Columnists
Darlington's identity is on the line
5:22pm Thursday 23rd January 2020
ONE engine, two museums – Locomotion No 1 cannot be stationed in two places at once. Someone will lose out.
Family tell of devastating moment they learned their little girl Poppy had kidney failure
5:00am Tuesday 21st January 2020
THERE’S a very good reason why Gavin Lancaster will spend his 40th birthday walking 13 miles – and she’s called Poppy.
Headline Challenge - 2020 in quirky headlines
8:10am Friday 17th January 2020
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.
Hearts and crafts
8:11am Monday 13th January 2020
THE Australian bush fires have produced one of the most tragic and shocking statistics of the year so far: a billion animals have perished in the flames.
The shame of the Tees Valley train
4:01pm Thursday 9th January 2020
UNLESS you try to use our local railways on a daily basis, you probably don’t understand how shockingly bad, how utterly appalling, they are.
In it for the long run - the 85-year-old parkrun hero who shows no sign of stopping
9:19am Monday 6th January 2020
IN the bright January sunshine that greeted 2020, a record-breaking 606 people gathered to get the year off to a healthy start by running three laps of their local park.
The Northern Echo 150: Why the regional press has never been more important
5:00am Wednesday 1st January 2020
FROM my desk in The Northern Echo newsroom, now on the first floor of our historic home on Priestgate, Darlington, I can see the team are busily putting together our New Year’s Day edition.
A track record to be proud of
1:07pm Monday 30th December 2019
APART from heralding the start of a new decade, New Year’s Day 2020 marks a much grander milestone: the 150th anniversary of The Northern Echo.
A warm Christmas welcome
8:45am Monday 23rd December 2019
IN the run up to Christmas 2019, it seems more important than ever to make people from other countries feel welcome.
A Christmas inspiration
8:32am Monday 23rd December 2019
The mother of missing chef Claudia Lawrence talks to PETER BARRON about her hopes for Christmas and the New Year
'You're my one in a million' - the couple who fell in love while working at a hospice
5:02pm Tuesday 17th December 2019
In 1984, Mary Butterwick famously sold her home to fund Butterwick Hospice Care and is remembered as “one in a million”. Today the charity launches a fund-raising initiative to continue Mary’s legacy by asking people to remember their own one in a million with a donation. It begins with one devoted couple telling how they found love while working at the hospice…
A tidal wave of Toryism
12:15pm Saturday 14th December 2019
IT is a time for geographical and geological metaphors: this is a seismic result, especially here in the North-East where a tidal wave of Toryism has swept through County Durham and along the Tees Valley, turning red to blue, from the former steeltown of Consett in the west, through the ex-coalfield to the former steeltown of Redcar in the east.
Giving me the needle
9:41pm Thursday 12th December 2019
AT the risk of sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge, I’ve never enjoyed the annual ritual of going out to buy a Christmas tree.
Thanks for the memories
8:09am Monday 9th December 2019
THE 20 years since the first Local Heroes Awards have flashed by at the speed of Usain Bolt being pursued by a cheetah. Or even Boris Johnson being chased by Andrew Neil.
Farewell: the end of the Northern Echo era for Mike Amos
7:00am Saturday 7th December 2019
The designated driver being in Singapore, the bus service from Houghton to home not exactly frequent, the column missed the tribute night at Philadelphia Cricket Club to honour Malcolm Pratt’s 60 years service. It climaxed when the function room was formally named the Malcolm Pratt Lounge.
After 55 years in journalism, 34 years of Backtrack, Mike Amos’s final column
6:10am Saturday 7th December 2019
Harry Stott, known more familiarly as Harrystottle, was my first chief reporter – today he’d probably be called a line manager – in the Bishop Auckland office of the Northern Despatch, conveniently situated above a money lender’s. It was August 1965.
The last election in the dark days of December
12:48pm Thursday 5th December 2019
THE last December election was in 1923, and The Northern Echo’s polling day forecast predicted a “moderate northerly wind, becoming light and backing to west”.
Who can we trust in this election?
5:00am Thursday 5th December 2019
FROM Labour claims about the ‘runaway privatisation’ of the NHS to the now-notorious Conservative promise of 50,000 ‘extra’ nurses. Never before has an election campaign been so full of half-truths and plain old-fashioned lies.
Hannah Chapman
Opinion on the issues of the week by The Northern Echo's editor.
Chris Lloyd
Chris Lloyd on a quest to understand today’s world.
Peter Barron
Weekly columns from The Northern Echo's former editor.
Ben Houchen
Monthly column from Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen.
