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keelansgrandad

Ollie Robinson

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Totally confused by what has happened.

The whole point of the current discussions about abuse and racism is to admit that there still are people like that and that they need to be persuaded to change their views.

It appears to me that Robinson has changed his views.

So shouldn't he be now be left alone instead of being punished?

Surely the most entrenched racists will now have a ready made excuse not to change?

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The fact he was 19 at the time is certainly a mitigating factor but nothing more than that. The ECB can't simply ignore some quite awful things he said. It's important to remember that he is expected to play in a team that includes players of colour who deserve the equal respect and treatment of their white colleagues. Thus the ECB is duty bound to ensure each of its players conforms to those fundamental requirements. A one match ban, and genuine reassurance that he no longer holds such views sounds about right to me.

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Now Dowden has stuck his oar in I think a lifetime ban is necessary. 😉

(I agree with Horsefly in reality.) 

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I think plenty of us believed some right proper BS at 19, and let's face it, many professional sportsmen are not exactly the Brains of Britain. Often many are pretty tokenly schooled and have spent large swathes of childhood focusing on the sport they aim to become professionals in. In other words, I do not expect them to have a fine grasp of all underlying currents.

This scouring of old social media posts to dig for dirt quite possibly does more harm than good. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is does Robinson act out the values desired from by the ECB when playing and are his teammates comfortable with him around?

Penalising him seems absurd. If it's such a bother, they should be really looking at those who did their due diligence beforehand. By all means apply high standards to him now, but applying them to decade-old social media posts is overegging the pudding.

In fact, I'd even say it's a bit Stasi-esque.

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8 minutes ago, Herman said:

Now Dowden has stuck his oar in I think a lifetime ban is necessary. 😉

(I agree with Horsefly in reality.) 

I hope you mean for Dowden. Persistent stupidity really does deserve a life sentence

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3 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

I think plenty of us believed some right proper BS at 19, and let's face it, many professional sportsmen are not exactly the Brains of Britain. Often many are pretty tokenly schooled and have spent large swathes of childhood focusing on the sport they aim to become professionals in. In other words, I do not expect them to have a fine grasp of all underlying currents.

This scouring of old social media posts to dig for dirt quite possibly does more harm than good. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is does Robinson act out the values desired from by the ECB when playing and are his teammates comfortable with him around?

Penalising him seems absurd. If it's such a bother, they should be really looking at those who did their due diligence beforehand. By all means apply high standards to him now, but applying them to decade-old social media posts is overegging the pudding.

In fact, I'd even say it's a bit Stasi-esque.

I wouldn't go as far as Stasi-esque, but I do think a lot of what you say is right. I do also think the ECB has to take some action to demonstrate that all players, irrespective of colour and ethnicity, are to be treated with equal respect.  Perhaps the best thing that might come out of this is that young up-and-coming sports stars can take this as a warning about just how careful they need to be regarding what they put on social media. 

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59 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

I think plenty of us believed some right proper BS at 19, and let's face it, many professional sportsmen are not exactly the Brains of Britain. Often many are pretty tokenly schooled and have spent large swathes of childhood focusing on the sport they aim to become professionals in. In other words, I do not expect them to have a fine grasp of all underlying currents.

This scouring of old social media posts to dig for dirt quite possibly does more harm than good. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is does Robinson act out the values desired from by the ECB when playing and are his teammates comfortable with him around?

Penalising him seems absurd. If it's such a bother, they should be really looking at those who did their due diligence beforehand. By all means apply high standards to him now, but applying them to decade-old social media posts is overegging the pudding.

In fact, I'd even say it's a bit Stasi-esque.

Agree, how odd that this was  brought to light as he starts his test career. He was 18/19 years old when he tweeted this stuff, all of it was wrong, but a long time ago, an overreaction by the ECB at this stage. 

Edited by Van wink

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I suppose my way of looking at it is "by all means apply current standards to current behaviours, but when you apply current standards to long-distant affairs, you run the risk of double standards".

All this does, ultimately, is stifle discourse as people start hiding things. It rewards those who hide things better rather than those who behave better. Conversely, it penalises those who don't hide things.

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the messages I read whilst completely unacceptable seemed pretty jestful and immature to be honest rather than anything that sinister. There were no personal attacks or anything of that sort and it appears someone has just dug them up to create drama.

It's 8 bloody years ago! Surely an apology and a ban from the latest round of games will do and then bring him back into the fold and get him promoting equality. The guy seemed genuinely remorseful and will have grown a lot since then. It's not like he's murdered someone.

Yet again the actual fight against racism has got lost amongst the noise, it's incredibly tiresome. Who is it actually helping? Sorry to go a bit Ron Atkinson but I was having this chat with my mates the other day (1 white guy, 1 black guy) and we all came to the same conclusion.

I honestly think we are too scared to actually fight the proper roots of extreme racism and sexism so seemingly go after the low hanging fruit so it looks like something is being done.

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I see another cricketer is about to be hung out to dry for having tweeted something perceived to be racist when he was aged 15 (see Wisden.com).  I doubt there are many people who come up to the standards required by the unforgiving woke puritans who have seemingly become our self-appointed moral arbiters.  #comingforyoutoo

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Perhaps we should go back to only having cricketers represent England who have attended public schools, because those chaps would certainly not make such racist comments. 

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15 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

I suppose my way of looking at it is "by all means apply current standards to current behaviours, but when you apply current standards to long-distant affairs, you run the risk of double standards".

All this does, ultimately, is stifle discourse as people start hiding things. It rewards those who hide things better rather than those who behave better. Conversely, it penalises those who don't hide things.

While I generally agree with you I don't think you can call them 'long distant affairs' - the tweets are from 2012/13 hardly a time when racism was considered A-OK.

I think missing a game, showing contrition (as he has done) and then moving on is the sensible thing. The unfortunate thing is the ****ing Tories and their hard-ons for the culture war have now got involved so it becomes much bigger than it is.

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What bad news are they burying while we are arguing about this? 

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12 minutes ago, king canary said:

While I generally agree with you I don't think you can call them 'long distant affairs' - the tweets are from 2012/13 hardly a time when racism was considered A-OK.

I think missing a game, showing contrition (as he has done) and then moving on is the sensible thing. The unfortunate thing is the ****ing Tories and their hard-ons for the culture war have now got involved so it becomes much bigger than it is.

Agree, but I'm purely commenting on principle rather than timescale here. I don't see this as needing to sit a game out though.

Edited by TheGunnShow

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