Let's talk about Gary Lineker

Declaration of interest.

For six years (1985-1990) I was director of the Media Monitoring Unit which was set up to monitor BBC, ITV and Channel 4 current affairs programmes for political bias.

Our main target was the BBC, some of whose employees seemed to regard the Corporation as the official opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.

With that in mind you will forgive me for adding my tuppence ha'penny to the 'debate' about Gary Lineker.

Frankly, and this is no exaggeration, the outcome feels as important to me as the miners' strike in 1984.

It's not, of course, and some of you may be rolling your eyes at the very suggestion, but if Lineker and his pals prevail and he is reinstated without agreeing to tone down his political tweets and comments, I do think it will set the BBC if not the country on a path we may live to regret.

Nevertheless, to continue the miners' analogy, I always believed the Thatcher government would prevail, largely because of the principles and determination of Mrs T herself.

It was clear too that she had prepared for it, hence the stockpiling of coal over several years to avoid the same humiliating fate the Heath government had experienced a decade earlier when coal quickly ran out after the miners went on strike and we had electricity cuts and the infamous three-day week.

Compare that to the BBC-Lineker situation.

No-one can say they weren't warned. Lineker's political tweets had been an issue before. He had been reprimanded and warned, allegedly, but the odds must have been quite high that he would continue to flout the BBC's internal guidelines.

Why didn't they have a plan to avoid the mess that has happened this weekend, with pundits, commentators and fellow presenters all declining to work not just on Match Of The Day but on Football Focus, Final Score and other BBC programmes like Fighting Talk on Five Live?

As someone (I can't remember whom) said yesterday, if you're going to remove your leading presenter you have to have a plan.

Personally I don't give a toss that Football Focus or Final Score won't be broadcast today. I haven't watched Football Focus for 40 years, and I rarely watch Final Score which seems a pale imitation of Jeff Stelling's Saturday Soccer on Sky Sports.

As it happens I rarely watch that either. Instead I listen for the results on Five Live (which is why I was so annoyed when they got rid of the classified results at 5.00pm) or I follow the scores on the BBC website while working or watching something else – the rugby, perhaps, or a film.

Meanwhile, announcing her decision not to present Football Focus today, Alex Scott was reported to have referred to it as "my show".

I'm sorry, it's not your show. I remember Football Focus when it was presented by the late, great Sam Leitch.

A great big tubby man, no-one could confuse Leitch for a footballer, not even a retired one. He was a journalist with a deep knowledge of the game who everyone respected.

Today the studios are crammed with former footballers, male and female, some more articulate than others, who are recruited as pundits or co-commentators with a handful fast tracked to the role of presenter (sometimes too soon, if you ask me, before they have enough experience).

But back to Football Focus. There have been many, many presenters of FF before Alex Scott and, unless she has just torpedoed the programme, she won't be the last.

Likewise MOTD. Yesterday someone said Gary Lineker is Match of the Day. No, he isn't!! He's merely the current presenter, keeping the chair warm for his successor.

Before Lineker there was the great Des Lynam, and before that Jimmy Hill and David Coleman and one or two I may have forgotten.

Even Lynam was replaceable, and Lineker is too. After all, does anyone seriously watch MOTD for the presenter or the pundits?

More often than not I watch the highlights on iPlayer and fast forward during the studio analysis which is far less fun for the viewer than the presenter and his chortling sidekicks may think.

Btw, have you noticed how much 'fun' and banter there is in the studio these days, whether it's TV or radio? No wonder they've all downed tools in support of Lineker. They're not colleagues, they're 'mates' so of course they have to show solidarity for 'one of their own'.

Talking of whom, those political tweets included the absurd and insulting suggestion that the Home Secretary's language on illegal immigration was reminiscent of 1930s Germany. How offensive, and inaccurate, is that?

I won't get into that specific debate other than to point you in the direction of an excellent article by Michael Deacon, assistant editor of the Telegraph.

'Gary Lineker has ‘stepped back’ from the BBC – now they should make his departure permanent' is behind a paywall but do read it if you can.

One subject it tackles is freedom of speech. Even people I like and respect (and are not fans of Gary Lineker) seem to think this dispute is about free speech. It's not. As Deacon points out:

On Wednesday, Mr Lineker sarcastically tweeted that it was “great to see the freedom of speech champions” demanding his “silence”. But this isn’t about freedom of speech. It’s about the BBC. If one of its leading presenters expresses hysterically partisan political views, the BBC’s impartiality is bound to be called into question.

