Interesting article in The Spectator....
"The ignorance of Gary Lineker"
When I was a girl, footballers had a somewhat limited vocabulary. That wasn’t to say that they were seen as inferior to wordy types – on the contrary, like blind piano-tuners, they were seen as accessing a higher level of excellence in one specific realm which we Normals had no chance of achieving. Thus when they spoke of being over the moon/sick as a parrot, we accepted that their brains were in their feet and happily indulged them. Even when humble hometown heroes were succeeded by flashy feet-for-hire mercenaries from Best to Gascoigne, who were worshipped like deities, their fans wouldn’t have given tuppence for their opinions on any burning moral issues of the day, which was just as well as these idols were linked by a tendency to beat up women. Even now it’s a rare season that doesn’t see a footballer accused of rape.
When taking the knee was all the rage, was anything done to pay similar respect to the victims of femicide? Not once. But then, those who embrace the brotherhood of man often believe that this gives them a free pass to insult women, as the Ghandi of sport, Gary Lineker, was accused of last year when his response to the Lionesses historic victory was a creepy Tweet about brassieres. But maybe it’s a good thing that Lineker hasn’t led the charge for women’s rights, as anything he touches with his cheese-and-oniony hands tends to end up smelling none too sweet.
He trivialised the very real evil of racism awhile back when, in an interview with Jake Humphrey, he pretty much claimed to be non-white, saying that as a youngster he had endured ‘pretty much racist abuse… without being good at sport, life would have been very different for me… I think I would have been bullied at school, I was kind of marginally that way anyway because I was this tiny geeky kid, with darkish skin and I had pretty much racist abuse although I’m not, I’m as English as they come.
Of course, if a man can be a woman at will, then Gary can certainly be black but with this statement – so hideously insulting to actual victims of racism – his preposterousness was established once and for all. Now he’s said something equally offensive, claiming that the language used about stopping economic migration to this country is in some way equivalent to ‘Germany in the 30s’. Yes, it’s our old friend ‘Everyone I don’t like is literally Hitler’, last used this offensively when India Knight wrote of being born in Brussels in a post-Brexit Britain ‘I now have a letter from the Home Office that I carry about on my phone, in case I need to show it to someone, like a Jew in late 1930s Berlin.’
Lineker is a long-time Israel-basher, which makes these comparisons even more revolting than they otherwise might be. His ignorance shines through, too. The Jews so viciously persecuted in 1930s Germany were citizens of that country – not migrants without documentation coming from a safe country. When you bring up Nazism in a discussion about immigration, you are continuing to spread the lie that the Jews of Europe had no right to be there. And not only is saying ‘They’re just like the Nazis’ about anyone who isn’t literally committing genocide a vile affront to everyone who suffered or died at the hands of the actual Nazis, as a rhetorical flourish it carries about as much weight as ‘I know you are but what am I?’
Are we really acting like stormtroopers if we enquire if it’s absolutely necessary for Albanians to relocate to Surrey? At one point last year, four out of ten illegal immigrants rocking up on the beaches of Kent were from a democracy where there has not been a war in 25 years. Are we really behaving like the Waffen SS if we ask when thousands of young men from the Middle East – many raised in cultures where un-shrouded women are regarded as scum – arrive in British cities, what their attitudes to women are? Even disregarding the effects mass immigration has on a host community, what about the harm to the migrants themselves? The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world; dissuading small boats from crossing it is a moral obligation.
The dung heap of filthy lucre which Lineker sits atop of – including the millions of pounds he has pocketed over the past 25 years urging the nation to neck as many units of salt, fat and sugar that we can manage to consume in the shape of Walkers crisps – is a huge one, believed to be £30 million. Think of all the good that money could be doing if he joined the UK branch of Patriotic Millionaires, those adorable moneybags who are currently clamouring to be taxed until the pips squeak. According to analysis from the USA where the idea started it could generate a whopping $2.50 trillion a year if for those with more than $5 million paid tax starting at 2 per cent annually, rising to 3 per cent for those with more than $50 million, and 5 per cent for billionaires. Over here on Nazi Island, such a taxation system is reckoned to be able to raise £43.71 billion a year. Go on, Gaz – do it for England! Though as he’s currently embroiled in a row with HMRC – who claim that he owes them nearly £5 million in back taxes – this seems unlikely.
We all know what this is about, of course – like so many cultural scuffles, it’s about Brexit, which Lineker came out against in the run-up to the 2016 referendum. ‘Personally I believe there are plenty of reasons to remain but barely any to leave. Love Europe, love being part of Europe. #Remain’ he tweeted. Ever since the Great and the Good – incorporating the Smug and the Superior – were defeated by the will of the people, they’ve been displaying all the good grace of Miss Havisham in her decaying wedding dress railing against the horridness of humankind. Lineker, like other footballers past and present, has been taken up by these sore losers as a Good Prole who can be waved in the faces of Bad Proles who felt that not being hog-tied by a bunch of Brussels bureaucrats might be worth taking a punt on.
But telling the proles to play nicely and share the state’s ever-dwindling resources from your cushy billet at the BBC (on a salary of £1.35 million, Lineker is the corporation’s highest-paid employee) was never going to be a good look and now Saint Gaz has been sent for an early bath by his BBC paymasters: ‘The BBC has decided that he will step back from presenting Match of the Day until we’ve got an agreed and clear position on his use of social media. We have never said that Gary should be an opinion-free zone, or that he can’t have a view on issues that matter to him, but we have said that he should keep well away from taking sides on party political issues or political controversies.’ I daresay he’ll have a horrid time sitting around in his £4 million London house. Though it must hurt that he no longer has his villa in Barbados – it was shown in the Paradise Papers leak that he sold the five-bedroomed, marble-bathroomed colonial-style mansion on the Royal Westmoreland Golf and Country Club development via his Goalhanger Inc firm, which was registered in the British Virgin Islands and thus seemed to avoid paying Barbadian stamp duty (Lineker’s representative said there had been ‘no tax irregularity’).
The BBC sending Saint Gaz to the subs bench for a cooling off period has caused a collective temper tantrum amongst his impoverished co-presenters Ian Wright and Alan Shearer who have sworn to boycott Match of the Day. Never mind – maybe the BBC could draft in some actual football fans, people who understand that it doesn’t make one a fascist to believe that endless immigration can sometimes be bad for Britons who don’t live in live in gated communities, don’t have extensive private health cover and whose kiddies don’t attend private schools.
I don’t have any faith in the BBC to have a backbone for more than a fortnight, so I’m sure that Lineker’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger smirk will soon be delighting us again. But Saint Gaz really needs to think about whether he wants to grace the BBC with his presence because amongst the licence-fee payers who keep him in the luxury he has become accustomed to will be a lot of people who don’t believe that a permanently open-door immigration policy will make life on this island better, either for the people already here or indeed the migrants themselves. As I write, an Iraqi migrant, Rebaz Mohammed, who arrived here on a small boat, has just been sentenced to six years in prison for stabbing a student because he wanted to be deported back to Iraq – having previously been cautioned for criminal damage and battery and jailed for 12 weeks for racially-aggravated harassment and stalking. Much of the £1.35 million a year Lineker is rewarded comes from BBC licence payers who may think that he should never have been allowed to come here – are they Nazis too? If so, surely Saint Gaz would never want to take blood money from people who are Literally Hitler.
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