O/T:-Gary Lineker

[sidders]

As the original poster, I have been buoyed by most of the comment on this fred but there are two aspects of the fred that annoy me.
The first is that a number of posters - probably because of the title I gave - seem to have been distracted by the issue of punditry and whether or not it enhances MOTD.
Boris Johnson has stitched up the BBC by his appointments; Nadine Dorries is out to do the same with Channel 4. The men at the top of the BBC can now decide on what constitutes impartiality and whether you agree with Jackal 2 that there is no such thing as objectivity or not, that is a dangerous precedent to establish. For the party that has whinged incessantly about cancel culture it is an extraordinary act of hypocrisy. And honestly I would say the same if Labour had made this move.
Lineker said nothing about the holocaust but Braverman, a refugee herself, is implying that he has. Lineker did not use his BBC position as a vehicle for his views. Like most of us, he has a life outside his job and should be free to express his thoughts on a non-BBC medium. MAKE NO MISTAKE he shouts, this is a move in the direction of censorship and determining what people can say and think. Stand back and watch the row that's about to explode when the new Attenborough series hits the road.
The second characteristic of this fred has been some posters wanting to slag off Lineker. He's good at what he does and his failings are human ones. As I understand it, his tax issues have now been cleared up to HMRC's satisfaction.
Of course being a bit of a leftie, he has no right to accumulate wealth, does he? Despite the fact that he comes from modest working class roots, he has made a success of his life as a sportsman and a media performer. To have won the breadth of respect he has which has resulted in backing from the likes of Shearer, Wright, Jenas et al speaks volumes. I don't think it will bother him at all that a few anonymous footie supporters think he's rubbish.

[BigFatPie]

jacobncfc no it is not about taking someone off the tele just because they said something some people don't want to hear. It was because the BBC is supposed to be seen to be politically neutral. EP I am not quite sure who I am trying to belittle with their answers, so not really pot kettle. BFP you have my political views all wrong, as there are/were a lot of things I liked about Jeremy Corbyn but I suspect even that would not left wing enough for you. In my opinion you are way off beam regarding Paul Embery, but I am happy for you to think differently to me.

Jeremy Corbyn was a terrible Labour leader who would have had some good policies. Embery was a trade union official who left the FBU under questionable circumstances and now seems to have carved out a decent career moaning about why the left is so concerned with social justice and equal rights rather than pandering to people’s worst instincts.

Btw on your ‘balanced’ GB news, the Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt was on it to discuss his forthcoming budget with…2 conservative MPs Esther McVey and Phillip Davies.

https://twitter.com/hmtreasury/statu...qVzaKpCpxSnnHA

A little insight into what the BBC would be like if some people had their way.

[Elite_Pie]

Could you define what you mean by 'nonce'?

No explanation forthcoming, but it does give me a chance to tell a story about my visit to Waterstones today.

The bloke in front of me in the queue asked "Can the Prince Harry Book be downloaded?"

The lady at the till said "Do you mean a PDF file?"

The bloke replied "Nah, that's his Uncle".

[BigFatPie]

No explanation forthcoming, but it does give me a chance to tell a story about my visit to Waterstones today.

The bloke in front of me in the queue asked "Can the Prince Harry Book be downloaded?"

The lady at the till said "Do you mean a PDF file?"

The bloke replied "Nah, that's his Uncle".

Ha…If they did a popularity poll on GB news between Gary Lineker and Prince Andrew I wonder who’d win?

[laddo]

Full Time Score

BBC (1) 1 Vs 3 (0) Linekar

[BigFatPie]

This from Twitter:

hose BBC negotiations in full:
“Delete the tweets”
“No”
“Okay, well, apologise for them”
“No”
“We’ll get somebody else in to do your job if you don’t”
*Everyone downs tools*
“Will you at least promise not to tweet political stuff in the future?”
“No”
“Okay, we have a deal”

[MancMagpie]

