Calling out unfairness wherever we see it is difficult but necessary: Sarah Todd
In mitigation, former Olympic swimmer and BBC commentator Sharron Davies has probably moved into another compartment in this writer’s middle-aged brain; that of campaigner rather than former athlete.
Since the furore over the women’s boxing at the Olympics following the inclusion of two boxers who were disqualified from last year’s World Championships for failing to meet gender eligibility criteria, it has been interesting to read more about events that must have spurred Davies on to become such an outspoken protector of women’s sport.
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Hide AdShe competed internationally for more than 20 years, including three Olympics. She won a silver medal in the 400m at the 1980 Moscow Games, missing out on gold to East Germany’s Petra Schneider who later admitted she had been subject to a state-run doping programme, with her performance testosterone enhanced.


Whether trans women - biological males who identify as females - should compete in female sports events is not an easy subject but Davies has been heroic throughout in calling a spade a spade.
For all the fudging on the issue of various sporting authorities, torn between fairness yet trying to be inclusive to all, she has followed a line of swimming lane straightness. In return, Sharron and her family have been subjected to death threats, along with knock-on unpleasantness for the charities she supports.
We should all be more Sharron and call out unfairness wherever we see it, however awkward doing so makes us feel.
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Hide AdIf we don’t, we will look around and the world will have gone completely crackers. Well, even more topsy-turvy than it is now.
At a basic level, somebody had been putting an advertising sign against our fence and it doesn’t really matter but it seemed somehow rude not to have asked if it would be ok.
For months and months we had a bike left every day against the same fence and if the owner had knocked on the door, they would have been told that the handlebars sticking through into the field were not welcome in case the horses cut themselves on them.
But, if they had asked pleasantly, another place could easily have been found.
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Hide AdInteresting to wonder, if the person with the sign noticed the bike and thought it was a free for all. That every Tom, Dick and Harry was welcome to lean things against the fence we have paid for on our land.
Common courtesy has a dictionary definition of “the basic level of politeness that you expect from someone” and that is what seems to have largely disappeared from our society.
It is rather a huge leap, even for this correspondent, to go from the leaning of a bike on a fence to the rioting that has erupted on our streets over the past week.
But every day somebody will get away with something in our woke world. Not pulled up on it, they or one of their friends or family tries their luck again. Maybe a minor crime that the police don’t investigate. Then, one day - like a pressure cooker - it all builds up and there is a reaction.
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Hide AdHopefully, our new Government will have the testosterone levels to call the army in to rid our streets of the scourge of thuggery. It has been truly awful to read of the louts who have harnessed genuine people’s concerns as an excuse to run riot.
It is such a sad reflection of our society’s priorities that these oiks were photographed making a beeline for the likes of sausage rolls and mobile phones. Sadder still that the grief of the families of the poor murdered little girls in Southport has been hijacked in such a disgraceful way.
One final thought, if a straight line is drawn between Rotherham and Halifax there is a distance of just 28 miles. Next to nothing. But worlds apart when one considers that as the angry rioting mob descended on Rotherham’s Holiday Inn Express hotel, which was being used to house asylum seekers.
Over at Calderdale Council’s headquarters in Halifax, work has been getting underway to transition (no, another typo) to 100 per cent plant-based and vegan diets.
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Hide AdCould there be a better example of the strange and gaping chasm that currently cuts through our population?
One town worrying about the net-zero rating of council nibbles and the other taking to the streets.
With a day job as an agricultural journalist the correspondence that comes through from vegans when a beef or dairy farm is featured is very real and it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than to say extremes are unhealthy.
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