You Don’t Know What You’re Doing

Premier League football has returned to the scene, albeit behind closed doors. So, with the inevitability of night following day, have pundits trying to demonstrate their knowledge of the game in an effort to bolster their superior insights on, well, just about everything. Sadly, all that has happened is that two of their number have demonstrated nothing more than an ability to do zero research, and as a result fall flat on their faces.

First to show that being a star pundit really is money for old rope was the Daily Mail’s singularly unappealing asset Sarah “Vain” Vine, for whom research is the kind of thing only the little people do. “Now that the ban has apparently been lifted on so-called political gestures on the football field, I’m much looking forward to seeing a few poppies this Autumn in remembrance of those who actually gave their lives to protect our freedom”.

Her sniping was aimed at those taking a knee before both of yesterday evening’s games, a gesture that all players and match officials observed. Paul Cotterill was quick to preserve the evidence. “Saving screenshot as standard procedure in case of deletion. Poppies worn on shirts is norm in Premier League”. Ms Vine had been caught not researching. Again.

Poppies, or at least a poppy emblem, are a standard feature on Premier League shirts each Autumn. Too late, Ms Vine deleted her howler, while Sunder Katwala noted “Sarah Vine has deleted her tweet, saying that 'now that political gestures are allowed [on football shirts], I look forward to seeing a few poppies' after hearing that poppies are worn on football shirts every year, before the shirts are auctioned for the Royal British Legion”.

But she wasn’t finished. “Not in international games - or at least that was my understanding. Perhaps I am wrong”. Two things here. One, she was slagging off the Premiership, not “international games”. And Two, as the BBC reported THREE YEARS AGO, “Fifa is set to lift the ban on displaying the poppy after talks with football associations in the UK”. How long before the Mail’s lawyers instruct her to desist?

Still, the blokes wouldn’t make the same mistake, would they? You don’t want to ask. After former UKIP MEP Patrick “Lunchtime” O’Flynn sneered “For the 2nd day running BBC R4 is failing to give any coverage or attention to the very many critics of Premier Lge players wearing the name of an extremist organisation on the backs of their shirts”, in another dig at Black Lives Matter, the male competition to Ms Vine was not long in arriving.

And that was despite Alistair Barrie warning “Could you point me towards some measured & verifiably independent sources on how BLM is an extremist organisation? I keep hearing they’re either communist terrorists hellbent on revolution, or living saints. To me, they look like a pressure group. I’d like more info”. Someone wasn’t listening.

That someone was Neil Wallis, who likes to be called the Wolfman, but is better known as “The Rasping Fuckwit”. Off the end of the pier he went in no style at all. “Well, those #BLM events in the Premier League matches last night set a very welcome precedent for Remembrance Sunday and every club and every player to proudly wear a poppy?”

Fuckwit by name, fuckwit by nature. There you have it: two of the finest pundits the right-wing press can offer. Now you know why trust in the press has gone down the pan.

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