Love your local leisure centre

Aug 08, 2023

We should heed David Olusoga’s words about the loss of the Gateshead leisure centre (“When I was growing up, our leisure centre was a lifeline. Now it’s been boarded up”, Comment).

The Local Government Association has consistently drawn attention to the vulnerability of our public leisure services.

Leisure centres and swimming pools lie within the domain of local government. They are what is known as discretionary services. They are built largely with local capital and run on local revenue. Central government does not require that they be provided. They must be defended at almost every local election and on many days of the year. When they wear out, there will be decisions about whether or in what form an authority can afford a replacement. As budgets shrink, leisure services are always there as a source of possible cuts.

Yes, leisure centres do promote physical health, yes they promote mental health and of course they are for everybody. They are indeed a lifeline. But they are also places of friendship, community pride and excellence. Luckily for north Norfolk, our own district council has maintained its leisure services and opened a new centre in 2021. This is not easy, but if residents will vote for it, then it can be done.Virginia GayNorth Walsham, Norfolk

I grew up in Harlow, Essex, in the 1950s and 60s. It had first-rate sports facilities, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a theatre, an annual music and arts festival that attracted artists and musicians from across the globe and that supported a world-class string quartet, the Alberni, who also taught in the town. I owe my career as a professional cellist to the place and Essex in general.

Then came Thatcher and, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, she paved paradise and put up a parking lot, and her successors are still doing it.Michael FullerHarpenden, Hertfordshire

Andrew Anthony asks if Nigel Farage is Britain’s most influential politician (Comment). I would say yes, and no. Farage is highly influential now, but only gained such influence because he was relentlessly given airtime by the BBC, especially Question Time, which in turn was almost certainly a direct consequence of David Cameron’s decision to stack BBC management with rightwingers. Cameron then left an open goal for Farage with the Brexit referendum, and through Brexit created a legacy of economic misery and culture wars stoked by those, like Farage and the current Tory party, who are desperate to distract us from the terrible failure that Brexit has been. The most influential politician in 21st-century Britain remains the man who broke the country and then scuttled off to write his memoirs in a shed.Dr Richard MilneEdinburgh

I was struck by your article rightly praising the work going on in Sussex to widen the cultural experience for wine tourism and comparing the area to Provence (“Au revoir Provence: tourism push gives Sussex its moment in the sun”, News). The previous Sunday, I had been in Arles, Provence. The elephant in the room is the weather. In Arles, the skies were unendingly blue and the temperature was in the high 20s. I see that Chichester today is cloudy and under 20 degrees. Way to go, Sussex. (Meanwhile, here in south-west Wales it is, of course, raining.)Anne CowperSwansea

The editorial claim that “Gove’s plans do little to help build a better Britain” (Comment) is, in comparison to Labour’s own deeply conservative policies, untrue. Gove has, for instance, introduced some interesting new building regulations. It was 10 years ago when architect Richard Rogers attacked the idea of building on the green belt and developing new “garden cities”, as this, he said, would merely repeat the mistakes of the past.

There are currently more than 1m planning permissions in the system that have not been built. There are, contrary to the editorial slant, a record 1.2m brownfield sites, nearly 300,000 empty houses and 800,000 second homes. What was striking about the editorial was the failure to mention climate change or the collapsing biodiversity that can only be accelerated by building on green fields.Stephen DorrilNetherthong, West Yorkshire

I passed 14 carbon storage units on my walk between bus stops just now, as I overtook cars waiting back-to-back for the queue of traffic to inch forward; each car pumping out CO2, 30% of which these 14 units are constantly working to absorb. These same units are giving out oxygen to restore my blackened lungs to a pinkish hue. In addition, these 14 units each provide storage spaces for birds to build nests and raise their young in safety; they provide a sheen of green in their appendages; they provide shade for overheated creatures of all species, which is especially welcome in the world at 1.1 degrees and rising.

No need, I suggest, for “projects that could capture carbon emissions and store them underground” (“Radical ways to fix Earth: are they magic bullets or sticking plasters?”, News), as we already have these natural carbon storage units. We walk among them, chop them down and burn them hourly.

Let’s preserve them, these trees, as the natural saviours of humanity that they are.Drusilla LongLeeds

In response to Barbara Ellen’s piece, “Sorry, Sadiq, but bleating a feeble ‘maaate’ at sexists won’t stop them” (Comment): for the past 18 years, I’ve been CEO of the Women’s Resource Centre, the leading national umbrella body for women’s organisations, a role that has brought me into regular contact with the mayor’s team. We’ve done some important work together, supporting lifesaving services for disadvantaged women and girls – some on the verge of closing – and delivering a new approach to address the way the police investigate rape, Operation Soteria, now being rolled out across the country.

The launch of the next part of the mayor’s “Have a word” campaign, “Say maaate to a mate”, has generated lots of debate, with some people saying it’s woolly or doesn’t go far enough, others arguing it goes too far in trying to control behaviour.

I welcome the “maaate” campaign. It’s the first I’ve seen to not just highlight the issue but address practically some of the reasons why men are reluctant to challenge misogyny among their peers. Rather than obsessing about whether “maaate” is the right word, I would encourage critics to consider what the campaign is trying to achieve – getting men to speak up instead of staying silent. This campaign is a clear step in the right direction. The reaction has shown that this isn’t an easy space to get into, but it is an important one.Vivienne Hayes Women’s Resource Centre, London N7

Eco or golf – it can’t be both (“The missing links: should they build an eco golf course here”, Focus). I’ve just returned from a day botanising on Coul Links and seen a profusion of plant species humming with insects. It breaks my heart that the spot where we found the lesser twayblade orchid will become a golf fairway, with scarce plants mown into oblivion.

Rewilding is being encouraged and funded on land degraded by agricultural use, yet we seem to be standing back and allowing an existing unique wild dune system to be mown and manipulated into a green desert for a tiny minority.Elizabeth ShiachLentran, Inverness