Gary lineker

Thursday

Toby Young

Should we be above cancelling the cancellers?

I’ve been mulling over Marco Rubio’s latest salvo in the Trump administration’s assault on the Censorship-Industrial Complex. The US Secretary of State has announced he’ll impose visa bans on foreign nationals judged to be censoring US citizens or US tech companies. And according to one news report, the ban will apply to their family members too. So who might be on this blacklist? Rubio hasn’t named names, but I can think of a few candidates. Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)would be hard-pressed to deny his pro-censorship lobby group targets US citizens and US tech companies, because ‘Centre’ is spelt C-E-N-T-E-R, though the company

Thursday

The Spectator

The BBC’s problems go far beyond Gary Lineker

As one might expect from a 103-year-old organisation, the BBC has a very high opinion of itself. Outside Broadcasting House stands a statue of George Orwell. Inscribed next to it is a quotation by him: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ A noble sentiment, and a more flattering testament to the corporation than Orwell’s description of it after working there during the second world war: ‘Something halfway between a girl’s school and a lunatic asylum.’ In his growing outspokenness, the football pundit Gary Lineker might have thought that he was channelling Orwell. Even before he was

Friday

Zoe Strimpel

The brash shall inherit the Earth

As a girl, and later a woman, prone to barbs and punchy elocutions, I have encountered a great many repercussions for my words. My re-education began in primary school when the mother of a classmate angrily rang my mum to tell her that I had said this or that outrageous thing to her daughter. (A daughter who was herself tough as nails and a crafty little madame; I never picked on those weaker than me.) Over time, the pain of fallouts with school friends became the stress of getting communication wrong in the workplace, which carries its own, more formal and sinister consequences. Now I try to pause and be

Tuesday

Terence Blacker

Who would be a goalkeeper?

‘We are all goalkeepers now,’ declares Robert McCrum, and who could seriously argue with that? Every day we try to defend our own goal against the hurtling ball of fate, but too often end up fishing it out of the back of the net. Then again, we are also all strikers, hopefully hoofing, occasionally taking a bit of a dive in the box. Or central defenders, muddied but valiant. Or nippy little wingers, making mazy but pointless runs down life’s touchline, whingeing at the referee. Come to think of it, we are all, in a very real sense, referees too. There is no end to the football-as-metaphor game. For the

Monday

Steerpike

Is this the BBC’s best defence?

Proposals by Nadine Dorries to scrap the BBC licence fee have produced something of a meltdown over at Broadcasting House. The Culture Secretary wants to keep the licence fee flat at £159 a year until April 2024, after which it will rise in line with inflation until 2028 when it will be replaced by an as-yet-unknown funding model. The news has induced dozens of the Beeb’s highly-paid stars into paroxysms of rage, not seen since the days of Brexit, as the Corporation’s biggest names rush to defend their employer on Twitter. Mr S has a soft spot for Auntie but some of the arguments being mounted in its defence are simply laughable. First up,