[WillowTheWhisp]

There are a couple of things that bother me about this project, one being the fact that we are talking about something which happened almost a century ago. It isn't possible to do any first hand research at this stage now, the best you could do is research the research which has already been done, or interview those descendants who may well have opinions on the subject but who can't really relate to the impact of the events at the time.

Interviewing descendants is all very well but their views will be coloured by their own personal opinions and not necessarily have much connection to the subject. For instance my late husband's greatgrandfather was one of those who were killed. His widow received a war widow's pension so the comment Spuggie made about them having to get by without any Welfare State or pension isn't accurate. But that's all we know. She died long ago and as far as we know didn't tell her children much and Peter's father died before I even met Peter so I have no idea if he had any personal memories of his father telling him what it was like. The only living relatives who I talked to several years ago hadn't much to say on the subject and they couldn't really agree on what they remembered great aunts and grannies having told them when they were younger.

As someone said earlier, it wasn't a whole generation. Not every man from Hyndburn was killed in WWI let alone in the Accrington Pals and I think we could be in danger of getting things a little out of proportion. I'm not belittling the loss of those who were killed, just trying to get things into perspective. We are so caught up with the Pals sometimes that we can forget that there were many other lives lost in wars.

I too find it incredible the way money is spent in this country when there are people in desperate need. If someone ran their household accounts the same way they'd be regarded as off their trolly. Imagine getting behind on your mortgage, having your gas and electricity cut off but going on a world cruise because there's plenty of money in the holiday pot but none left in the mortgage and utilities one so hey what the heck have the holiday because if you don't use the money for that you can't use it for anything else. It's madness.