Brits make one last push for new olympic sport

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From the Guardian

Perhaps sport should indeed have some part to play, however minor. London won the 2012 bid on the back of its young people, their significance symbolised by a funky "street art" logo. Promises were hurled around by Tessa Jowell, Sebastian Coe and Ken Livingstone, all pointing to the Olympics as a focus of hope and fulfilment for the young. "This is about kids," Livingstone said.

"Choose London today," Coe said, "and you send out a clear message to the youth of the world. It is a decision about which city will help show a new generation why Olympic sport matters."

In the six years since the bid was won the area has seen much in the way of architectural activity but little in the way of tangible dividends for the younger generation in the London boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest and Haringey.

Meanwhile, youth centres are closing. Eight of 13 have gone in Haringey alone. And school sports programmes in the UK are severely curtailed. Some of the young footballers who would have been playing at Wembley on Wednesday are on salaries of more than �200,000 a week. The nearest most of this week's rioters will get to that is a pair of looted trainers.

Certainly there were indications, in the comparatively small number of cases that reached sentencing, that magistrates across the country were in little mood for leniency.

In Manchester, Eoin Flanagan, 18, pleaded guilty to theft after he was arrested in Oxford Road with two jumpers and two pieces of musical equipment; he was jailed for eight months.

At Camberwell Green magistrates, Nicholas Robinson, 23, an electrical engineering student with no previous convictions, was jailed for the maximum permitted six months after pleading guilty to stealing bottles of water worth �3.50 from Lidl in Brixton. He had been walking back from his girlfriend's house in the early hours of Monday morning when he saw the store being looted, his lawyer said, and had taken the opportunity to go in and help himself to a case of water because he was thirsty. He was caught up in the moment, and was ashamed of his actions, his defence said.

But the prosecution told judge Alan Baldwin: "This defendant has contributed through his action to criminal activities to the atmosphere of chaos and sheer lawlessness." There were gasps from the public gallery as his sentence was delivered.

The mother of one convicted looter told the Guardian her son � who got 16 weeks for using "threatening or abusive language or behaviour" � had got a much harsher sentence because of the political climate. "If this wasn't the riot he wouldn't even have got a caution," she said. "It's all because of the riots."

Her son Ricky Gemmell had finished his shift at a Manchester call centre on Tuesday evening and gone home to change out of his suit before heading to the city centre; his family say to visit his girlfriend, with no intention of getting involved in trouble. He pleaded guilty, however, to telling officers during the riot: "I'd smash you if you took your uniform off" before being pinned to the ground and arrested. He became the first rioter to be jailed at a Manchester magistrates court session that began on Wednesday morning and ran late into the night.