PAUL Grimwood is indulging in the age-old blood sport of shooting the messenger.

As this city's principal messenger for 123 years, we have become hardened to a recurring barrage of gunfire, often discharged by those who find our revelations too close for comfort.

Tonight's salvo is in the form of a memo to Mr Grimwood's Nestl Rowntree workforce, in which he castigates the Evening Press for being "committed to a campaign of rumour and inaccurate comment which only helps to undermine the company and our employees". As a York man, the managing director should know better than that. This newspaper has been a firm supporter of the Rowntree factory from its early days, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with management and workforce to try to keep it in British hands in the 1980s.

More recently we have publicised and praised Nestl Rowntree's generosity in sponsoring York City and the Christmas lights. It is because we recognise Rowntree's crucial importance to York that we felt duty bound to report the concerns about the factory's future expressed by so many workers.

We approached Nestl Rowntree to ask for its response to these very genuine anxieties, but the firm refused to comment. Mr Grimwood has turned down repeated requests for an interview. After reading the memo, we went back to the bosses, asking them to explain what was inaccurate in our original report so we could set the record straight. Again, we didn't get an answer.

In our You The Jury poll, 83 per cent of respondents said they feared for the future of Nestl in York. A continued silence from management will only fuel those fears.

We would be delighted to hear from Mr Grimwood at any time.

Updated: 10:31 Friday, January 27, 2006