29/01/2014 Spotlight

The body of the man found at the Cornish mine works ` police now

launch a murder inquiry. Good evening, welcome to Spotlight.

It was originally thought David Alderson had been involved in a

cycling accident. This afternoon detectives said they were urgently

seeking a 33`year`old in connection with his death. We'll have the

latest live from police headquarters.

Also tonight, a family home in ruins after it partially collapsed in the

early hours of this morning. No one was injured.

And, after weeks of flooding misery, the Prime Minister promises

dredging will start on the Somerset levels soon.

A murder inquiry has been launched in Cornwall following the death of a

pensioner at a disused mine works. The body of 72`year`old David

Alderson was discovered earlier this month. Detectives appealed for the

public's help at their headquarters in Exeter this afternoon.

Spotlight's Andrea Ormsby is there for us now.

The body was found on Saturday 18th January. The 72`year`old from

Falmouth was known to be a keen cyclist and he was wearing his

cycling gear when his body was found, so it was assumed at the time

he had been out on his bike and had had an accident and hit his head.

But, what was strange was that his bike was never found. Today, police

have said that new information has come to light, which is now this is

a murder inquiry. David Alderson's last known movements were the night

before he was found. He was spotted in his own car near the disused

Coppermine where his body was found. But there was another man in the car

with him. It is that man that the police are now looking for. Kevin

Cooper, 33 and from Redruth. He is a white male, six foot three inches

tall. We would very much like to speak to him. His family have

reported him as missing. We are now looking for him in connection with

this incident. The police are warning members of the public not to

approach this man, but just to call 999. They don't think he is a

general risk to the public, but they are asking anyone with information

about him to get in touch. They are making the unusual request, they

know that he has known criminal acquaintances who would not

ordinarily get in touch with the police, but they are requesting

those people to get in touch with them.

A house in Cornwall partially collapsed in the early hours of this

morning. No`one was injured. The family who lived in the property in

Camborne had moved out when cracks appeared earlier this week. On

Monday, a landslide brought tonnes of rock onto a house in Mevagissey.

Yesterday a mineshaft opened up next to the A394, the main route between

Penzance and Helston. Experts believe the heavy rain since the New

Year is at least partly to blame. From the scene of the latest

collapse spotlights David George reports.

The collapsed house is in an extremely dangerous and unstable

state. The bathroom exposed to the wind and rain. A granite lintel

hangs precariously supported only by a window frame. A neighbour said it

was at 5:25am when he heard two sharp cracks and then saw the wall

come down. Michael Williams, his wife, son and his son's fiancee

moved out of the house and into a nearby hotel on Monday after a void

opened up near their front door. He told me wide cracks appeared in the

walls yesterday. Mr Williams did not want to take part in an interview,

but he did tell me what had happened. He said that on Monday

they noticed a large void under their front step and they were

advised to move out of their property, which they did. They are

staying in a nearby hotel. By Tuesday, cracks had opened up in the

property, some as much as two inches wide. Neighbours say the wall fell

at 5am today. A number of mineshafts have opened up here in the past `

two in the garden next door have been fenced for the last seven

years. They are part of the old Park an Bowen tin and copper mine, which

dates back long before early nineteenth century records. Most of

the old workings and shafts were capped by railway sleeper type

timbers which have lasted for 100 years or even 200 years, but

unfortunately, when the debris on top get saturated and the wait goes

on old timber, it is prone to collapse. Structural engineers

working for the family's insurers have said that the building will be

made safe and propped up before they begin a full investigation.

The Prime Minister has announced that dredging will start on the

Somerset levels as soon as possible. The announcement is in response to

criticism the government hasn't done enough to tackle the flooding which

has left some areas cut off for weeks. David Cameron was responding

to a question from Taunton MP Jeremy Browne in the Commons. They will be

meeting again this afternoon to explore what more we can do to help

the villagers in the Somerset levels. The current situation is not

acceptable. It is not currently safe to dredge in the levels, but I can

confirm dredging will start as soon as it is practical and the waters

have started to come down. Meanwhile, the Red Cross has brought

in a specialist vehicle to deliver aid to the marooned village of

Muchelney. The vehicle is capable of getting through up to one and a half

metres of flood water. It's been transporting vital supplies to

residents. Clinton Rogers reports. The Prime Minister has promised to

dredge the rivers... The news was required viewing in the marooned

village of Muchelney this afternoon. The Prime Minister's sudden promise

to do what people here have been demanding for years was greeted with

surprise and some scepticism. Well, they could argue that they dredged

last year. I think they did it for about a day. Muchelney is still cut

off. Each of the four roads leading into the village is still under

water. Undrivable ` unless you have the right vehicle. Today, the Red

Cross moved in with this. A specialist truck capable of

operating in up to a metre and a half of water. Today, it was

delivering much needed heavy supplies.like logs and coal.

