London Olympics legacy "a failure"?

[spring hall convert]

Heavily politically biased (faulty) logic there, methinks. ' "Legacy" is just a load of bollocks spouted by politicians on the take, whilst spending ludicrous sums of your money on making them look good' - I fully agree, and so obviously does Tessa Jowell. Far from 'not getting that memo', she obviously sees things how they are, and has gone for the jugular by telling the truth. Honesty, really.

I'm having an angry day. Sorry 'bout that

I do have my doubts about Jowell as a serious politician though. She was on LBC with Alistair Campbell the other day and she seemed scared of him and deferred to him at every opportunity. She seems a nice, well intentioned lady but I get a feeling the big fish run rings round her.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

According to Tessa Jowell.

Did London 2012 inspire a generation of children? My children were a bit young to be inspired by 2012 - although they quite enjoyed watching the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Of course she was going to say that, and of course it hasn't left any legacy for the young, it eas never going to. Too few playing fields, too few sports you can do for free, or cheaply and too many parents happy for them to sit on the computers all day. I gather they're all too fat to get out of the doorway now too.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Typical government bullshit as they tried to justify the outrageous cost of the London olympics. Of course it was never going to inspire a generation of children. And the legacy was always very questionable. £272m to convert the olympic stadium for football, most paid for by the taxpayer? What a joke.

Quite. The 'legacy' aspect is one of these meaningless boxes the bidders have to tick and spin some yarn about. It's not like there wasn't previous...

'After The Party: What happens when the Olympics leave town'

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...pens-when-the-olympics-leave-town-901629.html

 

[Gwylan]

That assumes all sport is only played in school hours. The vast majority of Olympic sports aren't available in any schools but participation levels are up

i don't know how to make it simpler I'm afraid. I thought that was straightforward - obviously not

Sports England's latest survey from earlier this year "The number of people participating regularly in sport is down, by 125,000 to 15.6m"

 

[Mo Gosfield]

If the government had something like "Well, we can't spend any more as Labour squandered all the money", we'd just put it down to the rough and tumble of politics but a spokesman said that the legacy worked as people were doing more exercise every week.

This seems strange to me: Jowell says that research shows that fewer kids are doing sport at school. And in another article on the BBC site, it talks about the big decline in people playing football and cricket, how fewer people are going swimming and a drop in people playing golf. There is an increase in cycling but not enough to counteract that lot - so where does the government get its figures from?

Among the adult population now, it has become fashionable to ' keep fit. Every weekend you see roads and pavements covered with red-faced, knock-kneed, splay footed, pigeon-toed, overweight and unfit people doing untold damage to their hips and knees in a desperate attempt to get fitter. Gyms are full of relatively young people, working out on weights, pounding out miles on treadmills or exercise bikes and all inside. Its fashionable to develop your body. Everywhere you look, young men are displaying rippling biceps and teashirt hugging chests. Young women are working out in their tens of thousands, desperate to stave off cellulite and ' batwings ' Its the in thing. Everyone is doing it. Its fashionable. A few years back, the only people you would see in gyms would be professional athletes or bodybuilders.
Thats why the government are saying more people are doing exercise. They are. In the gyms and running and cycling on the roads but not in competitive sport on the playing fields of this country.
Where have we been most successful in recent years? In rowing and in cycling. Why? Because those sports have been in the hands of world class coaches and management and consequently have had a lot of money thrown at them. It ain't rocket science. These are the ' in ' sports because of all the medals won but most kids don't row at school and only cycle for pleasure.
At grass roots level, the whole ethos is wrong in football. Too much organised football too young. The wrong approach. Hardly any kids playing in the streets or parks anymore. Too busy on laptops or mobile phones, twittering or facebooking trivia. Loads of kids are playing junior cricket but at club level, most teams concentrate on league cricket on saturdays and sunday cricket is dying. Lovely grounds standing empty. Not enough cricket being played. Rugby is doing ok but not at state school level and athletics relies totally on clubs. As for tennis, most of it is still genteel pit-patting by Dorothy and Ken and Barbara and Jim for a few hours here or there. Most clubs are empty, most of the time.
We are still a sport loving nation but nothing like we used to be. There is a lot of indifference now. There is an obsession with football to the detriment of everything else and an expectation level that can never be reached. Too many youngsters being persuaded they can make it and forsaking lots of other potential sporting areas.
In short, most kids are less fit than they used to be and a lot of adults are fitter than they used to be. Something gone wrong somewhere.

 

[Mattywerewolf]

i don't know how to make it simpler I'm afraid. I thought that was straightforward - obviously not

I guess if the survey was across Olympic sports only, over a longer time period, had statistically significant moves (i.e. not less than 1% change), and not based on a small sample extrapolated across the population at large it might be relevant. Uptake in sports over the last 10 years has increased by 10% in the same surveys but you don't mention that. While your school survey was interesting it represents only state schools and says nothing about sport outside of school or in private schools so that was equally floored statistics to support your argument... But given its obvious Rock on...

 

[Pavilionaire]

"A Youth Sport Trust survey of 1,392 primary schools in 2013/14 found that the average number of minutes children spent taking part in PE in a typical week was 102 for Key Stage 1 and 114 for Key Stage 2.
This was down from 126 minutes for Key Stage 1 and 127 minutes for Key Stage 2 in the charity's 2009/10 survey."

Sports England's latest survey from earlier this year "The number of people participating regularly in sport is down, by 125,000 to 15.6m"

My kid's primary school has no school sports teams AT ALL. They don't even do swimming (kids leave at end Yr 5 and swim at age 10-11 in middle school). However, there's lots of after-school and weekend clubs and plenty of kids doing karate, judo, cricket, football, gymnastics, rounders, dance and swimming in those.