23/12/2013 BBC Wales Today

Welcome to Wales Today. Our top story:

Severe gales and heavy rain cause widespread disruption across the

country. Roads, rail and ferry services are badly hit. A warning

tonight of more to come. In the rain will follow pretty soon. We are not

out of the woods, there will be more rain coming today and rivers will

rise in response to that rainfall. On one of the busiest travel days of

the year, the severe weather hasn't finished with us yet.

Our other headlines tonight: David and Astrid have both been

turned down for cancer drugs. Calls tonight for patients to be told why

they're refused the treatment they ask for.

Will your Christmas presents be genuine or fakes? We report on the

counterfeit goods being sold to thousands of customers.

And in tonight's sport: It looked like goodbye for Malky

Mackay, but tonight he's still in charge at Cardiff City.

He'll meet with the man who threatened to sacked him later this

week Good evening. Good evening. Some NHS patients are

being turned down for specialist treatment without any explanation.

That's according to the Board of Community Health Councils in Wales.

It also says doctors are failing to have "difficult conversations" with

patients about some life-extending medicines which may not be suitable

for them. Paul Heaney reports. David Spink has looked after his

wife Astrid for 20 years during her treatment for cancer. But in 2011,

he was diagnosed as well. Regular treatment has not been working. His

consultant says applying for specialist drugs which are not

routinely available on the NHS was his last hope. I got a phone call

them saying they had had a reply from the relevant board and I had

been turned down. Did they say why? No, they just said no. He is my life

and I hated, when there is something there and he cannot have it -- I

hate it. David Astrid used forms like this to apply for the

specialist medicine. They offer treatments that are not routinely

available on the NHS and are not proven to work with everybody, and

can be very expensive. It is not just cancer drugs. Requests can also

be made for specialist operations as well, but if those requests are

rejected, patients are not told why. People receive their rejection for

their request and they don't understand why. They can't related

to what they have seen and heard of -- relate it. And their expectation

to how it could help them. And it needs to change. Several council

said no to a greater proportions of request than the year before. Some

did not provide us with data we request than the year before. Some

did not provide could provide between one year and another. But

medical experts say comparing the figures is difficult because each

case is unique. We haven't got an open budget, and if you take money

away from the general budget, somebody else has to do without. You

are talking quite often hear in terms of very expensive drugs with

an improved track record and possible side-effects, and it is a

judgement that has been made -- without a proven track record. The

Welsh Government says individual patient requests and the system that

David and Astrid have been through is generally working effectively,

but it is considering further improvements to transparency,

consistency and communication with patients. For now, David and Astrid

are trying to make the most of the time they have together. Perhaps

something will come along or change and I will get the treatment, I just

live in hope. A woman from Treharris, in Merthyr

Tydfil, has pleaded guilty to stealing more than ?7,500 from

families who were saving for Christmas. Joanne Jones took money

from friends and relatives, who thought they were paying into the

Park Christmas Savings scheme. She pleaded guilty to 18 counts of theft

and is due to be sentenced in January.

A mental health ward at Glan Clwyd Hospital, in Bodelwyddan, has been

closed temporarily following concerns about patient care. An

investigation is said to be in its early stages and North Wales Police

have confirmed that they have been informed. The Betsi Cadwaldr Health

Board says, a small number of patients are affected and they are

being cared for elsewhere. Campaigners are taking legal action

over the Health Minister's decision to approve the closure of the

specialist baby care unit at Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest.

An application is being made for a judicial review after Mark Drakeford

gave the go-ahead to the Hywel Dda health board's plans. Opponents

claim the changes could put patients in danger. The Welsh Government says

it would be inappropriate to comment.

The Christmas getaway has been hit by flooding and travel disruption,

as galeforce winds and torrential rain sweep across the country. There

have been widespread delays and cancellations on the trains in the

south Wales valleys. Roads across Wales have been blocked by fallen

trees and flooding. The strongest gust of wind was recorded at Capel

Curig, in Snowdonia, as gusts hit 87mph. Forecasters are warning

there's more to come. Nick Palit reports.

