No Lineker, it's not about 'Freedom of Speech' - it's about your £1.4m contract.
Gary Lineker's tweets about the Home Secretary Suella Braverman, and his comparison with the current debate about refugees to the language used in Nazi Germany, may show passion but they also show stupidity. The BBC is now facing a staff boycott after the decision to take Lineker off 'Match of the Day'. A number of BBC football shows across TV and radio have been taken off air after presenters pulled out in "solidarity" with Lineker. Final Score and Football Focus were pulled from BBC One on Saturday after their hosts said they would not host their shows. BBC 5 Live's 'Fighting Talk' also did not air on Saturday morning. Lineker is "stepping back" from 'Match Of The Day' until an "agreed and clear position" on his social media use is made, the BBC said on Friday. (Translation: he's been taken off air). Lineker signed a five-year deal with the BBC in 2020 and he agreed to adhere to their impartiality rules. The rules are different depending on what area of the BBC you work in. If you work in news and current affairs as a journalist the rules are (allegedly) very strict. You have to be "totally impartial". Lineker works in the sports department so he has more freedom, but he still has to avoid bringing the BBC into disrepute. The BBC expect "high profile" individuals to not take sides on "party political issues" or "political controversies". The BBC guidelines state: "There are also others who are not journalists or involved in factual programming who nevertheless have an additional responsibility to the BBC because of their profile on the BBC. We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies and to take care when addressing public policy matters." The simple fact is that Lineker accepts £1.4m per annum from the BBC, funded by the licence payers of the UK, and that relationship is formalised in a contract. The editorial guidelines apply to all BBC presenters and staff.
Being so completely out of touch with day-to-day events in the UK, I quite often find myself at a loss to make sense of what's going on. This is the latest instance. The BBC has fired a star performer for putting his own ignorance on display by making a silly comment about a government policy? The BBC has often made wrong decisions, but this one (as far as I can see) shows that Gary Lineker and Tim Davie have one thing in common, namely a mental age of six. Both of them, when they're a little older, can ask their mummy and daddy to explain to them what they did wrong.
ReplyDeleteWill they sack him? He's unlikely to back down. And then what will his co-presenters do? Could get "interesting".
DeleteHJ has offered his services as a football pundit at the cut-down price of £500k per annum. He's still waiting to hear back.
They were happy to nuke Top Gear and lose the entire presenting team to get rid of Clarkson. If Lineker has made himself into a liability, there's doubtless many other presenters who can talk about kicking a ball around in the mud for a fraction of the price.
DeleteWell, Clarkson did assault a member of his production team!
DeleteBut hurtful words are literal violence, we keep being told. So there's no difference.
DeleteAnd they'd been after Clarkson's scalp for a long time. They wouldn't have fired one of their darling presenters over that.
But smacking a junior member of staff in the mouth is crossing a red line regardless.
DeleteSo, one might argue, is lamenting that nobody's thrown battery acid over a right wing politician; or making curry jokes about a Hindu MP - but those were ok because left-leaning BBC employees did it.
DeleteHJ isn't supporting the BBC or Lineker.
DeleteJo Brand's "joke" was deemed by Ofcom to be about challenging accepted views in society through provocative comedy! Yep, it's not acceptable to chuck acid around!
They all crossed the line as far as I can see, but if Jo Brand had smacked a staffer she wouldn't have been sacked, and if Clarkson had made the acid joke he would have been.
DeleteAnyway, my point was that the BBC won't let 'boycotts' from other presenters stop them if they decide to jettison Lineker. If he's being as much of a thorn in their side about taxes as the article I linked for Clive suggests he is, they may well decide he's outstayed his welcome with all this extra controversy.
Where was the solidarity in football when Glen Hoddle was sacked from the England job for expressing views about reincarnation that would be perfectly normal in many Asiatic countries? Presumably Lineker has virtue signaled enough to get himself special treatment.
ReplyDeleteThat's Karma for you.
DeleteI see there is now chatter about Tim Davie possibly resigning. What a mess the BBC has got itself into.
ReplyDeleteHard to have much sympathy with an institution that pushes its preferred political narrative while being funded by the public under threat of imprisonment. It's scandalous that pensioners are having licence fees wrung out of them to pay Lineker £1.4m to pontificate on Twitter and talk about a bunch of guys chasing a ball around.
Delete@Lain, Reuters does a consistently good job in explaining British quirks and idiosyncrasies to a worldwide readership. This is a particularly perceptive one that turned up earlier today in the Lineker-Davie connection:
DeleteThat could turn viewers away from the 100-year-old BBC, which is funded by a 159 pound ($192) annual "licence fee" tax on all television-watching households.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/scott-pulls-out-bbc-show-lineker-row-grows-britain-2023-03-11/
£159! Is it that much now? I ditched mine years ago. I do hope this leads to people scrapping their TV licence. Unfortunately, most people seem to still labour under the illusion (which is, of course, never corrected by the authorities) that one needs a TV licence in order to have a TV; as most of the country still seems addicted to numbing itself on the panem et circenses of Love Island and Strictly Come Dancing - lest they have to think for themselves - I can't see it happening.
