Short lifetime careers (or why teaching should learn from football)

There are a selection of careers that have a shorter lifetime than those the rest of us pursue. And these careers are often the sexy ones we aspired to do when - as I did - you attend, at age eleven, the 'come dressed as what you want to do when you're grown up' party. Firemen, police officers, soldiers, sportsmen and women, models. And, of course, dancers:

Dancers are notoriously bad at planning for their second acts. They underestimate the age at which they'll retire (the average age of retirement is 34), overestimate the amount of money they'll earn, and misjudge the forces that will end their careers. More than one-third of the dancers in a 2004 survey were driven to retirement by an injury; only 5 percent left because they actually wanted a new career. When dancers enter the workforce in their thirties, many are woefully unprepared. Only 3 percent of current dancers say that teaching dance is their preferred post-retirement line of work, but it's the most common fate: 53 percent end up teaching dance in some capacity.

You could write this script for footballers - we look at the mega-star millionaires of the sport and assume that this goes for all the footballers. But only the most talented reach this height, most footballers - like most dancers - ply their trade in the lower leagues. And while the top Premier League stars earn £1,7m per year on average in lower leagues this plummets to between £40,000 and £70,000. These are good wages on the face of it but not if you reckon that most footballers' careers only last 20 years at most. And like the dancers, these retired footballers all end up earning a (not always very good) living from hanging about the game they played - coaching, physio, commentary.

The problem is that, for all the money in elite sport and arts, there really aren't enough jobs out there to maintain the income levels and living standards that retired and redundant dancers and players got used to. Yet we look at the money involved and howl with horror even though, compared to our economy, the money in football, opera or ballet is a drop in the ocean especially given the pleasure sport and art gives to us all.

This problem - in a related but different manner - also applies to careers such as teaching and social work:

In other words, after ten years or so, one cannot remain in the classroom, one must go either upwards, into management or else sideways into a specialist area … or out. The days of Mr. Chips were long gone. One must be perma-vibrant, relevant and up with the latest fad. Especially with Ofsted bureaucrats breathing down one’s neck.

Much of the reason for this is the idea of career progression and that being a classroom teacher in limiting - at least in financial terms. Even with 'career grade' systems in these professions there remains the pressure on the most experienced teachers to spend less time in the classroom and more time doing other important but non-teaching functions. Same goes for social workers meaning that the most capable and experienced end up trapped in an office managing other social workers. In our system - one that presumes the boss is paid more than the people she manages - the teacher or social worker (perhaps also the salesman and engineer too) ends up as a manager, a consultant or advisor rather than spending time doing the thing that person is trained to do.

And this sort of brings us back to football. In football - probably because it is driven by the needs of the tournament - the people paid the most are the ones delivering the product. That £1.7million wage for the average premier league player reflects two things - the transient nature of his career (every time he steps onto the field he knows it could end) and the essence of the game as a contest between teams of the best. And the best are a rare thing.

In this place no-one suggests to the 27 year-old midfield superstar that his only hope of getting more money is to become a coach or a manager. Yet that is precisely the measure we apply to teachers and social workers even while paying lip service to the idea of a career spent in front of a class or in the field. Perhaps we need to change the way in which we pay these vital public servants, to end the tyranny of the spinal column pay scale, national negotiations and a world where school administrators earn more than the best classroom teachers.

Most short term careers have worked pretty hard at making sure there's a life after playing - for public sector ones like policing, fire and soldiering there's a pension and extensive investment in retraining and support. This doesn't stop many of those leaving these uniformed, regimented roles finding civilian life tricky but it shows someone's thinking about the issue even if perhaps not hard enough. In sports like football there's a lot of financial advice and support but just as we saw with the dancers, too many ex-players end up like so many Ghosts of Football Past earning a not especially good income from clutching onto past glories.

But the brightest sportsmen do end up in coaching and management but this is done in a situation where they can't do what got them there - play 90 minutes of high-intensity football. For the other careers we've touched on such as teaching there's really no excuse - we should be begging the best to stay in front of a class.


