Gary Lineker’s latest outburst about Israel is his worst yet
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Gary Lineker, the BBC’s chief political commentator, believes it’s unfair that he receives so much criticism for his comments on Israel and Gaza. “The minute you raise your voice against what they’re now doing there,” he complained during an interview with the Left-wing journalist Mehdi Hasan, “you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas.”
Any such accusation is clearly outrageous. I’m quite sure St Gary doesn’t support Hamas, or indeed any other genocidal Islamist terror group.
I do, however, think he suffers from the same problem as an awful lot of Western progressives. Which is that, when it comes to Israel, he has absolutely no idea how biased he sounds.
As a matter of fact, he demonstrated this during the very same interview. Speaking about the war in Gaza, St Gary said: “I can’t think of anything that I’ve seen worse in my lifetime.”
This is a remarkable statement. Not least because St Gary was born all the way back in November 1960. And, during the 63 and a half years since, the world has endured quite a large number of brutal conflicts. Take the Second Congo War (1998-2003), which claimed an estimated 5.4m lives. And the Vietnam War (1955-75), which claimed an estimated 3.5m. And the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-89), which claimed an estimated 2m. To name but a few.
Indeed, far from being the bloodiest conflict since 1960, the war in Gaza isn’t even the bloodiest being fought right now. The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, has so far killed more than 600,000 people. Then there’s the small matter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. And, as mentioned in Saturday’s Way of the World, the ongoing conflict in Sudan. To give just one small glimpse of the horror: a 17-year-old Sudanese boy told Human Rights Watch that he’d witnessed paramilitaries shooting children and then flinging their corpses into a river.
St Gary, however, says he can’t think of anything that he’s seen worse in his lifetime than what Israel is currently doing in Gaza, in its efforts to destroy Hamas. I’ve no doubt that he’s being entirely sincere. I merely wonder how he came to such a conclusion, given that so many other conflicts in his lifetime have been even more horrifying, and killed vastly more people.
Perhaps, during his glorious playing days, St Gary was so relentlessly focused on his football that he never watched the news or opened a newspaper – and therefore simply didn’t hear about these other conflicts. I suppose that’s one possibility.
Is there anything more bonkers than banning cat flaps?
Lord Blencathra, the Tory life peer, is sick of our cats hunting birds. Indeed, such is his disgust that he has called on the Government to intervene. First, by decreeing that all cats must wear bells. And second, by banning cat flaps – so that cats can no longer come and go as they please.
How exactly these two new laws would be enforced, I’m not quite sure. For example, what are police officers to do, if they happen to spot a cat strolling along the street without a bell? Arrest it? Order it to tell them its address, so that they can arrest its owner? Or will officers be told never to leave the police station without a job lot of cat collars with tiny bells on, so that they can rectify the matter on the spot?
If anything, a ban on cat flaps seems even harder to enforce. Given that the police aren’t guaranteed to turn up when you report a burglar entering your neighbour’s house, it seems unlikely that they’ll turn up when you report a cat entering it.
The main problem with His Lordship’s proposals, however, is not that they’re impractical. It’s that, from an ecological point of view, they’re so hopelessly short-sighted.
As I’ve explained before, evidently to no avail, cats may kill lots of birds – but birds kill lots of worms. And worms, by helping to fertilise our soil, play an irreplaceable role in the natural world.
So, if Lord Blencathra really cares about protecting defenceless creatures from insatiable predators, he should call for all birds to wear bells, too. Worms may not have ears, but they can sense vibrations. And since Lord Blencathra’s plan for cats will cause the bird population to increase dramatically, we must do all we can to give our poor, vulnerable worms a fighting chance of survival.
Then again, that plan may be even more difficult to implement than the one His Lordship has already proposed. In light of which, allow me to suggest an alternative. Forget making humble animals wear bells. Let’s make politicians wear them, instead.
After all, once the election is finally called, our town centres will be full of these creatures, remorselessly preying on unsuspecting members of the public. The tinkling of their bells would at least alert us to their presence, and give us a chance to flee, before they pounce.
Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday
