Not a sport

[helene_t]

Rik, I don't think many of those criteria you mention are relevant for the purpose of VAT exemption. Actually, one of EBUs arguments was that research shows that bridge reduces the risk of Alzheimer. And besides, it is good for avoiding social isolation. So I think it is really about burning calories etc, and EBU is trying to argue that bridge confers similar health benefits.

[Zelandakh]

Yes, in much the same way as "I'm going to do some training" doesn't necessarily mean you will be teaching somebody something

Absolutely, language means what it is understood to mean and I thought I made it clear I understand the meaning. It is still strange to me. Of course I would personally never use this sentence but instead "I'm going to training", which also happens to make the meaning more obvious but it would not surprise me if there are some that would formulate it differently.

 

For reference, here is a list of recognized sports in England. Some examples of activities more sporting than bridge are lifesaving, rambling and model aircraft flying. Perhaps this also illustrates the difficulties in definition and just how broad that definition is. Is there some activity akin to model aircraft flying on your calorie burning list Csaba?

[campboy]

For reference, here is a list of recognized sports in England. Some examples of activities more sporting than bridge are lifesaving, rambling and model aircraft flying. Perhaps this also illustrates the difficulties in definition and just how broad that definition is. Is there some activity akin to model aircraft flying on your calorie burning list Csaba?

FWIW that website says that they are using the Council of Europe's European Sports Charter 1993 definition of sport, which they don't bother to provide a link to, but googling gives the following.

 

"Sport" means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels.

That's an even worse definition than I'd expect from a political entity (which is saying something). Why is it "physical fitness and mental well-being"? Why is it "aim at [x], [y] or [z]"? What exactly is meant by "physical activity" anyway? I don't see why something which only aims to form social relationships, but has no aspect of physical/mental fitness or competition, counts. Helene's example of speed-dating actually is a sport, I guess (in fact, just regular dating seems to qualify).

[Zelandakh]

Hungry hippos and pub crawling would qualify too. I think some student union should make an application for pub crawling to be recognized as a sport so as to get the VAT removed from beers drunk by participants along the way! :D :lol:

 

One of the points being made by the EBU was that this 1993 definition was actually updated in the Charities Act 2011 to: "'sport' means sports or games which promote health by involving physical or mental skill or exertion". One of the arguments being made is that Sport UK should be using this newer definition rather than retaining the older one.

 

Personally I do not like either definition very much. It seems reasonable to exclude bridge using the 1993 definition but not under the 2011 one; but I would like to understand the justification for including model aircraft flying under either!

[Trinidad]

Rik, I don't think many of those criteria you mention are relevant for the purpose of VAT exemption. Actually, one of EBUs arguments was that research shows that bridge reduces the risk of Alzheimer. And besides, it is good for avoiding social isolation. So I think it is really about burning calories etc, and EBU is trying to argue that bridge confers similar health benefits.

I thought that the link between bridge and preventing Alzheimer's had been proven about 15-20 years ago. (I remember I read several publications while I was in Sweden. They seemed convincing to me as a non-expert. They didn't merely show correlations, they came up with mechanisms about blocking and promoting substances in the brain.)

 

So, if the British definition of sport is that it should have positive health effects than -according to that definition- bridge is a sport and American football and boxing are not.

 

Rik

[Zelandakh]

So, if the British definition of sport is that it should have positive health effects than -according to that definition- bridge is a sport and American football and boxing are not.

The 1993 definition also starts with the condition of it being a physical activity which is the stumbling block. Many sports have a negative health impact as well as a positive one - American football and boxing come under this category but it would not matter if they had no positive health associations at all, since that part of the definition comes under the OR and they would qualify under the competition sub-clause. Parsing the definition gives:

sport =(physical activity) AND (((imp physical fitness) AND (imp mental well-being)) OR (forms social relationships) OR (obtains results in competition))

 

A pub crawl is a physical activity that forms social relationships, ergo clearly a sport! In any case, this "physical activity" part is the reason why the question of whether the 1993 or the 2011 definition should be used is so important. But showing health benefits alone is not enough under either definition.

