent of?
Calvin doesn’t need to repent anything. The CoE are taking fixed positions on social not spiritual matters, and if you don’t agree, you are a heretic and damned without recourse or hope of redemption.
Of what does Calvin need to repent? Why, nothing more than not toeing the Establishment line.
Welby is terrified Calvin will launch into some Jackson Five numbers and actually make the CoE fun.
“Can’t you see that ray of hope,
Somebody finally saw the light,
They’re gonna send our brothers home.
It’s gonna be all right yeah”
Calvin wants to wear a frock,
To push his profile higher,
He’ll get the job he wants for sure,
God help the young boy’s choir
So what you’re saying is [insert anti-clerical cliché here]?
He looks creepy. Mark my words he’s a bad ‘un
Why not get God to put in an appearance and put an end to all this divisiveness.
Oh forgot he, she, it, them don’t exist and the world, galaxy, universe will one day end forever and forever amen.
Your arguments are so compelling you ought to debate William Lane Craig, or John Lennox.
Why do you believe that the universe came into existence?
Why do you believe that it will cease to exist?
Because the hydrogen will run out.
OMG! It’ll be all those hydrogen powered cars Renault built in order to save the planet.
You obviously don’t know about nuclear fusion and how stars function. Nice to see how ignorant you are.
Yes that’ll be it, I’m just not up to date with The Science. But I’m trying hard to understand. So let me see if I get it – there will come a time when hydrogen will no longer exist because the stars will have used up every hydrogen atom in the Universe. And if hydrogen doesn’t exist then nothing at all exists. Is that right? Is that what you’re claiming will happen according to our present understanding of physics, cosmology and psychohistory? Well I never. You learn something every day. Now tell me about AGW and how a bloke with a todger can give birth.
All the big organized religions committed suicide during the Corona panic. Religious leaders right up to the pope have essentially admitted that they neither believe in their own deities nor their teachings by simply becoming vessels for whatever highly invasive, non-medical miracle cure Corona’s witnesses wanted to try today. This is especially true for the so-called Christian ones. Forcing people into social isolation, separating children from their parents and pressuring people into getting potentially harmful injections of no conceivable value to them are not acts of love and an archbishop of X or pope of Z who claims otherwise is no Christian.
God bless Calvin Robinson. May his message of a spiritual Christianity be heard far and wide, and may the woke moneychangers (in the sense of being obsessed with temporal values) be cast out from the Church.
“denying institutional racism”
First of all, define “institutional racism.”
Which institutions? All of them? And exactly how are they racist? Be specific, and give exact details.
presumably, this Bishop would have a problem with Zuby, a black rap artist who called out BLM as a scam, and doesn’t believe the UK is “institutionally racist.”
Such blanket accusations are completely non-specific, and are impossible to argue against, precisely because no specific details or examples are ever given.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R1GS0SR5Y5s
Yep, white people telling black people that they are wrong about racsim – white people are racist and they don’t get it because they’re black people, and as white people they absolutely know – is about as good an example of how far left society has fallen. The left are a cancer on society.
Someone will correct this with the right numbers but Robinson put out a Christmas message that had an order of magnitude more views than Welby & about 10 orders of magnitude more views than the various Bishops. This is the issue, he would represent a power across the water.
Punishment for being on GB News.
Oh the irony- the liberal left is engaged in what we might call cultural imperialism – white European people telling black people, and other ethnicities, how to live and what to think.
“We like black people in the church but we do insist that they agree with our view of them.”, a spokesman may or may not have added.
That White Bishop must be a KPMG employee. He’s rid himself of all his unconscious biases, leaving only the conscious ones.
I struggle with the Church of Scotland for the very same reasons. I have seen the Rev William Phillips from the Tron Church in Glasgow on Neil Oliver’s show and I have attended a service. Delightful.
Yes, let’s keep dividing the nation and others with this racist theme. For it to reach the level of the C of E getting involved, you know it is a con job. Just in Essex for a few days. Multi ethnicity kind of a place. Got the impression this is how things were meant to be. Anyone else sick and tired of those attempting to divide. It is a false narrative. Recognise it for what it is, a fraud.
These C of E “Archbishops” and “bishops” won’t be happy until the C of E has no congregations and the great cathedrals are all mosques.
White Bishop to Black Pawn – obviously no contest
“Shut up and stop saying that you’re not oppressed” about sums up the lunacy of the church’s position.
Robinson is a good egg, and would do much better in a more evangelical church. You know, one more concerned with souls than property values.
On the Church of England:
Indeed. Number 1 is part of their general accountability-avoidance strategy – which they are very successful at, having had hundreds of years’ experience!
The only people who can reign in this self-serving organisation are MPs, and none of them seem remotely interested as it’s not seen as a vote-winner. This, in turn, is largely because most people in the country are largely apathetic – they aren’t religious, and regard the CofE as having no power or infliuence (incorrect), and being unworldly and bumbling but well-meaning – all also incorrect, but it’s an image which the CofE appears to intentionally cultivate.
The C of E demonstrating that it understands irony.