Lineker may be freelance and work for other broadcasters but he’s the BBC's highest paid presenter, for Christ’s sake, with arguably the biggest profile of any BBC presenter after David Attenborough.

He didn't achieve that profile by presenting programmes on BT Sport or LaLiga TV, who have also employed him. As someone else said yesterday, he has 'BBC' stamped on his forehead and with that comes responsibilities, including the responsibility not to say or tweet overtly political messages while he is being paid by millions of licence payers who are under threat of criminal prosecution if we don't cough up.

I suspect though that many younger people, below the age of 30 certainly, have never purchased a TV licence so arguments about the licence fee being a factor in relation to Lineker's attacks on government ministers go right over their heads.

Part of the problem of course is social media. It must be lovely to enjoy the love and support of millions of followers, but it's an echo chamber. How does Lineker not see that?

So where do we go from here? There are two options:

One, Lineker must accept, like all leading BBC presenters, to abide by the Corporation's guidelines on political tweets and comments. It doesn't matter if he is 'freelance'. It's the perception that matters, not the technicality.

Two, if he can't accept the restrictions of working for the BBC, he should quit. He won't be cancelled or out of work because many commercial broadcasters would love to have him.

If, in his absence, commentators, presenters and pundits like Alan Shearer don’t want to work for the BBC, no problem. Jog on.

A less selfish individual might regret the chaos he has caused these past few days and the hellishly difficult position he has put many of his colleagues in.

They may have downed tools in 'solidarity' but how many have done so in order not to be labelled a 'scab'. There’s no bravery in being part of the herd so there must be mixed feelings, to say the least.

Lineker, meanwhile, can walk into another, probably better paid, job. But can they?

What annoys me, and must annoy some of his BBC colleagues, is why does he expect to be treated differently to most of his fellow BBC sports presenters, past and present?

I never had a clue what David Coleman’s politics were, nor Jimmy Hill's, nor Des Lynam's (until he retired and endorsed Ukip).

Ditto current sports presenters like Clare Balding or Gabby Logan.

I'm not a fan of Mark 'Chappers' Chapman – who has also joined today's exodus – but, again, I have absolutely no idea what his politics are, and that’s how it should be.

If they can accept the rules under which they work for the BBC, why can't Lineker?

Meanwhile it's not just his colleagues who have been put in a difficult position but the BBC itself because their actions may have put the BBC in breach of its contract with the Premier League.

In today's multimedia world no broadcaster has a right to exist, so let the BBC self destruct if it wants to.

Personally I don’t mind the compulsory licence fee model if in return I get advertisement free TV and a handful of ad free radio stations.

But political impartiality is an important part of the deal, which is why even sports presenters must exercise some restraint when airing their personal views.

Sadly I have very little confidence that BBC management will win this particular battle, although I live in hope that director-general Tim Davie will stick to his guns.

Like Julie Burchill, however, who has written an excellent article for The Spectator (The ignorance of Gary Lineker):

I don’t have any faith in the BBC to have a backbone for more than a fortnight, so I’m sure that Lineker’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger smirk will soon be delighting us again.

I sincerely hope she's wrong but I wouldn't bet on it.

Update: Michael Portillo on GB News yesterday - “As soon as the BBC gives up on impartiality the licence fee becomes untenable.”

Exactly right.

Flood alert

The Government website has a page with flood alerts.

There is currently an alert for the brook that runs through our village in Cambridgeshire:

River levels have risen … as a result of persistent rainfall. Consequently, flooding of property/roads and farmland is possible today, 10/03/23 … We are closely monitoring the situation. Our incident response staff are checking defences. Please avoid contact with flood water.

In the 24 years we’ve lived here surface water on the roads has been commonplace after several days of rain, but a full scale flood is rare.

In January 2013 the High Street and surrounding area was flooded, and the same happened in December 2020, two days before Christmas.

Our house is a few hundred yards from the brook, and up a slight incline, so the threat to our property was minimal.

Where our cul-de-sac meets the High Street, however, the water rose by as much as three or four feet, making it impossible to access our house by road until the water level receded.

On December 23, 2020, after doing some Christmas shopping, I returned home around 4.00pm.

