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Dorset Echo - Our View

Since December 2014, our members have been invited by the local newspaper, the Dorset Echo, to write a column each week. It’s called Our View, and initially was written by William Parmiter and Adam Kelly, who stepped down in 2017.

William was then joined by Emily Burr, who has been writing the column with him since. In 2022, they were also joined by Kerry Martin.

 

Our three journalists are supported in the writing and editing by our Manager Laura Kerr.

In Emily, Kerry and William’s words: 

We can write about anything we want, as long as it’s around 300 words. To date, we’ve written over 450 articles. We have written about all sorts, from the sublime, to the serious and ridiculous. Here is just a small selection of subjects we’ve covered in our columns.  

Breakfast, Brexit, Boris, complicated lives, coffee froth, cooking disasters, crying, designing a supermarket, eating local and seasonal, floods in Pakistan, happiness, Harry and Meghan, inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities, irritating sounds, kindness, language, music, Panorama reporting the abuse at Whorlton Hall, planting trees, politics, prison or community service, queuing, racism, recycling, running the world, sandwich fillings, seagulls, smelly jobs, sugar tax, superstitions, stigma and hate crime, time machines, technology breakdown, traditions, us as food, wheelchairs in the sea, weather, what makes us laugh.

You can find our column each Tuesday in the Dorset Echo, either online or by purchasing a hard copy.

Our thanks to the Dorset Echo for hosting, what we think, is the first newspaper column in the UK written by anyone with a learning disability.

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