Rather, there is a market out there where low wages are not the most important form of competitive advantage. We have seen that in the ‘Best of the Black Country Awards’, where last year’s winners were drawn from the manufacturing, services and construction sectors, and where the winners included both new and established companies. Moreover, the Black Country tradition of numerous small firms operating cheek by jowl is exactly the model so successful in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, in science parks and film studios, and in financial centres around the world. Of course, some of the old ways have gone, and many manufacturing companies have perished. Recent years have not been easy for the Black Country, especially as profit margins have been squeezed by greater competition from overseas. But there are – as you yourselves demonstrate – many examples of the regeneration of the Black Country, be they new businesses or older ones re-focussing their activities. And the changes underway here are not restricted to the purely economic. The Black Country has seen successes in education, culture and the media. In education, the University of Wolverhampton – impossible to imagine that there would be one when I was a boy – now has over 23,000 students. The University has put its motto – ‘Innovation and opportunity’ – into practice, through its partnerships with the Wolverhampton Science Park and the TelfordWolverhampton Technology Corridor. In culture, the New Art Gallery in Walsall opened in its internationally acclaimed building in 1999.
And in the Express & Star, you have the most successful regional paper in the country. Sport, too, plays an important role in the life of the Black Country. Next summer twelve schools in the Wolverhampton and Walsall areas will be participating in Chance to Shine – a new campaign to regenerate cricket in state schools, and of which I am proud to be the President. Given that in business the need to work in teams is of the essence, it is sad that competitive team sport in our schools has declined. The aim of Chance to Shine is to give young people from all our communities, boys and girls, a chance to experience – before the world of work – what it is like to be in a team, and  BIS Review 112/2006  1  to learn how to win and how to lose. Last summer Chance to Shine enabled almost 50,000 children to play competitive cricket for the first time. Young people need role models and sport is perhaps the most important source of them. Of the many Black Country sports men and women who have been role models down the years, there is one whom I would like to single out tonight – Vikram Solanki. Born in Rajasthan, Vikram moved to Wolverhampton as a small boy, and became the finest and most exciting batsman to emerge from the area for a long while. Now captain of Worcestershire, one could not think of a better role model to bring communities closer together.