by Mike King
It is not often that a football club can be held up as an example of morality or as a positive example of how to deal with inappropriate behaviour, but Oxford City’s decision to sack footballer Lee Steele for writing a homophobic Tweet about Celebrity Big Brother contestant Gareth Thomas sends a out a strong message that bigotry is not acceptable.
This certainly contrasts with the treatment MP Diane Abbott received from her employer when she wrote not one, but two, racist Tweets last week.
What amazed me about the whole Abbott affair was that the media outcry was predominantly for her to apologise, not to be sacked, for her racist comments. This missed the point entirely. The issue isn’t simply that she wrote inappropriate messages on her Twitter feed, it’s that she is a racist. Her (reluctant) apology for any offense caused after the first Tweet hardly changes the fact that she, as a prominent politician in the Labour party, has shown herself to hold racist views. I’d suggest Ed Miliband could do a lot worse than nip back to Oxford for some tips.
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