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Wednesday April 9, 2008

Swinging Balls


Yet more PR political puff is revealed in the study showing that a quarter of all children between eight and ten have never played outside of the home without adult supervision. Gosh, that’s a stunning revelation and it doesn’t take a NASA recruit to work out why that should be so.

Issuing the usual parsimonious and hollow media sound bites, Education Minister, Ed Balls, and insipid, goofy chum, Cultural Secretary, Andy Burnham, recently swung like a pair of dysfunctional and uncoordinated orangutans in a children’s park to spearhead a new playground scheme. The wonderful irony is of course that buffoonish Balls and his government have systematically approved the selling off of nearly 200 school and community playgrounds since 1997. Small wonder that our children have nowhere safe to play outside and are getting as fat as buttermilk sitting at home frying their eyes on computer screens!

The cynicism of launching a play areas campaign at a cost of £225 million over a three year period, will not have escaped the more alert of the British public and those in the educational sector. Hanging oafishly from a swing, chubby Ed Balls lapped up media attention at this most embarrassing of media photo opportunities explaining that, ‘What people like is things which go round and round.’ With sound bites of such searing intellect and grammatical prowess we can ably see why he was awarded the post of education minister. Or not.

Rather than accept any blame for the ‘cotton wool culture’ in which today’s youth is being brought up, Ed Balls has deftly shifted the blame to over-indulgent parents who are nervous of letting their offspring loose on the streets (and rightly so!) and who sue local councils for any minor injuries incurred in public play areas. Much as the UK is panting along the same path as the US in suing anything that stands still long enough, I don’t believe there are convincing statistics to back up Ed Ball’s theory. In fact the man himself admits that just maybe, local councils are exaggerating the problem to bail out of improving local recreation grounds.

As usual, the government is stealing with one hand and giving back with another and only time will tell whether this latest knee jerk campaign will actually work. I hope so. Not for Ed Ball’s sake, but for that of the nation’s children.



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