Roads turn into streams, field into lakes, such was the force of the

downpours across Wales. All of this on one of the busiest travel days of

the year, as families get together for the festive season. On the

motorways, there were warnings of poor driving conditions, with

visibility hampered by heavy spray from lorries. Train services also

said that because of the weather, with major delays between London and

South Wales. Passengers travelling to Cardiff last minute shopping

found they could not get home because of flooding on parts of the

Valley lines. Replacement buses were laid on to bypass the areas of

submerged track. We have had to catch the train bus, instead of the

train up to Mountain Ash, because it won't go there. We have had to get a

bust out and have been delayed 30 minutes. A bit confusing with the

fact that there wasn't much communication on train platforms.

Things are not matching up, it seems a bit amateurish. I am a taxi driver

and we have done really, really well because of the weather. With coastal

communities right around Wales experiencing treacherous weather,

sea crossings were also cancelled. The ferry companies say they will do

all they can to get people to Holyhead on the next available

ferries. It is the coastal areas in the south bearing the brunt of the

storms. Galeforce winds and torrential rain, like here in

Swansea Marina. Also in Swansea, the waterfront funfair, set up

especially for Christmas revellers, remained closed for most of the day.

There were four warnings in Monmouthshire and gadfly. Speak your

the best advice we can give anyone is to be careful. -- the best advice

we can give anyone is to be careful, you don't know what is hidden

beneath the surface of flood water, so keep your family and yourself

safe. Across the country, flash floods and

damage. I will have do call an emergency meeting of the committee

and it will have to be a committee decision as to where we go from

here, because the building is not in use and there is a bit of

controversy about what you're going to do with the building in the

future. At the weather station at Capel Curig, wind speeds of 87 mph

were recorded and forecasters are predicting more of the same over the

coming days. At this outpost in Wales, winds reaching around 70

mph, and on the West Coast, gusts have reached up to 90 mph. The best

advice during this festive season is to stay indoors and keep warm.

Let's have a word with Derek. We can see the reason for all of this on a

graphics. Yes, it is all down to this deep

area of low pressure which has been moving in from the Atlantic during

the day. It is an intense area of low pressure driven by a very

powerful jet stream am a 30,000 feet above the ground, and this deep area

of low pressure, as we know, has brought heavy rain and galeforce

winds. That shows it spinning through the country today, heaviest

on the high ground in the south, the Brecon Beacons, and it did ease off

through this afternoon but you can see more rain in the South. And with

the ground already saturated from previous rainfall earlier in the

month, we have seen some flooding today and many rivers swollen.

And there is more to come? There is. Another band of heavy rain

will move through Wales tomorrow. Tomorrow will be dry, so some good

news, but we have to look out for strong to galeforce winds, Saville

gave force winds of the south-west tomorrow, and Boxing Day into

Friday, it looks like another Atlantic storm is heading our way.

We will have a detailed forecast later, the moment, thank very much.

An investigation is underway after a woman died in Bethesda, in Gwynedd,

earlier today. Police, the fire service and mountain rescue teams

were called to Nant Ffrancon just before four o'clock, following

reports of a woman in a river. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

?3 billion. That's how much UK shoppers will have spent today, on

the busiest shopping day of the year. After a slow start to the

festive season, retailers across Wales have seen sales pick up.

Big-name retailers have also avoided a pre-Christmas slump by starting

their sales early, as Matt Murray reports.

It's called Manic Monday. Hundreds of thousands of shoppers have hit

the high streets across Wales in that last-minute dash to pick up

gifts, food and drink. Even with an increase again in online sales, it

seems consumers still go right to wire when it comes to Christmas.

