£50,000 chess tables to level up North scorned as weird and tokenistic
STONE chess tables erected in parks in the North-West as part of the government's levelling up agenda at a cost of £50,000 have been criticised as ‘tokenistic’.
The 20 black and white squaretopped tables and seats, worth £2,500 each, have been erected across Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria.
Ministers said they had agreed to give councils the outdoor furniture for nothing to help young people hone their skills in “patience and critical thinking”.
But locals visiting Farnworth Central Park, in Bolton, Greater Manchester, which has one of the tables, called the pricey seating arrangements “weird” and a “waste of money”.
They also said no one used them to play the game, partly because they had not been supplied with chess pieces.
University student Laiba Amjad, 20, said: “I don’t really think the chess boards are helping level up the country as I wouldn’t go out in the park to play chess.
“It’s funny that the government thinks young people are interested in chess because they are not. You are not going to see anyone playing chess there.
“So they’ve spent £2,500 on a very expensive table. I didn’t know how much they cost. I was actually shocked that it was so expensive.”
The government announced in August last year that it was putting together a package of measures to “inspire the next generation” of chess players.
And part of this included a commitment to give out 100 chess tables to 85 local authorities in England so they could be installed in public parks.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it would be providing the £250,000 funding required for the initiative.
Henri Murison, from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a think tank advocating for business interests in the North of England said the initiative “summed up just how tokenistic levelling up had become”.
He said: “It shows the misunderstanding the prime minister has about how local government works, because his job in central government is to give local government enough money to pick its own priorities, not to throw sweeties at the provinces.
"If there's money to spend, it should be spent on what local people want and need the most.”