05/12/2013 BBC Points West

6pm. It's goodbye from me and on BBC One, we join our teams where you

are. Hello and welcome to BBC Points

West, our headlines this evening: Never been on a flight like it.

Passengers taking off from Bristol describe how a lightning bolt hit

their plane, which had been diverted due to strong winds.

Still living with HIV ` 32 years after diagnosis. I got told I had

three years to live. What happened? I'm still here.

Also tonight, the West Country mansion house that played a secret

role in the release of Nelson Mandela.

And the somersaulting student who's made it to the top of the tumbling

world. Strong winds are causing disruption

across the West, bringing delays to some train services and flights.

This morning, passengers on a flight out of Bristol had a scary

experience when their plane was hit by lightning. Alice Bouverie

reports. Safely on the ground at Newcastle

Airport. But still 90 miles from its desired destination. EZY flight 423

from Bristol was diverted from Edinburgh to Newcastle because of

the strong winds in Scotland. When it tried to land at Newcastle, more

problems. Passengers were quick to tweet what happened.

Lightning strikes are fairly common. The civil aviation authority has had

45 reported strikes this year alone. A spokesman Hugh at Bristol Airport

said that the aircraft 's are equipped to deal with this, and

their passenger safety was never at risk. But one aviation expert says

lightning strikes are still situations pilots are keen to avoid.

There can be marks on the fuse and large, Burns, examples of melting,

dense, equipment can be damaged. It can be expensive and cause problems,

and could lead to aircraft being withdrawn from service. But in terms

of safety, no, I think the passenger and crew are well protected. The end

of the story for passengers ` they had to finish their journey to

Edinburgh by bus. And high winds have brought down

scaffolding in Bristol. The collapse happened on Princess Victoria Street

in Clifton Village early this morning. No`one was hurt. The owner

of the scaffolding company told the BBC contractors had untied the

scaffolding from the building yesterday so it was a freestanding

structure. Ian's here. Judging by the pictures that we're seeing from

around the country we've not got it as badly. What's happening out

there? Well, it's a very lucky escape,

especially compared to the east coast, which have been very unlucky

with flooding potential. Nothing exceptional here, with the strongest

gusts at 68 mph, most areas have been between 40 and 50. You can see

from some of the stories, though, it is enough to cause some disruption.

Thank you very much. We will have a full forecast later.

A Royal Marine who was convicted of murdering a captured insurgent in

Afghanistan has been named publicly today. Sergeant Alexander Blackman,

who is from the Taunton area, had been described only as Marine A

during his trial. He'll be sentenced at Bulford Military Court tomorrow.

Four people have been arrested after a man from Gloucestershire died on a

night out in Manchester. 30`year`old Nick Bonnie collapsed in September

after taking what's thought to be a contaminated ecstasy tablet at a

nightclub. Four men from Gloucestershire have been

interviewed in connection with the supply of drugs and perverting the

course of justice, and bailed for two weeks.

Six men have been sentenced for selling illegal tobacco in

Gloucester worth tens of thousands of pounds. Trading Standards teams

caught the gang on several occasions selling the cigarettes from a store

in the city. Over a ?100,000 worth of illegal tobacco was seized during

the operation. Five of the men were jailed, three with suspended

sentences, whilst one other was given a community order. The owner

of the shop is still on the run. Things are getting better, but the

cuts won't stop. That was the Chancellor's message today as he

spelled out the state of the British economy. Here in the West, companies

welcomed measures to keep their tax bills down, but unions have

condemned the plan to raise the state pension age to 70. Our

business correspondent Dave Harvey spent the day at a packaging firm in

Wiltshire. They've been flat out making

cardboard boxes here today. When this place is busy, it really

matters. Let's follow this forklift to see the Poles. Look at that,

floor`to`ceiling. All of these are destined for West Country

manufacturers. This is first silicon and high`tech stuff, like in

Swindon. All this matters, because of this place is busy, it means

there is more manufacturing going on, so I be busy? Our business has

grown by 12% in the last year, which has resulted in a record year for

us. And as they grow, they will be hiring, but here's the catch. Firms

like this cannot afford to give everyone a pay rise. The challenges

we need to see how sustainable the recovery is. There is a lot of

pressure on margins, so we don't want to put ourselves in a position

where there is a downturn, we are not able to pay wages. So you can

take people on, but not give them pay rises? Is that the situation?

