Stavros
03-12-2023, 04:31 AM
Gary Lineker, for those who don't know, was a hugely successful footballer, playing in the UK, Spain/Catalunya, Japan and I think in the US. He hosts the most watched football show on tv, BBC-1's Match of the Day, where he is articulate, and has a rapport with other analysts, some of whom are ex-footballers with shit for brains, but you can't have everything.
The disappointment for me in his tweet on the UK govt policy on illegal immigrants seeking asylum, and his comparison with Nazi Germany, is not just that it is a lazy reference, but that if he was better informed, he could have drawn comparisons with the odious racist drivel that was rife in this country in the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s. At the time, the Govts -Labour and Conservative- were thrown into disarray by the expulsion of Asians from East Africa, first Kenya, and then Uganda.
So great was the crisis that the Conservative Govt of Edward Heath passed the first Immigration Act since 1948 while on the streets the National Front, led by a Nazi apologist called John Tyndall, whipped up a frenzy of street fights and other acts of vandalism (desecrating Jewish graves being a soft target). The crisis over the Asian immigrants spilled over into the Afro-Caribbean communities and thus the language became equally nasty and offensive, and in some cases the National Front even did well in local elections. Their thunder is said to have been stolen by Margaret Thatcher in the 1979 election campaign when she feared the UK might be 'swamped with immigrants' -though she didn't offer much in policy terms to deal with it, but maybe got the votes.
Most remarkable of all, the language and the policies that led Edward Heath to expel Enoch Powell from the Conservative Party are now standard, centrist fare, just as in the US what used to be the politics of a lunatic fringe has taken hold of centre stage and is unashamedly anti-Democtatic.
Lineker, I guess, will keep his job. He is a freelance presenter and can go on to other things if he chooses. The BBC has in any case more than Lineker making political statements while presenting programmes.
The links -
The Telegraph, which loathes Lineker and whose readers have been baiting him for years=
Gary Lineker thought he was untouchable - but failed to heed the warnings (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gary-lineker-thought-untouchable-failed-220403532.html)
Elsewhere-
Viewers react to ‘silent’ Match of the Day as pundit-less episode airs (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/viewers-react-silent-match-day-234928450.html)
BBC director-general apologises, but does not resign over Gary Lineker row (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bbc-director-general-apologises-does-191845525.html)
The disappointment for me in his tweet on the UK govt policy on illegal immigrants seeking asylum, and his comparison with Nazi Germany, is not just that it is a lazy reference, but that if he was better informed, he could have drawn comparisons with the odious racist drivel that was rife in this country in the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s. At the time, the Govts -Labour and Conservative- were thrown into disarray by the expulsion of Asians from East Africa, first Kenya, and then Uganda.
So great was the crisis that the Conservative Govt of Edward Heath passed the first Immigration Act since 1948 while on the streets the National Front, led by a Nazi apologist called John Tyndall, whipped up a frenzy of street fights and other acts of vandalism (desecrating Jewish graves being a soft target). The crisis over the Asian immigrants spilled over into the Afro-Caribbean communities and thus the language became equally nasty and offensive, and in some cases the National Front even did well in local elections. Their thunder is said to have been stolen by Margaret Thatcher in the 1979 election campaign when she feared the UK might be 'swamped with immigrants' -though she didn't offer much in policy terms to deal with it, but maybe got the votes.
Most remarkable of all, the language and the policies that led Edward Heath to expel Enoch Powell from the Conservative Party are now standard, centrist fare, just as in the US what used to be the politics of a lunatic fringe has taken hold of centre stage and is unashamedly anti-Democtatic.
Lineker, I guess, will keep his job. He is a freelance presenter and can go on to other things if he chooses. The BBC has in any case more than Lineker making political statements while presenting programmes.
The links -
The Telegraph, which loathes Lineker and whose readers have been baiting him for years=
Gary Lineker thought he was untouchable - but failed to heed the warnings (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gary-lineker-thought-untouchable-failed-220403532.html)
Elsewhere-
Viewers react to ‘silent’ Match of the Day as pundit-less episode airs (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/viewers-react-silent-match-day-234928450.html)
BBC director-general apologises, but does not resign over Gary Lineker row (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bbc-director-general-apologises-does-191845525.html)