MOTD, Lineker and 'outrage'

So the" just under a million" is a cumulative figure because they have such a backlog? I picked it up from your earlier comment.

I don’t know what the numbers of the backlog of asylum applications are at this moment - at the end of last year it was 166,000.
I used the phrase “less than a million” in round terms to highlight how exaggerated it was to claim that 100 million are coming.

Can we get back on to the topic please

Sorry for my part in going off track - I was just answering questions I was being asked about my post explaining why I supported what Gary Lineker said.

To get back on track, I was pleased to see other Sports presenters showing solidarity with Gary today.

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I’ve found the quote. She said there are 100 million around the world who could qualify for our protection. "Many of them are heading to the United Kingdom.”

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Just a brief response from me in order to correct that quote because we’ve been requested to stay on topic
(although this speech is actually what made Gary Lineker post the Tweets which are the topic of this thread, so maybe it’s not really off topic at all!)

Anyway, I heard Suella Braverman make the comment - she was speaking in the Commons, so it’s probably recorded in Hansard now.
She did not say “many of them” she said

there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear - they are coming here.”

That is the part which I thought was irresponsibly inflammatory and scare-mongering.

I can’t change my opinion about what I heard, so I’ll leave it there.

Well said Max.

God this stuff gets so convoluted, there are many rich folks who are global and have property here and there, they can just hop it at any time, others can’t.

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This is directly from Hansard

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-03-07/debates/87B621A3-050D-4B27-A655-2EDD4AAE6481/IllegalMigrationBill#contribution-8486F58E-15B3-405A-A509-36E2240C4DFC

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Surely there should be no doubt that Braverman is using inflammatory language. She exaggerates the numbers so that people get confused. Witness this thread where some seem to be thinking a million people a year are trying to illegally enter the UK. Not true. But Braverman and the government are happy to create this impression. Then she pitches in 100 million - not a single bit of justification for this.
For the record, in case anyone has missed the true statistics, 86% of refugees stop at the next country. The one bordering the place they are fleeing. Then, roughly, of the remaining 14% who head on, only a small percentage ever go all the way to the UK (this also assumes we are talking about middle-eastern / west-Asian refugees - Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen). This is why France gets x3 more asylum claims than the UK.
And whilst perhaps the comparison of the rhetoric to 1930’s Germany was a bit strong (but sort of right in principle), there are alarming comparisons to be made to the policy. The bill says it needs to create “detention centres”. There was another word for such places.

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The 100m figure is from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) estimate of the global number of forcibly displaced people. “many” is not quantified. It appears she has been misquoted in the media because the Hansard record doesn’t quote they will all be coming to the UK.

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I saw her make this introductory speech and I heard her say this, exactly as it is recorded in Hansard as shown in this screenshot of the speech in Hansard

“Let us be clear - they are coming here”

She says “many of them” in another part of the same debate.

That is not what she said in her introductory speech, which unveiled the Bill - and it was a video of this speech which was beamed around the internet and widely reported on.

Fair enough but she did clarify later in the same discussion.

Interviewer asked the right questions here:

…your questioning his impartiality but there are lots of people questioning yours. They are saying you buckled under pressure from the UK government, the Conservative party, of which you were once a member, an official, and the right-wing press to take action against Gary Lineker.

Completely spot on!

Trust the beeb to make a mountain out of a molehill.
I’m with lineker on this .
Yes something needs to be done .
However Instilling fear or threats to justify measures can’t be right…

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The globally rich should pay for this influx of people because the less wealthy have been bled dry.

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Typical hypocrisy from GB News

They are supposed to be so anti woke and pro free speech when it’s right wingers and Tories getting censored and no platformed

So where’s the support for Gary Linekers’s freedom of speech?

Quick to jump in to try to take viewers from the NBC and sabotage the protest

GB News and their right wing ilk and viewers obviously only believe in freedom of speech for Righties, Brexiters and people they agree with, not everyone else

You either believe in free speech for everyone, pot you don’t. They don’t :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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I think we must ask ourselves why did Lineker say what he did?
He knows stuff about football, and on the beeb that’s what he is hired to do. But he should not be using his popularity and exposure on TV as a football pundit to pontificate about things he Knows nothing about. This clip from Katie Hopkins says it all for me…

https://twitter.com/QueenNat_35/status/1634355713387515906?s=20

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