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Quote of the day - how the NFL is a corrupting enterprise that exploits its players and its fans

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It happened. We all got terribly excited about the Superbowl. Even in England where we have rugby league which is the same game but without armour, forward passes or endless delays to fit in advertising.

Anyway here's Matthew Stevenson on the NFL:

The National Football League runs on backhand payments to athletic organizations, sweetheart contracts, and monopoly pricing, in addition to screwing over its fan base by moving teams around. Its reward for urban price fixing isn’t prosecution for collusion under antitrust laws (it is exempt). Instead, it is awarded a national day of reverence, Super Sunday, during which 30 seconds of ad time costs $5 million, and the strategic national stockpile of guacamole is severely threatened.

The owners don’t actually own teams, but are general partners in a football trust, which allows them to share equally in all television revenues and collectively 'bargain' with concussed players, who are only free agents after five years of indentured service. By then, most are broken men. The league's attitude toward the declining mental of health of its retired players could be summarized as “So sue me”.

Yes, a few stars make big money, for a while, but teams are rarely on the hook for long-term guaranteed contracts and salaries are “capped,” they say, “in the interest of competition.”

No words being minced there and a stark reminder to those fans of proper football who call for salary caps, pooled income and other madatory controls on the operation of the game. Be careful what you wish for.  And read the whole article in New Geography - it's worth it.

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Local councils, grassroots football and the TV money...

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The Local Government Association, in the guise of Cllr Ian Stephens, chair of the LGA's Culture, Tourism and Sport Board, is worrying about the state of 'grassroots football':

‘There is an ever-widening chasm between the grassroots game, which is being allowed to wither away by the football authorities through pitiful investment, and elite football.'

And there's no doubt that this comment responds to a popular perception about the game - that the huge sums in TV rights and sponsorships aren't trickling down to those grassroots with the result that England's national team is rubbish. As ever, I suspect this is a case of the LGA looking for a source of funding for its parks departments.

But first let's look at that withering grassroots in English football:

Over 7m people play football on a weekly basis and they are supported by 400,000 volunteers, 300,000 coaches and 27,000 referees who give up their time to keep the game going.

There are some issues - more adults (and a thriving market) now prefer to play 5-a-side football and there is the perennial problem of having enough qualified coaches and referees not to mention people to do the dull old job of collecting subs and playing fees, registering players, organising fixtures and ensuring that, come Sunday morning there's a game for the team to play.

The Football Association spends a lot of money (much of which comes from those TV rights and sponsorships) on supporting grassroots football - around £50 million every year directly into supporting and developing all that local club football with a further £50 million spent on other development programmes. On top of this is a similar amount invested by the Premier League - along with the FA through the Football Foundation plus supporting the community programmes of individual clubs. This latter activity plus investment in other community sport (and an overseas programme) will see some £138 million invested by the Premier League in community sport. In its total three-year programme the Premier League will spend over £200 million on the grassroots of football.

It may be the case that more could be spent but to suggest that the grassroots of English football are withering away is pretty much untrue. The truth is that more money is now spent on developing football than has ever been spent. Those glory days when West Ham won the world cup for England were not brought about by investment in grassroots football because the infrastructure was all in place - even the cubs and scouts had extensive and organised leagues or cup competition.

The English Schools Football Association (ECFA) reports that 6,432 teams were entered into its competitions - this includes boys, girls and mixed teams. To provide some context, there are around 24,000 maintained schools in England suggesting to me that the biggest change in English football since 1966 hasn't been the lack of support for the game from the top teams or the big leagues but rather the collapse of competitive school football.

The Liberal Democrats recently call for 5% of the money from the Premier League's TV deal to go into the 'grassroots'. The new deal - the biggest ever - is for £5.136 billion over three years. Just so we're clear, 5% of this is £256.8 million. Under the current smaller deal the Premier League will invest over £200 million in grassroots football, community sport and the development of local football infrastructure.

What we're seeing here from the LGA - pig ignorance aside - is a crass bid for the FA and the Premier League to give local councils money:

The LGA said if the money invested in local pitches was increased and administered by local councils, it could help councils build upon grassroots initiatives.

 

This isn't about grassroots football at all. It's about local council budget choices.

 

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There is no evidence linking sports sponsorship with children drinking

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A few days ago "...a group of medical leaders, public health campaigners and health charities" wrote to The Guardian calling for the banning of sports sponsorship by drinks companies:

Our children deserve a better future and we must take the opportunity to give it to them. Self-regulation of alcohol advertising isn’t working when it allows drink brands to dominate sporting events that attract children as well as adults, creating automatic associations between alcohol brands and sport that are cumulative, unconscious and built up over years. Evidence shows that exposure to alcohol advertising leads young people to drink more, and to drink at an earlier age.

The lead signatory of the letter was Professor Sir Ian Gilmore perhaps the UK's leading temperance campaigner and a man who has never knowingly missed the opportunity to exaggerate, embellish and invent statistics to promote his mission to limit, perhaps to prohibit, drinking. And our natural instinct to protect children is a high value trump card to the likes of Sir Ian.


So - given that drinks brands have been advertising their brands on the shirts of football, rugby and cricket teams for a couple of decades, we'd expect there to be more teenage boozers drinking more alcohol. The problem is that this isn't true (pdf see page 122):

Thirty two per cent of young people reported having had an alcoholic drink. This represents a significant drop-off from LSYPE1, when 55 per cent of young people reported having tried alcohol. This fall appears to have taken place across almost all groups of young people.

This comes from a detailed longitudinal study by the Department for Education which makes it pretty reliable as evidence. So over the period when drinks brands have been sponsoring high level sport the consumption of alcohol by children and young people has fallen by around 40%. This suggests that Sir Ian and his pals have absolutely no evidence to support their argument. Not that this makes any difference to them using the argument.

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Television sponsorship, star players and oligarchs have made English club football great again.

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I'm prompted to write by a book review in The Spectator. Not, I'm guessing the first place to turn to for any deep or insightful assessment of football. And the review doesn't disappoint:

For all the sophistication of his analysis, Goldblatt provides no convincing answer to the question of why clubs, originally rooted in their communities, still command such loyalty when few of their teams contain local lads, and some not even a majority of English ones, but transient mercenaries.

Now this is a review of a book written by a sociologist which means we can be pretty sure that the author isn't an enthusiast for capitalism raw in tooth and claw. Indeed the review quotes Goldblatt saying football is  ‘social-democratic game in a neo-liberal world’. And as we all know, dear reader, anyone who uses the term 'neo-liberal' without irony is probably to the left of most mainstream politics in the UK.

But it's not Goldblatt's assessment that bothers me (and to be fair I haven't read his book) but the reviewer, Michael Beloff's view that television sponsorship, pampered star players and the vanity of oligarchs should be blamed for the current sad state of English football. Indeed, the truth - whatever this reviewer may say - is that English football is in a pretty good state. Unless of course you measure its success purely on the basis of how the national team performs.

Let's start with attendance - although levels have levelled off in the past couple of years, the numbers of paying customers for football matches in England rose steadily from its low point in the mid-1980s.

It's true that attendances after the last war were vastly high - we've all seen those images of packed crowds stood shoulder to shoulder. And, of course, we also know that the spread of leisure choices means that those days aren't returning. What is remarkable is that, given the range of leisure choices (and what seems like wall-to-wall TV coverage) well over a million people pay to watch football every week of the season. And this includes some 150,000 or so who stand on a cold terrace with a pie watching non-league games. The idea that a leisure industry can sustain this level of business in a very competitive market tells us that, far from English football be in some sort of trouble, it is thriving.

But - and here Beloff makes another sweeping statement - what about the players?

Like many other sports, football was invented in England; yet the balance of power has shifted elsewhere. The true superstars play in Spain, Italy or Germany.

Wow! Hard to know quite where to start with this observation - perhaps the clubs of the world cup finalists? Again Beloff couldn't be more wrong - there were eleven clubs with ten or more players at the 2014 World Cup Finals, five of them in the English premier league. And the English leagues provided 119 of the players - fully 38 more than the next highest, Italy's Serie A. Finally 22 England players play in England compared to just one of the Uruguay team. The idea that all the superstars play somewhere else really is arrant nonsense.

