T
Tuz_Not_Tuzz
Guest
If you know your history, you'll see 2 ironies in this picture.
And of course knowing your history, i won't need to explain it.
And of course knowing your history, i won't need to explain it.
Dear Gary
- Thread starter Rodneyfernsfeet
- Start date
peatlingfox
Roofer
100% agree. As a former Spurs player particularly, Lineker should be ashamed of his Nazi references
ArmadaSur
Roofer
Didn’t stop Klinsmann or Stefan Freud playing for them.
sabredunce
Silver Surfer
I used to get that at dinner. Everyone would yell about me ranting about the Lugenpresse, tell me to cut out 'that Nazi sh*t' and I'd get hit with the mashed potatoes.
Make Christmas dinner great again.
T
Tuz_Not_Tuzz
Guest
Here's some interesting info from Atilla the Stockbroker today. Obviously he's not a BBC employee, but still interesting to read his personal experience nonetheless.
"One final piece, for the moment, on the BBC/Lineker situation. This is my personal experience and interpretation of the changing BBC ‘impartiality’ guidelines over the years.
My first encounters were in the early 80s on Radio One - plays on, followed by sessions for, John Peel and Janice Long and various isolated bits elsewhere. No restrictions whatsoever as far as I recall apart from on certain extremely sweary words. BBC TV was similar except that in a live context they were even more worried about the potential for a bit of free range ‘inappropriate language’ but my anti Tory diatribes weren’t a problem.
This continued into the 90s, where I did a few commissioned programmes for R4 including a six part series, ‘The Art of Insult’, which I am absolutely certain would not be commissioned today. Still don’t recall any issues.
By that time I’d started touring abroad loads and it was a pleasure to see how -then - ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada and Radio New Zealand seemed to have imbibed the BBC model wholesale. Genuinely open and free, from my perspective, and exporting the ethic to brilliant stations like 2JJJ and 3RRR in Australia and the incredible student and community radio networks everywhere. At that time I was getting more and more opportunities to perform overseas and took the fact that I wasn’t getting as much coverage here as being a logical result.
It was when those opportunities really started to dry up in the mid 2000s that I realised there was something more to it than simply not being here or not ‘flavour of the month’ any more. I started to get producers saying things like ‘It’s a great idea, but there is a different atmosphere now’.
More and more programmes were being outsourced to private firms and it became apparent to me, in the ‘poetry’ niche, that I was excluded from the compromise which the more radical end of the BBC had made with its critics.
‘Comedy’, which had exploded out of the New Variety scene of the 1980s, now seemed to me to be the primary, and then increasingly the only, place where radical views were allowed to flourish unchecked on the BBC.
The message was: this is comedy, it’s a joke, it’s not grown-up, it’s not to be taken seriously, it’s a laugh. Everything else, including my chosen niches, ‘poetry’ and ‘music’ was ‘serious’ and governed by different standards. (I loathe being described as ‘a comedian’: I do dementia, personal loss, political rage and silly poems back to back and am proud of it.) I got the impression I was being penalised by refusing to fit into the ‘happy, not serious, we can get away with this’ box and simply saying ‘this is me, take it or leave it’.
And then I realised that my suspicions were right, for good and bad reasons. In 2011 ‘The Long Goodbye’, my epic fourteen and a half minute poem about my mother’s
six year battle with Alzheimer’s, was broadcast in full on Radio Four’s ‘Poetry Please’ and repeated to great accolades. No Tories or government policy were mentioned, just personal feelings and my stories of my Mum’s incredible life. They loved it.
Then, two years later, I was commissioned by ‘The Last Word’ to write a eulogy for Bob Crow after his sudden awful premature death. As documented yesterday, they asked me to alter it to make it ‘more balanced’, I refused and that was that.
My lips have hardly touched the BBC Radio 4 airwaves since.
Mirroring the Radio 4 stance, my old friend and one time roadie Steve Lamacq told me that in contrast to his mentor and predecessor Peel’s show in the Eighties it was increasingly difficult for him to play my stuff, or anyone to play any political stuff, on 6 Music because of the ‘balance’ question. (For some unaccountable reason there aren’t any rabid right wing Tory left field bands and poets about.)
