Political Correctness in Sport

Sport England has decide in their wisdom to insist that all Sports Club will to obtain a “ClubMark” to able to use Government/Council facilities and to be able to claim grant aid, this I believe will lead the decrease in Sports Club and sport participation. To achieve just a basic ClubMark you have fulfil 25 different criteria even for Amateur Clubs most are sports related but one has little or nothing to with Sport and “That is the EQUITY IN YOUR COACHING”. Although I totally disagree with the ClubMark and personally will not get involved it makes sense that the Club applies if only for the benefit of Grant Aid. One of the Club members had to attend one of these courses at the Clubs expense on arriving he was presented with a book 180 pages long on the subject. Like most of these courses there is role play and case scenarios here are a couple of examples:
Karen is a carer for her mother because of that has to take a bus fro training and always arrives late at team training because of this; the Coach after several warnings drops her from the squad!
PC answer: The Coach was wrong and allowances should be made for her.
Pragmatic Answer: If a Coach is running a squad he needs discipline and the foremost is good timekeeping: The team may only have a limited time slot; they may have to wait for Karen before they can start a particular sequence, and will she be able to make matches on time? It is down to Karen to be on time not for the rest of the team to wait remember this is a Team sport.
Palvinda plays in her local netball Team she has been selected to play a league game which requires her to wear a skirt her religions forbids this and she wears track Bottoms should she be dropped from the team.
PC Answer: No she should not be discriminated against on religious grounds
Pragmatic answer: Yes because the team could turn up at the event and be barred because they do not have the correct attire
Part of the course dealt with language and Terminology

Unacceptable Acceptable
Patient Person
Bind Visually impaired people
Deaf and dumb Deaf without speech
Special needs (additional )needs
Handicap Disability impairments
Disabled toilets Accessible toilets
Deaf People with hearing impediment


It no longer correct to address the Female sex as Ladies or Girls the correct procedure is to say Women or Females, use of local colloquial e.g. Love, Duck, Cock, Sweetheart, Darling all are forbidden. You must find out if your students are Homosexual, bisexual or lesbian! Why? What has their sexuality to do with their ability to sport or in my case Judo, I do not know whether I have trained with a Homosexual Judo Player I never asked and why should I. It is no longer correct to run separate sessions for different groups of people I.e., Judo session for the blind, or for Ladies sorry I mean Women everything must be inclusive, irrelevant of the safety aspects and what people want Things like men only clubs are now banned yet there is a Women’s Sports Federation, you cannot bar someone because their ethnic origin, or sexual preference, yet there are Gay Rugby Teams, Gay Olympics etc.
The main person behind all this Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman MP she has done her best since her Government took power in 1997 to sterilise the English Language, her drive to promote Political correctness is legendary and what has she achieved nothing but Division. The cost of this PC must be £millions and what does it achieve? The people who come with these ideas have no idea or practical knowledge of Sports Coaching. They think aggressive encouragement as bullying, if the class does not have any ethnics then it must be racist irrelevant that none live in its catchments area, no women then it must be sexist and so on. In a time when people participating in sport is dropping and Sport haemorrhaging Coaches you would have thought there would be encouragement not obstacles to attracting new coaches rather then insisting on very expensive PC training just so a PC industry can get more jobs for the boys (oops sorry PC bad word) jobs for the group.
Since Government and its Quango’s have got involved ion Sport, participation has been on the decline surely that must tell them something!

Martin Clarke Sittingbourne


Martin Clarke Sittingbourne