Harry Mead

Following the death of legendary fast bowler Bob Willis this week, Harry Mead recalls his most famous feat.

Harry Mead leaps in to protect the reputation of an explorer who was once regarded as the greatest ever Yorkshireman but whose 250th anniversary has raised heckles around the world

We are always gazing skywards, but what about the worlds beneath our feet? Harry Mead digs in to Underland to find out what's there.

I HAVE been writing my weekly column since 1966, and it first appeared in The Northern Echo 50 years ago this month. But today’s column is the last. Time, and an economic climate ever less favourable to newspapers in the digital age, have caught up with it.

THE moors have looked like a war zone this warm February due to heather burning. Harry Mead says it is a splendid sight

AMID the Brexit chaos the normal business of government must go on. Such a pity that much of it seems as inept as the Brexit imbroglio. Environment Secretary Michael Gove provides a striking example. Mr Gove has the admirable desire to improve the care of the countryside. So he plans to offer landowners conservation agreements which will, in his word “allow” them to safeguard environmentally precious parts of their land. Covenants with the agreements could bind future owners, and Mr Gove tru

ANYONE visiting our northern uplands in the last week or two can’t fail to have been struck by an astonishing sight. Columns of smoke rising everywhere, then flattening out and drifting into the valleys. The clear air turned into a haze. An acrid, though not unpleasant, smell in the nostrils.

JUST like anyone else our MPs are also independent citizens. Given their trade as politicians it’s reasonable to assume that all 650 voted in the EU referendum. For the rest of us, that was that. But how many ‘Brexit’ votes have our MPs had since then, each one with the potential to change the outcome?

JUST one Brexit fact for you this week. Since 2000 the UK’s net contribution to the EU – the amount paid over that received – stands at £66.3bn. The figure comes from a leading German financial institute, concerned, as well it might be, that the EU’s “ideological” handling of Brexit risks self-harming the bloc. It comments: “It may be argued that the size of the UK’s contribution alone merits a fair treatment of the second largest European economy.”

YOU would probably prefer “No more on Brexit”. Sorry then. I prefer to go back to its very origins. It was on January 23, 2013 that Prime Minister David Cameron declared his intention to hold a referendum on the EU. Unrest over our membership had of course been building for years and Mr Cameron announced: “It is time to settle this European question… I say to the British people: ‘This will be your decision.’”