Sport in the United Kingdom sports combined have less than one-third the participation of football. Additionally, a British sport journalist pointed out that football academies are "really bad at letting players out of the system who aren't going to make it", frequently keeping players until age 17 or 18, beyond an age at which they can reasonably be developed for top-level basketball. Another issue is politically related. Basketball is not played in the elite fee-paying secondary schools that produce a disproportionate share of the UK's political leaders. Also, several British basketball insiders have cited problems with the sport's governance within the UK, with Kevin Routledge,
George Roberts (British politician) George Roberts (British politician) George Henry Roberts (27 July 1868 – 25 April 1928) was a Labour Party politician who switched parties twice. He was born on 27 July 1868. At the 1906 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich. He was a minister in the Lloyd George Coalition Government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1916 to 1917, Minister of Labour from 1917 to 1919, and Minister of Food Control from 1919 to 1920. He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor in 1917. Roberts stood in 1918 as a Coalition Labour