Using particular terms and phrases is simply something you cannot do – under any circumstances.

But I am still surprised how people and elected politicians in particular still do this and inevitably end up in bother.

This week Anne Marie Morris, the MP for Newton Abbot in Devon, was suspended for using an offensive term whilst referring to Brexit negotiations.

She has since apologised for using the ‘N’ word but why was this even uttered in the first place?

If you think that in private or amongst a social setting people you can use certain terms and think nothing of it – then you have a problem I’m afraid.

It does show we are in fact living parallel lives.

We have the normal folk and then we have everyone else.

Coming up with excuses such as ‘in my day we used to say these things’ does not wash with me.

I recollect once speaking to someone who used an offensive term against his own culture.

He said he felt he now owned the P*** term because he was Pakistani himself.

His excuse was that he was called a lot worse ‘in his day’.

The problem was, he ended up using it so frequently other people then thought he wouldn’t mind being called it himself.

Of course he did not take well to this and all of sudden claimed he deemed it racist.

The fact is it isn’t ‘back in his day’.

We don’t live in ‘that time’.

It was wrong then and it is wrong now so can we can we stop trying to appease blatant racism.

Does that give me the right to be offensive to anyone I want when I am in my sixties?

Will I be excused from using offensive terms whenever I feel like it and blame on the fact that in my day it was fine to say it?

I don’t think so.

Naturally, though, when an apology has been issued and people are genuinely sorry then I think we should be able to move on.

I think we have a culture of labelling people for the rest of their lives over one word and one sentence.

Sometimes they may post it without realising it and other times they may utter it and only later realise what they have said.

Regardless, the simple thing to do is just think before you speak.