How much are you prepared to pay for an Olympic Gold Medal?

According to the BBC News this evening the British Olympic cycling team received £11.6m in public funding for their Olympic campaign.

Now Britain gained 14 cycling medals at the Olympics which works out at £828,571.43 each.

Do you think that is a good return on investment?

I'm not sure compared with how else the money might have been spent.

I don't want to knock cycling in particular - after all I have both road and mountain bikes. I'm not exactly anti-bike.

But what about all the deserving community groups - many church backed I imagine - who've lost out to the Olympics in the great scramble for lottery funding?

Or who are set to lose out as the country tries to better its performance in 2012? [Something which is neigh impossible given that Russia, USA and China were the only countries to beat the UK in the medals table. Unless of course we are about to invest tens of millions of pounds in gymnastics, table tennis and weight lifting].

This isn't simply a liberal rant by someone whose sporting prowess stretches to being able to walk reasonably quickly.

It's more a comment on our priorities as a nation. Right now this country is devoted to superficial, short-term adrenalin powered success. The kind of success that matters if your only benchmark is tomorrow morning's headlines.

Yet those headlines are irrelevant if you cannot read - and that is one in five adults in the UK.

I wonder how many people could have learnt to read if half the money invested in cycling was invested in additional literacy programmes?

The spiritual health of a nation is not measured in medals nor newspaper headlines.

Look always for how a country looks after its weakest and least powerful. If they are cared for, then there remains a spiritual core to the nation. Which is why Britain is far more secular than many think. We may still be religious and love our churches and cathedrals - but do we really care for one another?