And, as would happen eventually, the last bastion, ‘comedy’ has now been targeted too. They have dredged up some ‘right wing’ comedians (the one I heard had a predictable drone about how ‘working class’ he was, as though being right wing and working class was something to be proud of!) and pulled some of the ‘Leftie’ stuff off the air.
I’m not worried in the slightest now. I’m having the time of my life writing what I want on here, am honoured that so many people are reading it, and even more honoured that after 43 years people are still discovering what I do on stage and coming to see me for the first time!
But what has happened, and is happening, to our broadcast and print media is not democratic and must change. In a democratic society information and different pints of view must be freely available to all. They’re not, the Tories want to make them less so, and if Starmer doesn’t do something about it I’ll be out of the Labour Party and in his face before you can say Brighton 3, Palace 0 tonight."
"One final piece, for the moment, on the BBC/Lineker situation. This is my personal experience and interpretation of the changing BBC ‘impartiality’ guidelines over the years.
My first encounters were in the early 80s on Radio One - plays on, followed by sessions for, John Peel and Janice Long and various isolated bits elsewhere. No restrictions whatsoever as far as I recall apart from on certain extremely sweary words. BBC TV was similar except that in a live context they were even more worried about the potential for a bit of free range ‘inappropriate language’ but my anti Tory diatribes weren’t a problem.
This continued into the 90s, where I did a few commissioned programmes for R4 including a six part series, ‘The Art of Insult’, which I am absolutely certain would not be commissioned today. Still don’t recall any issues.
By that time I’d started touring abroad loads and it was a pleasure to see how -then - ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada and Radio New Zealand seemed to have imbibed the BBC model wholesale. Genuinely open and free, from my perspective, and exporting the ethic to brilliant stations like 2JJJ and 3RRR in Australia and the incredible student and community radio networks everywhere. At that time I was getting more and more opportunities to perform overseas and took the fact that I wasn’t getting as much coverage here as being a logical result.
It was when those opportunities really started to dry up in the mid 2000s that I realised there was something more to it than simply not being here or not ‘flavour of the month’ any more. I started to get producers saying things like ‘It’s a great idea, but there is a different atmosphere now’.
More and more programmes were being outsourced to private firms and it became apparent to me, in the ‘poetry’ niche, that I was excluded from the compromise which the more radical end of the BBC had made with its critics.
‘Comedy’, which had exploded out of the New Variety scene of the 1980s, now seemed to me to be the primary, and then increasingly the only, place where radical views were allowed to flourish unchecked on the BBC.
The message was: this is comedy, it’s a joke, it’s not grown-up, it’s not to be taken seriously, it’s a laugh. Everything else, including my chosen niches, ‘poetry’ and ‘music’ was ‘serious’ and governed by different standards. (I loathe being described as ‘a comedian’: I do dementia, personal loss, political rage and silly poems back to back and am proud of it.) I got the impression I was being penalised by refusing to fit into the ‘happy, not serious, we can get away with this’ box and simply saying ‘this is me, take it or leave it’.
And then I realised that my suspicions were right, for good and bad reasons. In 2011 ‘The Long Goodbye’, my epic fourteen and a half minute poem about my mother’s
six year battle with Alzheimer’s, was broadcast in full on Radio Four’s ‘Poetry Please’ and repeated to great accolades. No Tories or government policy were mentioned, just personal feelings and my stories of my Mum’s incredible life. They loved it.
Then, two years later, I was commissioned by ‘The Last Word’ to write a eulogy for Bob Crow after his sudden awful premature death. As documented yesterday, they asked me to alter it to make it ‘more balanced’, I refused and that was that.
My lips have hardly touched the BBC Radio 4 airwaves since.
Mirroring the Radio 4 stance, my old friend and one time roadie Steve Lamacq told me that in contrast to his mentor and predecessor Peel’s show in the Eighties it was increasingly difficult for him to play my stuff, or anyone to play any political stuff, on 6 Music because of the ‘balance’ question. (For some unaccountable reason there aren’t any rabid right wing Tory left field bands and poets about.)
