To carry on applauding Gary Lineker....2 - hoping to see BBC bosses heads roll.

[Nimbostratus100]

Because he was speaking the truth and he is entitled to, without being censored.

I am delighted to see the number of other sports commentators supporting him.

Now lets see Davie resign

And how about Fiona Bruce, BBC presenter (and Refuge ambassador), DEFENDING Boris' dad for beating his wife so badly he shattered nose.

Outrageous bias. Another one in the conservative pocket.

So is he allowed free speech or not?
A) Yes, because others have been allowed to say political things and keep their jobs (see again the Alan Sugar and Hitler/Jeremy Corbyn poster)
B) No. If not why not? Because the Tory party don’t like it? That’s pretty dangerous. Only people who say things the Tories like can speak.

Whether you like him or not, or think he has a point or not, is not the issue. Why are some people allowed to speak and others aren’t?

Yaaawwwn!

why would you think he doesn't care for refugees, when he takes them into his home and looks after them?

Come what may, it will be Old News soon as another crisis, big news story will come along

A comment above said they wanted this Government “destroyed”

Who would then be the Opposition?

If one party was in power with no Opposition, then what?

Think Russia today and their one sided controlled media

Be careful what you wish for

Just popping out for some more popcorn 👍

A truly sophisticated comment. Well done.

The BBC is funded by licence payers and its own commercial operations. Not Government.

It's not really a surprise to me that many Premier League footballers are liberal.

They're young men, many from a working class background, who may not have had a privileged upbringing and they're exposed to different cultures via their international colleagues.

You can be wealthy and care about other people. I'd like to see more sports people act like Lineker and Rashford.

Gary Lineker is the son of a market greengrocer, and his first job was on the market stall. Gary Lineker hosts refugees in his own home and takes care of them personally.

By "communities that live with immigrants" are you talking about the children who wouldn't have teachers in schools unless refugees staffed schools? Or patients that wouldn't have doctors or nurses without refugees taking these roles too?

Being responsible is calling out injustice, not keeping quiet...

Lol

What refugees (Afghan,eritera,Sudan,albania) are taking jobs as doctors and teachers??

99% of these jobs being staffed by foreign workers are staffed by foreign workers wil be entering the UK on visa's.

You sound like you get all your info from 17 year olds on twitter and that all refugees are coming in and working as teachers and doctors.

Most migrants who enter the UK each year do so on visa's, so the narrative of tories not wanting foreign migrants entering the UK is incorrect as otherwise tens of thousands wouldn't be entering the UK each year on visa's.

Isn't it crazy how the asylum system is so broken and slow that people are kept in limbo and the government is keeping them in hotels, preventing them from working.

What I don’t get it this “migrant hotels” are, at least to a significant extent, a byproduct of deliberate slow processing of asylum claims. As long as people are in the process of claiming asylum they can’t work so have no opportunity to contribute to the economy. If processed quickly many of these people would be working and then there wouldn’t be masses of them all living in hotels with no chance of any legal work. If we had a better approved route into the country for asylum seekers more would have their claims processed before they arrived and then not be in the position of being stuck in limbo for months or years after arriving and less would be risking crossing with people smugglers in small boats. The current government policies have (probably deliberately) created problems with groups of asylum seekers. Now they are pointing at said asylum seekers (that number about 200,000 waiting decisions) and blaming their presence for there being a lack of NHS services, school places etc. It’s clearly bollocks if you think about it at all. As an example pretty much the entire country has a shortage of NHS dentists. How can that be down to 200,000 people. Be generous and suggest it’s double that taking into account those granted asylum in last few years where there hasn’t been a chance to adjust funding/recruit more dentists for a known population rise. For our town based on overall population it would mean every dentist in the town (currently with ~3700 people each on their books on average) would need to treat and additional 18/19 people. If you are talking just asylum seekers an extra 10. Blaming these people is a convenient distraction from our real issues (reduced funding in real terms for many public sector areas over a decade or more and an increasing proportion of the population being elderly &/or suffering from various health conditions linked to obesity, which in turn has significant links to poverty). It’s easy to say look it’s all just those nasty migrants fault and we are doing something about that. It’s not so easy to actually address the real issues, particularly if doing so is likely to show how much your own party fucked much of it up in the first place. The extent to which people are bought into the government line is frightening and it’s very reminiscent of late 20s/early 30s Germany where the population were slowly convinced a group of people who were discernibly different were the cause of all woes. History suggests it’s not a good place to be headed. I don’t see it leading to a holocaust but it doesn’t need to go anything like that far to be pretty awful. Also I can’t help thinking all this is building up to withdrawing from the convention on human rights and I don’t think people generally realise how much they could stand to lose if that happens and we continue to have the type of government we do currently. All manner of worker protections could go out of the window, silencing protest & disentitled opinions would be easier (worrying how much is already happening there anyway).

