Make do and mend.

[Aggers]

I quite agree, Kaz.

[Suff]

CCS is really not viable and UK coal is twice the price of mining and shipping from other countries.

The miners put themselves out of a job until the world coal supplies are reduced.

The rest I agree with totally.

[Kaz]

We are sitting on many years worth of coal, foreign coal is cheap because their countries subsidise mining. The fact that we would rather import that than support our own natural resources and workers is shocking

Thanks Aggers

[Suff]

We are sitting on many years worth of coal, foreign coal is cheap because their countries subsidise mining. The fact that we would rather import that than support our own natural resources and workers is shocking

Of course we're all happy to pay twice as much for our electricity so the miners can mine our coal????

Our government is massively in deficit, spent by a Labour government who though spending more than they could afford was a good way to go. Supporting the miners too is just another deep dark hole to thrown money down.

Much of the coal we import (and that shrinks every year), is mined from areas where they can do open cast even if they have to remove a mountain from the top of it. In the UK there are few places where that can be done.

In the miner’s hissy fit with Maggie, they forced the FIFE mines to shut down all maintenance because the people doing that maint work were as bad as scabs and taking money from the mines. The NUM story was that Fifers should not take money when their brethren were out of work and suffering. Most of that maintenance work was the freezing systems which stopped the water from coming in from the sea as most of the FIFE mines were already under the Forth.

Needless to say, the mines flooded. So when the Yorkshire miners just went back to work, the FIFE miners wound up on the dole with 50% unemployment and absolutely no chance of a job. I was caught up in the 50% unemployment and had to drag myself out of it.

The only mine which re-opened in FIFE was as an open cast mine. No mining experience required, just excavator operation and truck driving.

The UK has 300 years of coal reserves at 1970's consumption rates. However we'll never mine that coal because the miners want to get as many people down the mines as they can on wages as high as they can. Those same miners fought technology which reduced costs but also reduced jobs. Jobs which would have paid more, enhanced by the increased output the technology would have given and increased profits.

As the taxes had been propping up mining for more than a decade, driven by this refusal to advance technologically, the government finally decided it was time to force efficiency on the mines. Then the miners, instead of working with the government, decided that denying the nation the fuel it needed to keep itself warm and run its industry was the best way to go. Or, simply, industrial blackmail.

After all it brought Heath down and had wagged the dog for long enough, why not. They had the coal, they had the power. What they also had was Scargill, a man with no plan other than the brute force of the unions to keep his own position and prominence. Unfortunately for the Unions, the world had changed. North Sea Gas had come on stream, cheap, easy to transport and easy to use and cleaner than Coal. The government of the time fast tracked the transition from coal to gas in every area they could. The government also stockpiled 6 months of coal at the power stations and more in other areas of the country.

In short, the boot was on the other foot. The miners went back to work. However the knife was in the heart of the business. Two years of strike, mines damaged, coal, as a fuel, degraded in our national infrastructure, home central heating moving from coal/coke to gas….. The writing was on the wall. It didn’t need to have been that way, but it was.

So, no, I have little to Zero time for recriminations about how our miners have been treated, how other countries have supported their mining industries or the fact that we are not burning an incredibly polluting carbon fuel for which the cleansing technologies are all pretty much theory at this time.

There will come a time when that coal is worth more than gold. That is the time to dig it out of the ground and use it and, at that time, the miners who dig it out will be well recompensed.

After all, most people forget just how much of our society revolves around carbon produced products. Like tights for example, or the veneer on much of our surfaces, or just about every single electronic device we own.…. Just look around you, take the oil derived products out of it and see what you have left; including your clothes… That resource is far, far, too valuable to burn.

[Kaz]

That's me told then

[Suff]

Sorry it's a really sore point for me. I was caught up in all of this and I have some pretty strong feelings about it. Get me in front of a NUM miner and we go at it hammer and tongs....

Sorry if I bent your feelings, I can't discuss this without some of my ire pouring out no matter how I try.

I was bitten by this twice. Once by the unions forcing wages high and killing employment when I was 17, driving me into the army. The second time was trying to get a job in FIFE after the debacle of the miners strike left unemployment devastation all around (it wasn't just Yorkshire).

The second time I did a better job and got myself on the right track.

If you add my environmental (global warming stuff), to it.... It's a bit like being run over by a truck.

I'll try and be a bit more balanced....

[Kaz]

No hurt feelings Suff, I know it isn't personal

We are never going to see eye to eye on stuff like this, on politics we are poles apart