OUR hard-hitting Straight From The Shoulder column, which gives business readers of www.thisisyork.co.uk, our award-winning website a chance to vent their spleen and hit out (with bare knuckles if necessary!) is growing - furiously, if that's the word.

Kicking off the column was Di Burton, managing director, of Cicada Public Relations Ltd, of Harrogate, and she pulls no punches, flaying her own gender when it comes to the paucity of women entrepreneurs in our region.

"Stop your whining," she tells them.. "I'm tired of listening to your constant refrain about barriers to success."

Now the men wade in on two vexed issues of their own.

One of them is John Minford. Remember him? He is the York accountant with interests in Zimbabwe who appeared in the Evening Press togged with bat and cricket whites, bearing the T-shirt logo he felt the worried England team could wear if they played in Zimbabwe in the World Cup.

It read: "Don't want to meet Mugabe. I've just been sent here to play cricket." For that reason he supports the Zimbabwean team's current controversial visit to our shores

"The squad is no advert for the Mugabe regime in the same sense that national teams from the old South Africa were once paraded as symbols of respectability for apartheid."

Last week John returned from a meeting with Zimbabwean businessmen in South Africa - unable to meet them on their home ground because of fears of retribution and he is protesting in HIS way - by suggesting in Straight From The Shoulder how we in York, North and East Yorkshire can help.

Then there is John Reeves, who lashes out at the negative attitude that people have towards property developers in our region.

John, by the way, is chairman of Pocklington-based property development and investment firm, The Helmsley Group.

Ask the man in the York street what adjective he would use to go with "developer" and the answer, John surmises, would be "greedy."

"Well, I think there's another side to the story, and I want to argue it", he writes.

And he does. Straight from the Shoulder. On www.thisisyork.co.uk

But this is not a one-way shout. It's a debate. You can answer back. So tune in, read up and counter for all you're worth. And for all the world to see...

Updated: 10:15 Tuesday, May 27, 2003