Probably double the sort of normal Monday sales and probably even

double what we were last Monday, even though that was quite close to

Christmas as well. A lot of people do leave things right until the last

minute. At this ladies boutique in Bangor,

they've seen that growth in consumer confidence. I feel a bit more

buoyancy and people are a little bit more positive and more willing to

spend. Despite a slow start to the festive shopping season, in

Carmarthen, businesses were also benefitting from the last-minute

rush. Many on the hunt for a bargain, with major names in the

high street already launching their winter sales early in a desperate

attempt to beat a pre-Christmas slump. In Cardiff, there were

savings of up to 50% in many of the shops as the sales started early.

With Christmas falling mid week this year, it is believed that many

people have started their holidays early, taking today and tomorrow

off, so this is expected to be the busiest shopping day of the year,

with UK consumer spending ?15,000 per second. That was evident this

jewellers. At People were queuing for an hour and a half just to get

into the shop. In recent years, there's also been a growth in pop-up

shops. Ener Chi is a family run business. They've decided to take

out a short-term lease to benefit from the Christmas rush. I don't

think it would be viable to rent the shop throughout the year, because it

will have times when overheads will not be enough, but it is the perfect

opportunity, for a pop-up who want to come out for six pop-up who want

to come out the six-month policy where their products and services

are in relation to people. So if shops were panicking about profits,

now panic buying seems to have brought a bit of festive cheer.

Matt Murray reporting. Our Economics Correspondent Sarah Dickins is in

the middle of the late-night shoppers in Cardiff's City Centre.

Lots of money being spent there tonight, presumably? There

definitely is, and this place has incredibly sophisticated technology,

so it knows how many people have actually been shopping here today

and how much they spend. Basically, a quarter of a million people have

come through here today and you can see a steady flow of people are

still coming shopping. To give you an idea of the perspective of that,

that is 100,000 more than you would get on a busy Saturday, and they

really are spending money this year. Most of the shops here are

saying they have had record days, either today or on Saturday, and it

is interesting what they are buying, the areas that have done

particularly well our jewellery, budget and expensive, and one shop

then there has a queue outside, there are so many, and security

guards are you letting in a few at a time. The other area is games

consoles, tablet and technology, really, they are the areas that in

Wales seem to be selling very well this season rapidly Christmas. We

can see Cardiff is heaving, but what about the wider picture in Wales?

Well, we might think this is ours, it is Wales, but with should also

remember people come here regularly as far away as Cheltenham and even

Plymouth, so this is a good barometer of the UK. The average

spend seems to be about ?820 on Christmas, with ?600 of that on

gifts, and that is about ?50 each more than we did last year. Why does

that matter? For various reasons, really. One is it is a really good

indicator about how we all feel about the economy, whether we feel

confident that we will earn money next year to the same level as this

year, so it is important from that point of view. But also, one in

every ten working people is now working in this sector, the retail

sector, so it matters for their future jobs as well. Sarah, don't

forget my present. Thank you very much.

As shoppers across Wales rush to buy last-minute Christmas gifts, there

are warnings tonight that parts of the country are being inundated with

counterfeit goods, because they're being sold openly across the border

in England. Trading Standards officers recently seized hundreds of

items in one operation with a street value of tens of thousands of

pounds. They're warning the problem is getting worse. Jenny Rees

reports. Big names. Designer labels. They

pride themselves on quality products, finished to a high

standard. The high street puts in a lot of effort to draw us in and

spend. Then there's the other end of the spectrum. Fakes. Badly made and

poorly packaged. This stash of goods was seized by Caerphilly Trading

Standards during a recent operation with Gwent Police.

Hair straighteners, shoes, make up, headphones, jewellery, sweaters.

