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Wednesday 26 January 2011

Equal or Not?

Andy Gray
As you may have heard Sky Sports pundit Andy Gray has been fired following comments aired on Saturday’s Liverpool/Wolves game. During this game Gray made a comment regarding a female official’s ability to judge the game. Gray was then offiically dismissed after the release of off-air studio footage showing Gray and colleague Richard Keys directing inappropriate behavior towards a female colleague.

The interesting aspect of this story is that all comments that lead to Gray’s dismissal were made off-air and were published by a Sky source with the intend of damaging his reputation. A spokesmen for Sky stated that Gray had been dismissed for ‘unacceptable and offensive behavior’ but they were still looking into the source of the leaks.

Factions opposing the fairness of the dismissal believe that Gray had no malicious intend and the comments were simply light-hearted banter between colleagues. Many people have also stated that this does not bide by equal rights as panelist on popular ITV show ‘Loose Women’ often make unnecessary sexist remarks with no repercussions.
Lorraine Deschamps, an ambassador for the FA feels as though more women should be involved in modern football and that “…their [Andy Gray & Richard Keys] anachronistic views have only served to highlight the change”.



Sian Massey, Female Official

Opposing this comment was Coleen Nolan of the Daily Mail who in her column stated that she strongly felt as though Gray should not have been sacked as it was clearly a joke and was never meant to be heard.

- What are your opinions on the matter?
- Is the decision to sack Gray in accordance with equal rights?
- Has it become publicly acceptable for women to have an open bigotry towards men?

4 comments:

  1. If the comments were made off air what is the problem? It was just abit of chat that somebody obviously took to heart abit too much.
    I dont agree that his job should of been taken from him, I dont even think a warning would of been fair either :/
    I myself have watched loose women a few times and find their comments towards men and 'anything you can do I can do better' attitude are much worse than this but they get applauded for acting like complete witches.

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  2. "Factions opposing the fairness of the dismissal believe that Gray had no malicious intend and the comments were simply light-hearted banter between colleagues"
    I think it is some kind of normal to mock some colleagues. But if you want you can work together with every person

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  3. I think sexism works in the other direction now. in all adverts/romantic comedies, men are shown to be the stupid ones. Learn to take a joke, and let him keep his job.

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  4. I agree completly, however, they wont give him his job back now purely to save face :/

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