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Gary Lineker vs. BBC

And to state the bleedin obvious, as you say, GB News is not credible news media. People commenting on GB News 'investors' taking a haircut miss the point. It's no more about getting a financial return than Russia Today or Press TV. They're all just propaganda outlets for nasty repressive regimes.

Agreed. It is clearly a right-wing propaganda entity, but it is also clearly in breach of Ofcom rules and at the least should lose its ‘news’ status, not that it should have ever been granted in the first place.
 
And to state the bleedin obvious, as you say, GB News is not credible news media. People commenting on GB News 'investors' taking a haircut miss the point. It's no more about getting a financial return than Russia Today or Press TV. They're all just propaganda outlets for nasty repressive regimes.

Just so.

Perhaps we should stop referring to these funders of GB News as "investors" and just accept them as right wing hate propagandists.
 
What exactly does one do though? If I had the money and resources I’d just leave the UK as I believe you have. I don’t blame you in the slightest, I’d do the same if it was a remotely financially viable option for me. I do not like it here anymore, yet like millions I am trapped and voiceless beyond using my tiny online business presence to voice dissent and bunging a few quid to pressure/protest groups etc. There is no credible political opposition, and even if there was the disenfranchisement by design of FPTP would almost certainly kill it.

PS Not sure exactly where I’d head if I had the resources, but much of the world seems much less overtly far-right than England at present. I certainly do not feel at home here anymore.

You are not the only one: a friend I have known for decades says he would seriously think of moving if he was younger.
 
Gary Lineker’s treatment exposes fact that image of warm, fuzzy BBC was always a lie
Jonathan Liew

"Take Reith himself, for example: a man who has become synonymous with the noble benevolence of public service broadcasting. Reith was a fascist sympathiser. He spoke with open admiration of the rise of Mussolini in Italy. After the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, he wrote: “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned up what looked like an incipient revolt,” which – to borrow a phrase – is language not entirely dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930s."

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/b...that-image-of-warm-fuzzy-bbc-was-always-a-lie

I remember John Peel dreading the meetings with the top exec for R1 where he had to justify his programme. I can’t remember the execs name but he was a posh, ex-public school boy who credited the DJ with the same amount of intelligence as he would to Neanderthals. Things became much more convivial after Peel let it slip that he had been to Shrewsbury public school.
 
You are not the only one: a friend I have known for decades says he would seriously think of moving if he was younger.

I'd move to France (and still might) although via Brexit the fascists & racists in our population have made it more difficult to escape.
 
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I'd move to France (and still might) although via Brexit the fascists & racists in our population have made it more difficult to escape.

There`s a bunch of admittedly dodgy people in northern France who would be delighted to bet a return fare on their boats.
 
What I can't understand is other media outlets reporting what's being said on GB news. Why are you validating their content and publicising them? Without that, it would just be an echo chamber. Similarly why was there a clip of Yaxley-Lennon saying something on BBC news earlier?
For the same reason they keep dragging erstwhile ‘Revolutionary Communist’ Baroness Fox of Buckley onto Politics Live, when she sits in an unelected chamber, represents nobody, does not edit a journal of any reach and is not a journalist of any repute- sheer, shameless, contrarian click-bait, placed there to ventriloquise the ideas of the hard right, to ensure those ideas get an airing but are not heard to be coming directly come from ‘establishment’ mouthpieces.
 
For the same reason they keep dragging erstwhile ‘Revolutionary Communist’ Baroness Fox of Buckley onto Politics Live, when she sits in an unelected chamber, represents nobody, does not edit a journal of any reach and is not a journalist of any repute- sheer, shameless, contrarian click-bait, placed there to ventriloquise the ideas of the hard right, to ensure those ideas get an airing but are not heard to be coming directly come from ‘establishment’ mouthpieces.

Interesting set of alumni, that Revolutionary Communist Party. As well as Fox there’s also Munira Mirza, Conservative mover and shaker, erstwhile senior No. 10 operator and wife of the Tory culture war mastermind, Dougie Smith.

Wonder who else went on from the RCP to be a light of the hard right.
 
It's generational as well. The RCP was started by Frank Furedi, his son Jacob is now deputy editor of right wing/libertarian news site "Unherd".
 
Interesting set of alumni, that Revolutionary Communist Party. As well as Fox there’s also Munira Mirza, Conservative mover and shaker, erstwhile senior No. 10 operator and wife of the Tory culture war mastermind, Dougie Smith.

Wonder who else went on from the RCP to be a light of the hard right.
Of the ones who are still around, mostly in an Institute of Ideas or Spiked incarnation, I can only think of Observer columnist Keenan Malik as an alumnus that hasn’t gone full QAnon/ GB News batshit crazy.

I remember them well from the 90’s. It was always easy to predict what their line would be. Their MO was to adopt the most ridiculous, contrarian, opposite position of the day vis a vis the bulk of the left, purely to be controversial.
 
I'd move to France (and still might) although via Brexit the fascists & racists in our population have made it more difficult to escape.
Not much of that makes sense. Frying pan to fire springs to mind. Choose your region carefully if you do move to France. Overall France looks like it has more racism than UK. There is quite a bit of EU data showing this.

We were unlawfully thrown off a job three weeks ago in the hills off Alsace (an area that is about as bad as it gets) and were called English ****ers as we were leaving. It's really bad in them hills of Alsace.

