[Football] Gary Lineker to step back from presenting MOTD

[Titanic]

Gary Lineker to step back from presenting MOTD

Gary Lineker to step back from presenting Match of the Day until agreement reached on social media use - BBC statement

www.bbc.co.uk

Gary Lineker is to step back from presenting Match of the Day until an agreement is reached on his social media use - BBC statement.
It follows an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the government's new asylum policy.
In a tweet, the presenter had compared the language used by the government to set out its plan to "that used by Germany in the 30s".

 

[Official Old Man]

one thing is for sure , if people such as yourself think we can continue to take in 12 to15 k cashless immigrants a year , indefinitely , i'd be really interested to know what your vision is of the UK in 15 to 20 years from now.

Don't wish to get in an argument here as I'm so on the fence with all this, but, there are many many businesses out there in the UK screaming out for staff to do jobs that the Brits wont do. I myself need summer staff and get people from boat hotel down the road daily looking for work. Asked if they are legal the answer is no but they will work for peanuts. Some do have jobs out back in kitchens getting paid under £5 an hour. Brighton should be ashamed of this.
But the country need these minimum wage staff in hospitality and these people need work. Put the two together.

 

[zefarelly]

STATE of these people.

GB News does football.

"I imagine Gary Lineker would quite like Brighton because.."

That really is quite special.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Righto............at least you are saying its a refernce to the early days of the Nazis
I have seen deniers on social media saying he never said the word Nazi so he didnt mean Nazi

This is where it gets quite subtle.

Out of interest, why do you think Linekar didn’t mention the Nazi party but instead said ‘30’s Germany’. Do you think he was trying to make the tweet less incendiary because his focus was ‘language’ rather than ‘the holocaust’ or ‘illegal wars’ or ‘the SS’ or ‘the Blitz’ or ultimately the 10 million people who lost their lives due to that party getting democratically and fairly elected.

 

[Springal]

There is definitely no comparisons between what Hitler was doing in the 1930s and the current Tory party.

No modern day government would try to ban unions and make striking illegal would they ?

 

[sydney]

Don't wish to get in an argument here as I'm so on the fence with all this, but, there are many many businesses out there in the UK screaming out for staff to do jobs that the Brits wont do. I myself need summer staff and get people from boat hotel down the road daily looking for work. Asked if they are legal the answer is no but they will work for peanuts. Some do have jobs out back in kitchens getting paid under £5 an hour. Brighton should be ashamed of this.
But the country need these minimum wage staff in hospitality and these people need work. Put the two together.

well , there you have it , British kids won't work ......in that case , f*** 'em ....they made their bed , time for a nap , trouble is though i doubt the people clogging up hotels are gonna work for 5 quid an hour when the dhs/ home office or whoever is tasked with sorting out this absolute clusterfuck of a situation is paying them double that to do nothing.

 

[DJ NOBO]

That’s where I’m at.

Where Swansman’s argument falls down is the BBC’s reliance on Charter renewal. Impartiality is central to the conditions of the Charter. The BBC would not exist in its current form (licence fee-funded) without the Charter.
So the BBC is not in a position to turn a blind eye impartiality even if it wanted to. Unless it wanted to commit financial suicide, which it doesn’t.

The BBC has made a mess of impartiality, but that’s a different issue..
Should it be license fee funded anyway? That‘s another different question.
Would it be better to have blatantly bias news coverage like in some other countries? Another question.

 

[Official Old Man]

well , there you have it , British kids won't work ......in that case , f*** 'em ....they made their bed , time for a nap , trouble is though i doubt the people clogging up hotels are gonna work for 5 quid an hour when the dhs/ home office or whoever is tasked with sorting out this absolute clusterfuck of a situation is paying them double that to do nothing.

But they are. I don't know the situation regarding these people and any payments made to them but I'm getting them in asking for work. As I say, I do everything by the book and so explain to them about NI numbers and they reply they are working in restaurants 'out the back' for under £5 an hour.
I know of a chip shop whose staff earn £4 an hour and get shouted at by the boss all day and night.
You're now going to say report it. About 5 years ago I tried and got nowhere. Spent weeks trying to speak to someone but in the end gave up.

 

[A1X]

Don't care if he's a champagne socialist or a Tory nut, he's not being paid for political commentary, balanced or otherwise.

He’s not anyway, he does that in his own time.

 

[Wrong-Direction]

At least the GB news version of MOTD did

Wtf

 

[trueblue]

You do realise you could get the same experience every week by going to your sports website of choice and watching the highlights of each game, one after the other? You could even choose to watch the Brighton game first every week, and you wouldn't have to wait until 10.20pm.

It's bizarre that people watch MOTD when they don't like the punditry bits. It's literally what it's there for.

