I was attracted to the campaign to save Coseley Baths this year, partly because I was born not far from Coseley, so I consider the Dudley Bourough and the Black Country my home. It's where many friends and family live, so I have a personal interest in the Coseley Swimming Pool closure, and more generally any NEWS concerning swimming and swimming facilities in and around that area. It feels to me like I am somehow genetically programed to take an extra interest in "what's going on" around the Dudley & Stourbridge area, maybe I have some patriotic genes that have an urgency to express themselves? Whatever the reasons, I have found myself conducting independent research into swimming and swimming facilities due to a lack of such independent research. When it comes to the political, economic and psychological information concerning swimming I have found a wall of disinformation, crooks working for private-profit, and money-power motivated individuals using a - racket - to replace older swimming facilities with new - leisure complex corporations, contracted by a new business network.
As I have mentioned before at my blog, I have personally witnessed the destruction of 3 swimming pool's - Stourbridge (87), Brierley Hill (2005) and now Coseley (2009). And spent hundreds of hours writing, reading and communicating my thoughts about swimming, swimming pools and how governments in Britain manage or miss-manage as to what the case maybe - SPORT & LEISURE?
My observations of swimming in the Dudley area have some similarities between recent cases of swimming-pool closure's up and down the country, for example:
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/2009/11/05/council-to-press-ahead-with-pool-closure-bid-72703-25098524/
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1489317?UserKey=
http://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/6875/Ceiling_problem_shuts_Golspie_pool__96_again.html
http://www.streathamguardian.co.uk/news/4744099.Council_closes_Streatham_swimming_pool/
One of my early memories of the corporate grip over sports in Britain was when I competed in the West Midland District championships and won a couple of events, to discover that oil giant ESSO were the major sponsor, and had their logo's on T-Shirts, Banners, medals and prizes. I guess that swimming and swimming facilities has found advantages from going into business with large corporations, banks and other sponsors, but there are downsides to such collaborations too, depending on your geopolitical standpoints, or your conceptions of international capitalist corporatism. There can be no turning back the clocks, swimming pools are being knocked down and replaced by leisure centers as the UK gears up for the 2012 Olympics. The painfully obvious contradictions we get from the corporate sponsored news and telecommunications media surrounding the games are highlighted by the plight of swimming clubs, swimmer's and their vital facilities in the UK.
The London-centric attitude and economic bias toward developing the south of England, only adds to the insult and injury to the rest of the UK (and by extension the world) regarding sports facilities. Compare the numbers of new SHOPPING MALLS, and/or corporate supermarkets to new swimming pools available to the public and capable of providing a swimming facility for clubs too?
Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are somewhat in the firing-line here, both Labour and Conservative, for selling out their culture, agriculture, banking, entertainment and healthcare of the subjects they were hired to help, very simply, the British Government has spearheaded the international finance capitalism or global gangsterism partly to blame for this slump in public facilities and good old fashioned markets or fair and equal trade, and the rise in TESCO like private corporations. Tony Blair and TESCO highlight the sordid relationships. Most local telecommunications media seem immune to such alternative thinking and continue the river of lies and bullshit.
--Steve Fly.
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