Have you watched the BBC?

I said this on the previous thread

People have a strange idea what a "refugee" looks like, an are meeting them regularly in professional roles without even realising.

I have been involved in the care of refugees for decades. I have known many highly qualified and experienced individuals, who have taken up professional roles as doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and craftsmen etc

AS I said in my previous thread, I am a maths teacher, and my head of department is a refugee, in the three schools I have had most to do with in the last few years, there are maths and science teachers who are refugees, and in one school the ONLY qualified maths teacher is a refugee

That is several hundred children who only have a qualified teacher available to them because refugees are filling the gaps

The specific nationalities that you listed, just off the top of my head, people I currently know

Afghan- well, I know several doctors, although in this cases we didn't actually acquired them fully trained, and so avoid ALL costs to do with training, they each arrived partly trained and completed their training here

Sudan - at least one maths teacher, an architect and an engineer

Eritrean - I know an amazing craftsperson who has set up a business, and is not only paying top rate tax, but employing many people, who are also paying tax

Albanian - cant think of any Albanian refugees I know off the top of my head

That is just without thinking too hard or looking back in any records, I have known a lot of refugees and cant remember the exact details of all of them

so your "lol" and sneering actually makes you look like you are the one who has taken their opinions from a very ill informed source. Or it could be seen as a racist point of view. Are you a highly qualified professional? What is it about these nationalities in particular, or refugees in general, that makes you think they are likely to be less intelligent, qualified or capable than you?

@Icedlatteplease

I'll defend GL right to say what he wants but not to say whatever he wants and work at the BBC.

Are you happy for whoever you work for to tell you what you may or may not say on Twitter?

This

People cant seem to stick to the issue at hand on this matter

Its not about whether Gary Linekar is a good bloke, or likes refugees, or had a market stall, or did or didnt pay tax, blah blah blah

It about his right as a member of the public, a private person to discuss current affairs on his own twitter. Which he does

He is not bound by (the fluctuating) impartiality rules that a journalist, news reader, news pundit, political correspondent would be. He is a freelance football presenter, that is all. And as such is able to say what he likes.

It might be different if he was commenting on his actual employer (for that particular job), the BBC but he wasnt, he made a comment about current political policy as a member of the public

His lawyer hopefully is having a field day.

Absolutely.

A lot of people getting sucked in to 'left vs right, Labour vs Tory', when the truth is the lines of party politics have been blurred for years.

I'm the first to advocate for and defend free speech, but that's not what this is about. Ordinary plebs like the rest of us a require by our contracts to not use social media to slander your employer.

So why is GL any different? I can only assume because he's another rich hypocrite who seems to believe he's above abiding by the same rules as everyone else, such as paying tax.

The point is that he doesn't have to live among the consequences of the unregulated migration that he promotes. He's entitled to his opinion, but it's worrying that he seems to have no understanding of the impact on the everyday person. Or of the dangers of accusing those who dare to disagree with you of nazism.

I completely agree, this is about GL's right to say what he has said, without being suspended from work

And I would support his right to give his political opinion on twitter, whether I agreed with him or not.

But I also have to respond when I see people so ignorant about refugees, and their roles in our society, whether it is on this thread, or any other. You can't let ignorance like that stand unchallenged

This

Required by your contract not to slander your employer?

It isn't in his contract- he is a sports personality, not in news or politics or current affairs

And the government is no his employer

So are you genuinely saying that your employer has a right to gag your political view point?

Exactly. Imagine the furore if a doctor was earning this amount of taxpayers money for a once a week clinic. He chats about football with his friends. He's not curing cancer, yet somehow his salary is ok because.....?

He belittles women's football

He condoned the quarari regime by going there to promote their cause (actions speak loider than words)

He's belittled the holocaust

He needs to go

Again, if you want to discuss his wages, or his views on womens football (which he has supported, not belittled) or his views on the holocaust, start a sepaerate thread about it. These things are not connected with whether he should be suspended from his contract for giving personal views, not connected to his employer, on his personal twitter

It’s time for the 1.35 million football pundit to go, also he needs to pay the tax he owes.

Then he can sit on Twitter all day and write what ever he wants.