Lamb to the slaughter.
Perhaps an unwise effort to derail a conversation about tuition fees:
"You know the scandal in this country, the scandal, is that 40 youngsters, just 40 youngsters on free school meals got into Oxford and Cambridge in the last year. That is outrageous, and not a single black person got into one Oxford College[*] over several years. That's the sort of scandal we ought to be protesting about." -- Norman Lamb, MP, on BBC Question Time, 9th December 2010.
Well, OK Mr Lamb, since you asked, I think I'm right in saying that there has never been a black or asian Lib Dem MEP, MSP, or AM. It has had one MP[**] from an ethnic minority, for one year. Where and on what date will you be welcoming organised protest against this sort of scandal, as opposed to the "breaking promises" sort of scandal?
I think that Oxford and Cambridge should be criticised over accessibility, but they probably shouldn't be criticised in such crude terms of cherry-picked statistics, by a rich white man representing an organisation with even greater accessibility problems of its own.
[*] Merton.
[**] Parmjit Singh Gill, MP for Leicester South, 2004-2005. Not a black person.
"You know the scandal in this country, the scandal, is that 40 youngsters, just 40 youngsters on free school meals got into Oxford and Cambridge in the last year. That is outrageous, and not a single black person got into one Oxford College[*] over several years. That's the sort of scandal we ought to be protesting about." -- Norman Lamb, MP, on BBC Question Time, 9th December 2010.
Well, OK Mr Lamb, since you asked, I think I'm right in saying that there has never been a black or asian Lib Dem MEP, MSP, or AM. It has had one MP[**] from an ethnic minority, for one year. Where and on what date will you be welcoming organised protest against this sort of scandal, as opposed to the "breaking promises" sort of scandal?
I think that Oxford and Cambridge should be criticised over accessibility, but they probably shouldn't be criticised in such crude terms of cherry-picked statistics, by a rich white man representing an organisation with even greater accessibility problems of its own.
[*] Merton.
[**] Parmjit Singh Gill, MP for Leicester South, 2004-2005. Not a black person.