I was going to put this into a comment on Patrick Crozier’s excellent item about Gary Lineker, the UK former footballer, and now TV show presenter (and enthusiastic Tweeter). But as the comment was chunky I am taking the liberty of putting it here.
On social media I come across the argument that Lineker hosts a sports programme, not a current affairs show about politics, so he’s not causing a problem by taking heated positions on a private twitter account. There are several problems with this line of reasoning.
Football these days is, alas, political. Maybe it always has been – even George Orwell disliked international games because he thought it stoked rather than reduced national ill feeling. Today, footballers have “taken the knee” over the Black Lives Matter eruptions, for example, or spoken about the Qatar World Cup and the row about maltreatment of stadium construction workers. There is a new UK government regulator of football (dealing with issues such as the finances of the game), and that is bound to be a political issue that a pundit like Lineker will want to talk about. Four years after Russia annexed Crimea, Lineker and the rest were in Russia to commentate on the World Cup of 2018. The footballing body, FIFA, was the centre of a massive corruption scandal. Brexit affected European football, such as because of the UK’s exit from the Single Market and the consequent impact on free movement and labour market contracts. And so on.
Why mention all this? Because it will not do for Lineker to say his role has nothing to do with politics so it’s okay to slag off the UK government or whatever on A or B, particularly in harsh language. That is why his principal, if not sole employer – the BBC – is entitled to ask him to tone it down on social media, or at least issue some small disclaimer along the lines “my views aren’t necessarily shared by the BBC” sort. The BBC is paid for by a tax known as the licence fee. In its charter, it has to uphold impartiality as part of the bargain, although in reality this is very hard to achieve consistently (which is why I think the fee needs to go).
For those who aren’t in such a role, or who have an independent income, they are freer to upset, provoke and delight anyone with equal measure. (This is also a reason why protecting savings from inflation is good precisely because it makes independent sources of income easier.)
But where a certain stance comes with the day job, then a contract of employment/service is entitled to contain some form of words about certain pronouncements. For Lineker, unfortunately, the “beautiful game” is no longer just about men (now women) kicking a bag of air around.
Final point: It is not as if Lineker, in condemning UK policy on illegal migrants, was adopting a particularly brave or original stance. His views are standard “liberal” boilerplate. I cannot imagine Lineker saying “Net Zero is BS”, or “All Lives Matter” or “Brussels is out of control” or “gender is not a social construct”.
Go on Gary, prove me wrong.
I would be more interested in a dog standing on its hind legs & speaking than anything tweeted, said or uttered by one Gary Lineker. Or even the other Gary. (Apologies to Peyps et al).
Not sure how your BBC works with its government-mandated fees. Would Lineker be considered a government employee?
In a word, Bobby, “no”. It’s possible he may not be considered to be an employee at all.
Bobby b, no. He’s a contractor but he is getting paid via a tax. He also earns money elsewhere.
Get rid of the BBC Tax “license fee” then I do not care what BBC people say.
And get rid of “Ofcom” so that other people, such as Mark Steyn, can also say what they want to say.
There should be many television stations with many points of vie – no pretence of being “unbiased”.
None of this is complicated – apart from why-the-government-does-not-do-it.
That is the great question – Conservatives have been complaining about BBC bias since at least 1963, yet do not get rid of the BBC Tax. And Conservatives accept that “Ofcom” is institutionally leftist – but refuse to get rid of it.
Why? Why? Why?
@Paul – Because regardless of how tainted the BBC has become (and I view it as tarnished beyond measure), there is still a perception that it is one of this countries “Great Institutions” (it ain’t) and no matter what the Tories may think of it’s leftwing bias they are fearful of being blamed for “Destroying the BBC”.
Far better to let the BBC collapse under the weight of it’s own pomposity and hypocrisy than be blamed for putting a stake through it’s heart and cutting it’s head off as Professor Abraham Van Helsing would have us do.
As for the licence fee, I agree that it should be abolished, but without the BBC in its terminal torpor there is a far greater problem of them getting some alternative (like sticking it on the Council Tax) that means it sticks around and is more pervasive than it is at the moment.
At least now I can refuse to pay (as I have refused since 2008) and apart from monthly threatograms from the BBC disguised as “TV Licensing” (a trading name of the BBC), there is nothing they can do about it.
@John of Enfield – I believe it was Dr Johnson rather than Samuel Pepys that you were searching for…
Strangely you don’t mention Alan Sugar, Karen Brady, Andrew Neil (who should never have been employed by the BBC due to the Spectator), Tom Davie, Laura Kuennsberg, Fiona Bruce, Robbie Gibb, and most egregiously Richard Sharp who have all breached impartiality guidelines.
Sugar and Neil in particular should have both been sacked for gross breaches of impartiality.
This is really about the corrupt crony Richard Sharp, who has bafflingly not resigned despite obvious cronyism.
“There should be many television stations…”
Since we got a new Sky box we have been able to watch You Tube content on our television rather than on a laptop or phone. In effect ordinary people now have their own TV station and there is an infinite variety of interesting content on every subject under the sun. Somewhere someone commented that he tunes in to MOTD just as the match starts rather than listen to the witterings of Gary and friends. If they wanted to a bunch of footy fans could now quite easily put together their own pre match analysis and post it just before the show so that the punters could watch that instead. The BBC would then have to justify their massive budget and why they pay huge sums to their pundits when ordinary people can do just as good a job free.
Why would anyone take serious notice of a bloke who left his wife and family, for a younger, bigger titted woman who, in turn, left him 6 years later (possibly because she looked forward to go clubbing while he looked forward to his Wincarnis and Ovalteen).