Yes, it is. But according to Mr Osborne, they will be toiling away

until they are 70. It is a daunting cook thought, really, and more to

the point, where is the boundary stopped? They did say it as another

year next year and so on. I thought there was a promise made a long time

ago that technology would mean that we would have less time at work and

more time to enjoy our lives. We are rich nation that don't have to force

people to work until they are old. There is, I am told, a cost of doing

business crisis. Companies would quite happily take on people and the

employment costs, but there is the pressure of national insurance,

which becomes a tax on jobs. We have to believe rates also, so these are

standing costs of running businesses before you make anything. There was

some help on national insurance today. Employ someone under 21, and

companies will pay no national insurance. There was some help on

national insurance today. Employ someone under 21, and companies will

pay no national insurers. There's an expected 3.2 rise `` 3.2% rise in

business tax. The fuel rise has been scrapped. It is not so much good

news, but an absence of bad. It further sums up the mood and West

Country business tonight. It is not great, but not as bad as it was.

Thieves have stolen over 70 Christmas trees from a nursery near

Keynsham. The raid took place in the middle of the night. The owners say

the stock was worth thousands of pounds. Sabet Choudhury reports. The

key men over there, and came across the field. They must have had

equipment to cut through the fences. I'm pretty sure someone merely where

there and planned it and organised it. Yes, a professional job.

John Pinkerton is far from feeling the Christmas cheer. At a time when

business should be good, he's just lost over ?3,000 worth of stock.

We're a small family business. It has made a big dent in our trade for

the year. We will struggle on, but it will still `` I'm still angry and

annoyed, but I would just get on with it. Broadleaze Nursery has been

a family business for over half a century. It's the first time

anything like this has ever happened to them. We don't have large

stockpiles of money or anything, so we're not like a big multinational,

where you can absorb the cost. We have increased security, so we're

taking it in shifts through the night, which makes it a very long

day, and it is called as well. The police described the theft as a mean

crime at this time of year and are appealing for information. But for

John and his family, it's now a matter of getting on and trying to

make the most of festive season. This is Thursday's Points West on a

rather blustery evening. Will and Alex with you tonight. Coming up a

bit later in the programme: As the new film about Nelson Mandela makes

its royal premiere in London tonight ` we discover the important role

this Somerset house played in bringing down apartheid.

A Cheltenham man who's lived with HIV for longer than almost anyone in

the country has spoken about his battle with the devastating virus.

John Percy is trying to raise awareness about the fact that here

in the West the number of new infections continues to rise. Our

health correspondent Matthew Hill has been to meet him.

John Percy is a familiar sight in Cheltenham, raising funds for an

AIDS charity as well as the profile of the disease he's been living with

for 32 years. PUBLIC HEALTH FILM: AIDS is a frightening disease. It

affects mainly homosexuals and the death rate from it is high. It was

in 1981 when doctors first told him he had a tropical blood disease,

known in those days as htlb3. I got told I had three years to live. So,

what happened? I'm still here! Why? Willpower. Keeping myself fit,

keeping myself healthy, keeping myself occupied, keeping my brain

going. In the early days when John Percy was first diagnosed, AIDS was

known as 'the gay plague,' but over recent years, this phrase couldn't

be further from the truth. Ten years ago there were 240 gay men in the

West diagnosed with HIV. That figure has almost tripled since then. But

if you compare that with heterosexual infection, the rate of

infection is even higher ` from 291 in 2003 to 840 last year. You are

either HIV positive, HIV negative, or HIV unknown, so we encourage

everyone to know their HIV status, and that helps, because if you find

out early but you are HIV positive, treatment outcomes are excellent.

That's why John has lent his voice to the public health doctors in

calling for everyone to be tested if they think they could be affected.

I'm a survivor, a long`term survivor. People who are living with

HIV now know that the treatment has got so far advanced and the

medication is phenomenal now. When I first started treatment, I was on 14

tablets, three times a day. Now they've got it down to one tablet

once a day. John can see his very survival might make some people

become complacent about safer sex. He feels everyone needs to remember

that he is still living with the virus ` and there is no cure.