Four people were arrested and around 500 items seized, with a street

value of ?15,000 to ?20,000. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our specific problem here in south-east Wales is the availability

of the product, quite openly across the border in the south-west of

England. And it means an awful lot of people travelling 30 minutes,

picking up impunity really, these counterfeit goods, and bringing them

back to sell them here. The growth area for selling these

goods is on social media websites like Facebook. Investigators here in

Caerphilly, working on behalf of a group of big brands, have just

helped take down 650 sellers online, right across the UK. The money that

you are paying to a counterfeiter isn't going to the retail trade, it

isn't going towards the economy. It is also funding other criminal

activity. There are clear links between counterfeiting and drug

trafficking, drug supply on the economy. It is also funding other

criminal activity. There are clear links between counterfeiting and

drug trafficking, drug supply, strays locally, nationally and

internationally. People trafficking. There is a whole host

of activity undertaken by people who are using the funds they collect

from counterfeiting to fund criminality. But is the offer of a

cheap product, genuine or not, still tempting? Not if I knew it was

counterfeit but some of them are so realistic now, I would find it hard

to know if it was real or not. Have you bought counterfeit things? I

have. Her straighteners, make-up, that sort of thing. I would be

afraid of any sort of skin condition you would have, would electrical

equipment be saved? I think I would be cautious. It might not work, not

the real thing, and you spend your money you may as well go out and get

the real thing. As for those found selling

counterfeits, the consequences can be tough. Large fines or up to ten

years in prison. 33 jobs have been lost after Arriva

Buses Wales scrapped three services and closed four depots in

Aberystwyth, New Quay, Lampeter and Dolgellau. The company blames cuts

in public transport funding and rising fuel costs. The Welsh

Government is now funding the three routes. They're being run by other

companies until next June, while a longer term solution is sought.

Where you don't have a train service, as in this part between

Aberystwyth and Carmarthen, you have to have a bus service, so these

services are important locally but they are important economically in

this part of the world, for tourism but also for the university towns

and also in enabling people who live in rural areas to get into their

centres of employment in Aberystwyth and Carmarthen.

A 13th century garden in Denbighshire will be opened up to

the public for the first time thanks to a ?170,000 restoration grant. The

grade II-listed Lord's Garden. -- in Ruthin, will open in 2015, once

conservation work using Heritage Lottery funding is completed. It's

believed the garden was once part of a medieval castle.

The season of peace and goodwill to all men seems to have even reached

Cardiff City Football Club. Here's Claire with tonight's sport.

Thank you very much. Good evening. Malky Mackay is still in charge at

Cardiff City and will have face-to-face talks with the owner

who wanted to sack him later this week. The 41-year-old Scot said

today he'd been deeply upset by Vincent Tan's email asking him to

resign, but as far as he was concerned he was the right man to

lead Cardiff and was 100% committed to doing his job.

On Saturday, it looks like Malky Mackay had bid farewell to Cardiff

City. A final thank you to fans for their continuous and loyal support,

with the threat of resign or be sacked hanging over his head, his

days at the club looked numbered. But with owner Vincent Tan now ready

to talk, Malky Mackay is still in charge, and today, he spoke honestly

about how the last few days had affected him. I was given an email

which deeply upset me by the owner. It was suggesting I either resign or

be sacked. And as I politely declined to resign, I wants to be

the manager here, I am proud to be the manager here, and I think the

players, supporters and staff are all backing the one way forward. So

I will keep doing what I'm doing and don't change that. Malky Mackay says

he has been overwhelmed by the support he has received from all

levels in the footballing world. If Vincent Tan was uncertain about how

fans were feeling, they made things very clear the him at the weekend.

And working behind-the-scenes is the chairman, who has been the middleman

trying to engineer a reconciliation. He has postponed a Christmas break

to try and help find a resolution. I have been asked if I would meet the

owner, which is absolutely something that I will do for the good of the

club and the good of us all going forward. I think that should be

sooner rather than later, and I certainly wanted that meeting to be

today. Unfortunately, that was declined, and if not today, then

tomorrow, but unfortunately that has also been declined. So after that,

we are talking about Christmas day and then there is a game day, so

unfortunately it will probably not be until the end of the week. There

are talks of a bluebirds protest ahead of their match with

Southampton on Boxing Day, but fans are being urged to keep a cool

head. After the turmoil of the last week, many will be hoping for some

pieces Christmas-time and that the men that led them into football's

top flight is still in charge come the New Year. -- the man.

