Columnists

Julia Breen: Corbyn has been a huge disappointment

10:30am Thursday 21st February 2019

THE first column I wrote in this slot, three and a half years ago, was about Jeremy Corbyn. I went to Middlesbrough Town Hall to see him speak, just as he started to taste victory in the Labour leadership contest.

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Harry Mead: I suggest to you, the EU is mad

5:00am Wednesday 20th February 2019

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?

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Litter louts appear to prefer Fosters

5:00am Wednesday 20th February 2019

ON St Valentine’s Day – don’t you just love it – the column joined a litter picking patrol. The collective effort was commendable, the revelation loathsome. In short, we are verminous.

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Feeling a right pansy

5:50pm Sunday 17th February 2019

AS you may recall from my last column, I’ve reached the conclusion that I need to embark on a New Year fitness regime.

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Choir practice saved my life

4:21pm Sunday 17th February 2019

PERFECTLY calm yet utterly lost, Andrew Mawson parked his car in a layby, walked out to the middle of the viaduct, and prepared to jump to his death.

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Scraping the mould off the jam will come in handy when we've run out of food

5:26am Thursday 14th February 2019

CRIKEY. We appear to be on a rollercoaster of our own making, about to plummet off a cliff.

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The project aiming to cut suicides by helping Teesside men to talk about their feelings

2:32pm Monday 11th February 2019

IT’S a freezing February night, with rain spitting outside, and around 100 blokes have gathered amid a buzz of excitement in an upstairs room at The Storytellers pub.

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A match made in heaven - Retired firefighter “playing with matches” to impress visitors

5:00am Monday 11th February 2019

A RETIRED firefighter has been “playing with matches” to impress visitors at a popular North-East cultural attraction.

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Toby or not Toby – an important question over breakfast

1:00pm Wednesday 6th February 2019

THAT is the question, and one that is much debated in this family. Which is better, the bairns endlessly argue, the Wetherspoons breakfast in all its preternatural permutations or the Toby Carvery’s “eat as much as you like” offer, choices including “breakfast” Yorkshire puddings and “breakfast” gravy.

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Harry Mead: What's the secret to Boyes' success?

5:00am Wednesday 6th February 2019

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.”

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Darlington nurse who's developed a passion by taking 400,000 photos of local runners

11:02am Monday 4th February 2019

THERE are some people who bring the value of volunteering into sharp focus – and Karen Harland is one of them.

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Remembering Liverpool legend Bob Paisley - born in a pit terrace in Hetton-le-Hole 100 years ago

5:00am Sunday 3rd February 2019

BOB PAISLEY was born in a pit terrace in Hetton-le-Hole 100 years ago last Wednesday. Liverpool pushed the commemorative boat out, ferry across the Mersey. Save for a mayoral mention before the town council meeting, Hetton did nothing.

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Ben Houchen: We are a small region that is thinking big

4:40pm Friday 1st February 2019

THE last few weeks have been pretty monumental for the Tees Valley. We saved our airport, but I wouldn’t want it to overshadow some other good news.

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Headline Challenge - 2019 so far in quirky headlines

7:00am Friday 1st February 2019

The Headline Challenge is played every weekday morning on the BBC Tees breakfast show (95fm). Peter Barron, and occasionally Chris Lloyd, bat for The Northern Echo, coming up with a funny story from around the world and challenging listeners to produce a better headline than theirs. Points are awarded for the best headline each day and it's double-points for a song title, film, play or book.

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Grandad at Large: The Chow Mein event

5:00am Thursday 31st January 2019

THERE are 5,160 miles between Britain and Los Angeles – with a route across Northern Ireland, Greenland and Canada – but the 11-hour flight journey was well worth it.

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Nerf guns at the ready for Brexit-ocalypse

9:30pm Wednesday 30th January 2019

AFTER I've finished this, I'm heading straight to Asda.

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Crossing the borders by bus

5:00am Wednesday 30th January 2019

ON the day that Arriva bus bosses met the drivers’ union in an attempt to avert another strike, the column put Plan B into operation.

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Harry Mead: Going back to the origins of Brexit

5:00am Wednesday 30th January 2019

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.’”

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