Tag Archives: guidelines

More on GaryGate: there’s nothing in Lineker’s BBC contract to stop him tweeting

Here’s another great analysis of what’s coming to be known as GaryGate, or LinekerGate:

The big take-out from this one is the passage from Gary Lineker’s BBC contract – on personal opinions.

It states, “The Conflicts of Interest Guidelines on Public Expressions of Opinion set out the position for all BBC staff:

“Public expressions of opinion have the potential to compromise the BBC’s impartiality and to damage its reputation. This includes the use of social media and writing letters to the press. Opinions expressed on social media are put into the public domain, can be shared and are searchable.

“The risk is greater where the public expressions of opinion overlap with the area of the individual’s work. The risk is lower where an individual is expressing views publicly on an unrelated area, for example, a sports or science presenter expressing views on politics or the arts.”

So Gary Lineker was well within his rights to express an opinion on politics, from his position as a sports presenter, it seems.

The revelation of these guidelines also highlights a glaring double-standard at the BBC, where hard right-winger Andrew Neil – for many years the Corporation’s most high-profile political presenter – was allowed to tweet his highly-partisan opinions willy-nilly for years without ever being called into question under these guidelines.

It seems the BBC cannot be trusted to apply its own guidelines.

Perhaps an independent body should be assigned to oversee it?

Ah, but that would require bureaucracy and red tape – and Tories are against that.

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Is civil disobedience the answer to Johnson and Cummings?

Boris Johnson: this is his response to your complaints that Dominic Cummings ignored lockdown rules. What are you going to do about it?

How kind of Boris Johnson to grace us with his presence at the daily Cocid-19 briefing, and explain that Demonic – er, Dominic – Cummings didn’t obey lockdown rules because they weren’t meant for elites like him but for plebs like you.

Okay, he didn’t put it in as many words, but the meaning was clear:

(Incidentally, if you’re wondering why I’m using the clip with signing…)

He seemed keen to evade the principle question – is it one rule for Tory government elites and another for the rest of us? – but the message was clear:

Even the UK Civil Service’s dedicate Twitter feed registered its disgust:

“Arrogant and offensive.

“Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”

It was up for only 10 minutes, during which it accumulated around 30,000 retweets, and the same number of likes, which is indicative of the strength of feeling, not just in the civil service but in the UK as a whole.

Okay, Johnson had his supporters, but for the wider attitude of the UK public, see Michael Jones’s tweet below:

He’s not the only one:

Here’s just one person’s story, corroborating Mr Jones’s conclusion:

“My Aunt died alone in a care home from Covid19. My brother and mother who live locally were not allowed to see her, hold her hand in the last moments or say goodbye. My mother couldn’t attend the funeral, or let me stay with them on my way to the funeral, because Govt guidelines don’t allow it.

“What I have seen today is that I was stupid. I could have just exercised my judgement that it was essential. My sacrifices, my mother’s sacrifices were for nothing. Or maybe if we were rich elites it would have been ok.”

That is the mood of the nation – especially those of use who have lost loved ones and were forbidden from even saying goodbye (and remember, thanks to Johnson’s snivelling incompetence, there have been more than 62,000 of those deaths).

If you have any doubts left, check out the results of my own Twitter poll. At the time of writing, it shows more than 96 per cent of respondents believe the Tories cannot be trusted to handle the UK’s response to the coronavirus pandemic – and they want to do something about it:

Civil disobedience?

It’s an idea with a lot of merit to it – especially if done to protect ourselves and our children from the consequences of damnfool Tory stupidity.

And it seems to have gained some traction:

So there it is. Who’s in?

There’s no downside, for obvious reasons. Any objection can be countered with what I think we should call the “Cummings defence”: that you followed the instincts of every parent.

I’m not going to force anybody into it; this has to be an individual decision by the people involved.

But, obviously, if you don’t do something, you’ll be saying you’re happy to let Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson and all those other slimy creeps do whatever they want and laugh at you. Your choice. Let me know what you’re going to do.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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What are the political loyalties of the groups attacking Labour’s new anti-Semitism guidelines?

(Incidentally, this is the only definition of anti-Semitism anybody needs.)

I would like to see the Labour Party membership cards of every member of the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews who have criticised Labour’s new guidelines on how the party should deal with complaints of anti-Semitism.

If some of them aren’t members of Labour, then which political party do they support? I think that is a very important detail that is being missed out in all the coverage of them.

Neither the BoD nor the JLC are Labour-affiliated organisations. They have been allowed input as groups representing Jewish interests, but they do not represent all Jews, nor even all British Jews – and where are the howls of outrage from Jewdas?

The Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to the Labour Party, of course – but its currency is now so tarnished that many believe that affiliation should be revoked.

Let’s look at the criticisms:

It seems even though the new guidelines adopt the hideously flawed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, the JLC, BoD and JLM don’t think it goes far enough to include the full list of behaviours listed as anti-Semitic by this legally-questionable document. They single out:

  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

And they are lying.

I cannot find any other explanation for such a gross inaccuracy. These behaviours do not appear in the list of seven examples given in Labour’s guidelines because they are explored in detail, later in the document. This detail is needed to avoid ambiguity.

It seems to This Writer that the reason for the animosity from the JLC, BoD and JLM can be found in the comment by JLC chair Jonathan Goldstein and BoD president Marie van der Zyl, who said anti-Semitism was “for Jews to determine”.

This ties in with the so-called ‘Macpherson Principle’, according to which an incident is anti-Semitic if it is perceived to be so by the victim – a principle that is wide open to abuse of the worst possible kind by cynical political manipulators.

To me, it seems the JLC and BoD have indicated an intention to shoehorn their political enemies into definitions of anti-Semitism that they are happy to make up as they go along – which is, of course, what we have seen throughout the course of the Labour anti-Semitism debate.

A good example would be the rather desperate attempt to describe me as a Holocaust denier – about which I hope to be able to report more later in the week.

Visit our JustGiving page to help Vox Political’s Mike Sivier fight anti-Semitism libels in court

It is for this reason that anti-Semitic intent must be clearly visible in any complaint. If the complainant has to resort to saying that they felt an argument in a social media post (for example) was anti-Semitic without any evidence to back it up, then they have no complaint. If they have to alter quotations by the alleged offender (as happened in my case), then they have no complaint – but the focus of their aggression clearly does.

That’s why Labour now needs to examine every complaint of anti-Semitism against its members, going back over the last two years since the Naz Shah incident.

I’m sure some of the people who were thrown out of the party did not deserve to go, and were victims – like me – of malice.

That’s why I say those who made these false accusations should now face investigation, so we can ascertain why they lied and what they hoped to gain from it.

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