Sport

Q. Sport & Leisure - a reflection of a Society’s Success, Health and Happiness? Tell us your thoughts.

Sport and leisure are vital. At a time when we surrounded by opinion that 50% of our children will be obese by 2025, told that 30% of the adult population is obese and that will bring a dramatic rise in the cases of heart attacks and diabetes, we must take some action.

Most people like sport and even those that don’t enjoy sport enjoy the feel good factor when British sportsmen and women do well.

At the moment British Sport is in probably its healthiest position for years. We finished 4th in the medal table at the Beijing Olympics, 2nd in the medal table at the Beijing Paralympics, the world Formula one champion is British, we have a male tennis player in the top four, four of our golfers are in the top twenty and so on and so on. And it’s not just our senior sportsman. In Sydney at the recent Olympic Sports Festival, the British kids won 68 medals and although there is no official medal table published, unofficially Britain finished top of the pile.

So the Heroes are there. Which is good because all kids need heroes? So how do we get more kids playing sport? Let’s say straight away that playing sport doesn’t necessarily mean kids have to participate in contact or team sport; and sport or activity which involves a bit of movement is what’s required.

So how do we continue the success story of British sport and get more and more kids and adults involved in some sort of activity. At the moment the national lottery is contributing part of its cash receipts to the Olympic fund. The NDP would continue to use that money for the develop sport. Once the Olympics is over this money would go to UK Sport who would be told to use this substantial amount of money to develop sporting activity. This money would be aimed at grassroots sport and not provide more money for the elite sports. The NDP would maintain the existing grants to UK Sport, which would be used, as now, at the elite and championship level.

It is vital we get more kids involved in activity. The NDP would like to see the big governing bodies of sport, the Football Association, the Amateur Athletics Association, the Lawn Tennis Association etc. start develop programmes mirroring the England & Wales Cricket Board’s Chance 2 Shine programme. To their credit the ECB are also developing street cricket. And there are kids, who might just be spending their leisure time on the streets, joining up to this type of scheme at a prodigious rate.

We are aware that a number of professional football clubs do much in their own community, however we don’t whether to FA and the other organisations mentioned above have youth development programme.

Any information would be welcomed.

Tackling the lack of activity displayed by many of our people is something the NDP would take on immediately. Naturally we would not operate in the same way as he current government who, if they could be bothered to take on a development programme such as this, would force people to participate; the NDP would encourage more and more people to take up any sort of activity, which helped reduce the chances of heart attacks and diabetes.

We would like to see activity classes promoted by GPs; these activities could be anything from ballroom dancing to rugby and open to all ages.

Maybe membership to activity classes, gyms and sports clubs could be subsidised in some way, possibly a similar scheme to the gift aid scheme could be introduced.

Sport and leisure should be part of the school curriculum. Every pupil should attend at least two one-hours every week. It doesn’t have to be team or contact sports, it can be dance, or pastime as long as it gets kids moving.

Post a Comment

Please Login or Register to post a comment.