Equity in your sport/coaching

[Stodgetta]

I sat through 3 hours of "Equity in your Coaching" last night on Chasers behalf. Unfortunately I was surrounded by cricketers from Birmingham, who found it far more relevant to their sport than I did for O in middle class, anglo-saxon Staffordshire.

Has anyone found it useful, or has it been just for a tick in the Clubmark box?

(I won't print the reaction I got from one of our representatives at the "Equity in your Sport" evening )

[Kitch]

what is it

a pile of PC pish perhaps ?

[Stodgetta]

what is it

How to encourage more disabled/ethnic/females to join our sport without offending them. Various contrived scenarios to discuss, what language not to use ....
And about 10 minutes at the end with all the law bits.

[Kitch]

So, very worthy

but you lose the will to live ?

[redkite]

Political correctness, risk management and health and safety: the bane of modern society.

[Klebe]

Political correctness, risk management and health and safety: the bane of modern society.

Are you allowed to say that ?

Oh well, back to my copy of 1984

[PorkyFatBoy]

I've managed to avoid this course (as I can't get back from a work related course in London to attend it). I must admit that I struggled to see how it would be relevant to us in Suffolk as 1) we don't do coaching and 2) ethnic diveristy consists of "inbred" or "outsider".

[Kitch]

I' djust like to say

It is our inalienable right not to be offended , upset or otherwise remotely put out by anything anyone else says, ever.
No matter how useless, stupid or fundamentally incompetent we happen or contrive to be.
Just imagine where we'd all be if people went around telling it how it is all the time
I dread to think !

[stodge]

Firstly I am completely supportive of encouraging everybody to do all types of sport.

but with a mega cynics head on
how much of

Clubmark
Trail O
Equity in Sport

etc etc
just to name a few mainly exist to be PC so that it looks better on applications to get funding.
Funding is normally tree like in nature and ticking the boxes has to pass down through the levels from government to governing bodies etc.

Therefore the whole thing turns into a cyclic accreditation process.

I saw a similar thing with BS5750 or (Quality Assurance) a few years ago.
In order to do business with other companies that were QAd they had to become QAd and the whole process grew.
Very few companies got QAd because they thought it would really improve quality, it was a matter of being pushed into it in order to trade with others.

If clubs do more with juniors and have a more responsible policy after gaining Clubmark then great it is a good process.
However I’m not sure it will change the way some clubs do anything its just a tick in the box for funding.

[PorkyFatBoy]

The added problem of BS5750 was that you could define your own quality levels. e.g. if you made meat pies, if you didn't specify the nature of the meat or the quality that was required as part of your procedures, as long as you made them the same way you would still meet BS5750.

The equity thing may be similar. We adopted the Child Protection Policy at the AGM (as requested by BOF) but everyone struggled to understand what this actually meant in practice and what changes it would mean when we organised events.

[Klebe]

PFB quite right, 5750, 5001 call it what you like was a complete case of the emperors clothes. No-one had the balls to point it out.

All it effectively did was guarantee (?) that the product was consistent. This process produces crap - therefore we are going to continue to produce crap. It had nothing at all to do with quality, nor did it address improvements to the process.

The inmates are running the asylum - we need someone to point the finger at the emperor.

[Mrs H.]

I hope you've all be marvelling at my powers of restraint I've actually been to hospital to have my knee MRI scanned - the noise - you've no idea

anyway - the basic problem with all these so called initiatives is that they completely ignore a very powerful force - indeed they actively undermine it - that of Common Sense. all that is required is that people should take a moment to consider the implications of their actions to see if what they are about to do is wise or not. the danger of these initiatives is that people don't feel they need to do that - assuming if they follow the rules everything will be alright. Sadly it is way beyond the powers of anyone in Whitehall, Matlock or any other seat of power to be wise on our behalf - but they can of course blackmail us into doing things their way - which is what this is all about - it has absolutely nothing to do with increasing opportunities for disadvantaged people and everything to do with control and finance

[Stodgetta]

I found alot of what was said yesterday racist/sexist/stereotypical/ patronising to say the least.

The idea that people from an Asian background don't do sport because of transport problems or lack of money, and that women don't do sport because of childcare problems...

I was also struck that alot of what was said was about how to get disabled or other minorities into sports and what you can do to attract them, whether they are interested or not, rather than finding ways to help someone join in when they express an interest.

Alot of Clubmark is good - providing coaching, events, responsibilities, opportunities and a safe environment for juniors, etc has to be a worthy objective.

Clubmark has been adapted for orienteering in the same way as it has been adapted for other sports. The "Equity in your Sport/Coaching" bits would appear to be aimed more at sports based in sports centres/towns and areas with an ethnic mix. Talk of using a minibus to collect people who may have transport problems and putting sessions on in the daytime/when childcare is easily available is laughable in O. Last night was about collecting a certificate to prove a club member had been there and ticking a box. It won't change the way clubs do anything, and waving an attendance certificate won't attract any more minority participants to the sport.

[Kitch]

I blame computers

no
really
its all the fault of computers.

You see 20 years ago the half witted idiots with no common sense all had half witted jobs that required no common sense, they were all occupied monotonously ticking boxes following convoluted process rather than making new and exciting things happen.
Now there are computers and that means that no-one is needed to do all the idiot jobs, but we don't have mass unemployment. The half wits have been re-deployed, and somehow the bastards have weasled their way into a position where they call the shots and the rest of us are being swamped by their process driven box ticking because its the only thing they know how to do.
So computers haven't helped atall, nothing gets done any quicker because before you can press the button that gets it done in the blink of an eye you have to fill in eight billion forms.
The lunatics truely have taken over the asylum.
People that actually get stuff done are the minority, they are bloody subversives !

You know someone here reckoned it cost them £5000 in man-hours just to get approval to buy a server that cost £500 !

[brooner]

I hope you've all be marvelling at my powers of restraint I've actually been to hospital to have my knee MRI scanned - the noise - you've no idea

i do! damn noisy despite the music they offer to play you through headphones, tho to be fair i was being forced to listen to mindless pap so was probably blocking that out and noticed the noise more! quite a scary machine in general really.