Editor's comment: time to up the ante on flooding issue

On Saturday my wife and I viewed a property owned by a delightful couple. The conversation was typical of the context: polite, formal and ever so slightly awkward as only an encounter in your own home with strangers can be.

That is until the the conversation elicited from us that the reason for our relocation was my having become the Editor of The Yorkshire Post.

The lady of the house became immediately animated. She delighted in telling me how she never misses a Saturday copy of the paper, and how marvellous she felt The Magazine is.

However, she then made a plea to me: she insisted that I make it my business to understand quite how appalled people are at the way Yorkshire has been treated in the aftermath of the floods. ‘You must be the champion for us on this,’ she said.

She was deeply passionate about what she was saying, and clearly didn’t expect to have the Editor of the paper she cherishes standing in her living room. She didn’t pass up the opportunity.

Karen was clear: that as far as readers of The Yorkshire Post were concerned, by virtue of my appointment, I now share in the responsibility for ensuring the victims of flooding around the county get justice.

So, the time has now come to up the ante.

Tomorrow this newspaper will pen an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron. It will spell out that the five million residents of Yorkshire are observing the Government’s response to the crisis in keen anticipation of a satisfactory proposition that will protect future generations from the abject grief and devastation experienced by some of Yorkshire’s communities.

Tomorrow’s special edition will carry as many pages as it takes to demonstrate just how the floods are continuing to affect the people whom this newspaper represents. We will deliver enough copies to Downing Street to reassure ourselves that Government ministers are left in no doubt that the reparations required here demand so much more than a fleeting nod. Mr Cameron observed a fierce partisanship present across Yorkshire not so long ago, but on this we are united.

I also take this opportunity to invite you to write to me. I want to be fully appraised of what Yorkshire expects of The Yorkshire Post. This is not my newspaper, it’s yours. I am merely a custodian on your behalf and so have a duty to represent you on a local, national and international level. I look forward to your responses.

by James Mitchinson, Editor