Enduring need to remember

One reason for this, of course, is likely to be the fact that war and its consequences remain an ever-present reality, with British troops continuing to see action and modern media bringing home to Britons the true nature of the sacrifices being made across the globe by members of our Armed Forces.

No one, then, can view the tradition of Remembrance as a mere relic of the First World War. Rather, it is a sad and seemingly permanent expression of the continuing relationship between the British people and those who take up arms on their behalf.

For the awful reality is that the war that was supposed to end all wars did nothing of the sort. Instead, it ushered in a bloody century of conflict in which British soldiers, sailors and airmen gave their lives in struggles ranging from the Second World War to the continuing conflict in Afghanistan, taking in Korea, Malaya, Ulster, the Falkland Islands and Iraq along the way, to name only a few of the theatres in which British troops have fought and died.

It is too much to hope that the forthcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan – a conflict which has now lasted longer than the First and Second World Wars put together - will herald a lasting period of peace, either in that benighted region or elsewhere in this war-ravaged world.

But it is not too much to spend a little time paying our respects to those who have given their lives in the hope that the fond dream of a peaceful world will one day come to pass. Today, as we once again mark the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice which ended the tragic slaughter of the trenches, we will remember them.

Walk-in worries

WHEN NHS walk-in centres were launched in Bradford, amid a fanfare of publicity, they were hailed by the then Labour government as the future of primary care.

Five years later, however, and one-in-four of these centres has closed, while many more have had their opening hours reduced, not because they have proven unpopular, but because so many patients have found them useful that they have become victims of their own success.

For NHS bosses have told the health watchdog, Monitor, that the centres have generated “unwarranted demand for services”, with walk-in patients continuing to see their own GPs with the same ailments, resulting in the NHS paying twice over for treating the same problems.

The question, however, is which particular NHS inadequacy this highlights. Does it suggest that the walk-in centres themselves are expensive white elephants? Or does it show that merely splashing out money on new buildings, without properly thinking through what fundamental adjustments would then be needed to ensure that these reforms are successful, is no way to run a health service?

For the fact remains that the idea behind walk-in centres was a sound one, improving access to GPs and catering for the modern lifestyles of busy patients who frequently spend the working day far away from their own doctors’ surgeries.

Indeed, with primary care now under pressure as never before and fears that accident-and-emergency departments will struggle to cope this winter, walk-in centres should be providing invaluable assistance to a beleaguered system.

Instead, because complex and inflexible payment processes have deterred NHS chiefs from providing walk-in care even when it is cost-effective to do so, they are providing an object lesson in how piecemeal health-service reform, because of the system’s inbuilt inefficiencies, can often be its own worst enemy.

Export weak

THE decline of British exports has too often been taken for granted as an inevitable consequence of the demise of manufacturing.

However, the startling fact that only two per cent of firms in this region are currently trading overseas – compared with 
about 20 per cent of companies across the country as a whole – illustrates another, equally worrying fact, namely the imbalance of the British economy which tilts away from Yorkshire, and 
from firms that actually provide goods, and towards the South-East and 
the financial-services industry.

This is why hopes are high that Export Week, which gets underway today and includes a series of events across this region, will be a major step towards realising the Government’s ambition of increasing the number of British firms exporting from a fifth to a quarter.

For the economic recovery will never be sustainable if it is centred on London and the South-East.

There are clearly too many firms in this region not realising their potential and it is crucial, therefore, 
that Ministers ensure this week, as they bang the 
drum for Britain, that the world-class goods and services being produced in Yorkshire gain access to the global stage where they belong.