This. Obviously some people will say "it was better' just because... actually, I don't know why. In many cases simply to have a dig at the BBC. Personally, I'd prefer some of the match edits to be a bit longer, not shorter as that tells you nothing about the game/balance of play. The punditry is pretty bland most of the time but it does give them the opportunity to provide context and you're pretty much guaranteed to end up aware of all the weekend's main talking points. There are millions of people with a broader interest in football than just the Albion who enjoy MOTD, even if it could be sharper. Hopefully it'll be back in business next week.

 

[trueblue]

Get a young talented presenter in, on a sensible salary that doesn't have a vendetta against a political party to host your sports program. Sorted.

I don't think Lineker has a vendetta against a political party. He's just a centrist, compassionate human - like most people.

 

[A1X]

He's using his platform and reach afforded by football, and in part the BBC. Maybe he should actually get stuck into politics if it's more important to him.

So are you now saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to have opinions on things outside that for which they primarily do as part of their jobs?

I’m imaging almost everyone on NSC doesn’t work for BHAFC, are we therefore all banned from offering opinions on the club, and instead have to “stick to plumbing / street cleaning / banking / biomedical research”?

 

[A1X]

At least the GB news version of MOTD did

GB News hates us
GB News hates us
We’re Brighton and Hove Albion
GB News hates us

 

[LamieRobertson]

Happy with that…missed the commentators…not the other crap….but tbh I’m happy enough going on YouTube and watching the goals for other teams and then the clubs extended highlights …shrug

 

[Jim in the West]

well , there you have it , British kids won't work ......in that case , f*** 'em ....they made their bed , time for a nap , trouble is though i doubt the people clogging up hotels are gonna work for 5 quid an hour when the dhs/ home office or whoever is tasked with sorting out this absolute clusterfuck of a situation is paying them double that to do nothing.

Hang on a minute....not quite sure what you mean there (so apols if I've got the wrong end of the stick) - asylum seekers in hotels are given £8 per week. The ones I speak to are desperate to work. They haven't come here to sponge off the UK. Spoke to two Afghan asylum seekers on Friday - one is a lawyer, the other a teacher. Both have good English (one was near perfect).

 

[Swansman]

When your current employer has a social media policy which you flout then no, of course you shouldn't.

Having a corporate policy saying that you through your private channels can not express political opinions is not only proper Saudi-regime-sort-of-stuff but also illegal in a lot of democratic countries (maybe not the UK as I don't know if you have laws and constitutional rights protecting your rights to express yourself).

If BBC says "you can't tweet political opinions during work hours" - fine, fair enough. If BBC says "you can't tweet political opinions at any time" - wtf? Why should BBC or indeed any employer have the right to determine what you can say hours when you're not under their payroll?

Its proper flawed. Imagine if there was some political party ruling your country that was very pro-corporate and very anti-workers rights. If the 100 or so biggest employers in the UK decides "we like this government and want to keep it forever" and thus decides that all of their employees can not criticise the government", like the BBC does now... then you are very far down a totalitarian path.

 

[cjd]

Is this the same Gary Lineker who uses his " platform leverage" ( whatever that means ? ) to pay less tax to the UK Government..? I thought that HMRC are claiming he has underpaid his tax by over 4,000,000.00 pounds by this method.

If this is true ( ?) doesn't say much for his caring side .....

 

[nicko31]

At least the GB news version of MOTD did

Ah bless them..

 

[Stato]

i think the issue here is why can the overpaid pricks in presenters , musicians , actors etc etc can have their say but 661/2 million normal hard working bods can’t Democracy at its best

I'm not quite clear how you could have paid any attention to this story and come up with a comment that is exactly the opposite of the situation.

Nobody has stopped any 'bod', hard working, or not from having a say. The only people that the BBC bosses are saying can't have their say is anyone who works for them in news and current affairs (reasonable) and anyone with a high profile who they see as representing the BBC. (Nebulous and unreasonable) - In other words the exact people who you suggest are the only ones who are free to have their say.

Previous BBC management would have just told the complainants, in a very adult way, that Gary Lineker's politics are Gary Lineker's, not the BBC's and that the issue has nothing to do with his job. When we were kids the BBC employed people like Norris McWhirter https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/28/norris-mcwhirter-alt-right-guinness-book-records and Patrick Moore: https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2012/12/sir-patrick-moore-great-and-bad-man. Nobody cared that they held and acted upon extreme right wing views, because their politics had nothing to do with world records or astronomy. The moment they brought them to work would have been the moment for their employer to act. A confident, inpdependent BBC would still act in this way. The response should have been:

'You think that employing a football presenter with soft left views makes the BBC look less impartial? Well that's your perception. We don't care about perception - we care about facts and the fact is that we have procedures in place to ensure that editorial policy is not impacted by the political views of individuals. - Even in the sports department. Now go away and grow up you bunch of squealing babies.'

 

[Crawley Dingo]

Funny how almost all those breaking political bias rules all seem to be of the same political colour. I dont think they should self censor off air, let the cards fall as they will.