Broadcaster’s sports coverage reduced to regurgitating old podcasts after cowardly decision to buckle to Tories’ manufactured outrage
The BBC has pulled its entire Saturday afternoon Radio 5 Live sports schedule – and a big chunk of its morning programmes – as more and more presenters refuse to appear, in solidarity with Gary Lineker, who was suspended for rightly comparing Tory anti-immigrant rhetoric with that of the nazis.
The broadcaster has simply announced that the schedule has ‘changed’.
The morning schedule was also hit, after the Fighting Talk team declined to take part in their usual 11am show:
The BBC had already reduced match of the day to nothing but highlights, after Lineker’s co-presenters pulled out in solidarity.
Keir Starmer and the Labour party originally sided with the Tories and attacked Lineker for his comment, then u-turned when they realised how many people were on Lineker’s – and decency’s – side.
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It looks like the BBC has scored a spectacular own-goal.
Solidarity with the presenters.
Actually I reckon they scored two belting own goals yesterday – one over Lineker and also the announcement that they would not be showing an Attenborough documentary because the right wouldn’t like it.
Oh dear, when given an opportunity to prove to everyone that he was appointed to the post of Chairman of the BBC on merit Richard Sharp has fallen flat on his face and proved his critics right.
Two Cheeks
You don’t think people notice Red Tories are just as cheap and nasty
Doug – When do you think that people will begin to notice that you are really a Tory Boy?
Excuse my cynicism, but isn’t there something just slightly bogus and opportunistic about all these chancers with social media profiles to worry about all suddenly discovering a political consciousness? I wonder how many of them had to look up “solidarity” in the dictionary…
You may be right timfrom
BUT
Enjoy the moment !
It’s nice to see pervert central squirm.
BBC are so afraid of offending the Tories and the right wing press that they’ll happily do their bidding. The BBC has become the media wing of the Tory party. Don’t watch it. Defund it. Disband it. No loss to anyone.
Where were these guys’ principles when we were locked into our houses and when a blood spattered middle Eastern dictatorship brought us the football World Cup?
B. ullshitting
B. rings
C. owardice
Looking at the Sam Freedman tweet, Gary Lineker should sue the corrupt BBC for unfair dismissal and defamation of character. Not that I think Gary needs the money to do so, but a crowdfund would in all probability go through the roof. I hope he does, you’d certainly see a few people twitching at the BBC as the fund gets to ‘lottery rollover’ proportions. I mean, he could always use the money for something much more useful like supporting refugees.
The BBC should be turned into a co-operative, one licence holder one vote. We elect the people at the top. We Own It.
We are a few days into this row and yet no critics of Lineker criticised the truth of his comment, but only that it was inappropriate for a BBC presenter to voice an opinion.
God forgive me. Lineker was right!
Jonathan Pie – 169,839 views – 11 Mar 2023 – Lineker V Braverman – “I’m with Gary on this one!”</b
https://youtu.be/jXqVGtxFppQ
By all means enjoy Jonathan Pie, but understand he’s not just a funny bloke. Think about it. We’re still being ‘played’ by people and things we despise..
Well said Chud!! Conflating democratic socialists with the liberals is the oldest trick in the Right’s bag of sneaky tricks. They do it all the time. It’s a key part of the Clinton/Blaihhhhr tske-over of the respective parties – snother castration of ‘the left’.
FFS, a lot of people actually think Keir-the-donkey actually IS left wing because of thid deceptive trick!
No apologies qwertboi but this guy is talking out of his arse in this video.
What Pie is arguing here gells with the experience of many on the left who have been driven out of not just the Labour Party by Starmer but also of the wider left by the kind of vociferous purity spiral know nothing adolescent mob Pie identifies who have taken over the discourse and are pushing an anti reality post modernist right wing narrative which is totally undermining class politics in favour of a hierarchy of oppression model which really does divide people into smaller and smaller silos.
(see here for a more detailed analysis: https://davehansell.substack.com/p/joining-the-dots
Which in essence is arguing exactly what Pie is arguing. Just in a different way via a different medium – written analysis compared to five minute video clip.
It is disingenuous in the extreme for this guy to deny that even though those of this ilk are a minority their influence now represents, as Pie accurately states, the actual rather than the theoretical zeitgeist through much of the Left inside and outside the Labour Party.
