Sport must be for all

More runners, jumpers and throwers of working-class or peasant origins will move to centre stage. African nations will come to the fore.

Football and various forms of fighting aside, too many of the first week's competitions have reflected the wide social disparities between and within the competing countries.

How many of the poorest African and Latin American nations, for example, have the capacity to churn out medal-winners in badminton, beach volleyball, the canoe slalom or equestrian dressage?

As of mid-day today, the whole African continent accounted for just four of the 285 medals won and they had gone to South Africa and Egypt.

Five Latin American countries had accumulated the grand total of 15, the same as Team GB alone, while India's billion-plus population - almost a fifth of the world total - shared a solitary bronze.

Most of the competitions in which Team GB have excelled so far have hardly been those that enjoy wide access and participation here.

Indeed, many working-class people would not regard them as sports at all.

The narrow range of social backgrounds of our medallists have been painfully obvious as soon as many open their mouths to speak.

The real problem is that this social disparity is growing rather than diminishing.

Around 5,000 state schools sold off their playing fields in the decade before controls were introduced in 1999.

More recently, countless leisure centres and swimming pools have been cutting their opening hours, raising their charges or closing altogether and the trend will continue until the present austerity programme is halted.

At the same time, Britain's public schools expand their sports and leisure facilities to entice the wealthy and the comfortable to buy their children a privileged education.

Without massive investment in sports and schools facilities, and the abolition of the grotesque private education system, Britain is heading for the scenario in which most sports competitors are upper or middle-class while their spectators, if they can afford the tickets, are mostly working class.

Croeso i'r 'Steddfod

One of Britain's biggest cultural festivals opens in Llandow today - the National Eisteddfod of Wales.

At least 160,000 people will enjoy a week of music, poetry, recitation, art, literature and sculpture provided free by thousands of performers.

Backed by public and private-sector sponsors, it will be run mostly by unpaid volunteers.

And here's the extraordinary thing - all the platform performances will be conducted entirely in the Welsh language.

While there will be plenty of English heard on the field and in the beer tents, Cymraeg will predominate.

The thousands of young people who flock to this peripatetic event every year to enjoy the rock scene that launched Super Furry Animals, Cerys Matthews and Catatonia, Duffy and Gorky's Zygotic Myncis will be doing everything that young people do, but through the medium of Welsh.

The festival will be a glorious celebration of the survival of an ancient language and its culture next door to the birthplace of English-language imperialism.

The Morning Star will be there too, thanks to its trade union and other supporters. Come to our stall. Bydd croeso cynnes i bawb yno!