unexpected syntax errors

[Robin Becker]

A user is getting this error

New issue 8: bad raise syntax
https://bitbucket.org/rptlab/reportlab/issue/8/bad-raise-syntax

........

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/svg2rlg.py", line 16, in <module>
from reportlab.graphics import renderPDF
File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/reportlab/graphics/renderPDF.py", line 168
raise ValueError, 'bad value for textAnchor '+str(text_anchor)
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

however, I believe that this older syntax is allowed in python 2.7. We've had
other issues like this raised from various distros which are apparently making
changes to 2.7 which change the external behaviour eg spelling corrections to
attribute names. Could this be one of those?