Politics

As Gary Lineker resumes his duties as the BBC’s highest-paid employee, it is worth appreciating that one of the Corporation’s greatest strengths is that its own journalists are willing and able to criticise the organisation in their coverage without professional repercussions. The broadcaster’s many critics should recognise this self-flagellation for what it is: a vital demonstration of transparency. Unfortunately, having worked at the heart of BBC News throughout the pandemic, I have learned that this readiness to admit errors publicly only extends so far. Impartiality should be the starting point of everything BBC News does. Instead, editors are working backwards when it comes to Covid. They are skewing contemporaneous coverage

I would be very happy if I never had to hear the name Gary Lineker again. He was a vague presence in my childhood thanks to his playing the game of football and his advertising of a brand of delicious, obesity-inducing crisps. But after more than a week in which his name has dominated every news bulletin, I have serious Lineker-fatigue. I feel as one might had we just had a fortnight of discussion and talk of the collapse of major institutions due to a political view expressed by Russ Abbot. To speak plainly, I do not care to hear the views of a retired footballer or crisp-seller on the

This week Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian to win Best Actress at the Oscars – and not by playing a wise mentor, a martial arts fighter or an exotic villain, those classic Asian pigeonholes. No, the 60-year-old played a struggling immigrant mum in the mind-bending film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which also won Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Yeoh, who is Chinese-Malaysian, dedicated her acceptance speech to ‘all the little boys and girls who look like me’. You don’t need to be little to appreciate the moment, though. For much of my life, Asians have been firmly out of the spotlight. But in the past few years,