And yet, people continue to highlight a few positive or negative examples like they reflect the national picture, missing the point!!!

I can post a whole host of national statistics and examples if you like?

Some great press releases on the SSPs at the moment, young ambasadors also taking the petition to London in a couple of weeks.

I don't know if the SSP's have made a significant improvement or not so in an ideal world we should keep the funding for them as it is important for youngsters to get involved in sport - however we are not living in that ideal world any more.

Unfortunately it would appear we have been living above our means for quite some time now and there are many services that we simply cannot afford to continue to fund for now and the forseeable future.

In my experience with sport and in particular rugby there is still so much good work that goes on by parents who were former players. They give their time freely often gaining coaching qualifications along the way and usually this is on behalf of a club that is privately funded. In many cases youngsters learn more in these evening and weekend sessions than they do in school hours. So I am optimistic that sport will not suffer as much as some other areas may do over the next few years.

We are a broad church Gilder.

The thing that I really dislike about quoting government and newspaper sources is that they change literally day to day - a few pages back I linked to an article in The Observer which had a paragraph in it stating Gove as saying that the school sports money would not be ring fenced in future and that headteachers would have control over where it would be spent - you'd think that a Sunday paper would keep its reporting intact wouldn't you ?

Not so, as you state above the report that I linked to has had that paragraph removed now and its more apparent that the £162mill spend is ceasing to be replaced by a £10mill Schools Olympic fund.

Either the minister didn't make his press release clear enough or the reporter just wrote the first thing that came into his head, or was drunk.

Probably all three.

m.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/ ... pe=article further pressure being put on the government. Hope the link works!

m.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/ ... pe=article further pressure being put on the government. Hope the link works!

Seth, Someone from your partnership got me to sign it when she was over 2 weeks ago. I know first hand what you guys do and how beneficial you are to our school sports.

Thanks mate appreciate the support. Probably would have been Carol, she's great.

Hope alls good at Nortonthorpe.

Thats it - Carol!

Elite athletes warning to David Cameron m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/n ... pe=article

Elite athletes warning to David Cameron m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/n ... pe=article

Having watched today's PMQ's it sounds like an embarrasing coalition 'U turn' on the policy is on the way.

Gerry Sutcliffe (Labour ex sport's minister) asked the question and David Cameron acknowledged he was reviewing yesterday's debate on the issue and will bring forward a further announcement soon.

Indeed, some real back tracking, if only they had consulted the YST and heads before making the decision.

Really hope there is a positive outcome, whether that involves my role or not as there are some worrying policies on education.

Gove must be the most inept politician of all time (and that is a very very long list). He hasnt devised or announced a single policy that hasnt been a cock up from start to finish

Oh I don't know - Vince Cable threatening to vote against a policy that he helped to write has got to be up there in the League of Ineptness

Not inept, more duplicitous or self-serving I'd have said.
Disappointing too, for the guy who was one of the few voices who predicted in 2005, I believe, that the property boom was built on sand.
I guess it just exemplifies Lord Acton's quote re power.

Cable was one of the politicians who actually seemed to know what was going on in 2007/08 but I said in May of this year that now was the time for him to walk the walk.

Seems like he was a gobe like the rest of them all along.

Feet of clay.
I expect the Fifa guys got involved originally with the best of intentions & then saw all the opportunities for graft.

The Lib Dems are dead in the water, the actions of Clegg, Cable et al have delivered the final knife in the back with their exchange of morals and ethics for power.

They'll be down with the Ulster Unionists, SNP and Plaid Cymru when it comes to the next election, reduced to a footnote in history.

Heres hoping.

I genuinely didn't give the coalition 18 months at absolute max. What I couldn't have even begun to contemplate was the total bending over and talking it up the rear end that Clegg and his chums would happily accept. I should have known really, because that's the way it works in public school. You learn your place, which is totally superior to the plebs and totally subservient to your "betters". I agree, they are finished. They will be a party of local government in the Westcountry by the next election.

I was expecting Milliband and Labour to be more on the front foot, but they don't have to be. They are simply sitting back and watching the fun. Even the "it's all Labour's fault, the mess they left us with etc.." has begun to lose it's effect . They must have thought that because Thatcher was able to start every sentence with "Under the last Labour Government......blah..blah" for the best part of 15 years, that they would be able to as well.

It also can't have escaped many people's notice how this 'Autumn snowfall' is the worst since the last time the Tories were in power.

I honestly feel like I've done a Life on Mars and woken up in Thatchers Britain. If the Specials re-release "Ghost Town" alongside UB40's "One in Ten", I'll give up.

At least Clegg has achieved his wish of proportionate representation. They have 8% of the parliamentary seats and are at 8% in the polls! I predict that the Lib dems will be wiped off the parliamentary map at the next election. Lets just hope the door hits the lying hypocritcal set of weasel worded quislings as they leave stage left. good riddance to a party that swapped its morals and ethics, policies pledges and promises for a seat under the Tory table.

Regardless of peoples views on the merits of PR I can see a huge backlash against the Lib Dumbs at the referendum. A chance to send a message to labrador clegg that bare faced lying wont stand.

Everyone expected the nasty party of the tories to reemerge after the election, they are after all the children of thatcher, but the lib dems depth of deceit is sickening.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12037163 as good a result as could have been hoped for. A credit to the hard work over the last 2 months from young ambasadors, children, parents, teachers and athletes aswell as the ssp's. We now have a platform to build a more positive future.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12037163 as good a result as could have been hoped for. A credit to the hard work over the last 2 months from young ambasadors, children, parents, teachers and athletes aswell as the ssp's. We now have a platform to build a more positive future.

Surprise, surprise another U-turn by Gove. The guy is an utter & complete joke.

I think its more an indication of what we already knew - politicians these days are qualified only in studying political history and economics from theory books, they have no knowledge of the real world outside of a university campus, have not ever run a business or probably even organised a family budget (oh look, I can claim for the moat to be cleaned) - in short they make this stuff up as they go along and its quite common for them to pitch ideas in the press and wait and see if there is a backlash, if there isn't then its policy, if there is then they amend it until they think we'll accept it.