Brilliant. We are all running out of the basic, essential forms of

heating, so this is just fantastic really. So today, action both on the

ground and in the corridors of Westminster. But there is a real

sense of frustration here that it has taken four weeks of misery to

get to this stage. There is no doubt that the operation was in place

because when the button was pressed it happened practically instantly.

If that button had been pressed a bit earlier, it would have saved us

all a lot of anguish. It's been a worrying time for Bill Daniel. He

needs a minor heart procedure. Tomorrow, they were planning to pick

him up in a specially adapted ambulance. But all that changed

when, two hours after we spoke to him, his wife had a fall. Suddenly

it's an emergency. Maybe a fractured hip. So now, Bill and his wife are

off to hospital ` the specially adapted ambulances made it in and

out. They could not have done that a couple of days ago.

Somerset`based helicopter maker Agusta Westland has been awarded two

new contracts which the government says will secure more than 1,000

jobs in the UK. The Defence Secretary, Phillip Hammond, was at

the firm's Yeovil headquarters this morning to announce details of two

MoD contracts, which are worth ?760 million. They will involve the

company maintaining and servicing Apache and Merlin helicopters for

the Army. Two centres which provide respite

care for children with severe disabilities in Cornwall are to

close. St Christophers in Redruth and Redwing in Truro will shut in

September. Carers say the centres give them a valuable break, but the

council says it will offer alternatives which will be better

for families. Eleanor Parkinson reports.

15`year`old Gabriel has cerebral palsy and severe autism. His parents

care for him at home, but one weekend a month he stays at a

respite centre. It gives him a social life and gives his parents a

break. Today, Cornwall Council announced it would be raising Saint

Christophers, the respite centre he uses in Redruth. The impact will be

immense. It is his point of socialisation. Unlike a child

without a disability who can go to the park, Gabriel Khan. These

children build relationships very slowly. Trust is a real point of

importance. The council is also closing this respite centre in

Truro. It will affect 27 children and 36 staff. Cornwall Council say

they are facing huge budget pressures but claimed they still

spend more on families with disabled children than many other councils

across the country. They say the families affected will be offered

alternative provision. For example, they could be offered direct payment

so they can choose and pay for their own care. It is about personal

choice, and about having the other services available like direct

payments, and allowing parents the ability to have more choice. It is

very difficult when you do actually closed down in this sector, people

get fixated on this sector, but there is more work out there and we

are trying to make it better for families. But what if there isn't

the care out there for people to purchase? There will be, and this is

why we are looking at our service as a whole. We want to offer a complete

service throughout Cornwall. The council said they delayed the

closures from June to September to allow families to get used to the

changes. Decisions on funding for care are against a backdrop of

squeezed budgets although there is a debate over the way councils spend

the money they get. One HIV charity, which is supported

by grants, has seen its funding reduced and yet is having to help a

huge number of extra cases. More than 1,100 people in Devon, Cornwall

and Somerset are said to be living with the virus. Tamsin Melville

reports. Verity has been living with HIV for

eight years. She contracted the virus from her husband after he had

a one`off encounter while working abroad. Medicines mean it is no

longer a death sentence, and she says it is the stigma that is the

real issue. Normally if I tried to talk about it, suddenly there is a

harsh. I have even had people leave my table when I was going to a group

activity and we had coffee, and I tried to talk about it, like they

would talk about their bottoms. People actually left my table.

People don't want to know. Verity is one of an estimated 250 HIV`positive

people in Cornwall. One local charity that offers support with

counselling and advice on issues like housing, benefits and implement

those clients have doubled in five years. It is the social aspect of

having the illness which causes the most problems. Until something is

done about that, these people will always need support. Cuts of around

30% in council funding this year mean the charity has had to downsize

from its own Truro premises to an area within the Royal Hospital

Cornwall's site. We are now running out of options. We want to divide

the services, but if we have further cut it will make it very difficult

for us to deliver those core services that we see a beatable.

