SUNDAY SUN

Today’s Sunday Sun contains a couple of snippets of regional news which prove interesting.

The first concerns the news that Michael Redfern QC, currently conducting the enquiry into the illegal removal of organs from the body’s dead Sellafield workers, is to widen his enquiry to cover coal miners. It has emerged that the lungs of deceased miners were removed during autopsies at the request of the National Coal Board, but without relatives consent. With this regions extensive history of coalmining, I can’t help but think that there will be families here who may have been affected by this practise.

The second article concerns a business partnership between two not for profit housing groups in Teeside. Ermimus Housing, with 11500 homes, will team up with Tees Valley Housing to create a body to oversee the management of both companies. No problem there. However, this will pave the way for directors to claim thousands of pounds in allowances, something they couldn’t do under the charitable status of the single company set up.

Hopefully, a certain ALMO housing group not a million miles away from Shields Town Hall won’t get wind of this. Otherwise, there go another couple of millions of tax payers money.