[campboy]

The 1993 definition also starts with the condition of it being a physical activity which is the stumbling block. Many sports have a negative health impact as well as a positive one - American football and boxing come under this category but it would not matter if they had no positive health associations at all, since that part of the definition comes under the OR and they would qualify under the competition sub-clause. Parsing the definition gives:

sport =(physical activity) AND (((imp physical fitness) AND (imp mental well-being)) OR (forms social relationships) OR (obtains results in competition))

Also it's not "improves" but "improves or expresses". Anything designed to show off your physical and mental fitness fits the definition, even if the activity itself is damaging.

[Trinidad]

Also it's not "improves" but "improves or expresses". Anything designed to show off your physical and mental fitness fits the definition, even if the activity itself is damaging.

So, participating in a war is a sport?

 

Rik

[helene_t]

So, participating in a war is a sport?

 

Rik

Yes. Or getting a health check. Or eating brocolli. But also smoking, since it demonstrates your health that you are able to smoke.

 

What about comitting suicide? It will give the pathologists a chance to inspect my health state before it deterioates due to old age. Then again, I suppose I can't be said to be healthy once I am dead. So maybe it doesn't count.

 

Sounds like VAT should only be charged on suicide equipment, unless somebody has the imagination to come up with other counterexamples.

[Zelandakh]

So, participating in a war is a sport?

Well it is a physical activity so that part is down but I am no so sure of the mental well-being being ticked off and that is necessary with the physical fitness. On other hand you could argue that it forms social relationships. Obtaining results in competition is a tricky one - technically that would be a yes but who is going to interpret them - if I lose 1000 soldiers to capture a battlefield of desert, who is the winner? So it is certainly within the realms of the definition for war to be a sport and pseudo-war activities such as paintball must surely qualify. Indeed now I know the definitions I am mildly surprised that no one has tried to argue that case - not paying VAT on entry fees and ammunition costs must surely be worth millions to the industry!

[barmar]

I don't think you'll ever be able to come up with a simple, objective definition of "sport". It's similar to Supreme Court Justice Potter's definition of " hard-core pornography" (versus erotica) as "I know it when I see it." (Wow, this is the 2nd time I've referred to this quote in the BBF today.)

 

When documents like the ones mentioned above try to define "sport", it's clearly meant as a rough guideline, and common sense and tradition are used to refine it. That's why real war is obviously not a sport, but paintball or laser tag (which simulate aspects of war) might be.

[jogs]

 

Videogame tournaments are giving million dolar prizes, they have a lot of money behind and might make it to olympics just by force one day. you know how olympic comitees work.

The Olympics doesn't care if bridge is a sport or not. Bridge draws few spectators. Videogame tournaments may draw a 20 million TV audience in the USA. Bridge would be lucky to draw a few hundred thousand.

[biggerclub]

The amount of calories burned by competitive bridge compared to formula 1 is probably settled. Whether this is relevant for the original topic of this thread is a different issue.

 

If the competitive element is enough, I suppose the miss universe contest is a sports event also. But probably most will consider hunting and parcour to be sports even if they are competitive only in a fairly broad sense. So maybe a pet show and a gameshow count also? What about speed dating or job interviews?

 

Heck, sometimes participating in pointless internet debates feels a bit like a sport.

 

There is a phrase applied to the activities of young (and some not so young) males in America, at least . . . sport . . . ah let's just say . . . sex. Although the actual verb commonly used here in the colonies is less offensive to Brits than Americans.

[biggerclub]

 

 

For me the qualifications of a sport are roughly:

 

 

 

Is it on ESPN? Thus Poker qualifies, but bridge does not. Nor cricket. At least, I don't think.

[blackshoe]

Yes you can also gain weight during the marathon if you eat a thousand hot dogs after every mile, but that doesn't make marathon running a non-sport, only this hotdog-marathon combo a non-sport.

If I ate a thousand hot dogs in one sitting, I'd be on my way to the hospital — or the morgue.

[gwnn]

Yes, I am quite aware of that. It was just a hyperbole (you will note that in another example, I said that killing bears with your hands between boards would make bridge more physically demanding, which is true, but also impossible for anyone other than Vladimir Putin). The point is, any sport done sufficiently slowly, interrupted by sufficiently big snack breaks can lead to a weight gain. I was merely applying Zelandakh's logic (F1 can be a source of calories if you manage to take in 1500 calories in an hour while going at 200mph) to an extreme situation. In practice, bridge players (top ones or average club players) can (realistically) gain weight while playing by just consuming about a can of Coke per session. This does not hold up (in a non-pedantic way) for marathon runners or F1 drivers or many other activities traditionally considered sports.

