THE EDITOR’S CHAIR: I wonder who would have been in the Cwmbran bunker? (From South Wales Argus)

THE EDITOR’S CHAIR: I wonder who would have been in the Cwmbran bunker?

12:56pm Thursday 4th October 2012 in News By Kevin Ward - Editor

OUR revelations this week that County Hall’s value has been slashed because a nuclear bunker built beneath it needs to be filled in set me thinking.

The existence of a bunker beneath the former home of Gwent County Council, most recently shared by Torfaen and Monmouthshire councils, has been talked about for decades.

The bunker is now described as a ‘void’ beneath the Croesyceiliog building that has to be filled before the land can be sold.

We hope to be able to send some of our journalists into the bunker before it disappears, to let you know what was in the shelter.

Something similar happened at a newspaper I edited in Worcester some years ago.

We gained access to a bunker that would have been used as an emergency communications centre in the event of nuclear war.

The interior of the bunker was absolutely fascinating and its contents belonged to another age, far closer to the Second World War than modern-day Britain.

There are hundreds of such establishments across the country.

Some of them have even been turned into museums.

The threat of nuclear war may be little more than a fading memory for many, but at the height of the Cold War in the late Seventies and early Eighties it was very real.

Perhaps the most illuminating information concerning bunkers would concern who would be in them at the advent of war.

It is information that will no doubt never be revealed.

But I suspect a good idea of your importance during the Cold War would have been whether you were on the bunker list.

I somehow doubt there were many newspaper editors included.

No support for any party intended

LAST week’s column raised the hackles of a number of political types.

For those who found it difficult to read beyond the sentences they disagreed with, let me reiterate that I was not attacking or supporting any political party.

I was expressing a personal opinion about the general perception of politicians and the reasons for it, and using a particular local example to make my point.

It would not have mattered whether it was Tories, Labour, Liberals or any other party staging a protest walkout from a council meeting – I would still have disagreed with it.

It’s important to remind those who criticised last week that this is an opinion column – and as such you have every right to disagree with it.

Frankie Boyle tweet just sickening

SOCIAL media has plenty of faults and is awash with foul-mouthed idiots making inappropriate comments.

It is usually best to ignore the fools and concentrate on the people who use the likes of Facebook and Twitter to its full potential as tools to connect, disseminate and market.

This week, however, I could not ignore a particularly sickening ‘joke’ made by the ‘comedian’ Frankie Boyle about Madeleine McCann.

Quite why anybody continues to employ this man, or buys tickets to see him perform, is beyond me.

He has lost all sense of human dignity.