U-turn on sport

If U-turning were a competitive sport, Stewart Maxwell would be in pole position to win gold. The Sports Minister in the Scottish Government confirmed yesterday that the SNP had gone back on its Holyrood election manifesto to abolish sportscotland, the national sports development agency. Instead, plans to move the agency's headquarters from the outskirts of Edinburgh to the new national indoor arena in the east end of Glasgow, which had been thrown into jeopardy by the SNP's pre-election pledge, will now proceed. Much political capital has already been made by the opposition parties, which have not been slow to seize on the U-turn. But that will be of no concern to sportscotland or, indeed, those with an interest in ensuring sport has its rightful place in delivering a better, healthier future for Scots. The relocation, which was central to the previous Scottish administration's bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, should be a dynamic for economic and social change to break cycles of poverty and ill-health in deprived areas in the city and beyond. Frankly, moving sportscotland should never have been put in doubt by the SNP raising the prospect of a match being lit under the agency in a much-vaunted, if in this case an ill-thought-out, bonfire of the quangos.