Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
While Britain continue's to import millions of tons of coal from the European Union, Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia,Republic of South Africa, Russia, USA and other countries,Kellingley Colliery, the last UK deep mine will close next month and that will be the end of a once proud Industry that employed over 1Million people and supported countless communities, in its heyday.
This is complete madness.
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/6065390-britain-s-last-deep-coal-mine-set-to-close-for-good-ending-an-industry-that-one-employed-1-million/"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
I agree with your sentiment garyc.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The steel industry will follow suit very shortly as it is in freefall due to China dumping cheap stuff on us. Our leaders never look far ahead once our steelworks are all closed down imported steel will fail to be cheap.
Andy B
- Location: dover
- Registered: 10 Nov 2012
- Posts: 1,816
It wont be long before many of our scrapyards also go out of business.Scrap iron is now only making around £10 per ton.Less than a year ago i think it was making about £100+.Alot of the local collectors have packed up and sold their trucks.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
I agree with all the above posts.
Guest 705- Registered: 23 Sep 2010
- Posts: 661
Well it stinks. The European agenda is set to totally neuter Britain's capability of producing anything and turn it completely into a service industry bug hutch with the banksters heading up the the national money gambling casino. There is no reason at all why this nation should not have a thriving coal and steel industry. The fact is that that monster Ted Heath lied to everyone back in the early 70's and set us on this trail of sovereign dereliction and industrial sabotage. Thatcher put the cap on it by calling it all good housekeeping as she went about the business of shafting communities by the score as she waded through the misery of the miners. Currently anti working familyman and Rothschild/ Bilderberg puppet Cameron is playing a blinder by coming out with the crap that 'OOh we can't help the steelworkers - it's against the EU rules'. Yeh right-just the way to make a success your 'Northern Powerhouse' old mate.
Never give up...
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
More than a fifth of Britain's energy needs are still met by coal.
When Kellingley closes, the Drax coal-fired power station will burn Russian coal for the next 10 to 15 years.
This is not clean coal, just cheap coal but how long will it stay cheap after they close our last deep pit?
How cheap is imported coal in real terms?
When you take into account the1000's of jobs that has gone, who's pay-packet's supported all local business and communities, keeping them alive, this is not about cost.
With no other collieries or employment in their area, this will be a huge cost to the benefits system at a time when all governments want to reduce benefits?
It simply is not about the cost, it is just another smoke screen, like their austerity cuts against genuine disabled and vulnerable people.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
None of this would happen in France, when Danone was subject to a takeover bid from Kraft and Pepsico the government stepped in and put a block on it. They subsequently announced that 20 major businesses would be classed as "national treasures" and would always remain French.
Yes that is against EU rules so they can be broken - steel workers take note.
Guest 705- Registered: 23 Sep 2010
- Posts: 661
Yes they can be broken.(The Steelworkers have taken note!) So what could those unelected conmen at the Euopean Commission do about it?-absolutely nothing!
What are they going to do? Fine us? Then don't pay it-they would be powerless to intercede. This is all about the EU and it's plan to systematically dismantle our sovereignty. Our Treacherous Tory political parties (ie Labour , Liberal and Conservative) have steered us towards this national tomb of oblivion and cultural melt down. I thought Corbyn was going to make a stand-but we have yet to see anything concrete. ( Watson's chickening out over Brittain was somewhat portentous)
I agree Gary, the Current Tories have no intention of assisting or re- establishing our heavy industry-they are working it like a creeping infection to establish an Orwellian consensus. Fuelled by a psychopathic allegance to their EU/US masters our Coal and Steel industries have been progessively dumbed down/destroyed under the false pretence of 'Austerity' and a convenient concern with the myth of climate change.
Ironically yet somehow unsurprisingly the EU is now tearing itself apart with its ludicrous attitude towards the deliberately self inflicted tidal wave of humanity pouring across it's constituent countries. I say attitude - as there is no actual policy or plan. What they thought was a way to accelerate the destruction of Sovereignty is actually hammering their very fragile credibility.
Perhaps we won't have to leave the EU-with any luck it will just vapourise before our very eyes. Maybe we will have the chance to restore our sovereignty and industry and army and police and borders - and be patriotic and human again.
Never give up...
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
So have the Illuminati lost control then, Richard?
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
With the country's last deep mine shutting next month the future of the UK coal industry looks increasingly bleak. Peter McCusker reports.
Speculation is mounting that the Government will announce plans to close all of the country's coal-fired power stations by 2023.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/business/business-news/future-coal-uk-looks-increasingly-10427026"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
All the coal mining shafts should have been preserved so the nation could go back for the UK coal reserves if required.
You wouldn't destroy an oil well just because the price went down you would preserve it .
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
I have to agree and disagree Keith.
They should never have closed in the first place and they should still be providing employment and support for our mining and wider communities until they became exhausted.
Not closed with Billions of tons of coal still laying beneath our feet.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 1555- Registered: 23 Jul 2015
- Posts: 29
Wait until you read what the Indians are planning with their coal industry. One pit there has been burning for a century or more and the others are going to be developed to help the poor, which I do not believe, knowing the Indian class system. It is all about money and sometimes I wonder if the six-billion pound British trade agreement with India, which Cameron has made includes Indian coal imports in the near future? We all know about the cheap steel flooding the country from China. And the buying spree foreign interests are having in Britain property. And the lies that are told by the car industry as to pollutant levels. We the ordinary people are losing the battle, and being a pessimist, I am not very optimistic about the future. There is one consolation though...When we are gone Mother Nature will still be here. Even should there be one little tree left she will start to rebuild. I only hope SHE will not include the human virus among her new creations. You cannot destroy our true creator only her creations... And prayers will not help you when the end comes.
