THE national programme of getting schoolchildren to run a mile a day is a laudable effort to strive towards childhood fitness and to reduce obesity.

However the biggest plastics and bleach manufacturer INEOS, who are now also the biggest fracking company in the UK, as sponsor is obscene.

This is a despicable attempt to use our children as pawns to ‘greenwash’ their dirty and destructive businesses.

The Daily Mile and co-sponsor ITV should be ashamed for letting themselves be used in this way.

In a time when plastics are polluting our oceans and even finding their way into our children’s bodies, plastic use should be kerbed and manufacturing reduced.

Certainly industrialising our countryside and polluting our land and water by fracking just to get a cheap gas bill for processes that use more power than the city of Liverpool shouldn’t be allowed.

Please parents and headteachers boycott this scheme to show that our kids and our communities can’t be bought with dirty PR money.

Starting your own scheme would be great.

Peter Roberts Cheshire