Our cul-de-sac was still accessible - there was only light surface water on the road - but thinking that the water level might rise overnight, blocking me in, I parked the car on the other side of the brook, thinking it would be safe to leave it there until the morning.

In hindsight I should have parked several hundred yards further back but no-one anticipated how quickly the brook would burst its banks.

At 8.00pm, when I attempted to walk from my house to the car (which had our Christmas turkey in the back!), I was confronted - at the bottom of our road - by three feet of rapidly moving water flowing along the High Street.

I hoped that the water on the other side of the brook - where my car was parked - might be lower so I stupidly attempted to wade through the water, hoping to reach the little stone bridge that crosses the brook.

It was dark and the road and flood water were only illuminated by a few relatively dim street lamps. Worse, the water was not only moving quite rapidly, it was also freezing cold.

Looking back I don’t know why I even attempted to do what I did, but luckily I came to my senses when the water was up to my thighs and it occurred to me that if I slipped and fell I might be swept away, which is roughly what befell a building worker in 1998, the year before we moved in to the one of the new houses he was working on.

(What actually happened is that he tried to drive across the ford in heavy rain. It was dark so he didn’t see that the water in the brook had risen several feet, and his car was swept downstream. They found his body the following day.)

In my defence I was concerned about the fate of my car, which was only a year old, and the turkey, but I realise now how unimportant they were in the overall scheme of things.

As it happens, the car was indeed a write-off (flood water destroyed the electrics) but the insurance company paid up within days without quibbling (and I also had GAP insurance) so the financial hit wasn’t too bad.

And at least I was alive!

Anyway, I’m off to buy a newspaper from the local shop. While I’m doing that I’ll check the current state of the brook.

Wish me luck.

PS. I hope this doesn’t sound too flippant. A number of houses in the village have suffered very badly from flooding, especially those on either side of the brook.

After the flood in December 2020 a number of families were forced to leave their homes for six to nine months until the damage was repaired.

Despite this, houses in those areas still sell quite quickly. I’m not sure I would want to live with the threat of future floods hanging over me.

Above: bottom of our road, December 24, 2020; below: High Street, January 2013

From Hayek to Edgar Wallace

Thanks to the LSE Hayek Society for organising ‘Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice’ on Wednesday.

Special thanks to Reem Ibrahim for chairing the discussion with me and the IEA’s Chris Snowdon.

Reem, 20, is a fearless force of nature who in a remarkably short time has become a familiar face on GB News and TalkTV.

She’s still in her final year at the London School of Economics but has already been snapped up by the IEA as their new communications officer.

After the event we headed off to The Edgar Wallace, an old London pub that dates back to the 18th century.

It got its current name in 1975, the centenary of the birth of the British crime writer credited with inventing the modern thriller.

The Edgar was an appropriate choice because the walls of the small downstairs bar are covered with posters and ads for cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Forest is hosting our own discussion at the IEA on March 23 when our panel of guests will include Chris, Reem, and Kara Kennedy, staff writer at The Spectator World, which is the US edition of the magazine.

I’ll post details over the weekend but if you can’t wait you can read about it here.

Yesterday’s news, which I’ll write about later, will make it even more topical and relevant.

PS. Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) was a pipe smoker for most of his life, while the most famous portrait of Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) shows him smoking a cigarette (with a holder).

Hayek lived to 92. Wallace is reported to have died of diabetes, aged 56, shortly after writing the original screenplay for the 1933 film King Kong.

Below: Chris, Reem, and me at The Edgar Wallace

Disciples of Hayek, assemble!

The Hayek Society at the London School of Economics is marking No Smoking Day with a special event this evening.

'Nicotine Wars: Fight For Choice' is an 'in conversation' style event featuring me, Chris Snowdon, and Reem Ibrahim, a final year student at the LSE who was recently appointed communications officer at the IEA.

Non-students are welcome so if you live or work in London and would like to come along, click here to register.

After the main event we shall be heading to a local pub for free drinks so do join us.

This is the first student event I've spoken at for a while. (The last time was on Zoom in 2020 when I spoke to the Students for Liberty group in Cardiff.)

I have happy memories of speaking to the Durham Union Society (Libertarians 1-0 Prohibitionists) but that was ten years ago.

Likewise it's nine years since I was invited to take part in a debate organised by University College London (UCL) Conservative Association. (See 'Morning after the night before'.)