I do not think the Global economy includes the working British people or any other worker either. Not when this country, and others, are being run by millionaire politicians and their lobbyists'. The coal will still continue to be mined. And the oil will still continue to be drilled for. And the thousands of poor people in Asia and elsewhere will still continue to be moved off their land, which is then sold to multi-national oil palm growers, and Bio-fuel producers by corrupt politicians, by the thousands of acres. Rain forests will still continue to be cut down. And the Artic Circle and Antarctica will still continue to be exploited for their potential mineral riches among the nations interested. The Japanese will still continue to over fish their waters, and kill thousands of female Albatrosses each year with their long lines. And Europe will still continue to overfish their waters...If humanity is still here after all this. Then it will the turn of the under-sea mining companies to bulldoze the bottoms of our oceans...It will never stop until the people say it will stop, and that by voting for it to stop, which at this time seems an impossible endeavour. But knowing human nature, and its capacity for greed, I can predict with certainty the end is in sight.
I can't blame the companies for their greed, but I can blame the corrupt politicians for theirs in letting these people exploit that greed, and that, in every country on this beautiful Earth of ours. I give humanity another century at the most before Mother Nature retaliates and rids her Earth of its human virus. We cannot say we do not deserve it. In fact we are working diligently towards our own end.
I have been in Dover since coming over from India in 1947 when all the British nationals had to leave. I went to St Mary's School in Queen Steet Dover, which no longer exists. I do not like the changes being done to the Dover seafront by people who do not really have the town's people at heart. I used to play in the rock pools with my twin brother under the prince of Wales Pier and had my first job in Dover painting the wrought iron legs, which are now filled in with concrete.
I feel a sense of loss at what The Dover Harbour board is contemplating. If the Yacht Marina is moved out of the inner harbour and into the bay it will become just another rubbish dump. It is obvious that big business is moving in against the wishes of the Dover people.
I worked at the Dover Harbour Board for thirteen years on the small boats before I retired in 2003 as a survey and environmental cox'n. The last ten yearssurveying the bottom of the harbour and its approaches. I know the tides and the bottom better than my own hand...and a lot of silt moving out there. If they fill the Granville Docks in, where I used to help unload fruit boats in the good old days. It will just become another huge lorry park in the future.
I also think the small boats are open to abuse by the swarms of immigrants coming over from France and further afield. With fewer customs, once the immigrants twig there is another way in they will take it. I have been to sea in three Merchant Navies since 1959 and have always believed Britain, being an island should have had a container fleet Merchant Navy manned by british sailors, the best in the world, trading with its Commonwealth. The Greek fiasco has proved the politicians cannot be trusted,nor the big Banks, to have any intrest in the working people of Britain, only in themselves... Who owns the town, is it business interests in Europe, the Harbour Board, or is there a hidden agenda. What is the plan for the Western approaches from Shakespeare Cliff to the Admiralty pier. QUESTIONS have to be asked and honest ANSWERS given. Already European countries have huge interests in our utilities and other, used to be publicily owned, businesses. We may as well not had a war, not when we are being slowly taken over by foreign interests. Britain was once a country to be proud of and brave people defended its honour and died for it. I am seventy-seven years old now and retired. I still remember the gaps left in the high street by German bombers, and those Dover people whomust have lost their lives there. Just what did my father and those brave people fight for? I had the honour of sailing with two or three merchant seamen in the fifties and sixties, who had actually been in the water a number of times after being torpedoed. Over fifty thousand seamen died and thousands of our Navy, Airmen, and Army died for our freedom. Will the young remember them when those left are gone. I no longer free free any more, only a sense of foreboding for our younger generation.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Post 13
Thatcher was not going to stop the closures program ,but the other morons in the cabinet could have argued for the access to the reserves to be preserved .
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
"America's dash for shale created a glut of cheap imports that Kellingley coal simply couldn't compete against.
But, of course, that's not the whole story. Environmentally, coal could only have had a long-term future if we'd developed and perfected Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS), and plans for that were shelved earlier this year. And that's where it does get interesting.
The current government is pushing shale as the potential stop gap, but the industry-backed Task Force on Shale has said gas, like coal, has no real longevity without CCS".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35124077"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Andy B- Location: dover
- Registered: 10 Nov 2012
- Posts: 1,816
They also mentioned on radio 2 (Jeremy Vine) that having to keep up with enviromental issues and green policies etc costs so much that we cannot compete with countries like Columbia and the like who have little in the way of elf n safety,pollution control etc so they can produce it much cheaper than us,whilst we have to comply with everything and seem to get nowhere.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Just caught a bit on the news where it turns out that 30% of our electricity comes from coal imported from Russia.
Guest 664- Registered: 23 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,039
Criminal that it has come to this point when we are importing so much coal.
Coal and steel are the very backbone of an industrial country and now we have zero pits and a desperately shrunken steel industry.
The unthinkable has finally happened and an industry that began centuries ago with a few indentured Geordies toiling in a bell pit has gone. All we have left is a few open cast sites and maybe one or two drift mines in Wales, I believe.
Guest 664- Registered: 23 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,039
Criminal that it has come to this point when we are importing so much coal.
Coal and steel are the very backbone of an industrial country and now we have zero pits and a desperately shrunken steel industry.
The unthinkable has finally happened and an industry that began centuries ago with a few Geordies toiling in a bell pit - in fcatm probably with the Romans, or even before their time - has gone. All we have left is a few open cast sites and maybe one or two drift mines in Wales, I believe.