Verity says the support available is too limited already. There is no

mermaid Centre like there is for cancer. There is nothing for us. I

see nobody from one month to the next few support us in any way, and

it has been quite a journey to come to terms with this. What will

council says it recognises the importance of early intervention and

support, but says it has been faced with difficult decisions regarding

all preventative services at a time of reducing budgets and increasing

demand. There's been a big increase and a

big decrease in the number of cancelled operations at the region's

hospitals, depending on where you live. NHS figures show the largest

rise was at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, where the number of

cancelled operations was almost twice as big as the previous year.

There were increases too in Dorset, South Devon and Somerset. The

Plymouth figure remained pretty much static. But it was in Exeter that

the number of cancellations almost halved. Scott Bingham reports.

For the last five years, David has been looking after his partner

Derek. Derek has a prostate problem and has had a catheter since August.

He was due for an operation at Torbay Hospital and went in on the

appointed morning. He had all the pre`op procedures, only to be told

at 5pm that the operation was cancelled. The bed was ready for

him. I phoned the ward clerk who said the bed was ready. It should

have been done that day. I felt as though I had a body blow, and I did

have a few tears because I felt really down. Torbay Hospital told us

it does its best to avoid cancelling operations on the day but sometimes

it is inevitable ` a surgeon might be ill, a bed unavailable, or an

emergency may come in. It is meeting a government target of cancelling no

more than eight in every 1000 operations. Elsewhere in the region

Dorset and Somerset also cancelled more ops last year, but by far the

biggest increase was in Cornwall. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust

said today in a statement: Here at the Royal Devon and Exeter

Hospital, the figures are looking much more healthy. They've managed

to cut the number of cancelled operations by more than half. We

have made a decision to invest into new wards, but we have also worked

closely with our partners in health and social care to look at our

pathways of care and we have change this quite radically, absolutely

wrapping services around the needs of our patients, particularly frail

older people. However, even here, hospital bosses admit that

operations will at times still have to be cancelled, so for hundreds of

patients across the south west, it's still a waiting game.

Yeovil Town have slumped to the bottom of football's Championship.

It follows a dramatic 3`2 defeat at Derby County last night. In League

Two, Exeter City drew a blank at St James Park against Oxford United.

Here's Spotlight's Dave Gibbins. Yeovil were sitting pretty at Pride

Park last night. Everton loanee John Lundstram gave them a shock lead at

promotion contenders Derby. That was quickly doubled by Ishmael Miller,

who revelled in putting the Glovers two up as he's on loan from Derby's

fierce East Midlands rivals Nottingham Forest. But then the Rams

started their charge. They hemmed in their opponents with a goal just

after half`time and forced them into submission with two more goals in

the closing stages. The first, three minutes from the end and the winner

in the fifth minute of added time which stunned Yeovil and sent them

to the bottom of the Championship. After the Plymouth Argyle and

Torquay United postponements, Exeter City played in front of their lowest

crowd since re`gaining their League status six years ago. They saw a

goalless draw with fifth placed Oxford. Despite Arron Davies hitting

the bar early on and a late double save at the end, City remain without

a win this year. He's one of only 12 Britons to make

it to the North and South Poles but, despite feeling alone in the snow

and the ice, Anthony Jinman had 2,000 schoolchildren with him. Well,

virtually. They've been tracking his journey online and have even been

able to ask him a few questions along the way. We had a few

questions for him too as he joined us here in the studio a little

earlier. Welcome back to a very warm winter

here in Britain. And you are not on your own any more. I have just spent

46 days on the ice, travelling some 730 miles from the coast of

Antarctica, directly to the geographic South Pole, so it is an

absolute pleasure to be back. In this nice warm studio. Yes, it is

nice. When you are on your own, you won't unsupported as such, because

they were hundreds of children across the globe following your

expedition. Yes, I am delighted to say that we had 63 schools and 2000

pupils from around the world, not just following the project, but

actually asking me questions. So they were able to interact directly

with you in Antarctica? Yes, it is incredible how technology has come

on, that with a solar panel you can charge a battery to charge a laptop

use a satellite phone, and through that you can send and receive

e`mails, as well as your social media. What do you think they have

learned from you? We have covered a huge amount of topics, from

glaciers, history, wildlife. It is an inspiration. Yes, raising

aspirations and inspiring children to follow their own dreams in life.

