Sneering presenters got schooled by Mick Lynch… again

Mick Lynch gives a speech


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Mick Lynch thrashes Britain’s rubbish posho TV interviewers so often you’d think they’d give up. But they haven’t. So, he’s had to do it again. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) Union leader spent another morning making the reality-detached sneering hacks look like fools over current strikes. And as always, we’re here for it.

First up, Lynch took on two morning TV hacks who seemed to be trying to argue that it was somehow the RMT’s fault that railway operators had been gouging money out of taxpayer subsidies:

Needless to say, Lynch ran rings around him. So, the presenter handed over to a colleague who made a nebulous point about how badly British Rail had been nationalised. She said:

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…the last time that the train companies were nationalised they were appalling, absolutely appalling.

Lynch was taking no prisoners, accusing the commentator of repeating a cliché she’d picked up somewhere. And then he explained the nuances and details of British Rail funding:

Under British Rail the last year of British Rail operations it was subsidised for £1bn. Under the private sector, as you’ve just pointed out, it’s now subsidised for £16bn.

Cliché-riddled presenters 0, Mick Lynch 1. This is the enduring pattern of his interactions with this sort of chancer.

‘Dimwitted journalists’

Lynch continues to be a hugely popular figure. Partly this is because he is a great debater, and a rare one on mainstream media in that he isn’t a smug posh git. But there’s a strong sense that what normal people really enjoy is seeing him put the boot into pompous presenters:

There is virtually nobody like Lynch in the media these days. And that is another reason he garners such support for RMT workers:

Another Twitter user said he took particular joy from Lynch’s pugilistic performances. And he’s right, there’s nothing quite like seeing a cocky right-wing presenter reduced to a quivering wreck by the RMT general secretary:

Meanwhile, someone else made an entire video of Mick Lynch as the Thunderbirds villain The Hood – during an earlier wave of strikes, Piers Morgan made a bizarre argument about Mick Lynch having the fictional character as his profile picture:

Confidence and power

It must be very hard for privileged presenters to understand why the tough-looking Londoner can run rings around them. These people are used to sneering at, and lording over, normal people.

But many working class people get it. Lynch is a figure who gives confidence to his workers. And what he tells us is important. There’s nothing that rich presenters and smug Tories can do that we can’t do better. It’s almost like we don’t need them at all – and that’s what really rattles them.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Steve Eason, cropped to 1910 x 1000, licenced under CC BY 2.0.

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  • Show Comments

    1. What saddens me more than anything about any of these strikes is that there is still a significant, if minority, section of the public who are sucked into the abject inadequacy of these presenters and the impression that they are so pathetically trying to give.

      No matter how abysmal, amateur and how ever often and categorically their adolescent nonsense is blown out of the water by this man and other union leaders, they still wish to accept that the workers are somehow, bizarrely, the guilty ones who are trying to bring the country and its people to it’s knees!

      The only reason I can think of is that they, too, are victims of this assault and robbery of the people by this greedy, super wealthy elite few, have lost all hope in fighting for their own equality and rights and, consequently, resent the strikers for fighting for something that they cannot or will not do for themselves.

      So a kind of ‘ why should you get better pay and conditions when we aren’t!?’ mentality.

      What other explanation could there be for it?

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