Posturing Lineker is ignoring real child victims

Westminster Noticeboard...

HOW sadly predictable that oh-so right-on football pundit Gary Lineker felt compelled to comment on the controversy surround-ing the ages of ‘child’ migrants arriving in Britain from the Calais Jungle camp.

Reacting to widespread surprise that many of the arrivals looked considerably older than 18, the Match Of the Day presenter tweeted: ‘the treatment by some towards these young refugees is hideously racist and utterly heartless. what’s happening to our country?’

his outrage was typical of the modern tribe of narcissist celebrities ensconced in their mansions who cynically use social media to burnish their credentials as deeply caring human beings.

this, of course, was the same Gary Lineker who tweeted after the EU referendum: ‘Feel ashamed of my generation. we’ve let down our children and their children.’

Is it asking too much of Lineker that he should stick to football and not, with unconscionable arrogance, sneer at the great majority of Britons who, incidentally, pay his vastly-inflated salary at the BBC — an organisation that is meant to be politically neutral.

the fact is that, over recent years, this country has welcomed millions of migrants.

Concerns that the Government’s well-intentioned policy of allowing child refugees from Calais into this country is being cynically abused are not ‘racist’ or ‘heartless’.

THIS week’s batch of arrivals from Calais follows an amendment to the Immigration Bill by the Labour peer Lord Dubs, who had campaigned for the UK to take in 3,000 lone, child migrants who were already in europe.

his call was particularly powerful as he himself came to Britain as a refugee in 1939 as a six-year-old. he arrived on a Kindertransport train from Czechoslovakia, escaping the persecution of Jews by the nazis.

the crucial word here is ‘kinder’ (German for ‘children’).

As a child, Lord Dubs travelled across europe to London’s Liverpool Street station. his mother later joined him in the UK, but his father then died, leaving her, as she said, with ‘no husband, no money, no family — nothing’.

Other children — and they clearly were children — fled here clutching battered dolls and teddy bears, some still with the Star of David sewn on their jumpers. It is haunting memories such as these that led people today to agree that unaccompanied child refugees trapped in the squalor of the Calais Jungle should be given asylum in the UK.

they didn’t expect a bunch of swarthy, broad-shouldered young men, some looking to be in their 30s, who deliberately destroyed their identification documents.

It costs councils an estimated £48,000 a year to look after each of these men with five o’clock shadows.

Inevitably, vulnerable children already in our social services system will not be getting the care they need as homes struggle to cope with this new influx.

which brings me back to I’m-more-virtuous-than-you Gary Lineker, who is simply kowtowing to his politically correct bosses at the BBC.

Indeed, it was telling that, in its coverage of this week’s arrivals from Calais, BBC news — unlike newspapers — pixelated footage of the ‘children’ so that viewers couldn’t see their facial hair.

Such disgraceful censorship exposes once again the Corporation’s Left-wing agenda — and is an insult to those boy and girl refugees who genuinely need to be allowed into this country. they are the true victims of this debacle.

DURING the debate that ended with MPs voting to strip ‘spiv’ Philip Green of his knighthood, he was compared to disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell. Yes, Captain Bob was filthy rich, fat, owned a tasteless yacht, had ghastly, spoilt children . . . and plundered his workers’ pensions. But at least Maxwell had the decency to fall off the back of his boat.

MRS MAY reminded me of Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz when she wore bright red shoes to the EU leaders’ summit. Maybe she was sending a coded message to Tin Man Jean-Claude Juncker and the Cowardly Lion, Francois Hollande.

the tories held David Cameron’s former seat of witney in thursday’s by-election, but with a majority reduced by more than 20,000. I bet the margin would have been much bigger if Dave had kept away — rather than joining can-vassers. Voters always despise any MP who ditches them mid-Parlia-ment, forcing an unnec-essary vote.

AFTER two months of Strictly training, Ed ‘Glitter’ Balls claims he’s lost three-quarters of a stone. But he still looks like the Michelin man. As part of Labour’s Treasury team in government, Balls got used to growing fat while the rest of his countrymen had to tighten their belts.