Our columnist this week is Amy Blakely, a 17-year-old student at St Joseph's College, Manningham.

In the spirit of today being Yorkshire Day, it seemed only fitting that today's topic of choice should be, well, Yorkshire.

So what does Yorkshire actually mean for young people today?

To many, if you were to even mention the white rose', it would send them into a fit of excitement and palpitations, only to return to their normal state when they hear that they are not about to spend an afternoon hitting the shops, not realising that many hundreds of years ago our ancestral Yorkshiremen fought battles wearing the very rose itself.

There are many pro-Yorkshire' groups on social networking sites such as Facebook, populated and organised entirely by young people.

I myself am a keen member of the group 1000 reasons why the North is better than the South', and another whose name should perhaps remain unmentioned. And so it would seem that for many young people such as myself, Yorkshire Pride is another way of expressing their personal identity - in a way reminiscent of rival football teams, i.e. my county's better than yours!' But when I actually think deep about it, there's not a lot about me that I would say was typically Yorkshire.

I know that according to my more southern friends I talk funny' and say words far more slowly than they do, but I don't actually have some visible outward sign that I am from Yorkshire (and proud of it too!) So perhaps it is in fact a state of mind above all else. I know that like my friends in faster-speaking counties I enjoy going out at the weekend, I like listening to the same bands that they do - although I can perhaps share a certain understanding with the Arctic Monkeys, while they remain behind. translating the lyrics into something perhaps a bit more understandable!

But what makes us Yorkshire Tykes different from them is possibly the ability to laugh at ourselves that little bit more, and yes, we acknowledge the fact that we might spend all day down the pit/herding sheep/building dry stone walls, but we do also know how to don our glad rags and have a reet good time, and us young 'uns know all about that!

So it seems that being from Yorkshire isn't all flat caps, Yorkshire puddings and tweed jackets - although they are highly important of course. Instead it's more about the way we view the world, with a certain optimism - there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!', and a distinct warmth and openness that can't be found anywhere else in the world.

And when people joke that to a Yorkshireman, anything outside of the border is foreign, they're probably right, because I know that I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere else.