Remembering Aberfan...

The Aberfan Disaster, which took place 40 years ago tomorrow, is my earliest memory of a news event. As I have said before on this blog, I have absolutely no recollection of England's 1966 World Cup win, but I clearly remember my mother watching the TV ashen-faced as the pit village catastrophe unfolded just a few months' later.

I guess that was part of the reason why, as a reporter on the South Wales Echo nearly three deacdes later, I felt drawn to highlight some of the terrible injustices suffered as a result of the coal industry in a campaign called Heroes of Coal.

The history of coal in the UK has been one of appalling industrial exploitation and official neglect, right up to the previous Government's flat refusal to compensate those former miners now suffering from chronic bronchitis and emphysema. But even against that backdrop, Aberfan stands as the most notorious episode of all.

The people of Aberfan never wanted the publicity that came with the disaster and, as Melanie Doel of BBC Wales writes in this piece, tomorrow's anniversary will be marked by quiet reflection in the village. But our thoughts will be with them nonetheless.

Another one bites the dust...

Clare Short's resignation from the Labour Party today is not just the culmination of a long process of personal disillusionment with the party, but the latest example of Tony Blair's failure to retain the trust of the people who once constituted his top team.

Short is the second member of the 1997 Labour Cabinet to leave the party, the first being ace badger-watcher Ron Davies. I cannot recall this ever happening to another Government in my lifetime, although others may have longer memories....

Of that initial Blair Cabinet, just six members remain - the Prime Minister himself, John Prescott, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and Alastair Darling, great political survivors all.

Four are dead - Ivor Richard, Donald Dewar, Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam - while another five - Ann Taylor, Jack Cunningham, David Clark, Chris Smith and George Robertson - have joined Derrry Irvine in the land of the living dead, aka the House of Lords.

Oct 23 Update: Rumours of Ivor Richard's death are apparently greatly exaggerated - see comments thread below.

Forsyth still doing the Lady's bidding

It would be easy to dismiss the report of the Tories' Tax Commission under Lord Michael Forsyth as a political event of no great consequence, given that its proposals have not only been rubbished by Ed Balls on behalf of Labour, but also that the Tories' own Shadow Chancellor Gideon George Osbourne has felt the need to distance himself from them.

That wouldn't, however, be quite right. Although Osbourne has made clear today that the Tories will not be promising an overall reduction in the tax take, and that any cuts in personal taxes will be paid for by increases in environmental taxes, I would nevertheless expect some of the Commission's ideas to make it into the next Tory manifesto. Or even the next Labour one.

Chief among these, surely, is the replacement of Inheritance Tax by a new form of Capital Gains Tax that would exempt the family home, an idea which is looking increasingly like its time has come.

Originally envisaged as a tax that would affect only the very richest, the exponential increase in house prices over the last 20 years has now brought many hundreds of thousands of estates within its ambit, causing much anguish to elderly people whose home is their only asset and who want to be able to pass on something to their children.

If Labour had any sense, they would nick this idea pretty damn quick. Most of the newspapers are already behind it, and my bet is that it's going to be as certain a vote winner among potential Labour-Tory switchers as council house sales were in the late 70s.

Fortunately for the Tories, Brown and Balls appear set on continuing to regard the abolition of IT as a tax cut designed to help the rich, missing the point that, because of the uneven pattern of house prices, it's really a tax that nowadays owes much more to location than social class.

One thing is for certain - that Margaret Thatcher would certainly approve of the work her old protege Forsyth has done in putting tax cuts firmly back on the Tories' longer-term agenda.

An old friend from my Lobby days, who was certainly in a position to know, once told me that Thatcher had actually marked him out as her long-term successor, and that, had she been able to fulfill her ambition to go "on and on and on," would eventually have anointed him ahead of the other Michael, Portillo. I wonder.