As the original poster, I have been buoyed by most of the comment on this fred but there are two aspects of the fred that annoy me.
The first is that a number of posters - probably because of the title I gave - seem to have been distracted by the issue of punditry and whether or not it enhances MOTD.
Boris Johnson has stitched up the BBC by his appointments; Nadine Dorries is out to do the same with Channel 4. The men at the top of the BBC can now decide on what constitutes impartiality and whether you agree with Jackal 2 that there is no such thing as objectivity or not, that is a dangerous precedent to establish. For the party that has whinged incessantly about cancel culture it is an extraordinary act of hypocrisy. And honestly I would say the same if Labour had made this move.
Lineker said nothing about the holocaust but Braverman, a refugee herself, is implying that he has. Lineker did not use his BBC position as a vehicle for his views. Like most of us, he has a life outside his job and should be free to express his thoughts on a non-BBC medium. MAKE NO MISTAKE he shouts, this is a move in the direction of censorship and determining what people can say and think. Stand back and watch the row that's about to explode when the new Attenborough series hits the road.
The second characteristic of this fred has been some posters wanting to slag off Lineker. He's good at what he does and his failings are human ones. As I understand it, his tax issues have now been cleared up to HMRC's satisfaction.
Of course being a bit of a leftie, he has no right to accumulate wealth, does he? Despite the fact that he comes from modest working class roots, he has made a success of his life as a sportsman and a media performer. To have won the breadth of respect he has which has resulted in backing from the likes of Shearer, Wright, Jenas et al speaks volumes. I don't think it will bother him at all that a few anonymous footie supporters think he's rubbish.

What is also interesting is that in 2017 when Lineker tweeted 'Bin Corbyn' there wasn't even a murmur from the BBC in any capacity.

Surely that's a political statement? So why no backlash then?

Because the Beeb clearly have an agenda, and its ran by Tories.

[upthemaggies]

The Spectator today.....



The triumph of Gary Lineker is a disaster for the BBC

The BBC-based sitcom W1A centred on a running joke about how the spinelessness and ineptitude of senior management led them to dig themselves ever-deeper into holes. At one point in the series, the Corporation’s ‘Head of Values’ is wrong-footed by an ex-footballer who wants to be a television pundit. Another episode centres on him closing down an orchestra which turns out to be widely admired by licence-payers.

Well, life imitating art and all that then. Today’s ‘resolution’ of the Gary Lineker furore, which began on the basis of the director general Tim Davie’s determination to defend the Corporation’s impartiality, could hardly have done more to cement its reputation as a redoubt of liberal Left bias and groupthink.

The errant Match of the Day presenter is not only welcomed back having issued no apology about his tweets, but having also forced a review of existing impartiality requirements, especially those applying to freelance presenters. There is only one way this review is headed and that is to a significant dilution of restrictions on the public utterances of sports presenters with big ears who are paid more than £1m a year from the licence fee.

Perhaps there will be a ‘please don’t call people Nazis’ clause Davie will seek to use as a fig leaf, but nobody will be buying that. Because comparing the language used to set out the government’s asylum plan to ‘that used by Germany in the 30s’ is the very thing that has forced the new Lineker Principle upon us: namely that household name presenters not employed in politics or news coverage can pretty much say what they like about political issues on social media and elsewhere.

Theoretically, one supposes that it must also follow that such presenters will be able to advance high octane right-wing views as well. But given that we know broadcast media operatives lean heavily to the liberal left, there are unlikely to be many examples of that.

So the very phenomenon Davie has sought to address as DG – the perception of BBC bias against mainstream ‘provincial’ sensibilities – has today been formally institutionalised. Stand by for a torrent of ‘Brexit is evil/Britain is falling to fascism’ standard London dinner party takes from the Corporation’s talent.

The BBC is going to continue being a key part of the ultra-polarisation of British political culture, rather than the antidote to it that Davie envisaged.

The past week has rendered Davie a broken figure whose credibility lies in tatters. It has also illustrated that BBC chairman Richard Sharp is compromised to the point of being utterly hamstrung when it comes to guiding the Corporation through tricky terrain.

As a former Tory donor widely seen as ‘Boris Johnson’s man’ following his role in facilitating a loan for the ex-PM, Sharp has been able to say and do nothing throughout the Lineker saga. Never mind whether he should resign (and, of course, he should), the point now is that he must resign because he is demonstrably unable to do his basic job.

