It is a particularly sad note on which to move towards the start of a Millennium which promises so much for our children and our children's children that the most significant story of the day is one that tells such a sorry tale of the way we are preparing them for the future.

It is deeply depressing that it is considered necessary for money to be spent on training teachers in Bradford how to spot signs of regular smoking in children, some of whom are addicted to nicotine when they are as young as ten, in a pilot scheme which is likely to be spread even wider.

The scheme does not mean that the authorities are giving up on preventive measures designed to deter children from starting to smoke in the first place. There is clearly a need for those to continue. This new measure is aimed at those who have failed to get that message and who could, without help, find themselves hooked for life.

The case for such a scheme is strengthened by the revelation that 70 per cent of all 15-year-olds in deprived areas of the city are said to be smokers - a statistic which bodes ill for the future health of Bradford's citizens of tomorrow unless they can be persuaded to want to kick the habit and then helped to do so.

This effort needs to be supported, expanded and multiplied in a rearguard action to defeat what is, despite the best efforts of the health-awareness workers and the medical profession, an increasingly-present killer in our midst.

Let's put Bradford back on top

On the eve of a new Millennium, the people of Bradford hold the city's fate in their hands. They can go with the good, declare their pride in the place where they live, and work together to make it succeed. Or they can give in to the bad and sink into despondency as they watch it decline.

There really is no choice for those who are committed to Bradford through birthright, family ties, jobs and all the other reasons which make people feel they belong to a place. We have to pull together, build on its strengths, and make the Bradford of the 21st century somewhere where our children and their children are pleased and proud to grow up.

After all, Bradford is not a bad place already. Much has happened recently to improve the city centre. The countryside around it is the envy of many other urban areas. The Bradford Metropolitan District truly is, in the words of an advertising slogan of some years ago, a "surprising place".

So let's resolve to start the new Millennium celebrating it, building on the spirit engendered by our Bradford's Best campaign with which 1999 ended.

Bradfordians pride themselves on their healthy scepticism. Unfortunately, for too many people that has turned into an unhealthy, bitter cynicism and an urge to "talk down" the city. It is that tendency which must be reversed.

In its place needs to be a willingness to see the best rather than the worst, a determination to defy those who would divide and demoralise, and a commitment by all the people of Bradford to see our city where it belongs - back on top.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.