I enjoyed the theatre of taking part in two debates at the Oxford Union (most recently in 2015) but I was on the losing side each time so the experience was bittersweet.

I was also on the losing side in a debate at University College Dublin (UCD) prior to the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland in 2004, but I should be on friendlier territory this evening.

Actually, it won't be the first time I've spoken at a Hayek Society meeting. In January 2008 I wrote:

I have just accepted an invitation to address the Oxford Hayek Society. The OHS is a libertarian society at Oxford University, committed to the advancement of individual liberty ...

The late Lord Harris (former chairman of Forest) was himself a disciple of Hayek. According to Ralph's obituary in The Times:

'A frank apologist for free markets, Harris was among a group of post-war economists inspired by Friedrich Hayek who, at a time when it was deeply unfashionable, opposed the legacy of government planning left by John Maynard Keynes and proposed an unbound capitalist society.'

The funny thing is, I discovered very quickly that, compared to the bright young things of the Oxford Hayek Society, any pretence that I was a true libertarian ran hollow.

While they were sympathetic to my arguments about smoking, what they really wanted to discuss was the legalisation of all drugs, from cannabis to heroin.

I can't remember what happened after the meeting but I suspect I made my excuses and hurried back to my hotel!

Open letter to Government demanding ‘action on smoking’ misses target

An open letter to Government calling for ‘action on smoking’ has failed to meet its modest target of 2,500 signatures.

As I noted last week, quoting directly from the ASH Daily News bulletin:

Cancer Research UK have written an open letter to Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging them to publish a new tobacco control plan to tackle smoking – the leading preventable cause of cancer. They are asking members of the public to add their names to the letter to show how much support there is for ending smoking. The letter will be published on No Smoking Day (8th March). Sign up by March 7th to make sure your name is included. You can sign the letter here.

Calling for ‘decisive Government action on tobacco’, the letter declares:

If the Government cannot pay for the measures and services to needed to help people quit smoking, then the industry should be made to do so. We ask UK Government to please put families and our health system first in the upcoming Spring Budget and implement a Smokefree Fund, using industry funds, without industry interference to pay for these measures and services. 

As of midnight last night, the letter had been signed by just 2,136 people, well short of the initial target of 2,500.

Given this failure to generate support for ending smoking, I can’t wait to see how Cancer Research (and ASH) spin it. No doubt they’ll find a way.

Happy No Smoking Day!

End smoking to free up GP appointments, says CRUK

According to Cancer Research, ending smoking in England could free up 75,000 GP appointments each month:

Ahead of next week's spring budget, the UK's largest cancer charity is calling on the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt MP, to reduce pressures on the NHS and provide a boost to the UK economy, by taking swift action on tobacco control.

Measures that should be adopted include a consultation on raising the age of sale of tobacco, as well as more funding to help people quit. If government can’t pay for this, then ministers should introduce a ‘polluter pays’ style charge on the tobacco industry.

Sky News has the story here (Raising legal age of tobacco sales 'could free up 75,000 GP appointments per month', says charity).

It includes the quote I gave the Press Association yesterday:

"It isn't the government's job to end smoking.

“Over the past decade smoking rates have fallen significantly not because of taxpayer-funded anti-smoking campaigns or stop-smoking services, but because millions of smokers have switched to reduced-risk products such as e-cigarettes.

"Government interventions, like plain packaging, have generally had very little impact."

Meanwhile, if you're wondering where the 75,000 figure comes from, the PA has this explanation:

The charity’s analysis is based on GP appointment data and a 2018 study which found that people who do not smoke see their GP 12% less than those who do.

I haven't read the study but if they're suggesting that every smoker who has an appointment with a doctor is there to address some smoking-related issue – well, that's a huge assumption. Smokers have non-smoking related ailments too!

It also ignores the fact that most smoking-related illnesses can be caused by a number of factors so it's ridiculously simplistic to suggest that 'ending smoking' might 'free up' 75,000 GP appointments a month.

But even if it did, should we then forcibly end obesity to free up thousands more GP appointments?

Meanwhile the single largest group of people taking up GPs’ time is almost certainly the elderly. Perhaps we should get rid of them too? Think of all the appointments that would ‘free up’.

My own view, for what's worth, is that because the majority of smokers come from poorer backgrounds it's quite possible that poverty, stress and poor diet are equally if not more responsible for many of those GP appointments.