Thirdly Beloff suggests that the Premier League is 'uncompetitive' suggesting that the prospect of the big prizes - league champions, qualifying for the Champions League and the FA Cup - only exists for 'half-a-dozen' clubs. Here's the current top of the table - I think this proves Beloff wrong (and not just because I'm a West Ham fan):

Underlying all this argument is a common political point - that the greed of players has somehow stolen 'the people's game' away from the people. There's a sort of nostalgia in this political point, a harking back to a mythical golden age when star players lived in terraced houses and went to training on the bus. We ignore the huge profits made by wealthy club owners - made possible because of wage caps and a transfer system that was tantamount to slavery. It was a time when clubs were full of 'local lads' wearing chunky brown boots to trundle across pitches that, half the time, would be better suited to planting wheat than playing football.

In the end football - and the desire to watch exciting players gracing the hallowed turf of 'our' club - reflects the world as it is not some sort of rose-tinted, patronising image of sturdy working-class yeoman playing and watching. And the liberalising of the game - opening up the transfer system, more overseas players, better management (everywhere but Leeds United) and ending wage limits- results in the Premier League producing a spectacle that is a vast improvement on the sluggish, muddy and foul-ridden game of the 1970s and 1980s.

There's plenty to worry us about football but it really isn't the clubs, the players or the management of leagues. Nor is it support for junior and lower level football - the grassroots is thriving (although it could use more of that FA cash). And neither is it the fans (Beloff has a little bien pensant pop at racism and homophobia - presumably to tick the London metro-liberal bingo card).

No, the problem with football lies with FIFA, UEFA and the FA, with the administration of the game. Rather than pretend there was some golden age of football writers like Michael Beloff would be better served directing their criticism to the corruption and fixing, the tinkering with rules, the refusal to embrace technology and the training of referees.

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Tennis and politics...

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We all sat - the whole party full - cheering on Andy Murray (not that our cries will have reached Wimbledon from Bradford) as he became the first British winner of the men's singles there for 77 years. And it was brilliant as a great bonus to our celebration of Margaret Polak's 90th birthday.

Funnily enough no-one mentioned how this might affect the coming referendum on Scottish independence. Nobody made the grumpy reference to Murray supporting Scotland and whatever team is playing England. No-one sought to claim that all this sporting triumph would give David Cameron a boost in the polls. Indeed no reference to the political significance of Murray's victory was made at all.

And there's a reason for this - great those Andy's win might be, it has absolutely no political significance and no political effect at all. Not a jot.

This however doesn't stop the usual bunch of daft pundits doing just that - making ridiculous political claims on the basis of this victory:

Here's Toby Young:

However Alex Salmond tries to spin this – and pulling out the Saltire was a cheap stunt – it is a victory for the Union and not for Scottish independence. Cameron is just past the half way point in his premiership but he's now at least one set up against Ed Miliband and on course for victory.

Well no, not really, Toby. It's rather a win for a young man from Scotland who has spent most of his life seeking to be the best tennis player on the planet. It has nothing to do with the Union or Independence and his winning is not likely to make it more or less likely that the Conservatives will win the next election.

Others were in there two - ex-pat, ex-MP Louise Mensch was no surprise in all this and was joined by assorted wannabe political commentors.

The truth is that sport doesn't need politics but politics needs sport. And sport should resist!

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For the children...

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This is beyond stupid. It is deeply wrong and insulting to parents:

"It is with regret that from now on we will be unable to accommodate parents wishing to spectate at our sports fixtures unless they are in possession of an up-to-date Swindon Council CRB check.

"At Isambard we take safeguarding very seriously and because of this we are unable to leave gates open for access to sporting venues at anytime during the school day.

"The current access arrangements are frustrating for both Isambard staff and parents and have recently resulted in reception staff and PE staff being on the receiving end of verbal abuse from parents who have become frustrated trying to get into or out of the school." 

There is absolutely no need at all for this policy. None whatsoever. But we can expect more and more of this as headteachers and governors get ever more panicked over safeguarding issues.