And, as would happen eventually, the last bastion, ‘comedy’ has now been targeted too. They have dredged up some ‘right wing’ comedians (the one I heard had a predictable drone about how ‘working class’ he was, as though being right wing and working class was something to be proud of!) and pulled some of the ‘Leftie’ stuff off the air.
I’m not worried in the slightest now. I’m having the time of my life writing what I want on here, am honoured that so many people are reading it, and even more honoured that after 43 years people are still discovering what I do on stage and coming to see me for the first time!
But what has happened, and is happening, to our broadcast and print media is not democratic and must change. In a democratic society information and different pints of view must be freely available to all. They’re not, the Tories want to make them less so, and if Starmer doesn’t do something about it I’ll be out of the Labour Party and in his face before you can say Brighton 3, Palace 0 tonight."
Harwichfox
Roofer
roughage
Roofer
This is a straw man argument. It gets tiring when the "debate" is constantly being re-framed by people who either a) didn't understand what Lineker meant, or are b) deliberately choosing to argue a different point.
One poster referred to History qualifications and whether people had used them to write a book or teach. It was a patronising comment, but just for clarity I am the Head of History in a Leicestershire school. I have taught the Weimar period and the rise of the Nazis for two decades. An area of particular focus is how Hitler was able to tap into latent anti-Semitism to bring a large proportion of the German population with him. One of the first areas he used was language. He referred to Jews and other minorities as parasites and non-Aryan. The Volkischer Beobachter, run by Julius Streicher, published cartoons showing the Jews as spiders, entrapping ordinary Germans in webs and sucking the life from them.
Importantly, he also framed political opposition as traitors. He constantly referred to the "Stab in the back" theory, that Germany had been sabotaged by Jews and the "left". Most of this began before the Nazis were even in power. By 1933, when he'd become Chancellor, the Nazis organised a shop boycott of Jewish businesses. "Good Germans" were told not to patronise Jewish shops. As it was organised on a Saturday (The Jewish Sabbath), when most were closed anyway, it was reported as a great success. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws defined Jews as non-German and stripped them of many rights.
Lineker, quite accurately, referred to the similarity in the way language is being used. He didn't say anything else about parallels. Anyone with a genuine understanding of history can see that there are parallels. Anyone with a genuine understanding of History will also recognise that the contextual situation is very different. The UK might be facing the biggest decline in living standards on record, but we are nowhere near the privations that many Germans experienced post-WWI. But Lineker wasn't making a direct comparison. He didn't say that we will head down this road. He merely referred to the dehumanising language.
Those who are getting irate about what Lineker tweeted need to actually read what he tweeted and think about what he meant rather than extrapolating and then pontificating on how clever they might be for realising that "1930's Germany" was a reference to the NSDAP.
Then, they may even step back and think about why the government is using language like this to describe human beings.
Last edited:
Harwichfox
Roofer
What ever , this government are of racist, fascist, greedy bigots who play on people's own racism to turn them away from the real issues,low pay, poverty,poor NHS etc from their corrupt, selfish and greedy government a classic tactic used by many dictators and dictatorial governments over history. They pick on a minority and say it's all their fault you've lost your job or live in poverty not ours and you know what, silly buggers believe them.
Brauny
The optimistic pessimist
Poverty !!! Fuck off, ask you grandparents what poverty was.
hackneyfox
Roofer
Poverty is relative, or does it not count as poverty unless you have rickets?
Do we really want to be comparing ourselves to a time when we had a child mortality rate of 8.3%?
If it's relative, there will always be poverty.
hackneyfox
Roofer
Perhaps we shouldn’t accept the huge differences in wealth, remember my dad talking about limiting the differential ratio in salaries between a cleaner and a director. He thought they were bad back in the 70s, they’re beyond obscene nowadays.
But poverty will always exist, regardless of what constitutes average net income.
However, onto the very different point about wealth differentials, I'd agree that there are many overpaid tosspots who risk nothing and create nothing. OK, making difficult decisions etc as part of maintaining companies or running a council etc deserves rewards at a certain level; good management should be well paid.
