Tom Richmond: Let football giants pitch in to help grassroots

Thankfully, there have been no Downing Street summits to discuss the national team's exit from the tournament or schemes to kickstart

grassroots football with non-existent money. This is, after all, precisely what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would have done, and we should be grateful that Cameron intends, for now, to boot such

gimmickry into touch.

Yet, in this instance, England's performance was so abysmal that there is, perhaps, a role for government as Holland and Spain prepare for tomorrow night's final.

The issue is as simple as football tactics – the opposition can't score if you don't give them the ball. There are too many overseas players in the upper echelons of the domestic game.

Home-grown players are struggling to flourish. This needs addressing. But so, too, do grassroots facilities in local communities – they

simply do not compare favourably with the all-weather and floodlit pitches that are so widely available on the continent.

This is not going to change in the short-term, despite the social benefits of youngsters being encouraged to undertake sporting pursuits. The Government, and town halls, simply do not have any money left – and, in Scarborough's case, every last penny of reserves has had to be spent on the continued restoration of the town's Spa.

Yet, given the extortionate of money that the major clubs pay out in salaries, there has to be a case for the Government persuading the Premier League and FA to pay for a new sports pitch in a local

community whenever they register a foreign player.

It might just give home-grown players a chance. It will help improve facilities in the downturn. And it might just help curtail some of the obscene wages that are paid to over-rated and under-performing players.

TALKING of flags, Labour's housing spokesman, John Healey, scored an own goal when he asked how much it was costing the Department for Communities and Local Government to decorate the building with England flags during the World Cup? Healey's successor, Grant Shapps, told the Wentworth MP in a terse reply: "Approximately 30." And he added: "We believe the expenditure of 30 on English flags represents

significantly better value for money than the 134,503 spent last year buying luxury Parisian sofas for the department."

JUST who is running transport policy under the coalition Government?

Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary and the man notionally in charge, said on Sunday that spending on future road and rail projects will be affected by cuts to his departmental budget that could exceed 25 per cent.

But, a day later, one Earl Attlee, a government whip and transport spokesman in the House of Lords, told peers: "Investment now in transport is an investment in our recovery, renewed growth and our children's prosperity."

The grandson of the post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee argued that, just as the canals had transformed the 18th-century British economy, "so our transport networks can transform Britain for the better in the 21st century". And, minutes later, Liberal Democrat party president Baroness Scott of Needham Market waded in and said "planned, preventative (road) maintenance" was more efficient than reactive repairs.

This muddle shows the extent to which transport policy has already lost direction, and that is before the cuts kick in which now threaten the planned overhaul of the ageing fleet of trains on the East Coast line linking Yorkshire with London and Scotland.

Given this confusion, there's little chance of this Government being able to press ahead with the planned high-speed rail network, is there?

HERE'S some free advice to David Cameron on how to make savings without alienating public opinion. He should order heads to roll at West

Midlands Police where 100,000 has just been spent on new black and

blue shirts for officers because the traditional white ones were too restrictive. What nonsense.

The same, too, at the Walsall leisure centre where 250 windows have been blacked out to protect the modesty of female swimmers. P45s should be given to those busybodies at Gloucestershire County Council who ordered schools to photograph the contents of children's lunch boxes so parents could be warned against the dangers of unhealthy eating. And that's before we get on to the NHS trust which has spent 7,000 training unemployed women to become stand-up comedians to boost their confidence.

These excesses are no laughing matter when one considers the public money wasted in each instance.