Sally had a letter published in The Daily Telegraph today - well done!
Oliver

Caborn's legacy

Sir - If Mr Caborn is serious about "building physical activity back into
people's lives" (Feb 9) then could we please have a reversal of Sport
England's disastrous discrimination against the outdoor pools of this
country? A policy decision was taken back in 1996 to rate these as "zero
priority" and as a result no outdoor pool has received a Sport England grant
in the last decade and local authorities have been able to bulldoze with
impunity (the single exception was a grant given to an outdoor pool in 1997
to become an indoor one).

Children do not think about exercise in the way that adults do: they don't
measure it out.They just want to dive in and have fun. If a local pool is
available they will spend hours there; when the pool has become a car park,
then Mr Caborn's legacy is already written in the dust.

Sally Wainman
Ipswich

---------------------

Here's extract of the 9 Feb article she refers to:

Richard Caborn, the 63-year-old Labour MP for Sheffield will set a
Westminster record as he becomes the longest serving minister for sport in
one single period. .... Although Caborn expects to retire to the
backbenches if Gordon Brown takes over as Prime Minister later this year, he
is still trying to push through major changes. He is the driving force
behind the European Sports Review, which calls for sweeping changes to the
way football is run and has set him on a collision course with the Premier
League. Caborn met with the club chairmen yesterday in an attempt to thrash
out their differences.

He is also trying to persuade the Treasury to give more money to sport to
help the fight against obesity, crime and social exclusion. He is
considering a ground-breaking idea to make four to six hours of sport a week
part of Anti Social Behavioural Orders (ASBOs). Then there are those
governing bodies, such as the Football Association, who are still resisting
calls to modernise.

"For the first time in decades we are actually having to consciously build
physical activity back into people's daily lives," he said. "We have, for
decades, been designing it out of people's lives, whether it's lifts or cars
or whatever. So sport is one of those things that can start being an agent
for change and we need to convince Whitehall that they need to invest in
sport, not just for sport but to actually deliver government policy."