In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:
Maybe it's just my inherent distrust of politicians but I can't help feeling that politics / politicians should be kept far away from climbing.
I'm fairly sure this is not a rational response but the whole 'climbers at 10 downing street' idea makes me feel rather uncomfortable.
However I accept that engagement with government is useful in terms of securing access etc. I think that's as far as I would like to see it go - as long as I can get to the crag, I can't really see what benefit their involvement has.
The whole olympic sport buisness seems largley an irrelavance (to me at least) as competitions are a tiny part of climbing as a whole. I'd be far more interested if there was more money / focus on expeditions. I realise this reflects my own preferences within the broad spectrum of interests that moutaineering encompasses.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't Sport England pulled a lot of money away from climbing so it can redirected to London 2012?
I'm not sure how the mountaineering exibition at Reghed was funded (I'm assuming publicly) but that closed fairly recently.
It doesn't seem that the goverment has been doing a lot for us recently...
Is anything likely to change after this celebration?
Just my collection of jumbled thoughts
Mark