 

And just to reiterate, I am not saying that there is a magic number of kcal/h beyond which everything is a sport, and under which nothing is. But kcal/h can give us a good rule of thumb whether a particular activity is physically demanding, and thanks to the health freaks, there are lots of data available about it so it is relatively easy to compare various putative sports. I'm not even really arguing that bridge isn't a sport, since then we are back to square one on what a sport should be. However, despite Trinidad's insistence that including physical strain in the definition is "utter nonsense", all relevant dictionary definitions I could find did indeed do so (even a Dutch one). So if we go by this standard, Formula 1 (and golf, something Trinidad questioned) clearly does meet it and "mind sports" do not.

 

Edit: sorry added a whole paragraph.

[gwnn]

I'm sure there are other people dying to know hiw many hot dogs you're allowed to eat during a marathon if you still want to lose weight. It turns out (based on the first google results I found) running a marathon burns 2600 calories (100/mile - a marathon is only about twice as demanding in total as an F1 race) and a hot dog is 290. Rounding up, then, you can eat 10 hot dogs, or one every 2.6 miles or 4.2 km.

[cherdano]

I think this debate completely misses the most important question: how many calories do you lose while arguing semantics in an online discussion forum?

[gwnn]

I don't like your spin there. It is closer to 'calories sacrificed to make the world an enlightened and better place.'

 

 

:)

 

[biggerclub]

I suppose one could see it that way. But things must be paid for. Is your government running a surplus? If not, which services/spending would you cut in order to reduce the VAT? Or would you raise some other tax to compensate? Perhaps increase borrowing? Just wondering.

 

I waded through the whole thread just to see if anyone would address this legitimate question. I was disappointed.

 

IMO -- the most sound tax policy collects all taxes for all levels of government activity on privately owned land/mineral wealth. It was strongly proposed in the US at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th Century. We even had a "single tax" advocate who ran, strongly for US President, Henry George. George's seminal work on inequality, "Progress and Poverty" was the best-selling US book in history for a while.

 

The thesis is that if the government charges people for the right to maintain exclusive use of land, land will be forced into the hands of those who can put it to best use -- productive use, not speculative holding based on expectation of appreciation. My own extension of this is to charge a "perpetual tax" on the extraction and use of mineral wealth.

[jogs]

Is it on ESPN? Thus Poker qualifies, but bridge does not. Nor cricket. At least, I don't think.

The national spelling bee is on ESPN every year. One year ESPN had one hour on the scrabble championships. Never seen bridge. Cricket occasionally gets mentioned.

[campboy]

Yes. Or getting a health check. Or eating brocolli. But also smoking, since it demonstrates your health that you are able to smoke.

 

What about comitting suicide? It will give the pathologists a chance to inspect my health state before it deterioates due to old age. Then again, I suppose I can't be said to be healthy once I am dead. So maybe it doesn't count.

 

Sounds like VAT should only be charged on suicide equipment, unless somebody has the imagination to come up with other counterexamples.

I think some of those don't count since the definition talks about the aims of the activity, not the effects. Smoking may demonstrate your health, but that's not why people do it.

[gwnn]

As an aside, I remember I needed an inspection from a sports doctor each year before participating in the Romanian Youth Chess Championships (the same exact form was needed for Greco-Roman wrestlers or gymnasts as well, although I suppose the examinations were slightly different). The doctor and my parents always had a bit of a chuckle about this "bureaucratic absurdity" but one time they identified a minor heart irregularity I was suffering from, so it was not all pointless (but I was still allowed to play chess so it was a win/win for me).

[nige1]

IMO, on the cusp:

• Tiddlywinks is a sport because it's key skill is physical (judgement and dexterity)
• Dominoes is not a sport although it involves moving things about, because the key skill is not physical.

Although how such distinctions affect VAT boggles the mind

[Bbradley62]

IMO, on the cusp:

• Tiddlywinks is a sport because it's key skill is physical (judgement and dexterity)
• Dominoes is not a sport although it involves moving things about, because the key skill is not physical.

Although how such distinctions affect VAT boggles the mind

I suspect that if there were a world championship in dominoes, a quadriplegic competitor could have an assistant to position tiles in exactly the manner dictated by the competitor; in this case it would be clear that manual dexterity had zero effect on the outcome of the competition.