I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.

So, this is Gary Lineker:

He's known for a fair few things over here. He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan. But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things. The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.

The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job). He also has a twitter account. And political opinions. So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France). By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff. It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes. And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations. Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this. On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.". This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".

Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate. But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric. And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect. Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime. But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics. However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem". But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else. And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend. But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts! Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him. Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him. People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit. The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary. And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow. The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel. And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).

Great Ancoats Street, Manchester.

For those who don’t do Twitter, please enjoy tonight’s entertainment in the form of a massive own goal for the BBC execs who caved to the government’s demands...

shout out to gary lineker for causing an absolute meltdown in both the government and the bbc <3

Worth saying regarding the Gary Lineker stuff, the BBC took action when he spoke out against the British Government’s policy and language around refugees.

But when Jeremy Clarkson came out with any of his racist shit or when he said striking workers should be shot in front of their families then he was ‘his own person’.

Fuck the BBC.

Good morning to everyone, especially Gary Lineker. It’s a badge of honour if Tories are mad at him over this.

western news outlets and reporters are claiming that messi wearing the bisht, the black garment/overcoat, “ruined” (the telegraph) the best moment of his life.

“it’s a shame they’ve covered his argentina shirt” (gary lineker, bbc pundit). “just why, why would they do that?”

do you have any idea how tone-deaf that comes across as? do you know how expensive this piece of clothing is? did you consider that this is a way an arab host is honouring his guest? by giving him the same cloak their royalty wear? did you consider the fact that no one else cares??????

messi himself posted the picture on instagram 😭. anyone can see that he didn’t look at all uncomfortable when they were putting it on him. western media is clearly more disturbed about it than he is. he just looks like he’s having the best moment of his life and he couldn’t care less if he was wearing a spacesuit right now, but thank you to western media for enforcing the idea it was a problem.

oh and even if he did have a problem with it, can i just make it clear that NO ONE, less still you morally superior westerners, is allowed to talk about someone else’s culture with such a ridiculously distasteful and arrogant tone.

honestly in a way i’m so glad this world cup is over because now i can stop hearing western media’s constant passive aggressive, frankly racist attitude towards arab/muslim culture. good riddance…

links/sources:

edit: thank you to all the wonderful argentines and others taking the time reblogging saying that you understand it was something meant to honour messi and that u honestly don’t care that he wore it, im loving reading what you guys think and im glad most of us have brains here, much love to you all ‼️🫡

emily brontë, wuthering heights // pep guardiola in an interview with gary lineker

Gary Lineker, Andrew Neil and the BBC’s Real Impartiality Crisis – Byline Times

From the article;

'In particular, Andrew Neil, who helped front multiple political programmes at the BBC over many years, before leaving to help launch GB News, was never subject to even a fraction of the scrutiny now being placed on Lineker. Neil, like Lineker, was a prolific user of Twitter and regularly shared his own views on everything from Brexit to climate change and the SNP.

At the same time, he was chairman of one of Britain’s leading right-wing magazines, the Spectator. Neil was allowed to keep his role at the magazine, which regularly caused significant controversy over its content on issues including race and religion, despite being in such a prominent position at the BBC.

And while he did once come under some internal pressure over a tweet he posted about the Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, his use of the social media site was never the subject of a single tabloid splash or BBC bulletin.

In short, he was given a pass – in a way neither Lineker nor former BBC journalists like Lewis Goodall and Emily Maitlis ever were.'

Gary Lineker

Mad respect to this man for sticking to his guns like this. Lineker has more integrity and conscience in his little finger than the entire Labour front bench have between them, let alone the government.

Well, someone's gotta call the government on its considerable bullshit, and if the news media won't do it then I guess its gotta be the guy who does Match of the Day 🤷

i'd like to say that it's surprising that a (former) footballer is doing a better job than the entire uk press/the leader of the opposition but we've sat through marcus rashford's free school meals campaign so. this isn't surprising at all.

Whoever stands in for Gary Lineker on Match of the Day tomorrow is a scab forever.