Off Topic The Farage sticker, free speech, and a well known bore.

For those who have missed it, the Museum has run into a little difficulty over the past 24 hours after exhibiting a new range of Charlton fan’s stickers.

One of them involves the democratically elected Nigel Farage MP - like him or loath him, and on this occasion this isn’t the point, it’s led to a heated spat between the Museum Supremos and fans who either like or don’t like Mr Farage, resulting in the club’s own museum blocking fans for having an opinion.

The hypocrisy is laughable.

The self appointed doyens of free speech, the self appointed arbiters of good taste, the cardigan- clad pub bores…now involved it appears in stifling free speech.

Below is the Charlton fan’s sticker that has apparently caused such offence…

 

Where can you buy them?

 

I take it nothing in the picture is official CAFC merchandise.

If not, and if any of these are new stickers, I would say those new ones are not part of CAFC culture or history at all.
If they can be bought that would appear to be an attempt to make money off CAFC without it's permission, and they should certainly not be in the CAFC museum in my opinion.

The Club should disown any association with non-historical unofficial merchandise showing politicians.
No politician is approved of by all CAFC fans, and that impression should never be given.
Imagine how some fans would feel if a sticker appeared showing Jeremy Corbyn in the same style. Or an elected Sinn Fein MP.

I guess if the Farage image is historical rather than new then it might have had something to do with Brexit.
But there is no visible indication of that. No Brexit Party logo or Brexit related text for instance.
And I'm not aware of any connections between Farage and Charlton Athletic.
Are there any?

Although this an issue nominally connected to CAFC it is not a matter of Club policy.
It is also by it's very nature divisive within our forum community here.
This will probably be merged with the Politics thread later when I have time.

 

Apparantly Farage is a palice fan as well! I'm not joking.

 

The one top left is a goody, but I'd have to take the Union Jack off it.

 

Perfect.

 

To return to what I believe is the point of the first post on this subject,
I think there are two things fundamentally wrong with the situation;

1) Whoever runs the Museum is wrong to include material that uses the image of a politician, especially if that politician has no connection with CAFC.
Such material will obviously divide fans, not unite them.

2) The Museum is wrong to 'block' fans - I assume that means denying them the right to express their opinions. That is a denial of free speech.
If divisive material had not been included, this second bad decision could have been entirely avoided.

Bear in mind my thoughts here are based only on the information as I have seen it in this thread.
There may be more to this story that we are not aware of.

 

Something out of nothing which led to handbags for about 3 pages.

 

I must admit, the more I've thought about this the sillier it seems.

I took it rather seriously when I first saw it, but that was while I was snatching a quick break at work and had several other pressing matters on my mind.
A storm in a teacup is what it now looks like.
And if Nigel Farage really is a Palarse fan, it's unintentionally pretty amusing.