cancel culture

Have you seen the story about the FA banning ‘Three Lions’ from future England games for fear of offending foreigners? Well, I have and I am fuming about it. This is political correctness gone mad. It’s the cancel culture all over again. It’s those snowflakes again, wokery at its very worst. How on earth could people be offended by a simple song like that? It’s the same with poppies offending certain groups of people. Honestly, if you’re offended, go and live in Rwanda or somewhere. You can’t say anything nowadays without someone getting offended.

The Sun ran this story today and other media outlets ran with it. Our own ‘Bristol Live’, the online clickbait arm of the failing Bristol Post, was one of them and readers were furious. Political correctness, cancel culture – oh, you know the rest of it. The only thing is this: it’s not true. And why would it be?

‘Three Lions’ is a classic football song which takes us back to 1996 when The Lightning Seeds, aided and abetted by Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, livened up Euro 96 held in England. It was a wistful, nostalgic song, about our past failings rather than current greatness. It wasn’t remotely political. It was lovely and uplifting.

The Sun said unnamed foreigners were offended by the tales of England having won bugger all since 1966. But the truth is no one is offended, just like no Muslim was ever offended by the sight of a poppy. This is nothing to do with some mythical cancel culture from the so called liberal elite: it’s everything to do with the culture wars being played out by this awful Tory government and the right wing gutter press which supports them. The workers divided will always be defeated. That’s what’s happening in Britain.

And if you saw the reader replies on Bristol Live does cut through to a large number of people, mainly the hard of thinking, who believe anything Rupert Murdoch’s drooping organ tells them.

I am not really angry about this nonsensical story, just deeply disappointed that so many people fall for this cynical, low-life politicking, deliberately and provocatively spreading outright lies.

One idiot on the Bristol Live, having fallen for the Sun’s tosh, said something similar had happened in rugby union when they tried to ban Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and because of that the rugby union chaps sang it even louder. No. No one banned it. Just that some officials and some players, specifically England’s Maro Itoje, feel uncomfortable given the songs links to slavery. If the almost entirely white crowd at Twickenham choose to sing Swing Low, it’s a matter for them and if Itoje says he finds it uncomfortable, he should be allowed to say so. But it isn’t some kind of cancel culture. But once a lie is told, and then repeated, people often tend to believe it must be true.

We’re actually more liberal than these angry hot heads same to think. The people themselves will decide which songs are sung at sporting events. If they want to sing Three Lions, they will, and if they want to sing Swing Low, they will. Time will decide, in an evolutionary way, whether they will continue to be sung. People just shouldn’t get angry about what hasn’t happened. If they do, The Sun has won. No one wants that, do they?

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