You were a Plymouth explorer, won't you? That's right. I was born in

Plymouth, I remember being at primary school and learning about

Captain Scott, and that was a topic I was always interested in. I always

dreamt of travelling to the Arctic and to Antarctica, and in 2010I was

lucky enough to travel to the geographic North Pole, and now I

have done the geographic South Pole. So, to have children following in

that experience, and learning from it first`hand, it is like life

learning if you will, it is a great way of sharing that experience and

inspiring children about the polar regions. What did you learn from it?

You have done the North Pole and the South Pole, but what do learn from

your two experiences? The geographic North Pole is very different. You

start off at the beginning of February, and you travel across a

moving frozen ocean. I think we can see some of the pictures. Wow, this

is the first time I have seen some of this film footage. This is you!

This is me going out of my tent in Antarctica. This is what I was on my

own. This was my home for those 46 days. The temperature actually

inside, you know, the sun there is 24 hours of daylight, so the

temperature inside the tent, when the sun is shining, can be as much

as 25 Celsius. The North Pole is completely different to that. It is

well below freezing all the time. Even though you are travelling in a

polar environment, in the North Pole you are travelling across a moving

ocean, it is very dynamic, the sea ice collides together and breaks

apart, where is Antarctica is this incredible frozen continent. You

travel across it in the summertime. It brought up different challenges.

It was more of an inner journey. Briefly, what is your next journey?

I would like to go back into doing some more mountaineering projects.

Potentially doing Everest in 2015. It has to link into the curriculum

and the work we do within schools, so we are looking into options as we

speak on that. I am sure that whatever you'd do will inspire

another generation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

I get the feeling we will see him again very soon with his next

challenge. It will be a cold night. We have had

lots of enquiries about how much rainfall we have seen over the last

two months. We have got lots of weather observers who keep tabs on

it. One chap said he has had 418 millimetres of rain for the two

months of December and January, which is double what we expect to

see. That just proves how wet it has been.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we will get some preliminary weather statistics

for January from The Met Office and we will give you an update this time

tomorrow on those official statistics show. The good news is

that tomorrow is mainly dry. That will be a bonus for all of us. It is

colder, and much lighter winds, generally rather cloudy, but at

least for one day we will get some dry weather. Friday is another wet

day. It is not just the rain that could be a problem on Friday. Also

some fairly strong winds, gusting up to 40 or 50 mph. And round the

coast, they will be gale force for a time. This weekend we have got some

of the highest tides for the year. Overnight tonight and tomorrow, we

still have this area of low pressure which is generating a few showers at

the moment, but it will slowly weaken and become absorbed by the

next band of wet weather coming in from the west. It will be late to

arrive tomorrow, so much of the day will be dry. This is the new area of

low pressure. This one is racing across the Atlantic. The centre of

the logos up towards the north of Scotland, but the weather front

associated with that will drape themselves across as for much of the

day tomorrow. Perhaps only in the day we might get some brightness

across eastern parts of Somerset and Dorset, but quickly the rain will

set in. It will be a windy day. The showers we have overnight tonight

will fade away through the night, but clear skies will develop, and it

becomes largely dry. A bit misty in places and colder than the last few

night. Overnight maybe just one or two degrees above freezing, so the

risk of a frost and some ice. Tomorrow will be the quietest day of

the next few with light winds, some sunny spells, but more cloud coming

into the far west to generate some showery outbreaks of rain across

Western Cornwall. It'll be a cold day, with seven degrees the

temperature for most of us. Some patchy rain for the Isles of Scilly

into the afternoon, but there should be a dry morning.

The coastal waters forecast has fairly light winds tomorrow.

However, there is another warning for Saturday. This one is for the

strength of wind. Through the day on Saturday we could have gusts up to

60 or 70 mph. Particularly through the Bristol Channel. That will

coincide with some of the highest tides of the year early on Sunday

morning. We will keep a close eye on what could happen through the

weekend. That's it from us this evening.

There will be hourly regional news updates on your BBC local radio

station throughout the evening. Have a good evening. Goodbye.