Dr Peter Greenhouse is a consultant on sexual health in Bristol. Thank

you for coming in. Many years ago, it is used to be a death sentence,

didn't it, but that is not the case now. Do you think we have become

complacent? The availability of simple to take treatments has made

things very much easier for people with HIV, and people can live a long

and healthy life now. But, yes, there's no doubt that certainly in

the gay community, there's a lot more sexually transmitted, and they

are more widespread also in the wider population. They are still

worried about HIV and aids, but they are perhaps taking a few more risks

than CO2. I really encouraging everyone to get a test, then? Yes,

absolutely. The quicker they have a test, they will be able to reassure

themselves or get onto treatment quickly, which means they will live

a normal life span with a new treatments that are available, but

not only that, if you get onto treatment, damning to five is in

your bloodstream goes going to a manageable level, and it means it is

unlikely that you will pass the infection on. Testing works for

prevention and also for treatment. That sounds very reasonable, but

there is still a stigma attached, isn't there? Yes, individuals seem

to be worried about insurance, but that has not been a problem, because

now that treatments are effective, people are going to survive, so that

is a moot point. It is very important that people should test,

because the level of HIV in the local community in Bristol is

rapidly approaching the one in 500 level that triggers the need for

hospital outpatients to be tested as a routine precaution. That is

happening in London, and Bristol is close to that level. Thank you very

much for coming in. Tonight sees a Royal premiere of a

film about the life of Nelson Mandela. Long Walk to Freedom will

go on general release in the UK in the New Year. But here's a

little`known story probably not in the film script ` the fall of

Apartheid and the release of Mandela was partly engineered from a country

mansion in Somerset. Mells Park House near Frome hosted top level

and highly secret talks between leaders of Mr Mandela's African

National Congress and representatives of the South African

government. Our Somerset correspondent Clinton Rogers visited

the house last summer. Now in private family ownership,

this Somerset mansion kept a secret. A secret which, to this day, can

scarcely be believed. They spent about three days on each occasion.

Peter Smith was instrumental in buying this house in the late 70s

for the company he worked for. Consolidated Gold Fields, a company

with quarrying interests here and big gold mining interests in South

Africa. And yet, even he knew nothing of the history Mells Park

was about to make. Obviously, it had to be kept secret,

but it was never leaked out for years? No, not until 2000. All those

years, it was kept secret. And small wonder, with South Africa in the

grip of apartheid and on the brink of civil war. The two sides were in

no mood to meet publicly, or anywhere in South Africa. This

dramatised documentary finally told the full story years later. Of how

big business interests brokered talks. Of how Consolidated Gold

Fields suggested that its mansion in the West of England would be the

perfect retreat. Welcome seems a meagre word. A place where leading

figures of Nelson Mandela's ANC, including deputy leader, Thabo

Mbeki, could come face`to`face with South African government

representatives. Two sides ` fiercely, violently opposed ` coming

together in rural Somerset. So this is the very room where it

happened? This is it. It changed a bit since then. You say that, but

looking at this photograph, the decor hasn't changed. The curtains

are the same. Obviously, there is a snooker table here, but this must

have been... This used to be a big board table. This is where the

meeting took place? That's right. Can you imagine the kind of

atmosphere that was in here? It must have been really tense, I think. An

understatement, I'm sure. Mells Park is just a few miles from Frome, and

had been the idea of the company's communications director, Michael

Young, second from right in the back row this photograph. There is no

doubt that he risked his own life travelling to South Africa to set up

these talks. But today, he told BBC that it was all worth it. We were

all taught to look under our cars for devices, and post had to be very

carefully vetted, and I was getting calls to my house at about four

o'clock in the morning from people indicating that they knew what I was

doing, and I better watch my back. What were you more afraid of, the

South African police forces or people who were then seen as

terrorists? No, I had nothing to fear from the people you call

terrorists. Their leader had asked me to help build this bridge. No,

the people I had to be careful of were the agents of the state in

South Africa. They were people who were not averse to taking people

into the bush and letting the lions and the animals do the rest. It is

truly incredible to think that the beginning of the end of apartheid,

the release of Nelson Mandela and the shape of the new`look Rainbow

Nation was all negotiated, in part at least, in the strictest secrecy

in a Somerset village, as far removed from the troubles as you can

imagine. Fascinating! By day, Kristof Willerton is a

biochemistry student, but in the evening the 20`year`old from

Gloucester has another explosive talent. He's the current World

Champion in tumbling ` a gymnastic discipline that involves sprinting

and somersaulting down a track. Alistair Durden has been to meet

Kristof, and see him in action. They call it the 100 metres sprint

of gymnastics ` but you don't see Usain Bolt doing flips and twists

like this. Kristof Willerton has been tumbling since he was ten `

he's broken his foot three times and also his arm. He tried other

gymnastic disciplines, but nothing to beat the thrill of this. A lot of

it is being a bit of a daredevil. If you have an ability to throw

yourself without questioning it, that makes you a good tumbler. A bit

of craziness. It's one of those sports that you get a lot of

adrenaline, because you are literally throwing yourself across

the room. So it is a lot of fun. There's never going to be another

Kristof. He is truly one`of`a`kind. A lot of people have to learn where

they are in the air, but he just knows where he is at all times and

knows where the floor is instinctively without being told or

taught. Kristof is a full`time student at Oxford University, in the

third year of a biochemistry degree. It means spending time in lectures

and the lab during the day, then travelling nearly two hours to

training, five days a week. But the two sides of his life complement

each other well. In gymnastics, there's tiny margins for error. If

you make a tiny mistake, that changes the result completely, and

that's the same in chemistry. When you're in the lab, the pressure of

actually doing your results well, and if you make a small mistake, you

can ruin weeks of results. I think that's why I like thriving off the

pressure, and it's why both areas work for me. He's been national

champion for the last four years, and has just become the first

British man to win the World title in Bulgaria, winning gold by the

narrowest of margins. Going into it, I knew I had to do a perfect run.

