For instance here's the headline:
New Zealanders belong to a sporting nationAlmost two-thirds of Kiwis belong to a club or organisation, Statistics New Zealand said today. In keeping with a nation that takes great pride in the All Blacks, Silver Ferns, and All Whites, sporting clubs are the most popular.Yet 72 percent - almost three quarters - do not belong to a sporting club.
The second highest group membership belongs to religion - 21 percent. A header that said New Zealanders belong to a religious nation would be unthinkable. Especially from a government department. Yet the difference between membership of sporting and religious clubs is only 7 percentage points.
3 comments:
7 Percentage points and an unfathomable suspension of reality.
I wonder how the activity rates go across the different types of "clubs". Do people go to their sports clubs as much as they go to their other ones? There is no cross-tab to let you see.
One of the saddest declines in club membership is around service clubs.
At around the 3/4 mark last century many Lions and Rotary Clubs were turning away people wishing to be a part of the two wonderful world movements and Clubs were being formed on a monthly basis.
Men and Women in the prime of their productive lives were clamouring to join.
When I moved to Paradise 15 years ago a very strong Lions club was at its constitutional limit of 40 members and the average age was well over seventy, today it is still at that limit (dictated by venues large enough for meetings particularly when Partners attend) and the average age has been reduced but we are the exception rather than the rule as many Clubs, more so in the Urban areas are struggling.
Apparently volunteering is going out of fashion, just ask Volunteer Fire and Ambulance, Search and Rescue, and the destruction is imeho another outcome of welfarism.
Just go back to the aftermath of the over 10 000 seismic incidents when media marvelled at the massive outpouring of help being offered but now complacency has re-established itself and the spirit has all but evaporated.
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