Great Yorkshire Show will return next year to celebrate best of county

BARRIE Crowther (The Yorkshire Post, April 13) asks whether the decision to cancel the Great Yorkshire Show was a little premature and whether it could have been moved to later in the year.

Much like all our exhibitors, visitors and stewards, all of us at the Yorkshire Agricultural Society are hugely disappointed that our annual three-day celebration of food, farming and the countryside will not go ahead as planned in July.

Although it was a deeply sad decision that we did not wish to take, we firmly believe that it was the only sensible decision to make as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. People’s health simply must come first.

Unfortunately, there is no clear timescale in terms of when the current social restrictions will be lifted and when large-scale events such as ours, which attracts more than 130,000 over its three days, will be considered safe to go ahead.

This uncertainty, as well as the amount of detailed planning and preparation that is required to deliver an event on the huge scale of the Great Yorkshire Show, means that rescheduling the event for later in the year was sadly not an option.

Nonetheless, with the support of the farming community and the Society’s membership, we are determined that the next Great Yorkshire Show will be a truly special occasion and one that we will all be ready for.

We are continuing to work hard as a charity to support the farming community in any way we can.

Our farm shop, Fodder, continues to support more than 430 local suppliers and remains open to shoppers, for online food parcel collections and for online home delivery orders for those who are self-isolating locally.  

We look forward to better times ahead when we can all come together again to celebrate the best of Yorkshire. For now, we would urge everyone to follow medical advice: stay at home, protect the NHS and help save lives.

From: Diana Priestley, Darley Dale, Matlock.

THANK you Ms D Haigh for your most unhelpful suggestion (The Yorkshire Post, March 27) 
of depriving people of supermarket trolleys in order to alleviate panic buying and the hoarding of food.

Many of us, the frail, the disabled, the old, rely on the friendly trolley to see us round the supermarket. At least that is something we can do.

Or perhaps you prefer to do our shopping for us?

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor