[Oliver Dowden] "Ollie Robinson’s tweets were offensive and wrong. They are also a decade old and written by a teenager. The teenager is now a man and has rightly apologised. The ECB has gone over the top by suspending him and should think again."

People change. You may even change today - you see something, read something, have an interesting conversation - or just a thought pops into your head - and something about you changes. You grow a little bit more tolerant - or perhaps a little less tolerant. None of us - until we drop dead, are the finished product. Personally I find this fantastic. I can look back at the 'old me' (be that me of 5 years ago or me of 5 days ago) and compare - and I can look forward to the future me and imagine what might be.

I am extremely reluctant to criticise someone for some crass tweets from years ago. Robinson has - so far as I am aware - apologised for the tweets, and there's also no evidence that this behaviour continued. That's good enough for me. What's depressing is the number of people suggesting that this isn't good enough, how do we know Robinson isn't still a closet racist? Oh well I wasn't saying such things when I was his age! Bore off - none of us are saints. I think those so keen to criticise should stop and reflect on what type of person they want to be, and what type of world they want to live in...

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