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Time to thank John Major...

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Amidst all the self-congratulation of current political leaders as their frankly pathetic game of claiming a bit of "credit" for the Olympics (how fast in the other direction would Boris, Ed and Dave have run had the event been less of a triumph), we really should take a moment to thank John Major.

"My original vision for the Lottery was to fund a renaissance in sport, the arts and our heritage. I saw the opportunity to fund projects the Treasury would never be able to afford". 

Whatever we may think of the lottery - its regressive nature, the way it squeezes out other fundraising and doubts about gambling - there is no doubt at all that without it British athletes would have done less well at these Olympics.

Thanks to the unique contribution of National Lottery players our athletes are being given World Class support as they prepare for London 2012 and beyond. A proportion of Good Causes money raised by The National Lottery is targeted at our most talented athletes and has helped to land 438 Olympic and Paralympic Games medals since lottery funding began.

And the National Lottery was - more than anything else - John Major's creation.

I guess we should thank him. It would be more credible of politicians to do this rather than seek political advantage from the Games. Yet I haven't seen Dave or Ed or Boris or Seb turn to camera and say those words - "without John Major insistence on the lottery funding sport, these games would have been less successful. Thanks John."

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I love the Olympics...

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Corruption, favouritism, private roads, brand fascism, a naff logo, oppresive security and bureaucratic incompentance - for the past couple of weeks the news has been filled with the impending disaster that will be the London Olympics.

Ever curmudgeon, cynic and hater of sport has sprung to life selecting his or her special example of the Olympic scandal. It has been a pleasure to read hundreds of blogs and thousands of tweet bemoaning the waste of money, the indulgence and the arrogance of the Olympic organisation.

But for me, all this has to be set against the truth - thousands of athletes who have trained for years for the honour of coming to London, one of the world's greatest cities, to compete in the Olympic Games. Less the big names, the top sprinters, the tennis stars, the football players, and more the lesser sports, the ones that get no attention in a world dominated by football - tae kwan do, archery, shooting, sailing, mucking about in canoes and  swashbuckling with swords.

Every four years we turn away from the normal round of sports and look instead at a difference collection of inspiring athletes, men and women who will do there best - even the ones who know they've no real chance of a medal. We'll see tears, smiles, rage, excitement and sheer exhaustion. And - for all our cynicism - we'll love the spectacle and marvel at the talent displayed. This is what the Olympics are about.

I hate the controlling nature of the organisation, if I never have to see Seb Coe again it may improve my temper. But I don't care. I love the Olympics and relish that these games are in my country - England - and in the city where I was raised - London.

So let the games begin. And I for one intend to enjoy - to savour - every bit that I can of these London Olympics.

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Has the BBC given up on reporting news??

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Yesterday evening, the main BBC News chose to spend the first ten minutes of a half-hour programme talking about racism at the European Football Championships. Now I happen to think that racism is a serious issue but still question whether a few idiot Poles making monkey noises at non-white Dutch footballers really constitutes the main news item.

Once the BBC had finished with interviewing itself and expressing shock and horror at the racist chants, the next important news item was that we had some pretty bad weather. This featured some pretty spectacular waves (not the surfing kind) at a place in Cornwall.

Only then did the BBC mention the appalling events in Syria where a government is beating, raping and murdering its citizens while giving the finger to the civilized world. The imminent collapse of the Euro (perhaps) barely merits a mention. Before we return again to sport, to racism and the preening of presenters.

Where is the real news?

It seems to me - and the Leveson enquiry defines this perfectly - that the media classes determine the news agenda by what they talk about at the dinner table or over fancy coffee in some trendy cafe. What matters to real folk out there is the real world is as nothing besides the endless obsession with political gossip, perceptions of racism and having a good laugh at the stupid people who don't live in North London.

All this is compounded by filling in hours of supposed news programming with stagey interviews of BBC journalists - turning these people from news reporters into the news itself. The result is that we are given the tiniest glimpse of the wider world followed by tendentious opinionating from the BBC-appointed (and employed) expert.

It seems to me that the BBC has given up on reporting news.

