Just what the UK needed

In a country already obsessed by football (mainly) and to a lesser degree other sports, the New Year's Honours - to every sportsperson the government thought it could get away with - is just what was needed - NOT.

If this, and the Olympics, were going to encourage people to play sport, well it might be defensible - but what is far more likely is that it will encourage people to spend even more time slumped in front of their televisions.

I can look out my kitchen window into a run of windows in flats some 50m away. I'm fascinated by one in which it seems at night (you can't see through the curtains during the day) the television is always on - and usually on sport. (The screen is so large that even from this distance I can see it quite clearly.)