I fear for the health of the policy gurus at Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice. Their seeming long hours and late nights dedicated to keeping us informed of the continuing tremors along the fault line of broken Britain appear to be inducing a form of amnesia.
Having trailed a policy document on the care of older people at the weekend, the IDS sausage factory spewed out another one yesterday - this time about the lack of sporting opportunities in state schools.
You couldn't accuse IDS of having dreamed this one up on the playing fields of Eton - he was educated at the HMS Conway naval school so he is more deck quoits than wall games.
He wrote in the Daily Telegraph of the disproportionate number of UK Olympic medallists who were educated in fee-paying schools: half of them.
"What has gone wrong with sport in state schools?" he thundered.
At least he didn't ask the whereabouts of the state sector's playing fields because he of all people should know that many of them are buried below the luxury housing that now occupies the land.
Perhaps he has forgotten that the process started under the Conservatives in the 1980s (and continued under Labour, incidentally).
But IDS does know where the blame lies: it's 1960s liberalism which eschewed competitive sport, of course (at least his long-term memory is functioning efficiently enough to recall this old chestnut).
The fact is that few schools banned competitive sport. The true damage occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when the playing fields were sold to private developers and the individual - not the team - was king.
Competition was about enterprise, profit and individualism; it was not about kicking or passing a ball. Team spirit? That sounded too much like "society".
Iain Duncan Smith and the svengalis who influence his so-called compassionate Conservatism have clearly forgotten what has been happening since the 1980s.
I do hope their collective memories return should they take power.
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