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A little contrast...

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Yesterday, amid great fanfare, the Parliamentary Science & Technology Committee announced the latest push to 'denormalise' alcohol featuring the "have two days of booze" in a week argument. An argument that presumably applies to Mildred who has one small glass of white wine with the dinner she eats in front of the telly every evening as well as to the toothless street drinker.

Alcohol is bad - look at the drain on the economy, look at how many people (using our lunatic method of calculation for such things) are filling up casualty! So up goes the duty, the nasty nationalist, lefties in Scotland bung in a minimum price and the result is:

The investigation by HMRC uncovered the unregulated and fire hazardous industrial unit at Moscow Farm, near Great Dalby, during raids in September 2009. They seized nine thousand bottles of fake vodka, branded as Glen’s, 25,000 litres of pure denatured alcohol (enough to make around 100,000 bottles of vodka), manufacturing equipment, bottles and counterfeit packaging – labels and cardboard boxes.

Evidence showed around 165,000 bottles of the fake vodka had been distributed across the UK for sale. 

Today, in contrast, £30 million in extra public funding was directed towards another cause of lifestyle-related admissions to hospital (over 250,000 of them each year) - sport. But unlike alcohol, exercise is a good thing so merits a celebratory press release:

The Centre will be truly national – promoting sport and exercise medicine – made up of three network partners around the country. The Health Secretary made the announcement today while visiting Loughborough University, one of the network partners.

The Centre will help more people to be more active, treat injuries caused by exercise and conditions associated with lack of exercise.

If the consumption of alcohol by adults was treated the same way, I'd like to bet we'd have much less of a problem.

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Fixing markets for failure never works...

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The manager of former world cup winning side, West Ham United, Sam Allardyce has this to say about the Football League's incoming "fair finance" rules:

"The rules are going to cause absolute chaos and are going to destroy football as we know it unless we are very careful," he says.

"It's making finance more important. I am not saying that we want to put clubs into jeopardy – the Portsmouth scenario – but this is the entertainment industry, not a financial institution whose only aim is to balance the books."

The point Big Sam makes here is that the current rules aren't making lower league football in England less competitive - he comments in the same article about how the league is more "ferocious and volatile" than when he last managed in the Championship. Whenever the word "fair" crops up alarm bells should ring - indeed these new rules won't stop clubs failing but will make it ever more difficult for smaller clubs to build a successful run. And it won't stop clubs getting into financial trouble either.

But then no-one's listening. Always and everywhere fixing markets to favour failure doesn't work.

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Do we need a jogging tax?

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On the logic that people should be discouraged from engaging in lifestyle choices that damage their health - that these things should be "denormalised" - we should take action about jogging. Especially given the burden such inconsiderate activity places on the the NHS.

MRI scans on 40 athletes training for challenging sporting events like triathlons or alpine cycle races showed most had stretched heart muscles.

Although many went on to make a complete recovery after a week, five showed more permanent injuries.

The researchers told the European Heart Journal how these changes might cause heart problems like arrhythmia. 

I know the industry - let's call it "Big Gym" - says these are minor considerations and that "endurance training isn't unhealthy" but surely something must be done.  And remember that it's not just this increased risk of heart disease, there are over 250,000 admissions to hospital resulting from sports injuries in the UK alone.

Perhaps we should set up Exercise Concern?

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Should we 'denormalise' sport?

We’re told – rightly so I believe – that taking part in sport and exercise is good for us. However, in the spirit of understanding and, with a wry couch potato smile, I thought I’d have a look at the problems with exercise.

Back in 2005 a survey was done for “Spaces for Sports” looking at the incidence of sports injury.

New research by Barclays Spaces for Sports has revealed that just under a third (30 per cent) of the nation pick up 22 million sporting injuries per year.  The major causes of these injuries are over-exertion, lack of preparation and general clumsiness, with third party involvement and slippery surfaces also blamed. On average a person regularly participating in sport will pick up 1.65 injuries every year and will take up to five days off work or college due to incapacity and/or treatment.

