“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
George Bernard Shaw.
Several years ago a new £10m swimming pool was announced for Squire Lane across town, despite there being a nearby pool in Shipley.
Simultaneously, outlying pools in Bingley and Queensbury were closed due to issues around running costs but no replacements were to be built. Richard Dunn Sports Centre was replaced by Sedbergh and Bowling Park refurbished at a cost of around half a million.
Now, thanks in part to a Government Levelling Up grant of £20m, Squire Lane is reborn but at a cost of £48m; how so? The council claim that the £28m gap will be from capital and borrowing but if they could not afford to repair Bingley and Queensbury, how can they suddenly find £28m?
I have made the point repeatedly that many outlying areas of Bradford consistently miss out on sports funding with cricket, football and sports villages all awarded to largely Labour-controlled, inner-city areas. Yet if we really are one city, then surely decent facilities should be spread fairly.
Writing this I came across an article (22/2) in the T&A by local MP Imran Hussain bizarrely blaming a lack of government investment for the decline of grassroots sports clubs.
Grassroots sport – even football – has been in decline for decades. The natural feeders – state schools – have little provision for sport and few teachers able to teach it. He also conveniently ignored the focus on certain postcodes benefitting from huge investment in recent years. In truth, we are a lazy, unfit society.
As a sports-mad kid the facilities grassroots clubs “enjoyed” were basic to say the least; however, the problem today is not resources it is participants and volunteers. He wrote “we shouldn’t have to be relying solely on the goodwill of volunteers” missing the point that the very essence of grassroots clubs is a community of volunteers.
Hussain is utterly clueless so far as the real issues facing grassroots sport, believing that cash will cure all – it will not. There are many local clubs working hard to provide young and old with a purpose but society has changed markedly and participation sport has withered.
Instead of bleating for more cash he would be well advised to get off his backside and see the real issues rather than grandstanding and blaming it all on the government. But that might require some real effort.
I did email him but – surprise, surprise – silence.
The Best Job In The World
As an occasional viewer of breakfast television – the bright, gaudy, loud ITV version – I nominate a certain Andi Peters as having the best job in the world.
All he seems to have to do is wake up in some sun-kissed part of the world each day and do a two-minute segment encouraging people to enter a raffle to win hundreds of thousands of pounds. This is presumably so they can live like him.
And that is all he does. Imagine the furore if this was the BBC? I can only think that landing and retaining such a job means he must know dark secrets about those above.
This morning he was in Monaco…if only?
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