[Kojak]

Gary Lineker is employed - and paid a seven-figure sum - as we speak. Neil Oliver hasn't been a presenter on the BBC for four years. Why do the views he expresses today stop the BBC from airing an old episode of a programme he was part of over a decade ago looking into the coastline of the UK?

They don't! Look, I liked Coast. I thought it was a great show. I just find it somewhat amusing that Lineker has been taken off air - completely spuriously IMO - for expressing his opinions, yet they replace a programme taken off air by the fallout to all this with an episode of Coast, the presenter of which later became known for his own, very very out-there views. I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing - just that it's a thing. And quite an ironic thing, at that.

One of the arguments put forward against Lineker is because of his association with the BBC (aka fronting a show on it) and thus if he tweeted his political opinion it could possibly damage the BBC's reputation as an impartial broadcaster. How the same case does not apply for Neil Oliver is beyond me. Yes, yes, he's made controversial comments after he filmed Coast, but his face is still on there, being associated with the BBC as it is currently still being used on air.

Are you seriously suggesting that every single person who has ever presented anything on the BBC should feel forever unable to give their opinion on anything remotely political, no matter how long ago they last worked for the corporation, because their catalogue of work will be retrospectively treated as politically biased content which cannot in good conscience be shown from that moment on?

David, I fear you're now being deliberately obtuse. That is not what ANYONE here is saying. What one or two people here ARE saying is that it seems strange that the BBC has benched Gary Lineker for voicing his opinions, yet they are more than happy to show programmes featuring other people with equally prominent views (just of a different flavour). Do you think they'd continue to show a programme if the presenter turned out to be a neo-Nazi? I think not. Or a sex offender? Well, we all know what happened to those old episodes of Top of the Pops...