To think if it was a white Tory rather than a black Labour poli...

[OldMumsy]

re the smacking thing, this would have been big thing on MN, being all socialist and all that, bunch of hypocrites. Imagine if Boris or Dave had said smack your children you would have been screeching, but Lammy, nothing, nada...

Hadn't heard a thing about this.

you know, you would have made far less of a twat of yourself if you had started a thread saying hey, what do you think of this then? some politician appears to be suggesting...

Instead you assume that everyone has a) heard all about this b) agrees with it c) gives a shit what colour someone is d) gives a shit what party someone is from

You've made a bit of a tit of yourself, all things considered.

Birds. He actually specified 'working class parents'? So working class parents need to be able to hit their children because we're too thick to be able to maintain discipline in any other way, or something? Oh yes. working class. We all beat our kids and get beaten by our husbands, who keep whippets and race pigeons.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9047317/David-Lammy-ease-smacking-rules-after-riots.html

Knock yourselves out!!

Op here, I am not racist or pissed (much), I am just thinking that if a Tory had said this it would have been jumped on by the guardianistas, but nada from any of them... so I am not wrong.

I think the point OldMumsy is making is that 'the left' would have been outraged at this suggestion if a white Tory MP had said it but haven't said much because it is a black Labour MP saying it.

I don't agree with smacking at all but I can see the point the OP is making.

He's a bloody idiot.

How insulting to working class people. Working class people HAVE to smack. What, is talking with your fists part of our working class culture or something

I'm working class. I have NEVER used smacking as a form of discipline. (Although to my great shame I did, as an inexperienced and depressed parent, on two occasions slap my eldest son. Through my own frustration. Which I am deeply ashamed of)

So, in order to combat gang culture, with knives and guns and daily violence - parents should...

be more violent.

[boggle]

This man is coming on MN for a webchat did someone say?

I can't WAIT to get my hands on him.

In a non violent way, of course...

I am that any one of any party of any colour could say something as crassly offensive and unbelievably stupid as this.

Actually, I'm not. He is a politician after all.

I am 'of the left' and I wasn't remotely aware of this.

Now that I am, I think he is being ridiculous and offensive. The party he supports and his ethnicity have no bearing on that.

It strikes me that this is a rather crude and fatuous attempt to start a ruck.

Lammy has always been a twit, regardless of colour.

Didn't he used to go out with June Pingpong? What happened to her?

Ha, I brought up two lovely girls and yes I smacked them when they were naughty like I was when I was a kid.I think you are all completely barking and making a rod for your own backs, Why spend years with horribly behaved kids when you could make your and their lives more sensible and happy?

You don't have to hit your children to raise them well and to ensure that they are good people. People who don't hit their children don't have horribly behaved children.

Nor do they have children who are afraid of them and flinch when they make a sudden movement.

I read it, thought 'knob' and turned the page!

old public school politicans were rather smacked on the arse on a weekly basis we have to remember by perkins in the upper dorm

My kids are not scared of me hecate, thats in your head only.

Yeah?

Make a sudden movement towards them with your hand and watch them flinch.

Every child who gets hit has that response. You can't help it. It's instinctive.

I must have been 30 before I stopped flinching when my parents made sudden unexpected movements with their hands.

I don't care what you think. You don't matter.

Lammy totally lost my respect over the riots. He is a sham Labour politician. The Tories can have him!

Heart of Arse, as a Tory I don't want the cunt.

the stupid thing about this is that the politician thinks that there wouldn't have been any riots if we were allowed to smack our kids a bit harder than we are allowed to by law. Someone on channel 4 news quite rightly commented that in that case they must have beaten the hell out of their kids in Kennsington and Chelsea.

Of course lack of hitting children doesn't lead to riots.

I wasn't even aware that the person who made the comments was black, not that it matters - they are still nonsense.

What's happeend to the Labour Party? Following the Tories with utter piss-up-in-brewery politics. FFS.

I am just a person with an opinion. Same as you.

your opinion that we are all hypocrites, for example. And your opinion that if you don't smack your children, they will be horribly behaved kids for years.

So it's ok for you to say whatever, it's ok for you to say that everyone who doesn't smack their children has horrible children, ok for you to chuck broad insults based on your assumptions around, but not for someone to respond to that with a different view. Oh, and the jeremy clarkson thread - where you insulted people in your OP too. That's ok.

You want to be a bitch, fine. But expect it back in spades.