Aberfan - 50 years on

[theleader82]

A sad day for Wales today as it's 50 years since the aberfan disaster. I remember learning about it at school. Hopefully lessons have been learnt and with health and safety it couldn't happen again.

[paolo]

I first learned about in maybe 1982 watching s BBC show as a kid called the rock n roll years

Grim

[Carlos J]

A tragedy that was inevitable and unnecessary.

[The Tick]

There have been so many tragic accidents in the past, relating to industry, transport, housing etc.

When you hear today's lot moan about "bleedin' elf n safety" you have to remind them that it's because of horrors like this we have such measures to begin with.

Also demonstrates what a big part of life coal was in that part of the world.

[Carlos J]

Well said, Tick.

[Zambo]

There have been so many tragic accidents in the past, relating to industry, transport, housing etc.

When you hear today's lot moan about "bleedin' elf n safety" you have to remind them that it's because of horrors like this we have such measures to begin with.

Also demonstrates what a big part of life coal was in that part of the world.

Health and Safety laws are obviously necessary, but there is a line which many have crossed into absurdity.

[theleader82]

South Wales was the engine of the industrial revolution . It's a shame we gave up our industrial skills for call centres and other services

[The Tick]

Ross Kemp did a documentary recently about politics and the coal mining industry in Mongolia. Seeing all the amateur makeshift pits really hits home what a hazardous business it is. Also factor in the mining disasters (not all are fatal) that continue in the USA, China, South Africa, Chile etc.

[Royal24s]

Are you Welsh then Leader ?
I think I used to be Welsh actually, but that was a very long time ago indeed. I do remember Aberfan though, and I remember my father coming home with his police uniform a solid cake of mud and slag after three days digging dead kids out and the only part of his face visible being round his eyes and down his cheeks where he'd been crying.
Nothing to do with health and safety of course, just piling slag heaps too high in the wrong places. Any one of twenty could have come down at any time really. They did know they werent supposed to do that and had known it for years. People were always complaining about them .
Best thing to do, Leader, is to bugger off from there. The coal and the iron went long ago, which in some ways wasn't a bad thing and there's nothing left there now but ghosts and crumbling buildings.

[tennisman]

Appalling negligence on the part of the NCB.

The bit in the Hugh Edwards documentary the other night where they recreated the tribunal made my blood boil as various people at various levels demonstrated an arrogant or ignorant (or both) disregard for what was already known to be good practice as encapsulated in the Powell memorandum.

Lord Robens effectively accepted culpability for the NCB after the tribunal had been going over 60 days. How the man slept at night is a mystery to me. Then again, maybe he didn't, although his arrogant responses to media about the chances of getting alternative high paid work if he wasn't in charge of the NCB didn't suggest an ounce of contrition on his part.

He might have taken a leaf out of the people on the ground in Aberfan who did much of the grissly work to get the dead out; his own miners from the nearby pit.

If the whole terrible catastrophe is not a staggering example of corporate industrial negligence in the area of health and safety, I'm not sure what is.

As with Hillsborough, it took the heart, guts and will of those who survived and their families to get recompense.

Even though a large lump sum was paid back in 2002/03, I saw a tweet today that said that the community centre still needs donations to keep it running.

At establishment level, we do like to make it impossible for people at times. As if doing the back breaking work of coal mining wasn't hard enough.

[Royal24s]

You can call it health and safety if you like, but that's stretching what the previous poster was saying.
For my part, and I'm not going to get into any bitch fights over a terrible event like this, I wish you wouldn't compare it with Hillsborough. It was different to that.

[m4 colin]

I remember listening to coverage on the BBC (still the light program I think) In my Grandparents living room They hadnt got a telly yet . I was twelve and I thought what a horrible way to die Not really comparable to Hillsborough I think but death is death and loss is loss and if its you and yours its a100%grief

[AlcoholBrazil]

The bastards NCB grabbed 10% of the charity donations for renovation. So you can add grave-robbing to their crimes.

[Royal24s]

I remember listening to coverage on the BBC (still the light program I think) In my Grandparents living room They hadnt got a telly yet . I was twelve and I thought what a horrible way to die Not really comparable to Hillsborough I think but death is death and loss is loss and if its you and yours its a100%grief

Best not to dwell on it I find Colin. There's this huge contradiction that a lot of people can't see what's important because they've never seen much death and mayhem. If they had then they'd know what matters and what doesn't , but at the same time you want to protect them from that. When they're shitting on about which words someone used or the latest ism or something or the dangers of not wearing a seatbelt you wonder how they'd like a few women cut in half or 40 kids splattered over the walls by a detonation, but you don't want the silly bastards to have to see that either.
I don't know why I'm saying this really - some things have to be filed away and not gone over again and again.