The cultural Left has won this skirmish hands down. No BBC boss will ever dare to stand in the way of Lineker’s juggernaut brand again. And the two ‘Tories’ at the top of the Corporation (Davie once stood as a Conservative candidate) are so much roadkill under its tyres.

What, though of the licence fee – the idea that TV viewers must, under penalty of the criminal law, pay almost £160 a year to fund an organisation that will not defend its impartiality requirements against a cultural leftist onslaught?

The case for any Conservatively-minded person defending it is now down to one based on the wilful suspension of disbelief required to be able to say that this is a unifying, trusted and impartial institution in British life that merits a quirky, illiberal and old-fashioned funding model. It isn’t. It’s gone.

[Old_pie]

BBC 0 Lineker 1 (og Davie)
BBC 0 Common Sense 1 (og BBC)

[BigFatPie]

The Spectator today.....



The triumph of Gary Lineker is a disaster for the BBC

The BBC-based sitcom W1A centred on a running joke about how the spinelessness and ineptitude of senior management led them to dig themselves ever-deeper into holes. At one point in the series, the Corporation’s ‘Head of Values’ is wrong-footed by an ex-footballer who wants to be a television pundit. Another episode centres on him closing down an orchestra which turns out to be widely admired by licence-payers.

Well, life imitating art and all that then. Today’s ‘resolution’ of the Gary Lineker furore, which began on the basis of the director general Tim Davie’s determination to defend the Corporation’s impartiality, could hardly have done more to cement its reputation as a redoubt of liberal Left bias and groupthink.

The errant Match of the Day presenter is not only welcomed back having issued no apology about his tweets, but having also forced a review of existing impartiality requirements, especially those applying to freelance presenters. There is only one way this review is headed and that is to a significant dilution of restrictions on the public utterances of sports presenters with big ears who are paid more than £1m a year from the licence fee.

Perhaps there will be a ‘please don’t call people Nazis’ clause Davie will seek to use as a fig leaf, but nobody will be buying that. Because comparing the language used to set out the government’s asylum plan to ‘that used by Germany in the 30s’ is the very thing that has forced the new Lineker Principle upon us: namely that household name presenters not employed in politics or news coverage can pretty much say what they like about political issues on social media and elsewhere.

Theoretically, one supposes that it must also follow that such presenters will be able to advance high octane right-wing views as well. But given that we know broadcast media operatives lean heavily to the liberal left, there are unlikely to be many examples of that.

So the very phenomenon Davie has sought to address as DG – the perception of BBC bias against mainstream ‘provincial’ sensibilities – has today been formally institutionalised. Stand by for a torrent of ‘Brexit is evil/Britain is falling to fascism’ standard London dinner party takes from the Corporation’s talent.

The BBC is going to continue being a key part of the ultra-polarisation of British political culture, rather than the antidote to it that Davie envisaged.

The past week has rendered Davie a broken figure whose credibility lies in tatters. It has also illustrated that BBC chairman Richard Sharp is compromised to the point of being utterly hamstrung when it comes to guiding the Corporation through tricky terrain.

As a former Tory donor widely seen as ‘Boris Johnson’s man’ following his role in facilitating a loan for the ex-PM, Sharp has been able to say and do nothing throughout the Lineker saga. Never mind whether he should resign (and, of course, he should), the point now is that he must resign because he is demonstrably unable to do his basic job.

The cultural Left has won this skirmish hands down. No BBC boss will ever dare to stand in the way of Lineker’s juggernaut brand again. And the two ‘Tories’ at the top of the Corporation (Davie once stood as a Conservative candidate) are so much roadkill under its tyres.

What, though of the licence fee – the idea that TV viewers must, under penalty of the criminal law, pay almost £160 a year to fund an organisation that will not defend its impartiality requirements against a cultural leftist onslaught?

The case for any Conservatively-minded person defending it is now down to one based on the wilful suspension of disbelief required to be able to say that this is a unifying, trusted and impartial institution in British life that merits a quirky, illiberal and old-fashioned funding model. It isn’t. It’s gone.

Lots of words to say ‘The BBC would be much better off if the positions of DG and Chairman weren’t political appointments’.

Interesting as well that the Spectator’s chairman is Andrew Neil who was free to publish his right wing magazine and tweet political opinions whilst also conducting political interviews on the BBC. Hmm.