By Steve Stratford, Deputy Editor

The response to our We Want Walton campaign has been staggering, and we're so pleased that the strength of feeling on this issue is making people pick up their phones, send e-mails, sign petitions, join our Facebook group, write letters and fax their support.

Ever since the possibility that non-emergency neurosurgery treatment for North Wales patients could be transferred from Liverpool's Walton Centre to hospitals in Swansea or Cardiff, readers have supported our campaign in their hundreds. It's one of the greatest responses to a newspaper campaign that I have known, and it's heartening to know that the Weekly News is championing a cause so many people feel strongly about.

Our deputy news editor Martin Williams has been asking for an interview with health minister Edwina Hart for some weeks, and finally got one on Monday. Ms Hart is fully aware of our campaign, and the strength of feeling that comes with it, but her message to readers is "not to worry" because the man she has assigned to conduct the review into Welsh neurosurgery services is a good and honest man, respected by his peers, and he'll make the right decision.

Well, the Weekly News and our hundreds of supporters reckon that the right decision is to leave things as they are, that the right decision is not to make patients and their families travel for five hours to South Wales, that the right decision is to stick with Walton, which has served the people of North Wales so brilliantly for decades. Why mess with something that works so well, and is most of all convenient for our population?

The whole Walton issue opens a big can of worms about the North/ South divide, of course. North Walians have long felt that all the power, money and influence is in South Wales, and North Wales is treated as second class. Just look at the way the Assembly has treated Llandudno Junction with its long-delayed plans to open a North Wales base there.

The Weekly News really hopes common sense prevails on this one, and next week we'll be sending copies of our last three editions to the health minister so she can see for herself the huge support We Want Walton is getting. We're told there are plenty of copies of the Weekly News floating around Walton itself. People care about this one, and there's no way the Weekly News is letting this one go without a fight.

E-mail your support to martin.williams@northwalesnews.co.uk or phone us on 01492 574344. We also have a Facebook group - just search on We Want Walton and join the cause.

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