CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Doesn't sound too cheap. On a par with phone/internet or gas or electricity per month.
The reminiscences of my gym period in 1985-88 indicate £1/per hour at Brixon Rec full price or £1 per whole evening at the Flaxman Sports Centre in Carew Street also full price NO CONTRACT IN EITHER CASE.
In those days of course council sports centres were a public service and indeed kept some of the youths off the street using up their energy constructively. In a way the outsourcing of sports centres was similar to what is now happening to libraries - except that probably they ethnically cleansed the sports centres with less opposition than the fad for turning libraries into gyms, where the middle classes and Will Self quite justifiably see this as cut back in library service and quality in order to offer gym contracts for fitness devotees in good jobs as a money making exercise.
I've not been inside the Rec for sports for 30 years, but the impression you get walking past the one in Clapham Manor Street is they are chocker with young white professionals on cycling machines watching pop videos. There might be an odd black trainer or staff member but not customers.
So my diagnosis is they are most interested in getting customers on contract - so the likes of Olivia are fighting an uphill battle with the like of me. Better (GLL) have reduced their bandwidth screening out the old, the poor and the sick and are no longer offering a true public service.
I still maintain that my council election manifesto in 2014 was correct - we need an free open air gym where the carwash is now. If Southwark could do it in Albany Road what is wrong withn Lambeth. Rachel should consider adding that as an aspiration if she does stand here as an independent.
I see the blog I put up about this for the 2014 election has not yet been deleted!
