Most of the people I know - actually all - think that this is one of the slowest moving transitions between Winter and Spring they have ever known.
For me, some things are moving too fast to keep up with and others are are taking their horrible time. I have had a subtle but debilitating illness for the last few weeks and I am just getting over it now. With aching joints and pain that moves slowly - very slowly - Southwards, I thought it might be another form of covid, but tests were negative. Yesterday I heard of a friend who had the same thing, so my suspicion that it was a non-identifiable virus going around was confirmed. Non-identifiable because her doctor could not put a name to it.
So the process of destroying the BBC has accelerated by them taking Gary Lineker off Match of the Day for comments he made about the government's latest vote-catching (as if) policy to prevent small boats full of migrants from crossing the Channel and arriving - or not - on the shores of Britain in their thousands.
He said that what they are proposing is 'beyond awful' and words being used were reminiscent of 1930s Germany. That gave them the excuse to pile pressure on the Board of the BBC and accuse it of breaching the impartiality protocol normally applying to news journalists, not footballers. Lineker has hosted two young, asylum-seeking men in his own home in the recent past, so he cannot be accused of shouting from the sidelines.
Rishi Sunak has been on a mission to try to undo the damage caused by the previous two Prime Ministers, who were openly - and stupidly - hostile toward Macron and France at a time when you would think we needed all the friends we could get just 30 miles away over the water. He has taken almost £500,000,000 with him to sweeten the message, but I wonder if that will do any good. It certainly won't get him re-elected.
Nobody - at all - does not think that there is a huge and growing problem with asylum-seekers and economic migrants arriving in the UK, but in 13 years the Tories have done nothing to help anyone or anything facing a future as unpredictable as ours is right now. They have systematically sacked or ignored anyone who might have been able to put a firm hand on the tiller of this vast ship as it sails through troubled waters in a storm of its own making, and are now obsessed with tinkering about to save their own jobs in a party which they destroyed years ago for what appeared to be short-term gains.
In bowing to government pressure by suspending Lineker, the BBC has shot itself in the foot. Both his co-presenters have refused to appear on tonight's Match of the Day, and there will be no commentary either. Further to that, many - if not all - of the footballers playing will refuse to give post-match interviews on the pitch as they normally do, so the whole two hours will be in total studio silence. No pundits, no commentary and no post-match assessments. Sky Sports are going to love it.
Ironically, I don't think you can get closer to the sort of authoritarian state which Gary Lineker alluded to than to attempt to stifle free-speech on a publicly owned and government-funded TV network.
UPDATE: Almost every sport show - radio and TV - is being pulled by the BBC presenters in support of Lineker this weekend. Solidarity. Everyone who does not love Lineker seems to respect him. Also, if the government get away with this one, they will be the next for attention.
