Football fans might disagree, while accepting Lineker's right to voice his opinion.
…… and everyone else in the broadcasting “team” follows him like sheep. 🙄 He’s hardly a good example/role model of “how to keep your mouth shut, rather than causing offence.”
And when one of its presenters, especially a starry one, brazenly grates against the institution of impartiality, the BBC has a right to act, no? My view is that the likes of Lineker and Emily Maitlis, formerly of Newsnight, have forced the Beeb’s hand. These people pushed their luck, and they know it. From the staggering arrogance of Maitlis’s use of the privileged platform of Newsnight to spout her (entirely predictable) Guardianista views, to Lineker’s use of his BBC-burnished platforms to make pretty shocking political statements – such as likening the language used by an Asian-heritage female politician to the language used by violently racist Nazis – these two and others pushed too far. The BBC had no choice but to act. It knows that if it allows big names to wax lyrical on politics, in defiance of the rules, then it would have no way of stopping other Beeb people from using this licence payer-funded entity as a personal soapbox. It would lose control. What’s really going on in the online Lineker love-in is not a fight for free speech, but a fight by the correct-thinking liberal elites to further turn the BBC into their political plaything, to complete its transformation into an outlet for their beliefs and their beliefs only. Their cringe-inducing cheerleading for Lineker, and for Maitlis before him, has nothing to do with the great old cause of defending the liberty to utter, and everything to do with colonising the Beeb so that it becomes little more than a mouthpiece of the right-on middle classes. This isn’t a fight for free speech – it’s a moral coup by noisy political influencers determined to turn everything, even the public broadcaster, into a platform for political preening.
He made a mistake (imo) Toril , I have never disputed that.
He should think before he passes the button on Twitter then ….. imo 😉 “Think before you tweet.”
I just wonder whether the rest of them have withdrawn their services to support him or whether they actually agree with what he said. 🤔 The BBC have made the right decision because some “celebrities” assume that they are untouchable. (Again ….. just my opinion.)
The amount that Gary gets paid (thanks to the licence payers) beggars belief in my opinion. It would be great to think that we could all earn that much for rabbiting on about football and for reading an autocue.
As someone on television this morning said ….. the BBC is turning into a state broadcaster and I, for one, would prefer to have adverts on the BBC rather than forking out for a licence every year when the channel isn’t one that I watch a lot.