DeleteThanks HJ for the summary, I've been hoping I'd find one. Do you know when the latest guidelines were introduced?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, this is all humbug. Gary lineker got himself into trouble not because he disagreed with Govt policy, he got into trouble for effectively calling the HS a Nazi. If he had limited himself to expressing disagreement, in adult terms, his position wouldn't have been seriously questioned, outside of the Daily Mail.
Pardon my memory, but doesn't this smug, hypocritical, sanctimonious lefty spends. A lot off effort to avoid tax?
Apparently so. It seems that he's spent several years embroiled in a court battle to get the BBC to pay his taxes for him.
Delete@ Prof Gen
DeleteNot sure but certainly before he signed his new contract in 2020. He's also been warned before when in a tweet he asked whether the Conservative Party planned to “hand back their donations from Russian donors”.
I'm in two minds about this one. On the one hand, people should be able to say whatever they think. On the other, there IS a certain implied covenant that somebody who has access to a public pulpit should not use it to advance private opinions. What I AM sure of is that, had he used that pulpit to compare, say, Labour ministers to the NKVD or the Stasi, he'd have been out the door so fast he'd think he'd been hit by a train and his leftie friends would disappear like a summer dew.
ReplyDeleteOf course as a private individual he's entitled to express his opinions - however daft. However, as someone working for the BBC he also has a contractual obligation to abide by the terms of his employment. The guidelines he accepted state:
Delete"There are also others who are not journalists or involved in factual programming who nevertheless have an additional responsibility to the BBC because of their profile on the BBC. We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues or political controversies and to take care when addressing public policy matters."
Not a watertight 'contract' but clear enough when it comes to throwing terms like 'Nazi' in the direction of the government.
Happy Jack The allowable scope and range of employers' restriction of free speech has never been fully tested in court. Neither Lineker nor the BBC is willing to take the case to law because a precedent would be set and that precedent might be very painful for one side.
DeleteCedders_B
Good point.
DeleteI caught one line from the interview with the BBC Director-General Tim Davie:
ReplyDelete“ … the BBC and myself are driven by a passion for impartiality …”
Comedy gold! He is apparently blissfully unaware of the various blogs dedicated to exposing BBC bias.
Btw, Colin Brazier, who used to be with Sky News / GB News, has tweeted the following:
“How about this plan for reconciliation. Gary gets his Saturday night gig back and keeps on tweeting. The rest of us stop paying the BBC license fee, without being prosecuted.”
Cheers to that!
Aiming for impartiality in journalism is chasing a unicorn, anyway. Simply selecting what to broadcast is an act of partiality in and of itself. I'd rather have a range of acknowledged biases and no licence fee.
DeleteBBC 0 - 1 Lineker
ReplyDeleteYup, that looks like the final whistle. An easy win for Lineker. Will Sharp and Davie hold on to their jobs now that he has left them both lying face down in the mud?
Delete@ Ray I'm sure they're in no danger. The BBC is the natural habitat of overpaid whinging mediocrists.
DeleteWith regard to Lineker's taxes. He claims that his contract with the BBC means that he is an employee, but the HMRC position is that he was an independent contractor. The difference between the two interpretations is reputedly around GBP 5 million. The case could be solved in moments if the BBC were to make full disclosure of the relevant information, namely his tax code (if any) on the BBC payroll system. Strangely, in a previous dispute the two parties occupied completely opposite positions.
ReplyDeleteAs a self-employed person, I have nearly 20 years experience of the relevant regulations (IR35). I have been able to use them to reduce my tax liabilities substantially; my accountant speaks regularly with HMRC and follows their guidelines on how to apply them. The fact that Lineker is in a stooshie with the taxmen suggests that he and/or his advisers have not always acted in good faith.
Cedders_B
Lineker's presentation of the immigration situation is extremely simplistic, and his choice of language is reprehensible. He should not be surprised if his employer demands that he accounts for himself.
ReplyDeleteTwo facts 1) according to UNHCR, people arriving from France without the necessary clearance are economic migrants - this is because France is a "safe" country. Refugee status applies only in the first safe country a person reaches after fleeing. 2) People arriving on the beaches of the UK are in breach of local immigration laws. There is no legal obligation on the UK government to look after such people.
One wonders how much pressure the government applied to Davie to make him act in such a wretched and supine manner. He has demonstrated himself unfit for the high office he holds.
Cedders_B