Some Tories are seriously embarrassed at the contrast between the
success of Team GB in the Olympics and their government’s miserly and
backward attitude to health and sports. And they have every right to be
embarrassed! The Tories’ policy for tackling the wave of obesity
affecting children and adults alike is to leave their food policy in the
hands of the big food corporations! Not for nothing, two of the main
sponsors of the Olympics were Coca Cola and McDonalds – two of the worst
culprits for undermining a healthy diet.
Some Tories are seriously embarrassed at the contrast between the success of Team GB in the Olympics and their government’s miserly and backward attitude to health and sports. And they have every right to be embarrassed! The Tories’ policy for tackling the wave of obesity affecting children and adults alike is to leave their food policy in the hands of the big food corporations! Not for nothing, two of the main sponsors of the Olympics were Coca Cola and McDonalds – two of the worst culprits for undermining a healthy diet.
It is the height of hypocrisy for the Jeremy Hunt, the Minister responsible for Sports and arch-advocate for the Murdoch Empire in Westminster, to call for “Olympic-style” events at school level, when his government has cut school sports spending to the bone.
The Tories cuts have resulted in the numbers of School Sports Partnerships – the bodies responsible for coordinating and helping to organise school sports – to crash. Two years ago, Michael Gove announced a cut of over £160m in school sports and after an outcry from British sportspeople and former Olympians, it was reduced, but only by a marginal amount and then only until 1913. Recent research based on a Freedom of Information request shows that among 150 top tier local authorities, there are now 110 fewer School Sport Partnerships than there were before the cuts. Almost half of local authorities recorded a decrease in the number of School Sport Partnerships, while 28 per cent no longer have any at all.
In every region of England the number of days that PE teachers were able to work on school sports is less than that available to school sport co-ordinators employed under the old system. The worst affected regions are the West Midlands, where there was a 74% decline, the north-east, which decreased by 72%, and Greater London, which declined by 67%.
Nor is it just school sports that are suffering. There is no coherent policy on the so-called Olympic ‘legacy’. After making their tax-free millions over the Olympic period, the big corporate sponsors will pack up their bags of money and clear off, leaving the East End of London to fend for itself, along with all the rest of the local authorities struggling to provide sports and leisure services. All over the country local authorities are finding it harder and harder to keep the price of swimming pools and leisure facilities within the price range of ordinary workers and many are facing closure.
What an irony it is that half a mile from the Olympic site the Atherton Leisure Centre in Newham has been recently closed as a direct result of public expenditure cuts forced on the local borough. Thousands of people who used to use its swimming pool, gym and other facilities have nothing to replace it and in the next few years what is left of the Olympic facilities will be either dismantled or left beyond the price of ordinary people.
Yet the enthusiasm for the Olympics shows what a huge interest there is in sport in general. The BBC reported that nearly 20 million UK TV viewers saw Jamaican Usain Bolt win gold in the 100m final. Sad to say, in Tory Britain only a tiny fraction of these twenty million will ever get the opportunity to engage in their favourite sport cheaply and consistently.
