YP Comment: '˜Daesh' doctor's NHS betrayal

This perplexing question follows reports that Issam Abunanza, who worked in Scarborough and Sheffield, had joined the terror network.

AN NHS doctor from Yorkshire abandoned his wife and children to join Islamic State in Syria

His incredulous parents, who have chosen to disown their son, are not the only people who feel betrayed. The same is true of Dr Abunanza’s patients and NHS colleagues – a man who worked to save lives is now supporting a murderous regime. And the same can be said of all those faith leaders working tirelessly to counter Daesh’s poisonous narrative.

Understandably, much emphasis has focused on efforts to prevent the grooming of impressionable young Muslims on the internet where it is difficult to silence the most radical of hate preachers. This was brought into sharp focus last summer when it emerged that 17-year-old Talha Asmal had fled his Dewsbury home and blown himself up in a terrorist attack in Iraq to earn the infamy of becoming Britain’s youngest ever suicide bomber.

Other young people have made a similar journey, but Dr Abunanza’s fateful decision cannot be dismissed as youthful naïvety. Aged 37, the very fact that he trained to be a doctor means that he is not only a man of supposed intellect, but fully conversant with the English language and therefore fully aware that Daesh’s atrocities have led to the slaughter of innocent people from all faiths. As such, this episode is another reminder that there must be no let up in attempts to challenge Daesh’s dastardly doctrine.

Just because it is losing territory in Iraq does not lessen the threat that this barbaric network poses to the future peace of the Middle East, but the rest of the civilised world.

Where’s the steel? Ministers must deliver for North

DEPUTISING for David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions, Chancellor George Osborne said that the Government was doing “everything” within its power to support the UK steel industry as bids are considered for the remnants of Tata’s operations. However the audience which needs convincing is not the House of Commons where PMQs was memorable for the curious absence of Brexit-supporting ministers from the choreographed seating plan on the Government front bench, but those communities paying a heavy price for the decline of a once great industry.

As steel workers lobbied Parliament, this issue needs to be considered from two perspectives. First the EU and whether membership of the European Union is still in the best interests of this industry – or not – and whether a Brexit vote would leave Britain better placed to impose tough tariffs against China.

Next the North. In a week when the green light was given to plans to frack shale gas from under the rolling hills of Ryedale, a move which could hit North Yorkshire’s tourism industry, the Government now needs to start supporting this region in equal measure. A key test comes today when around 250 staff at the Department of Business, Industry and Skills regional office in Sheffield will learn if their jobs are safe or being transferred to London under a cost-cutting plan.

The decision will confirm whether the Government is doing “everything”, as Mr Osborne says, to support steel jobs and the North – or if the UK has become even more fractured when it comes to economic, industrial and energy policy. Watch this space.

Losing its sparkle: Is M&S going out of fashion?

THE only comfort to Marks & Spencer chief executive Steve Rowe is that he is not the only retail chief struggling to come to terms with market forces on the high street – the same applies in equal measure to the supermarket sector.

Yet it remains to be seen whether his new strategy, namely cheaper clothes and more shop floor staff, pays off – or not. The approach, followed to limited success by Morrisons, seems so obvious that there must be a flaw in the sales pitch.

Perhaps the problem is more profound and that M&S, a national institution that can trace its roots back to a market stall in Leeds, has gone out of fashion because its clothes have not kept pace with changing styles.

It’s an age-old dilemma. M&S do not want to lose their disloyal customers whose taste in clothes is more conservative, but it also needs to appeal to a younger generation if the financial bottom line is to sparkle again after a profits warning sent the firm’s share price into freefall.