The Leisure Review: the editorial

Edition number 60; dateline 1 February 2013

Taking a day off from the invective

Regular readers of the editorial (hello to you both) will be relieved to learn that there will be no editorial for the February issue of The Leisure Review. The managing editor has given me a day off in lieu of the unfamiliar effort involved in producing the January issue, which is usually omitted from each new volume of TLR. This January edition was forced upon us by the pressure of what we might term ‘breaking news’ and the unfamiliar demands of timeliness of publication. Given that our default stance is one of languid contemplation, such effort takes its toll.

The focus of issue 59 of The Leisure Review is physical activity and the TLR round table sits at the top of the features list. The standard TLR tactic – and arguably the reason TLR exists – is to get people working in the sport, leisure and culture sector round a table to talk, whether about themselves, their projects or the wider issues of the day. Those we invited to join us on this occasion were most generous with their time and their opinions, creating what we hope is an interesting and insightful debate that will provide food for thought for others who might have liked to have been taking part in the conversation.

A bit further down the features list the physical activity theme continues with an exploration of doorstep sports delivery by the managing editor himself and, in something of a departure from TLR’s usual commissioning policy (but in keeping with the physical activity theme), we have invited the head of a large and influential organisation to justify not only their existence but in this particular case their name change, their investment in a new logo and the use of the phrase “a new colour palette”.

Elsewhere we offer a range of thought-provoking features and regular items. Although most of these pieces are only tangentially related to physical activity, they do seem to have some things in common, not least exceptionally high levels of candour, exasperation and feistiness. With James Bryce, Sideliner and that celebrated North Briton MacSideliner all taking the opportunity to give almost everybody in any position of influence or power, whether presumed or actual, both barrels, it seemed somewhat otiose for the editorial to adopt its habitual, self-proclaimed, self-appointed and, let’s be honest, self-regarding role of taking to task the stupid, the lazy, the hypocritical and the plain wrong.

So, having delegated the invective, the editor is having a day off. I’ll be spending the time spinning some of the other plates in the corporate behemoth that is the TLR Communications Group and catching up on the finer details of government policy that I may have missed. That should keep me calm.

Jonathan Ives
Editor