Lineker should not be sacked because of his comments about Government policy on foreign invaders being linked to 1930’s Germany. Lineker should be sacked for being an over opinionated twat, who should comment, on tv at least, about what he knows, such as football and potato crisps. Giving him the freedom to defend his comments, I look forward to this moron being interviewed and giving examples of the Nazi party putting Jews, gypsies, Catholics, etc, in 4 star hotels (Auschwitz, Belsen, and Sachsenhausen don’t count), giving them free sauerkraut, all at the German taxpayers expense, and the freedom to accost and rape young women, or assault people who have different religions or social mores.
Will that happen? Of course not, Lineker is now untouchable. I knew there was a reason I stopped paying for a tv licence all those years ago.
Either the current labour-lite government or their replacements are likely to instigate a process of withdrawing the mandatory but easily avoided TV license (thereby avoiding tens of thousands of politically unsightly prosecutions, mostly of women) and replacing it with an annual grant of c£5bn out of tax revenue.
Trebles all round and bbc presenters whether or not directly employed will be allowed to express their views freely, as long as they’re the right views.
OFCOM will continue to ensure that anyone not following the message, Mark Steyn for example, is quickly banished off the air.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an incoming Starmer Government did exactly that. Tories (even the Blue Labour we have nowadays), that would be a stretch too far.
John Galt nails it:
I’m sure Gary’s 5 million quid dispute with the taxman over his ambiguous employment status has nothing to do with him deliberately distancing himself from the BBC by going off-piste. It’s genius – save money *and* signal your virtue to your adoring fans. The taxation-is-theft part of me loves it.
This is the true scandal, a government that assumes regulation of football (even if via an independent body, i.e. one that is not accountable to the government, so has free rein). It was, AIUI, Mussolini who was the first to ever have a Minister for Sport, which was because he was a Fascist busybody. ‘Tutto dentro dello Stato‘ comes to mind.
The media of course, say nothing about the absurdity (never mind the tyranny) of government regulation of football. If the fans object to the amount of money in football, all they have to do is stop watching, stop paying subscriptions to TV channels that show football and stop buying merchandise.
It is utterly absurd to even have “impartiality guidelines”, just as the existence of the BBC is a preposterous anachronism.
Ofcom delenda est
John Galt you are correct – the accused BBC is considered a great-national-treasure, just as the 1940s copy of the 1920s Soviet health service is considered a great-national-treasure with all deaths (and the deaths are many) being blamed on “Tory Cuts” in spite of its budget being vastly increased.
But I can understand why people would be scared of not having health care, such a fear makes sense (even if the fear leads to bad policy which increases, rather than reduces, ill health and early death) – but why the passion for the BBC?
Where does this British love of the state come from?
Anyway, instead of getting rid of the BBC Tax (“license fee”) the whole thing has been turned into debate about the freedom of speech of Mr Gary Lineker, with, according to the opinion polls, most British people supporting him.
So the brown skinned Home Secretary is a White Supremacist for opposing the, white, Albanian criminal gangs, and her Jewish husband is a Nazi, with Israel being Hitler.
I suspect it would not be necessary to rig elections on this island – here Mr Biden might (perhaps) really defeat Mr Trump “fair and square”.
Elsewhere it has been mentioned that MOTD is normally ninety minutes long. Since that is the normal duration of a football match that would make sense, at least to me. I now learn that the program consists of twenty minutes of actual football and seventy minutes of punditry. I’m left feeling totally baffled as to why anyone, even people who actually like football, would want to watch it.
Is anyone else reminded of the chapter in Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ where newspaper magnate Gail Wynand attempts to dispense with the journalistic services of the outwardly-urbane-but-ideologically-malevolent Ellsworth Toohey, only to find that his nominal ownership of his paper is an illusion, as Toohey’s tentacles have wormed their way into most of his staff, so that he is left with only a handful of drunken old-timers and untrained juniors with which to try and get the next edition of the paper out?
For Wynand, read BBC Director-General Tim Davie.
And for the outwardly-urbane-but-ideologically-malevolent Ellsworth Toohey, read Gary Lineker.
RonSwanson: Exactly so. Why in the world would Lineker deliberately pick a fight with what HMRC is determined to prove is his employer just before the end of the tax year? It’s a real mystery, that one. I wonder who his accountant is.
Mine too. What annoys me isn’t the fact that he’s done it, or that he’s being dishonest about it (that’s kind of necessary for the scheme to work); it’s all the performing seals coming out in support of him who think he’s doing it on principle.
And the fact that, as far as the BBC’s concerned, it shouldn’t matter whether he’s a direct employee or not: people appearing regularly on its shows, the “faces of the BBC”, shouldn’t be making political statements. Full stop. (That this is an absurd situation is irrelevant. It is the situation.)
ZY: As an aside, I note that James O’Keefe quoted The Fountainhead in his farewell speech to PV employees. He made no direct connection to that incident in the book, but the inference was clear.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jan/27/gary-lineker-says-bbc-should-make-licence-fee-voluntary
Lineker isn’t all bad, you know.
Zerren Yeoville.
The head of the Stanford Law School (a lady who has been on the left all her life) apologised to a Federal judge for the horrible way he was treated when he visited Stanford University to give a talk – he was shouted down and had to rescued by Federal Marshalls (unlike the FBI the Marshalls work for the Judicial Branch of the Federal Government – not the Executive Branch).
After the lady apologised – large numbers of students (perhaps the majority of the law students) reacted by putting on face marks and black clothing (a sort of uniform – one sees the same clothing in the paramilitary, and Marxist, “Antifa” movement) they followed the lady around in an obvious effort to intimidate her.
Bizarrely these Fascist students call themselves “anti” Fascists.
They are typical of the Collectivists the schools and universities (and the media – including the entertainment media) are producing – and most certainly not just in California.
Peter Briffa – well that is a surprise, I was not expecting that. Thank you for pointing out that Mr Lineker is not always wrong.