As ever however it's easier to target smokers, and smoking.

PS. I'll be discussing the CRUK story on GB News later this morning.

PMI's CEO: "Quit smoking or you will never date my daughter"

Fair play to Philip Morris International's PR or comms team.

Whether by luck or design (probably the latter) they do a pretty decent job promoting the company's smoke free agenda, and the way they have consistently generated headlines with occasional but widely reported interviews with senior executives should also be acknowledged.

A prime example is André Calantzopoulos' appearance on Radio 4's Today programme in 2016 when the then CEO created global headlines after he told the BBC that Philip Morris could stop making conventional cigarettes.

Another is a 2018 interview in which Peter Nixon, then managing director of Philip Morris UK, told the Independent, "There is no reason for anyone to smoke any more." (As it happens I think this was arguably an own goal but it nevertheless generated a lot of publicity.)

I could list other examples but the most recent was on Saturday when the Financial Times published an interview with Calantzopoulos' successor:

The chief executive of the world’s largest tobacco group Philip Morris International is not short of anecdotes in which he implored people to quit smoking.

Over a cigarette at a US embassy party in Warsaw in the mid-2000s, Jacek Olczak recited the health warning on a pack to the then-Polish health minister. A few years later, the minister, Zbigniew Religa, died of lung cancer.

More recently, Olczak gave his eldest daughter’s boyfriend a stark choice: quit smoking or switch to IQOS, PMI’s flagship smoke-free alternative, “or you will never date my daughter”. A year later, he switched.

Even allowing for the fact that the story was probably tongue-in-cheek, I appear to be alone in pointing out that it's 2023 yet Olczak seems happy to portray himself playing hardball with his eldest daughter's choice of boyfriend.

Did she have no agency in this?!

I sensed a similarly flippant tone when the Independent interviewed Peter Nixon in 2018:

Among his 400 employees in London apparently, there is one hold-out who still smokes. “I’m working on him though.”

It struck me then that with almost one in seven adults still smoking in the UK in 2018, it was a bit odd that of the 400 people working for Philip Morris in London only one was still a smoker.

Or perhaps, like the boyfriend of Jacek Olczak's daughter, they had been given an ultimatum.

See: Philip Morris's CEO on quitting smoking and detoxifying the brand.

Below: The FT's Oliver Barnes, who interviewed PMI's CEO, tweets ...

No Smoking Day hijacked by tobacco levy lobbyists

According to today's ASH Daily News bulletin:

Cancer Research UK have written an open letter to Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging them to publish a new tobacco control plan to tackle smoking – the leading preventable cause of cancer. They are asking members of the public to add their names to the letter to show how much support there is for ending smoking. The letter will be published on No Smoking Day (8th March). Sign up by March 7th to make sure your name is included. You can sign the letter here.

Is this the Big Splash I mentioned last week? If so it's interesting how far No Smoking Day has moved from its original altruistic goal of helping smokers who want to quit to do so.

In those days the event, as its name suggests, was focussed on a single day, although in its prime a team of people with an annual budget of £600,000 was employed to organise it.

Now, according to ASH (whose CEO Deborah Arnott is 'helping to co-ordinate' this year's event), the goal is 'ending smoking' completely, ignoring the fact that there are still millions of people who enjoy smoking and don't want to quit.

Demanding 'Decisive Government action on tobacco now ...', the letter to Barclay and Hunt insists:

The UK Government has a duty to act to prevent young people from starting to smoke and fund stop smoking services to help people quit ...

If Government cannot pay for the measures and services to needed to help people quit smoking, then the [tobacco] industry should be made to do so. We ask UK Government to please put families and our health system first in the upcoming Spring Budget and implement a Smokefree Fund, using industry funds, without industry interference to pay for these measures and services.

As I write 1,947 people have signed CRUK's letter to the Chancellor and the health secretary, which hardly suggests mass support for a levy to fund a 'Smokefree Fund', nor does it represent a significant protest against alleged government inaction on tobacco control.

Compare it to the 250,000 people who in 2012 signed Forest's petition against plain packaging, or the 50,000 who subsequently signed a Forest-penned letter to the then prime minister David Cameron on the same issue.

The deadline to sign the CRUK letter is Tuesday March 7, the day before No Smoking Day. I'll keep you posted.