The England Cricket Thread
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Associate
Do we really need to discuss the difference between posting text on an Internet service and traveling abroad with the stated intent of being trained as a terrorist?
Caporegime
This is what passes for discussion in this day and age unfortunately. The more outraged and blown out of proportion you make something, the more attention you get.
I would be surprised if he was not asked as part of on boarding if he had any skeletons that would hurt reputations, both his and ECB. One of the reasons for the investigations should be if he misled the ECB or why the ECB did not do better checks. When I first heard of the tweets, I did think he was just young and dumb, but the nature of some of them are vile, and there needs to be honest discussions with him and the board about how/if he has changed.
Caporegime
Yes... in much the same way that almost everything is a scale in this world. Quite surprised that you can't see a difference between someone posting offensive tweets as a teenager and someone going and training to be a terrorist as a teenager.
Caporegime
Where are you reading the content of these. I can only find the ones about women, muslims and asian people no of which I would call "vile". There was mention of one using the N word but I couldn't find the actual tweet so I have no idea how bad it was.
Permabanned
Just google and go to images, some pics of them. They are fairly standard naive kids stuff to be honest.
Caporegime
And people don't change that much from 16-17 or 17-18 or 18-19. Some people don't change from age 12-40. The point is that he was a young lad, being a young lad and doing something stupid but not dangerous. If all the jokes and banter that me and my friends have had throughout the last 20 years was made public the outrage would be amazing. I'm sure it would for 99% of people of all colours, races, genders and whatever else you want to divvy it up by. Watch current TV for 10 minutes and you will see white men being lampooned quite openly. I'm watching Kimmy Schmidt at the moment and I reckon you get about 5 white people / white men jokes per episode and its fine.
The problem is that you cannot say anything that can be taken negatively against various groups even if its a joke. I very much doubt that he was racist or sexist when he wrote those tweets, he was just stupidly tweeting things that most people aren't stupid enough to put in the public domain. Women make jokes about men and at our expense, asian people make jokes about white people and how we look and act, Muslims make jokes about bombs but amazingly we don't need to condemn them for it but its not nasty.
Caporegime
Yeah, they are pretty much as I expected. A "lad" making low brow jokes and tweeting at his mates. I have played a lot of team sports in my time and went to uni and played sports and thats the sort of crap that is utterly routine. The sort of crap that goes both ways and regardless of sex or race, people just get on with each other and take the **** in good faith. I would say it must be exhausting to be permanently offended by everything and seeing the worst in everyone but I assume its actually very easy when someones default view is to assume that everyone is nasty and intending to offend.
I don't think we need a rant about white people being victimised really? FWIW I haven't even seen these tweets I just took note of people absolving him of responsibility purely because of his age. If we apply that logic to one we should apply it to all surely?
It's highly likely that he was just a bit of an idiot but any major organisation cannot be seen to just brush these things under the carpet. The ECB, like the FA, are meant to be standard-bearers and had to take some action. In normal circumstances I'd imagine he'd have been sent on some sort of educational course and given a slap on the wrist but the fact that it came out on the day that England were making a stand for unity gave the ECB no choice but to suspend him while they investigate.
Yeah and now Boris is wading in saying it was a bit OTT (hasn't he got better things to be worrying about?), but realistically they aren't going to reverse the suspension now - he's going to miss 1 test match, big deal. It would create more controversy if they suddenly reinstated him, you'd then have the PC brigade up in arms about how the issues aren't being taken seriously.
Let him serve his suspension, there's no ranking points at stake anyway, then he can return for the India series.
Let him serve his suspension, there's no ranking points at stake anyway, then he can return for the India series.
Caporegime
Thats what you took from that post? That white people are being victimised. I was quite literally saying that its fine that they take the **** out of white people. Who cares. Crack on. The issue is that we all laugh at those and then someone makes a joke about black culture and suddenly its racist. No one is absolving him of responsibility, they are just saying "have a bit of common sense this was years ago and he has apologised" and yes, we should apply the logic that someones action in general shouldn't hold that much weight if they are a long time in the past and they have changed. People also usually do a lot of growing up between their late teens and mid-late twenties.
Who knows currently honestly. Common sense went out of the window a long time ago. Companies and organisations are so scared of being accused of not taking something seriously enough that they just automatically overreact in the other direction.
Caporegime
Seems a bit strange for him to comment on it after some of the remarks he's made much later in life than these Robinson tweets.
I'm not saying this is necessarily my view, but there might be some who would argue that's what's needed for a bit to really stamp out racism and the like. The over-reaction makes people think twice and really question their behaviour "Can I say this? Could this be construed the wrong way?".
It's like when Tony Adams got banged up, just happened to coincide with a big drink-driving campaign for Xmas. Some felt his sentence was a bit harsh but maybe it made the difference between another pint or a glass of coke for one or two people.
It's just desperately cynical PR....same as him saying the failure of the European Super League was down to Brexit freedom
Trying to score points with the commoners, without actually having to do anything....
Caporegime
You can make any number of weak arguments for these things though. Its very easy to find the offence in very little if thats what you are looking for but the question is, should we? Racism to me used to be a horrible word and something that I would take very seriously. Now it holds about 1/10th of the impact because it just means "something that could be interpreted as negative towards another race". All these things are just being watered down.
Permabanned
Yeah I hear this weak argument condoning the racists quite a bit on here.