We should return to the law as it was

On 24 January 2012, the BBC quoted Tottenham MP, David Lammy, thus:

"Over the last few decades, Westminster has spent more time telling them what not to do as opposed to offering them practical support. The endless back and forth about smacking in the early 2000s exemplified this…

Parents in Tottenham continually raise with me the real pressures of raising children for example on the 15th floor of a tower block with knives, gangs and the dangers of violent crime just outside the window. They say THEY NO LONGER FEEL SOVEREIGN IN THEIR OWN HOMES AND THE ABILITY TO EXERCISE THEIR OWN JUDGEMENT IN RELATION TO DISCIPLINE AND REASONABLE CHASTISEMENT HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM THEM.

It's too easy for middle class legislators to be far removed from the realities of the typical single mum struggling with these issues… I do say that WE SHOULD RETURN TO THE LAW AS IT EXISTED FOR 150 YEARS BEFORE IT WAS CHANGED IN 2004."

Well said, Dave. About time we heard a New Labour type say something sensible. Although it would have been nice to hear it before you got booted out of office.

How about all the race law? Harold Wilson and his jalf-Jewish Russian Home Secretary introduced the first one back in 1965. Successive governments have been adding to it ever since and its grown to such an extent that now, if a brown footballer calls a black footballer a negro, he gets banned for eight weeks and kicked from pillar to post by the PC Crowd for months on end. Trust me, the British people never wanted to be saddled with all that Brit-bashing nonsense either. Would you be in favour of returning to the common sense of yesteryear on that as well? Elsewhere, Lammy added:

“MANY OF MY CONSTITUENTS CAME UP TO ME AFTER THE RIOTS AND BLAMED THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT, saying, ‘You guys stopped us being able to smack our children… These parents are scared to smack their children and paranoid that social workers will get involved and take their children away.”

I blame the Labour government for all sorts of stuff, Dave. Most of the governmental types are a…holes who couldn’t give a damn about the British. So I’m definitely with you on returning to ‘the law as it existed for 150 years before it was changed in 2004.’ Yeah. Bring back the old ways. Nowadays, if you want to know how it used to be before the ‘middle-class legislators’ screwed everything up you’d have to go to a museum!

Speaking of which, do you remember that Culture Minister threatening to fine the country's 1,400 museums and galleries if they didn’t put more black and ethnic minority figures on their management boards? He said there was a ‘whiff of institutional racism’ about the arty types and their boards were ‘pale, male and stale!' I mean, how 'racist' was that? What an a***hole, eh?

What’s that, Dave? You were the New Labour Culture Minister at the time?

Oops.

Check out Lammy's intellectual credentials in a celebrity edition of Mastermind.