The question for me is not about Gary Lineker himself nor about left/right politics but much more about fundamental individual freedoms that have been the foundation of western democracy and its model for as long as I can remember wherever one used to live. It seems to me that the space of individual freedoms continues to shrink constrained by a slew of newly defined boundaries that are in a sense transforming us into a bunch of programmed robots and the expectation is to follow the instructions or else…. Whether it’s about institutional, political (like party guidelines) or religious boundaries that are being imposed the penalties range from political, social and/or financial if we dare step outside the box we’ve been put into simply because we want to make a living or for any other motivation. Don’t get me wrong I am all for common-sense restraints to individual freedoms along the lines of;
- The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
- The need to fight all forms of discrimination and attacks on groups (religious or otherwise) – if and only if – it’s proven that the attacks are of a personal nature and have no justification beyond harm – not the perception of harm by powerful individuals and/or groups.
However, the above mentioned limitations need to be the exception and not the prevailing rule. In other words we need to become more mature in dealing with the issue of individual freedoms and not to allow internal and or external pressures to dictate how we deal with such matters.
The BBC in my opinion has failed miserably in this situation because any form of guidelines that limits – or eliminates – anyone’s ability in their organisation from sharing their views – so long as it’s not on their platform – needs to be scrapped. We are after all humans (celebrity or not) and we do have our biases/convictions whether political (left, right or centre), religious or otherwise and we should be free to share them with others whenever/wherever we want because it’s precisely these individual freedoms that make us different from our adversaries (and some of our disgustingly close allies….).
If we fail to defend our core values we lose the battle of ideologies that’s taking place right now and the consequences of this alone may break us for good.
Have a Great Weekend 🙂
Related Article
Match of the Day to air without presenter or pundits after Gary Lineker’s suspension
Gary Lineker suspended by the BBC for upsetting the Conservatives because he stood up for some of the most vulnerable people in the world. The same BBC whose chairman gave the Conservatives £400,000 before helping to arrange an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson pic.twitter.com/gwwQ1j1oEr
— Kaveh Solhekol (@SkyKaveh) March 10, 2023