YP Comment: Welcome to Yorkshire, the new capital of world cycling

This was the scene in Leeds when Yorkshire hosted the Tour de France two years ago.This was the scene in Leeds when Yorkshire hosted the Tour de France two years ago.
This was the scene in Leeds when Yorkshire hosted the Tour de France two years ago.
IT is staggering to think that cycling's World Road Championships, to be staged in Yorkshire in 2019, could eclipse the enthusiasm witnessed two years ago when this county staged the greatest Grand Départ in the illustrious history of the Tour de France.

The world’s very best riders will compete over nine days for the cherished rainbow jersey – and a global television audience expected to be in excess of 300 million viewers will, once again, see this county at its finest. It will be priceless publicity.

One of the world’s biggest sporting events, it is further evidence that Yorkshire is 
at its very best when the whole county pulls together and it is pleasing to learn that the routes for all eight races will encompass the whole region.

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Credit must, once again, go to Welcome to Yorkshire’s indefatigable chief executive Sir Gary Verity who had the vision – and chutzpah – to start bidding for global sporting events on this scale. This county would be a poorer place without his leadership.

Credit must also go to Theresa May who promised to underwrite the cost of staging the world championships when she set out her vision for Yorkshire in this newspaper on August 18. Unlike the former Government which wanted the 2014 Grand Départ to be hosted by Edinburgh, such high-level political support will have helped to sway the UCI, cycling’s governing body.

And, most importantly of all, credit must go to all those cyclists and spectators who have embraced Britain’s newest national sport in such numbers and with such enthusiasm, from lining the streets to painting their bikes in a vivid yellow to signify the support of their community. Unlike Doha, where the current World Championships are being watched by just a handful of spectators, this county will stage an event like no other in 2019 and show why Yorkshire can claim to be the new capital of global cycling.

Worse than Eden?

LIKE footbALL’s proverbial game of two halves, the same principle appears to apply to David Cameron after University of Leeds academics compared his premiership to each of his post-war predecessors. Given insufficient credit for presiding over Britain’s first peacetime coalition, Mr Cameron’s record since 2015 is then judged to be inferior to Sir Anthony Eden’s handling of Suez.

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Some perspective is required. Mr Cameron’s coalition with the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg did last five years and it did stabilise the country after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown led the UK from boom to bust, not least because of their dysfunctional relationship.

Though targets on deficit reduction and immigration were missed, Messrs Cameron and Clegg deserve more credit for attempting to sort out the mess that they inherited from Labour.

As for Brexit, only time will tell whether the June 23 EU referendum vote was a liberating moment in UK economic history or the most disastrous political miscalculation since the war, a view held by Tory grandee Ken Clarke.

What is certain is that Mr Cameron was a poor negotiator – he asked for little and received even less from his EU counterparts – and he allowed the historic June 23 vote to become, for some, more of a referendum on the trustworthiness of politicians per se rather than the precise terms of Britain’s future relationship with Europe. As for Theresa May, it’s difficult to draw lessons from this exercise because no previous leader has had to implement Brexit. What she is duty-bound to do, however, is put the national interest first. If she does, history is likely to be kinder to her than Mr Cameron and others.

A cry for help

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THE WORLD should be grateful that there still exist notable Parliamentarians, like Wakefield’s Mary Creagh, who are prepared to highlight the humanitarian suffering in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.

Published on the opposite page, Ms Creagh revealed how heroic neurosurgeon Omar Ibrahim – one 
of only 30 medics in Aleppo – is removing bomb fragments from the brains of children on the floor of a destroyed hospital, while Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old girl from eastern Aleppo, tweeted last week: “No bombing!”

For all of its faults, Twitter is still providing a voice to the helpless as the bombs drop on those who are still alive amidst the carnage. The question is when will the world listen to the cries for help articulated so eloquently by Ms Creagh?

Suffering that puts more trivial trials and tribulations into perspective, how much worse will the situation have to become before global leaders use their powers and come to the rescue of the powerless?

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