Stop for a second and calculate the cost to business of all those sprained ankles, broken collar bones and ruptured Achilles tendons. Consider, if you will, the burden these selfish people are placing on our National Health Service – over a quarter of a million emergency admissions every year. Our accident and emergency departments are, quite literally, clogged with sports men and women and their injuries.

Yet we never read of the dreadful burden all this indulgence brings upon society, there are no campaigns to ban rugby or football, to stop people doing lasting damage to knees and hips by running on hard roads. Indeed we praise those super-fit individuals for their dedication, their healthy lifestyle and their sporting prowess.

Contrast this with the new assault on the couch potato – following on from attacking smoking, drinking and the humble burger, we must now condemn TV:

Dr Lennert Veerman, from the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, and colleagues report their findings today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

"If our estimates are correct, then TV viewing is in the same league as smoking and obesity," he said.

Last year, another Australian study by Professor David Dunstan and colleagues from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne found an hour of TV viewing a day led to an 8 per cent increase in the risk of premature death.

Oh dear. Not that I believe a word of this – seems like an exercise in conflating all sorts of behavioural traits and then adding a cute bit of arithmetic to get an ace headline.  TV is bad – is killing us.

The point here is that the argument – or one of them – for introducing bans, pricing controls and other nannying nudges is that these sinful behaviours cost society loads of money. We’re forever being regaled with the cost of drinking or smoking or obesity. Yet it seems to me that, for all its goodness, sport and exercise is a huge cost to society in lost work time, in treating injury and in caring for the long-term consequence of sporting injury and strain.

Maybe, for the sake of consistency, we should tax, ban or nudge sport as well – starting with the really dangerous sports such as riding horses or playing rugby and then moving to protect people playing football. More padding, less physical contact, short game time, a smaller pitch and a softer ball – these things will protect those playing and will reduce the cost to society of sports injury.

Just a thought!

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Surviving the Western Terrace

Or as one tweeter reminded me, the "notorious" Western Terrace - one of the very best places to watch cricket so long as you don't want to follow the play too closely!

We were sat on the terrace as part of what seems to be a very extended send off for Stu Muxlow, who having taken redundancy is setting off Eastwards on his trusty motorbike. I gather that Stu will actually set off later this month.

The Western Terrace is loud, bumptious and extremely good-humoured. It is populated by a mixture of youth and experience which, fuelled by copious amounts of booze, results in a mix of chanting, occasional bursts of what might (if one feels kind) be singing and a neverending stream of wisecrack, ribald comment and edgy commentary on the play.

The crowd did the obligatory ooh-ing as the bowler ran in, cheered Yorkshire's sixes and wickets while ignoring the same from Warwickshire. And, as it became clear that the visitors were going to chase down Yorkshire's score with some ease, the crowd commenced with other entertainment - cheering as some young women walked up the stand, jeering as the stewards removed a lilo and conducting a perfunctory and disorganised Mexican wave. All interspersed with the familiar cry of "Yorkshire, Yorkshire".

I'm sure there are similar crowds at other grounds but part of me suspects that the denizens of Headingley's Western Terrace are probably the loudest, wittiest and cheeriest - or that's what they would tell you! A fine way to spend three hours in the sunshine - under a perfect blue sky rather than Yorkshire's more usual grey - enjoying our national sport (or rather the bowdlerised, pajama-wearing version of our national sport), having a beer or three and enjoying the noisiness of Yorkshire's best crowd!

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Last weeks important Scottish news

There were two political events affecting Scotland this week. The first was the collossal yawn of Labour holding on to one of their safest seats - Glasgow North East (although 'did not vote' won by a country mile in truth).

The far more important political decision - and one I suspect more Glaswegians know about, care about and have a strong opinion about is this:

"The clubs welcomed the additional input into an ongoing process, however, they were of the opinion that bringing Celtic and Rangers into any form of Premier League set-up was not desirable or viable."

I am absolutely sure that the SNP led Government of Scotland really wanted this response - had the Old Firm joined with Liverpool, Manchester United and the 1966 World Cup Winners it would have been a massive set back to their long term project of independence! How can you be independent when two of your biggest institutions defect to a foreign field?