Mark Andrews: Wheels come off bike-hire scheme and why computer games are not sports

Makes you wonder if the athletes will have any energy left to, ahem, perform on the track.

Then again, maybe they won't need much energy. This year's games will include, for the first time, something called "Esports". Which as far as I can understand involves nerdy looking young men in Iron Maiden T-shirts playing computer games while dribbling into Pot Noodles.

Esports are to athletics what "social-media influencers" are to real work.

In a speech to an American think-tank, Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden said a country confident in its values should not be “obsessing over pronouns or indeed seeking to decolonise mathematics”. He says neither Britain nor the US "can afford the luxury of indulging in this painful woke psychodrama".

Couldn't have put it better myself. But who does he think has been running the country for the past 12 years?

It's a bit rich declaring war on woke when your own party has allowed this pernicious ideology to seep into every area of public life.

According to communications regulator Ofcom, a growing number of families are cutting back spending on food and clothing to cover the cost of their internet bill.

Now these reports should always be treated with scepticism. What does "cutting back" mean for example? If it means ditching the McDonald's or KFC Bargain Buckets, it's hardly much of a hardship.

However, if people really are going hungry to fund their internet habit, it shows how deep-rooted our dependency on the worldwide web has become.

I didn't have a home internet connection until five years ago, and wouldn't lose much sleep if I had to give it up now.

Now the work-from-home guidance is over, there's no need for anyone to be held to ransom by the broadband providers.

It looks like the wheels are already coming off the plan to turn the Black Country into Beijing, with just 60 people a week using a "Boris bike" rental scheme in Dudley.

The £5 million project, which also operates in Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Walsall and Birmingham, was launched in a blaze of publicity last year. It replaced a previous failed attempt in Wolverhampton, and you might have thought the penny would have dropped then.

Such a scheme might work in London, where thousands of Japanese tourists rock up every day and want a cheap way of getting around the sights. But why is anybody going to need to hire a bike in Kingswinford?