Tragedy raises serious issues

The nightmarish death of a Black Country couple, killed by carbon monoxide seeping from the ground beneath their home, should set alarm bells ringing everywhere. Our region, like so many old industrial areas, is riddled with shafts for coal and stone, some of which date back 200 years and many of which were neither properly sealed nor mapped.

We are accustomed by now to Black Country gardens collapsing into long-forgotten mines or car parks subsiding into ironstone workings.

But the tragedy which claimed the lives of James and Molly McDonald in their Netherton home reveals a far more sinister danger.

The inquest heard that this case was the first of its kind recorded in Britain. And yet a contractor described how a similar test in Coseley a few years earlier had found a similar leak in a house.

The questions raised by this case are obvious.

Is it as rare as the experts seem to think? How many more pockets of deadly gas are trapped, at risk of being released?

As the coroner said, if this has happened once it could happen again.

And what of the past? How many more unexplained deaths in this region may have been attributed to natural causes or old age for want of proper investigations?

We live in an age of health-and-safety madness when councils seem to compete for who can impose the silliest measures, from banning conkers to removing hanging baskets or fencing-off fruit trees.

How ironic that while a generation of jobsworths are looking upwards for non-existent dangers in the form of conkers or falling pears, a lethal danger may be lurking, quite literally, beneath their feet.

Yesterday’s inquest has revealed a clear and present danger.

We do not know the scale of the problem, how likely it is to happen again or whether the process of testing the ground is somehow implicated.

But two people have died needlessly. It must not happen again.

Halloween is no excuse for yobbery

Halloween, once a quiet English festival of apple-bobbing and lantern-making, has become taken over by the American custom of trick or treat. Parents have a duty to ensure the fun does not turn to fear.

For a start, trick or treating should be exclusively for small children with a responsible adult discreetly in the background.

And if tricksters go too far, no-one should feel embarrassed about calling the police. Fun does not include drunkenness, yobbery or vandalism - whatever the date.