But those special people who create, build, grow and establish companies from scratch – often over many painful, stressful years – fully deserve unlimited rewards in my book. Likewise those geniuses who have brilliant ideas, or who know what the world wants / needs long before anyone asks for it. Fuck any limit or restrictive multiple of what they should earn compared to anyone else. They were under no obligation to put everything on the line to follow a dream and struggle against fuck knows what odds to produce opportunities and support livelihoods for future employees, and generate wealth and revenue for countless others.
So the idea that they should then be told they can only earn 100 or 200 or 300 times what the cleaner earns is complete and utter bollocks – rooted in envy, jealousy and idiocy. Just my opinion. (But I reckon I'm right.)
But now we’re telling people what they should be offended by
The issue was/is Our Gaz broke the BBC rules, it would have been much better if he hadn’t said what he did, much better if what he said was ignored and infinitely better if the politiciians had not got involved
Adumass
Bentleys Roofer
You only have to take a cursory glance at the BBC director generals interviews to realise he didn't break the rules. That's why they are reviewing them.
On poverty. The salary gap between working class and middle class (whatever these terms actually mean) are closer than they've ever been , and the gap between middle class and the elite has never been larger. You only need to read the budget impact analysis to see how that is.
Those with massive pension pots are quids in but the average person will be worse off:
"Disposal income per person will fall by 6% this financial year and next, according to the OBR, representing the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s."
Compare to...
"The tax-free limit for pension savings during a lifetime will be abolished in April. At present, you can save just over £1m before an extra tax charge is levied. The impact will be lots of money being put into pensions by wealthy savers."
On poverty. The salary gap between working class and middle class (whatever these terms actually mean) are closer than they've ever been , and the gap between middle class and the elite has never been larger. You only need to read the budget impact analysis to see how that is.
Those with massive pension pots are quids in but the average person will be worse off:
"Disposal income per person will fall by 6% this financial year and next, according to the OBR, representing the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s."
Compare to...
"The tax-free limit for pension savings during a lifetime will be abolished in April. At present, you can save just over £1m before an extra tax charge is levied. The impact will be lots of money being put into pensions by wealthy savers."
buz_not_buzz
Occasional Poster
Given that the sort of people you are talking about will generally be paying themselves salaries that aren't that much higher than the cleaner it's all really rather moot isn't it and has little to do with wealth differentials.
TBH I was just replying to hackneyfox's suggestion that "bosses" are paid too much. I take the view that there are distinct types of "boss", not one. And that the entrepreneurial type deserve zero restrictions on what rewards they should get for their trouble.
buz_not_buzz
Occasional Poster
Sure and I get that bit about the types of "boss" (and indeed it was Hackney invoking Hackney Snr that confused income - in this case in the form of salaries - with wealth in the first place). And agree that there should be no restrictions on what rewards the entrepreneurs - or indeed anyone - should get but believe that those rewards be taxed appropriately in each case (I suspect we might differ on what "appropriate" looks like in each circumstance). As an aside I cannot help feeling that the change in Pension rules (the combination of the higher annual allowance with abolition of the lifetime pension allowance) will favour those on extremely high salaries which are more likely to be first type of boss (the non-entrepreneur) - for example the sort of people who become MPs who take on highly paid directorships.
I'm fairly sure that the lifetime limit used to be £1.8m, but I may be wrong. There's certainly scope for a ceiling on highest-rate tax relief on private pension contributions, but then I would think that, already being retired and drawing on my pensions
Club_B00k_Crutchless
Registered
Does an upper limit of £1.8m have any impact on the life of your average person? I doubt it, but hey, abolish it anyway just in case your Rich mates need to invest more into their pensions.I'm fairly sure that the lifetime limit used to be £1.8m, but I may be wrong. There's certainly scope for a ceiling on highest-rate tax relief on private pension contributions, but then I would think that, already being retired and drawing on my pensions
All pensions? What about those entrepreneurial people who have made their own money and want to retire young?
Looks like there's one here for the jealous envious idiotic column...
Club_B00k_Crutchless
Registered
Jealous, or hoping to see a fairer taxation system?Looks like there's one here for the jealous envious idiotic column...
TBH my money's on jealous envious and idiotic
Club_B00k_Crutchless
Registered
A fool and their money are easily parted.TBH my money's on jealous envious and idiotic