Would any one here like to apologise for anything they said 30 years ago?

unbelievable

Forgive 'n Forget, that's what I say, especially after I said "no way will this win the gold cup" 30 years ago.

does anyone know how many times we're allowed to watch & laugh
at the mike tyson hoverboard footage before it becomes a racist incident

.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35192265


Where will this 'apology' nonsense end? 

On the basis of this ridiculous apology, you could probably fill an entire 5 year Parliamentary term with one Minister after another apologising for something someone in power said on the record from the Middle Ages through to the 1980s.

The 1985 memo, written by Mr Letwin and future Conservative MP Hartley Booth, urged Mrs Thatcher to ignore claims that rioting in mainly black inner city areas was caused by social deprivation and racism.

"The root of social malaise is not poor housing, or youth 'alienation', or the lack of a middle class," they wrote in the document, which has been released by the National Archives.

"Lower-class, unemployed white people lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale; in the midst of the depression, people in Brixton went out, leaving their grocery money in a bag at the front door, and expecting to see groceries there when they got back.

"Riots, criminality and social disintegration are caused solely by individual characters and attitudes. So long as bad moral attitudes remain, all efforts to improve the inner cities will founder."

Why apologise for telling the truth?

Crime and criminality is a complex issue involving the interplay between a variety of causes - individual freewill, the fear of punishment, social deprivation, lack of role models and many many more.

Trite soundbites by Politicians who always have a monopoly on the truth and then apologies to placate the professionally offended get us precisely nowhere.

Well, well, well, who would have thought this?

Without a trace of irony, just look at which well-known politician of the BBC dragged before the cameras to speak on this non-issue for the lunchtime news? It's so good to know she has never herself made any disgraceful statements in her much more recent past.

Just over 10 minutes into this broadcast.

Viewers are warned they might find the stench of hypocrisy a little overpowering.

.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06sf5d6/bbc-news-30122015

Andrew Neil, nailed her one night on her racist views, in the end she just kept refusing to answer his questions, again and again.

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tc6Cb3wHu8

Can I apologise for something I said more than 30 years ago, I can't believe I said this.......I DO,

EO - how anyone can disagree with that memo is incredible.

And to call it racist is ignorance beyond belief.

It seems we're forbidden to draw any conclusions about what people of varying backgrounds contribute to the world.

This being the case, how can the world ever advance? Until we accept that there is a massive problem among black communities (see Africa), the problems will persist.

alun - did you catch the end bit of that?!

The reporter says 'it's an embarrassment to a modernising minister'.

Yuk yuk and more yuk!!!!!!!!!!!!

If it's 'modern' to bury the truth, apologise for speaking the truth and be under pressure to quit for believing the truth, God help us all...

Injera, yes I did, and just managed to keep my lunch down.

The staggering thing is that the BBC feels no shame about dragging Madame before the cameras to chat on this as if she has full integrity, without so much as a reference to her own disgraceful remarks in more recent times.

There is always a scum element in any community regardless of race.

Liberal luvvies fail to understand this.

To trot out Diane Abbott on such matters is somewhat laughable.

still don't see how letwin was wrong - there are STILL horrendous problems with black gangs in london

I was a contestant bullseye

a northerner

won the speedboat,sold it

how I could use it today

two words ----

KIDS COMPANY

Seems no less offensive to believe that certain people are unable to prevent themselves from committing violent crimes unless offered their own special social measures and financial subsidies.

By apologising,  Letwin is fuelling the movement that tries to prevent free speech being voiced whenever ethnic groups are involved in an issue.
They want everyone to back away from telling it as it is.

He's got nothing to apologise  for except to protect his own career from these people.
Better if he'd said ''I stand by every word of the report'' and then the rest of the  government had come out in support.

Agree

Get ideas out there, wrestler around with them, challenge the thinking behind them and take public opinion with you.

I've always thought freedom of speech is the ultimate tool to advance any society and that the best of competing ideologies / thought processes will always triumph over 'lesser' ones society reject.

Nick Griffin? I'm all ears man. Let's hear what makes him tick. Tyson Fury, Diane Abbott, David Icke.

Instead we just get supposedly intelligent people, who should be able to debate the above and their like into a puddle on the floor, going 'Nasty Fascist / Luvvie / Nutter!'

i don't mind the bit in bold below, but the bit about money to tackle the problem going to Rastafarian arts and crafts workshops and disco and drug trade is pretty f*cking offensive.

Thanks for the laughs chaps you never fail to deliver right on cue

If only we could place bets on what people would say I'd be a millionaire

letwin gone up im estimation

When the owl hoots at midday, that's when the cockroach will be king


The only winning ticket holder!

Scooped the fking pool bigtime there didn't you Baron?

I've met Letwin and he is an oily creep.  And as someone who has been the target of racial generalisations himself you'd think he'd be a bit more careful.

"No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin."

Aneurin Bevan

- and Tommy Toes

and the scum that have represented the labour party for decades from kinnocks time are what exactly!!??

There's two questions one of which can easily be answered. Did the dirt poor wreck Brixton during the depression or not when there was real poverty? I wasn't there but suspect not. So what's the problem with that statement?

The second is more problematic and can't really be answered easily relating to what young black people would do with money pumped into their area. That of course presupposes that we should be pumping more money specifically to address their concerns over those of other groups. Discrimination is either right or wrong. Including, "positive discrimination".

I also deplore the closing down of people expressing views others don't like. You don't have the right not to be offended I'm offended by those cr babies at Oxford trying to pull down Rhodes statue. I'm not bleating about it or calling for them to be slung out of the University though.