Football and rugby celebrations set bad health example – Yorkshire Post Letters

This year will no doubt be regarded as an annus horribilis across the world, as a result of a miserable scrap of biological dross. Everyone has seen their lives turned upside down by this damnable virus. However the vast majority of people have accepted the need to follow restrictions on their liberty in order to prevent our hospitals being swamped and potentially breaking down.

We have been told to maintain social distancing, but every night we see on the television the antics of footballers and rugby players. While both these sports are impossible to play with social distancing, the practice of hugging, kissing, and piling on to each other needs to be banned.

Those who do it should have a yellow card, and if they do it again, they are sent off. Draconian it may be, but getting a dose of this damnable virus is just as draconian. Ask any Long-Covid sufferer, and they are not necessarily old people either. It seems that this damnable virus can do lasting, if not lifelong damage. Surely such action will press home the serious nature of the illness?

We have seen with our elite political leaders that there is one rule for them and one for the little people, shown particularly graphically by Dominic Cummings and his unapologetic dash to Durham and his drive to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight. (I thought that driving while unfit to do so was a serious motoring offence.)

Now we see elite sportsmen (and women) potentially sharing their viruses without a care in the world.

I am given to understand also that Tier 3 regulations state that one should not drive in or out of such areas. Why then can race-horse owners run their horses at courses in Wales (complete national lockdown) such as Bangor and Chepstow? How can football players go into Barnsley, Sheffield, and Liverpool in their luxury buses? Other elite sports, eg rowing, have not been able to train for many months now. There seems to be one rule for the elite, and one for the little people.

Quid pro quo for provision

From: John Riseley, Harcourt Drive, Harrogate.

I AM a keen supporter of Parliamentary petitions and a believer in ensuring that the nation’s children, without exception, are well fed (Tom Richmond, The Yorkshire Post, October 26). I am, however, in two minds about joining the million people who have signed Marcus Rashford’s free school lunches petition.

There is a case for direct provision, but there should be a quid pro quo and this needs to be set out at the time of giving. It would be foolish to try to exact it after the extra largesse has become accepted as a right.

There must surely be some component of current cash allowances intended for feeding children. If the state directly feeds more children it can reasonably withdraw part of that component..

The state should also be assertive with regard to those who should more properly bear this responsibility. That must not be to provide an excuse for leaving it unfulfilled but to apply more of cost where it rightly belongs – and that is with the fathers of the children concerned.

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