I was delighted to hear the other day, that Sport England had recently provided a substantial sum of money to help those of us who have sadly passed beyond the stage where we can comfortably call ourselves "middle aged" to remain fit and healthy. 

I gather that the money will be channelled through an organisation called "Active Dorset" - which brings together sports clubs and others involved in providing sporting facilities locally. As there are a lot of these bodies in rural Dorset, a network of this kind obviously has a pretty wide reach and should therefore be able to help the elderly and the ageing amongst us to find ways of keeping fit, more or less regardless of where we happen to live. 

There is a strong temptation, when one hears about something like this, to mumble and grumble about whether it is really a good use of taxpayer funds: I can almost hear someone asking whether it wouldn't have been better to spend the money on some really crunchy and absolutely necessary item like social care for the frail elderly or the NHS. 

But this temptation really needs to be resisted - because the truth is that the strains we are currently experiencing in adult social care and the NHS arise partly from the fact that, as society gets older we aren't doing enough to keep ourselves fit and healthy. It's not only much nicer for the individual involved but also much cheaper for the taxpayer to invest in a little preventative exercise than to be faced with all the ghastly consequences of becoming immobile. 

This really is a case of a stitch in time saving nine.