So next up for Cardiff is Southampton. Meanwhile, Swansea City

have an anxious wait for news on striker Michu. They are awaiting

results of a scan on his ankle injury, but fear he may need surgery

and could face a long spell on the sidelines. He missed yesterday's

defeat by Everton. Swansea are away to Chelsea on Boxing Day.

Rugby and with the New Year's Eeve deadline looming for the regions to

sign a new participation agreement, Scarlets fly-half Rhys Priestland

has admitted it's very difficult for players to decide what to do when

their contracts run out next summer. Leicester have contacted him over a

move, but he says he's not made his mind up yet.

News tonight, just to let you know the Boxing Day fixture at Force lass

is in doubt. There will be an early inspection. Chepstow is race of all

right now but they are monitoring the situation ahead of the Welsh

National on Saturday. Let's find out what we can expect over the

Christmas break. A real mix, some sunshine as the

good news but also a few soggy pitches and not much, if any snow.

But in the next 24 hours, there is more severe weather to come. Heavy

tonight and drier tomorrow, but with severe gales. The heaviest rain is

in the south, and amber warning is in force until six o'clock tomorrow

morning. There is also a yellow warning in force for strong winds.

Severe gales in the north-west tomorrow, with gusts between 50 and

75mph. The highest gust recorded today was 87mph at Capel Curig at

midday. 68mph at Mumbles There's more information on the

Natural Resources Wales website. The Floodline number is 0845 988 1188.

This evening, more rain will spread across the country. Again, some of

it heavy, with flooding in places. After midnight, the rain will clear

to showers. The strong to galeforce wind easing a little and turning

colder. The showers turning wintry on high ground, with temperatures

inland falling as low as one Celsius. Tomorrow's chart shows a

deep area of low pressure close to north-west Scotland. Lots of isobars

and that means strong to severe galeforce winds. Here's the picture

for 8am. Some dry and clear weather but not dry everywhere. There will

be showers around. The showers are heavy in places with hail and wintry

on higher ground. Also windy. Gales on the coast. Stormy in the

north-west and feeling cold. So drier weather for us tomorrow, some

sunshine, but with blustery showers as well. These are heavy in places,

and wintry on higher ground with sleet and snow. Slight accumulations

of snow likely on ground above 300 metres, or 1,000 feet. Colder than

today, with a strong to galeforce south-westerly wind, severe gales in

the north-west. Christmas Eve, night the wind will gradually ease with

further showers. Some heavy and prolonged with a wintry mix of rain,

hail and sleet and snow on higher ground. Christmas Day much calmer.

Some showers around. These wintry on high ground. A little snow on some

hills and mountains but some dry, bright weather as well. Feeling on

the chilly side but with much lighter winds. Boxing Day, a few

showers in the south and west. These mainly of rain. Otherwise, dry with

some sunshine. Temperatures around average. On Boxing day night into

Friday, the weather is set to go downhill again. Another deep low

bringing another dose of heavy rain and gales. We could see further

disruption and flooding later on in the week. Our picture tonight is

from Simon Jackson. The River Usk in Brecon very swollen this afternoon.

More rain heavy tonight. Drier tomorrow with heavy showers and

windy. Severe gales in the north-west. Take extra care if you

are travelling. The good news is I can promise some, whether for

Christmas Day. -- some whether that is more calm.

The weather obviously means the possibility of disruption over

Christmas. is more calm.

The weather obviously means Don't forget, we will keep you updated on

the weather, and travel information in our bulletins on BBC Radio Wales,

BBC Radio Cymru and online. the weather,

I'll have an update for you here after the BBC News at Ten. We'll

leave you this evening with the Tredegar Brass band. From Claire,

Derek, me and the whole Wales Today team.

Tredegar Brass band. From Claire, Derek, Thank you for watching. Merry

Christmas. MUSIC: "One-Horse Open Sleigh".

MUSIC: "Jingle Bells". MUSIC: "We Wish You A Merry

Christmas."