RIP Aberfan

[rhyds]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

There have been a few programmes on the BBC about this terrible and avoidable tragedy.

It even took them two hours to turn off the broken water main that was hindering rescue efforts!

To be fair that "water main" may have been the rather huge Brecon Beacons-Cardiff aqueduct. Even if you turned it off straight away it would still be draining for quite a while.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by rhyds

To be fair that "water main" may have been the rather huge Brecon Beacons-Cardiff aqueduct. Even if you turned it off straight away it would still be draining for quite a while.

It didn't say what it was, so you could well be right.

I've read on another forum that the NCB paid out £500 per child in compensation.

If this is correct, even adjusting for inflation (£8,732), this seems a very low amount.

Incidentally, the next programme about this is on BBC4 at 8pm tomorrow (film poem), followed at 9pm by concert highlights from the Wales Millennium Centre.

On BBC2 at 1:45am on Monday morning, Huw Edwards looks at the decades long fight for justice.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

It didn't say what it was, so you could well be right.

I've read on another forum that the NCB paid out £500 per child in compensation.

If this is correct, even adjusting for inflation (£8,732), this seems a very low amount.

Incidentally, the next programme about this is on BBC4 at 8pm tomorrow (film poem), followed at 9pm by concert highlights from the Wales Millennium Centre.

On BBC2 at 1:45am on Monday morning, Huw Edwards looks at the decades long fight for justice.

There was some sort of scandal with the money donated by the public meant for the victims to iirc

[rhyds]

The scandal was that the National Coal Board refused to pay for the remaining tips above the village to be removed because, in their opinion, they were perfectly safe. They didn't care that they'd said the same thing about the tip that moved, or the psychological damage those remaining tips would cause.

The government didn't want to force the NCB to shift the tips (The NCB was essentially a branch of government), until the villages essentially raided the Welsh Office in Cardiff and dumped bags of coal waste on minsters' desks.

The real scandal however was that while the government gave the NCB a grant to pay for the removal, they forced the Aberfan disaster relief fund, which had received over a million pounds of public donations (at 1966 rates), to pay £150,000 towards removing the tips.

The trustees fought against it, as it was not only totally immoral (it would be like asking Hillsborough families to pay for a new Leppings Lane stand) but also illegal under charities law, but even the Charities Commission put pressure on them. In the end the trustees gave in as they were afraid there was no other way to get rid of the tips.

In 1997, the incoming Labour government paid back the £150,000, but without any interest or inflation. In 2009, the Welsh Assembly Government finally paid the money back in real terms (with inflation and interest taken in to account) which was about two million.

[RichardCoulter]

Good Lord, talk about adding insult to injury.