Arabs and Turks are not popular even in the more tolerant part of Alsace, ie Strasbourg. I don't think they fare too well in the rest of (white) France either.

I also think there is more fascism here, but in a different way. I mean it's overly bureaucratic and controlling vs UK, so getting things done is much more difficult, establishing yourself here requires a lot of paperwork / patience, and there will be no opened welcome arms from the authorities when you turn up. It will feel like quite the opposite.

I've been here 6 years and am coming to the end of that difficulty, and overall it's marginally a better place to live. But not because there are less racists and fascists here. There aren't less racists and fascists here. There might be more racists and fascists here. Another example of fascism is that the customs police (Les Douanes) searched all of us on a train last year. Just insisted we open our luggage on the train for them to have a good rummage through. Just routine. None of us had done anything. Where is the liberte, egalite and fraternite in that? UK police have never done that to me. I understand Les Douanes have more power than all other police departments in France. One to avoid.

I think if you are looking for slightly better weather, slightly better food, the opportunity to learn / improve a language, have access to other parts of Europe for much cheaper holidays, then you are onto a winner. Escaping unpleasant people will not yield the results you hope for, I am sure!
 
I can only respond with my personal experience of nearly 20 years in S W France, in that time we had 1 instance of 'racism'.

My wife was having her hearing tested when the lady consultant said she ought to go back to the UK for the test for her hearing aids because she would not understand the test (my wife has very good French), the nurse just looked at my wife and gave a shrug.

Maybe it is being out in the sticks as opposed to city but lots of instances of general kindness, a tap on the door and bowl of cherries is waiting lots of occasions returning home to find fruit or veg. on the doorstep, many invites for coffee and cake.

We did involve ourselves in local events and the various communal meals etc but I would not know if that had any bearing on the very pleasant attitude of everyone we met.

Dave
 
I've been here 6 years and am coming to the end of that difficulty, and overall it's marginally a better place to live. But not because there are less racists and fascists here. There aren't less racists and fascists here. There might be more racists and fascists here. Another example of fascism is that the customs police (Les Douanes) searched all of us on a train last year. Just insisted we open our luggage on the train for them to have a good rummage through. Just routine. None of us had done anything. Where is the liberte, egalite and fraternite in that? UK police have never done that to me. I understand Les Douanes have more power than all other police departments in France. One to avoid.
If this one of your best examples of fascism in France, the country is probably doing OK.

You seem to have a surprising amount of trouble accepting that different countries operate according to different rules. The fact that Les Douanes have the right to search your property/car etc. wherever you are in France without having to give you a particular reason is just the nature of things in France (OTOH and IIRC, you have the hallowed right to insist that they wear white gloves to do so) and yes, it is probably different from what can happen in the UK. Call it fascism if you like, I prefer to reserve the term for more serious instances.
 
Not sure exactly where I’d head if I had the resources, but much of the world seems much less overtly far-right than England at present. I certainly do not feel at home here anymore.

I left because of the way cishets had stoked transphobia, the physical threats, the attacks, the checking for spit in my coffee — attempts to delegitimise my existence and genocidal language used by not only the people of that country, but the establishment — the way the government and the whole media has weaponised and normalised hating my kind, the chronic underfunding and lack of access to treatment services. Waiting 3 years for throat surgery, 5 years for trans people to get PrEP because we are funnelled into GICs… that’s a death sentence.

That and so much more.

Nowhere is perfect but I am with my circle of friends and partners and lovers with plenty of us to band together and they are people worth fighting with and for. I have nothing for me in the UK. I doubt I will be returning permanently after I have closed my tax and property affairs — nor will I seek dual citizenship.

England can drown in its own bile. It has so much further to fall.
 
Arabs and Turks are not popular even in the more tolerant part of Alsace, ie Strasbourg.

Looking at the current popularity of the Rassemblement National, the future of the country looks grim. Yet I won't throw a stone at the voters, as being not French I don't know how it feels like to have that many attacks perpetrated on my soil in three years. My head would spot the difference between terrorists and normal people, but my heart might not, especially so if someone among my friends or relatives had suffered from the attack. And many many people were directly affected by the killings if you count in all family members of those who were killed, the neighbours of the crime scenes, the police forces, nurses, social workers, etc.

I am not a fan of Daech to say the least, they have made the life of the resident muslim population even more difficult than it already was, and for a number of years. More hatred is all they have achieved.
 
I can only respond with my personal experience of nearly 20 years in S W France, in that time we had 1 instance of 'racism'.

My wife was having her hearing tested when the lady consultant said she ought to go back to the UK for the test for her hearing aids because she would not understand the test (my wife has very good French), the nurse just looked at my wife and gave a shrug.

Maybe it is being out in the sticks as opposed to city but lots of instances of general kindness, a tap on the door and bowl of cherries is waiting lots of occasions returning home to find fruit or veg. on the doorstep, many invites for coffee and cake.

We did involve ourselves in local events and the various communal meals etc but I would not know if that had any bearing on the very pleasant attitude of everyone we met.

Dave

30 odd years ago my parents lived in a rural part of France, and they said it great. Everybody knew everybody, and the locals were very friendly. They said if there was a barbecue or birthday etc. Everyone from the village would be invited. No doors locked etc.

About 10 years ago I went to Paris and thought people weren't particularly nice, so as you say, It very much depends on the area#.
 


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