Dear All
According to a new report not a single country in the world in the last 20 years has seen a positive health impact as a result of hosting a major sporting event.
The reasons for this are many fold from poor strategic vision, lack of participants in specialised sports to education.
In 2014, Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games in the city, for a few weeks the city will be awash with international sportsmen and women competing for medals, like most large sporting events, it will be successful on many levels.
Where the Commonwealth Games will fall down is the day after the event ends.
The problem is engagement of the public to use the facilities afterwards.
The specific problems in Glasgow are poor education, lack of coaching staff and an underachieving body called Culture and Sport which caters to the lowest possible denominator rather than elite athletes.
If the matter is to be address to bring the community into sport participation, then the ‘culture’ of Culture and Sport must change.
To put it bluntly the facilities must be set up to cater for world class athletes, that way the entire service can cater for everyone.
People like Culture and Sport like to say they provide ‘world class’ facilities but they are sadly deluded; they think ‘new’ means world class. The Councillors on the Glasgow City Labour Council of shame go along with that because they aren’t too bright.
The provision of health and fitness education, a key requirement to encourage participation is so poor to be embarrassing.
In order to address the problem of legacy, Council’s Health, Wellbeing, Social Care and Equalities Committee has carried out research on previous Commonwealth and Olympic Games cities.
They found the majority of cities did not have a good track record when it came to delivering long-term benefits for ordinary people.
This begs the question why Glasgow with such poor facilities needed to carry out research when an internal inquiry into Culture and Sport would have flagged up the same conclusion.
One of the funniest statements issued by the Labour Council of shame run by Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell is that Council chiefs say they will do everything to ensure the city’s people benefit from the 2014 Games.
To that end, Councillor George Redmond, executive member for Health and Wellbeing Committee, said;
“Glasgow is already well ahead of the game”.
Councillor George Redmond does a bit of running and plays football, hardly a fitness educationalist by any means. His claim that Glasgow is ahead of the game shows in my opinion how backward he is, he should pop into the Kelvinhall and look at their fitness facilities particularly free weights.
It goes beyond the word disgraceful.
As someone with an extensive knowledge of teaching from my youth, my thoughts on seeing this were, “what the fuck is this”? It was like entering the lost world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Redmond added;
“The health and fitness initiative, Glasgow Club, has more than 22,000 members who pay by direct debit every month and a further 100,000 members who pay as they go, so Glasgow already has a huge base to start from”.
A ‘huge’ base of under educated people who use poor facilities after passing an induction, limited in scope. After passing this, these people are left to sink or swim; there is no real culture of fitness education learning in Culture and Sport.
It is like ‘going to school and find out you are your own teacher’!
The lasting legacy that the people in Glasgow will have of the Commonwealth Games is that Labour Councillors nothing before, nothing during and nothing after to improve the city’s health.
They will however be patting themselves on the back because they will get the chance to get their photos in the paper thinking how wonderful they are.
Dr Linda de Caestecker, director of Public Health, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said;
“Glasgow has the right infrastructure to make our Commonwealth Games legacy a success”.
The word that springs to mind regarding her is ‘sycophant’, it is people that make the legacy and there aren’t enough of them to change the city’s poor health record.
Culture and Sport should be separated if sports development stands any chance of flourishing for the people.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
According to a new report not a single country in the world in the last 20 years has seen a positive health impact as a result of hosting a major sporting event.
The reasons for this are many fold from poor strategic vision, lack of participants in specialised sports to education.
In 2014, Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games in the city, for a few weeks the city will be awash with international sportsmen and women competing for medals, like most large sporting events, it will be successful on many levels.
Where the Commonwealth Games will fall down is the day after the event ends.
The problem is engagement of the public to use the facilities afterwards.
The specific problems in Glasgow are poor education, lack of coaching staff and an underachieving body called Culture and Sport which caters to the lowest possible denominator rather than elite athletes.
If the matter is to be address to bring the community into sport participation, then the ‘culture’ of Culture and Sport must change.
To put it bluntly the facilities must be set up to cater for world class athletes, that way the entire service can cater for everyone.
People like Culture and Sport like to say they provide ‘world class’ facilities but they are sadly deluded; they think ‘new’ means world class. The Councillors on the Glasgow City Labour Council of shame go along with that because they aren’t too bright.
The provision of health and fitness education, a key requirement to encourage participation is so poor to be embarrassing.
In order to address the problem of legacy, Council’s Health, Wellbeing, Social Care and Equalities Committee has carried out research on previous Commonwealth and Olympic Games cities.
They found the majority of cities did not have a good track record when it came to delivering long-term benefits for ordinary people.
This begs the question why Glasgow with such poor facilities needed to carry out research when an internal inquiry into Culture and Sport would have flagged up the same conclusion.
One of the funniest statements issued by the Labour Council of shame run by Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell is that Council chiefs say they will do everything to ensure the city’s people benefit from the 2014 Games.
To that end, Councillor George Redmond, executive member for Health and Wellbeing Committee, said;
“Glasgow is already well ahead of the game”.
Councillor George Redmond does a bit of running and plays football, hardly a fitness educationalist by any means. His claim that Glasgow is ahead of the game shows in my opinion how backward he is, he should pop into the Kelvinhall and look at their fitness facilities particularly free weights.
It goes beyond the word disgraceful.
As someone with an extensive knowledge of teaching from my youth, my thoughts on seeing this were, “what the fuck is this”? It was like entering the lost world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Redmond added;
“The health and fitness initiative, Glasgow Club, has more than 22,000 members who pay by direct debit every month and a further 100,000 members who pay as they go, so Glasgow already has a huge base to start from”.
A ‘huge’ base of under educated people who use poor facilities after passing an induction, limited in scope. After passing this, these people are left to sink or swim; there is no real culture of fitness education learning in Culture and Sport.
It is like ‘going to school and find out you are your own teacher’!
The lasting legacy that the people in Glasgow will have of the Commonwealth Games is that Labour Councillors nothing before, nothing during and nothing after to improve the city’s health.
They will however be patting themselves on the back because they will get the chance to get their photos in the paper thinking how wonderful they are.
Dr Linda de Caestecker, director of Public Health, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said;
“Glasgow has the right infrastructure to make our Commonwealth Games legacy a success”.
The word that springs to mind regarding her is ‘sycophant’, it is people that make the legacy and there aren’t enough of them to change the city’s poor health record.
Culture and Sport should be separated if sports development stands any chance of flourishing for the people.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
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