Its accounts show that its funds fell by more than £300,000 in the two financial years to 1999.Expenditure on staff and administration also exceeded that on donations in 1997-98, when the charity employed four full-time staff. Administrative expenditure in that year was £153,051, of which £119,612 went on wages. The direct charitable expenditure was £41,407, the accounts show.Trustees yesterday insisted the fund was “healthy and secure” and said the commission was “mischievous” in announcing its investigation.The fund’s chairman, Colin Fowler, said that thousands of miners had been helped by staff giving advice on debt, industrial disease claims and information road-shows, which the figures did not demonstrate. Mr Fowler said money had also been given out in grants of up to £100 to miners’ widows and for educational trips for children.”We can see there has been high expenditure but we disagree strongly with the interpretation being placed on that,” he said.

“We strongly refute any implication that there may have been impropriety. The trustees give their time freely and make no financial gain.”The charity, based at the National Union of Mineworkers’ offices in the city of Durham, has funded two welfare officers, a secretary and an administrative officer post.Simon Gillespie, the head of operations at the Charity Commission, said the issues to be investigated were being taken “very seriously”. The commission, which set up the investigation after a routine scrutiny of the charity’s accounts, has appointed a “receiver and manager” until the work is complete.. It was 1967: Britain had started colour television broadcasts, from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in summer. Then on 25 October a cow fell ill on a farm near the market town of Oswestry in Shropshire.

It was 1967: Britain had started colour television broadcasts, from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in summer. Then on 25 October a cow fell ill on a farm near the market town of Oswestry in Shropshire.
That was the beginning of an epidemic that only ended five months later, with the farming business on its knees and huge areas of the country covered by overlapping five-mile exclusion zones. A total of 442,000 animals had been slaughtered in 2,364 separate outbreaks. Roughly £150m – a huge amount at the time – was spent on slaughter costs and lost sales; farmers received £27m in compensation.It became known as the Great Cattle Plague, and even today it is still the subject of angry discussion in rural circles.As outbreaks popped up around the country, triggered by the combination of the virus’s 14-day incubation period and its extreme infectiousness, the Ministry of Agriculture began imposing five-mile exclusion zones as new infections were identified; animals could not be moved in or out.Soon those zones became so numerous that they overlapped.

Entrances to fields and farms were blocked with disinfected straw; members of the public were not allowed to enter them.Humans are usually safe from the disease, but at least one person died from the epidemic; some of the worst outbreaks were in Cheshire, Shropshire and Wales. The disease was later reckoned to have been virtually eradicated throughout the European Union after a campaign of vaccination and slaughter. That makes yesterday’s action, in which the EU banned all meat, milk and livestock exports from the UK, understandable.After slaughter, farms had to be scrubbed twice a day with special disinfectant and animals were not allowed on to the land for at least six months. Restricted entry signs stood over the entrance to farmland, bearing warnings including: “You are now entering an infected area.”Horse racing was suspended in Britain after the 1967 outbreak and the official Shrovetide football game in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was cancelled in 1968 because of continuing restrictions. The outbreak was finally linked to frozen lamb carcasses imported from Argentina.Although Britain did suffer another foot-and-mouth outbreak in 1981 on the Isle of Wight, it was easily isolated A total of 200 cattle and 369 pigs were destroyed.. Standing barely 5ft 5in in his prison-issue socks, Kane doesn’t look much like a thug.

But the slightly built 16-yearold burglar has been segregated for terrifying other young prisoners with beatings and extortion while running an illicit tobacco racket. Standing barely 5ft 5in in his prison-issue socks, Kane doesn’t look much like a thug. But the slightly built 16-yearold burglar has been segregated for terrifying other young prisoners with beatings and extortion while running an illicit tobacco racket.
Held in an anti-bullying unit, he holds little sympathy for the “muppets” whom he forced to pay £4 per cigarette, collected in the form of confiscated telephone cards, toiletry items and sweets. “If they say they cannot pay up, you give them a bit of a hiding and then you double their price,” he said.Kane is serving a 10-month sentence at Stoke Heath young offenders’ institution in Shropshire, where the chief inspector of prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, has uncovered evidence of “appalling” levels of injuries to young prisoners.The chief inspector has complained to the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, that Stoke Heath is “not safe”, after he found that more than 800 inmates had been reported injured in an eight-month period last year. Sir David said: “The thing that worried us about Stoke Heath was the appalling number of reported injuries to boys, some of which had resulted from control and restraint techniques[by staff].”Serious problems began to emerge at the 40-year-oldjail in March last year, whenthe Prison Service launchedan investigation into allegations of widespread misuse of funds and prison property by senior staff.Managers were alleged to have misused official vehicles and taken unnecessary trips abroad on expenses. Another allegation concerned the misuse of a riding stable intended for the prisoners.The governor of Stoke Heath, John Alldridge, went on sick leave. His deputy,Dennis Waghorn, was transferred to another prison and a third manager was suspended on full pay.The investigation is continuing, but Mr Alldridge was “medically retired” by the Prison Service at the end of last month.