When I landed, I was happy, because I thought possibly got the silver,

and in the end, just getting the gold was obviously a great relief.

Tumbling was an Olympic sport back in 1932 but hasn't featured since.

It means Kristof won't get to compete at Rio in 2016, but he says

he'd love to coach gymnastics when his own career has taken its final

twist. It's now ten years since the BBC's

Restoration series brought the plight of Britain's "at risk"

buildings to our attention. Here in the West, historic gems like

Whitfield's Tabernacle in Kingswood and the quirky Castle House in

Bridgwater competed for the chance to win a ?3 million lottery grant.

Tonight, a special BBC programme looks at how some of those buildings

have fared since then, and examines the challenges facing the people

trying to restore our most historic but neglected buildings. Jules

Hyam's been taking a look. Across the West there are many

historic buildings that English Heritage considers to be "at risk" `

important pieces of our local and national heritage that could

disappear forever. Tonight, the architectural historian Jules

Hudson, visits some of the buildings which have important stories to tell

but may not be around to tell them for much longer. Time is very much

against it. I have been trying over the years to try and see it saved.

But I think it's got to the stage where we really do need a miracle.

Whether miracles happen or not, I don't know. Of all the buildings on

the at risk registers in the West, this is the one English Heritage are

most concerned about. It is not just at risk, but his situation is

critical. While structures like Birnbeck are seemingly caught in a

vicious circle of disagreement, there is a more positive outlook for

others.. As Jules found out when he visited a one`time Restoration

finalist ` Sherborne House in Dorset. These new rules are the work

of Sir James Thornhill. Known for pieces that Hampton Court and St

Paul's, but this was a private commission. There slow deterioration

is the main reason that Sherbourne House has been on the register for

more than a decade, but no, they have been restored. Jules' journey

through the West's building heritage takes in some unique and beautiful

historical gems ` and he meets some very driven and dedicated

enthusiasts, who ` even in difficult economic times ` are finding

innovative ways to help restore England's Heritage.

And you can see that programme tonight ` it's called Restoring

England's Heritage, and it's on BBC One at 7.30pm. Now, we know from the

national and local weather that hisses been very bad weather wise.

It was the national and local weather that

hisses been very bad weather worst past? In terms of the winds, yes,

but the East Coast will be another story. We will keep a very close eye

on developments on the east coast, but no such threat for us. We're

going to enter a much quieter is built, and you can see here, we will

have some milder air up from the south, and so things will continue

into next week. It's going to be very much of a likeness in terms of

the day`to`day detail right through mid`December. For tomorrow, then,

mostly dry until we get into the afternoon, and then by that stage,

more cloud, but nowhere near as windy as the conditions we saw

today. The worst have been in the North, but a few wintry 40s will

move down from Cheshire, but elsewhere will be giant with

sunshine around and more cloud. For the rest of this evening and

tonight, it's largely clear skies on and off, with variable cloud and

showers in the North, with potential for some of them to become wintry.

But elsewhere, it should be dry and the winds will been nowhere near as

much of a feature. Temperatures tend to rise as you come down to watch

the south`west. Tomorrow, a fair amount of sunshine so start, with a

dry start as well. " Coming from the West, and you will see the signal

for some showery outbreaks of light rain, and a few sports at least as

we get towards the afternoon. Many areas will be largely dry, however,

despite the increase in cloud. Quite a change. Temperatures tomorrow will

be between 5`7, and as we head into the weekend, we will see a lot of

cloud on Saturday and maybe some light rain, but most places

effectively dry. You'll notice the change in the temperatures, heading

upwards as we go into next week. It will be tricky gauging temperatures,

because nuances in cloud cover will make a difference by two or three

degrees, but generally speaking, a very benign temperature for quite a

while to come. degrees, but generally speaking, a

very benign temperature for Thank you, Ian.

And now, it's time to open the fifth door on our advent calendar.

Tonight's picture is a snowy Cheddar Gorge from Michael Deardon. Thank

you very much for that, Michael. We hope you're enjoying these

pictures. We love looking at them. I feel chilly just looking at it but

it feels like Christmas! Thank you very much for watching. We're back

10pm. From all