Now I’m not much of a sports fan, though I do enjoy American football, tennis – big fan of Maria Sharapova – and ladies’ beach volleyball. Accordingly, I’m woefully ignorant about sports, and would be a liability in this area for any pub quiz team. But you’d expect the Sports Minister to be knowledgeable about sports, wouldn’t you? I was unaware Helen Grant MP is the Sports Minister until J pointed me to the following insightful piece about her ‘crusade’ for women’s sport (it’s about three-quarters of the way down):
It seems having not the slightest interest in or knowledge about a subject is no barrier to a person becoming a minister… so long as the person’s a woman, anyway.
It took me a moment to recall the occasion on which I’d hoped to meet Ms Grant, but didn’t. It was at a fringe meeting held by Politeia near the 2012 Conservative party conference:
Ms Grant was due to talk about the government’s drive to increase female representation on boards – I had some juicy questions to put to her in the Q&A session – but she was only at the event for only a short while before being called away. On the evening news I discovered the reason for her departure. She’d been called away to accompany David Cameron into the conference venue, a trivial matter covered by numerous film crews hungry for any footage. As a black female MP, she obviously ticked three boxes. What an inspiring statesman Dave is. We can but hope he won’t be the leader of the Conservatives for long after the 2015 general election.