Go talk to any one who has been vilified from within the Party at every level right down to Ward level (or outside in the wider left) – and I speak from personal experience – for having the temerity to question the denial of biological reality; or the medical mutilation of children; or challenging the support these numpties give to the criminal sex trade.
You get shouted down using school playground level shite words like TERF and SWERF. Ostracised by people who will never grow up even if they live to be a hundred.
Go speak to Esther Giles, no platformed at a Labour Against the Witch Hunt in February 2021. No platformed by these useful idiots at an event protesting against witch hunts.
Go talk to those in Rother Valley who had a totally inappropriate candidate in 2019 who openly shat on local victims of long standing and un-dealt with child sex abuse by championing the sex trade.
This guy in this video is setting up his own straw man. He is in total denial of the points being made about something which is very real and which matches the experience of many people both inside and outside the Party. Oblivious to the fact that he is projecting his own reactionary and regressive right wing stance and the fact that he is rebranding this reactionary nonsense as ‘progressive.’
Captain Hindsight must have had a quick catch up with a focus group.Wrong side of history again.
What is it with the Beeb?
On the day that the most significant geopolitical event of the century so far, the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, is announced the Beeb headlines its website with a spat between BBC management and a group of its sports presenters.
And kuennsberg this morning, going on about the lineker shizz…. Not that she’s ever deliberately misled audiences and failed to show a lack of impartiality, is it?? 😙🎵
It’s not just the BBC. Sky’s hardly bothering either. Thank heaven for Al-Jazeera. They’re giving it the attention it deserves (though their self-interest is very clear).
BBC ‘live’ sport? Wimbledon guaranteed every year along with FA Cup and 6 Nations Rugby. Lower league football totally ignored as on-line local radio sports discontinued. Everybody has to pay and pay. Lineker and chums can find employment with Starmer’s chum Murdoch and save the license payers many hundreds of thousands of pounds! A voice for those with no voice (sic)
I see that “getting the unemployed & disabled back to work” is at the forefront of the hunt budget next week.
Not going too well with the “stop the boats” plan, so they’re looking at the next most vulnerable to hurl their shite at – again.
“Removing barriers” they call it.
No. Just NO. Removing someone’s safety net to force them into work; work they can’t do, and work that doesn’t make them any better off creates MORE problems than it solves ffs
Didn’t work for the last 15 years, won’t now.
Wonder what lineker and the rest of the punditerati will have to say about that**?
**Not much, I expect.
Dave Hansell – not too clear about your point here – do you mind if I
try to interpret what you have said to see if I have it correct?
Yes I agree with you about those who parrot “terf” and “transphobic” –
and take it as an example of a general point. In the example – some
who regard themselves as progressive also speak – even more
confusedly – about the “LGBT Community” as if all Lesbians,
Gays, Bisexuals and Trans-sexual all believe the same thing because
they don’t! For example there is a feeling amongst some lesbians
that there is an element of both male disrespect and entitlement
among some trans women (so called “trans activists” ). Lesbians
have reported instances of TAs sneeringly at them and
accusing them of being “really” trans-men but not admittng it.
Concerned women (including Lesbians and non-Lesbians)
are called “feminists” in a contemptuous way by trans-activists –
meaning the stereotypical idea of a feminist. Some of these
so-called “feminists” are women who have been abused by
their previous male partners like JK Rowling and
MP Rosie Duffield and some have other concerns such as
“safe spaces for women” being breached. Others are
sports-women worried that trans-women are trying to use
their biological advantage to win prizes. Even trans-women
have been targeted by these TAs – for there are some who
have sympathy with so-called “feminist”.
All these concerns are legitimate – to me – yet are dismissed by
“progressives” as transphobic, via the application of rigid rules.
To me – as a scientist – there is no sense to it. Its what I call “tick-box
thinking”.the unthinking application of a rigid set of rules. This set of
rules is applied with no thought as to what lies behind them.
The “anti-woke” brigade deliberately misinterprets each situation – either
not caring or actively despising or hating what lies behind them.
The whole situation has become toxic with no possibility of learning
anything about Trans-sexuality