Another Lineker Smear Flops

After the Daily Mail’s appallingly overrated “diary” hack Sebastian Shakespeare span a pack of lies about former footballer and Match Of The Day lead presenter Gary Lineker, which was easily disproved by simple recourse to the British Airways website, one might have thought that others in the authoritarian, bigoted and right-leaning press would stop and think before following up. But that thought would have been misplaced.

To no surprise at all, from the thirteenth floor of the Baby Shard bunker has come another cheap smear from disgraced former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth, who has today asked his legions of readers (Rebekah and Rupert Bonkers-Bigot) “Why doesn’t Gary Lineker tweet about the rising price of crisps that Walkers blame on Brexit?”

Kel doesn’t stop for a moment to reflect on the thought that not only have Walkers only made the price rise announcement in the last 24 hours, but also that product ambassadors do not go round slagging off the products they front for. There is also the teensy problem that many of the firms raising prices have no alternative, and in some cases have not raised prices for years previously. And then there is the fall in Sterling.

That does not bother Kel, who froths “Manufacturers make an interesting but questionable argument since the spuds are British and all the crisps are made here”. Ah, if only crisps were just spuds and nothing else, but they’re not, as Kel well knows. But on he ploughs: “They say sterling’s fall has pushed up the cost of packaging, oil and seasoning, all of which I believe”. And then there is a but, as one might expect.

“But by ten per cent? More likely two per cent, don’t you think?” Ah, the rigorous and citation-rich analysis, or maybe not. As he did with so much during his tenure of the Sun editor’s chair, Kel hasn’t got a clue and so makes it up. He ignores all those imported ingredients, and of course the transportation costs, with oil priced in dollars. You know, Kel, the dollars against which Sterling fell by around a fifth recently.

Costs keep going up, so the price of the finished product goes up too. It’s not rocket science, and most people can understand why it happens, even if they don’t like the resultant effect on their pocket. Instead, Kel whines “GARY LINEKER spends half his life on Twitter. He’s so busy, for all I know he might even employ somebody to write his tweets for him” and then says he must have someone else doing the Tweets.

Why? Because Lineker used a big and complicated word in a recent Tweet, and Kel had to nip round to ask Rebekah what it meant. So out comes the smearing iron: “he takes exception to attacks on the High Court judges for their tumultuous Brexit verdict … There’s hardly a minute goes by that he  doesn’t feel it’s his duty (or probably part of his contracts with the BBC, BT Sport or, more importantly, Walkers crisps) to share his thoughts with his followers”. Nobody can be of independent thought when Kel is around.

A word in your shell-like, Sun and Mail smear merchants. You picked on the wrong target this time. Lineker is more popular than Sebastian Shakespeare, Kelvin McFilth, and all the other dumb pundits you can muster, and more trusted. You lost this fight. Live with it.