Why children should be encouraged to play like they are at Elloughton Primary School in East Yorkshire - Sarah Todd

The school has been ranked in the top two per cent in the country for the quality of play enjoyed by the pupils.

Now, our offspring are grown up, but if they were school age Elloughton’s award from OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) would be much more of interest than anything awarded by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).

As well as having great fun, the experts have worked out that “increasing their risk taking” has been a good thing, helping the youngsters learn life skills that aren’t taught in the classroom. Something the namby-pamby brigade have taken away from so many of our youngsters.

When was the last time you drove down a side street and saw some lads kicking a football around? A driver in front pipped his horn in anger when a likely looking youth pulled out alongside his car on a bike, giving what we always called a “croggy” to his mate. While lots of things make this correspondent grumpy, this was not one of them. It gladdened the heart to think of two youngsters out and about rather than being sat slack jawed in front of mobile phones like seemingly 99.9per cent of the rest of their age group.

All by themselves they had probably learnt an important lesson, that some miserable devil would be pipping at them if they pulled out like that across the road again. They might also get hit by a car, so will have notched up at least one of those aforementioned risk-taking awareness lessons. Just like we used to do. Somebody would stop and shout at you or tell your parents they had seen you being daft on your bike.

This is doubtless dumb for a journalist to admit (in mitigation farming and rural life is this correspondent’s specialist area) but the names of all the Tory leadership contenders just won’t sink in. Put on the spot they couldn’t be recalled without resorting to teenage behaviour and looking them up on the old mobile phone.

However, Kemi Badenoch will now be remembered. People have been pulling her to pieces for comments made during a Times Radio interview about wanting to make sure the state interferes less with business.

The shadow housing secretary (and mother of three children) was quizzed about maternity pay and quite rightly said she didn’t think it needed changing.

"We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another,” she said. “This, in my view, is excessive.

"Businesses are closing, businesses are not starting in the UK, because they say that the burden of regulation is too high."

She’s spot on and anybody in the real world would surely agree. Try to make an appointment at any hairdressers and they will doubtless struggle this side of Christmas because of how many ladies they currently have on maternity leave. These benefits are all well and good in massive multi-nationals but taken any further they will surely suck any remaining life out of small businesses.

Her leadership rivals (no names known) in the race to replace Rishi Sunak were quick to criticise and take her comments out of context. Shame on them for not being able to come up with any statements that get us remembering their names themselves.

The Conservatives are starting to look like a party of the bland leading the bland. They are so short of a big personality. Any sort of personality - and a full wardrobe of self-financed clothes and spectacles - would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Somehow symbolic of the times we are living in was the fact that the ceasing of production this week at the UK’s biggest steelworks, leading to thousands of job losses across South Wales, hasn’t been a bigger story. The final piece of steel was made at Tata Steel's plant in Port Talbot on Monday night so greener electric furnaces – which will not be operational until 2028 and cost £1.25bn - can be fitted. Nearly 3,000 jobs lost and nobody in a position of authority seems to have said anything memorable about it.

They all need to get themselves back to the playground, learn to take risks and get some personality.