Last English coal mine closes today
 

Listening to this unfold on the radio, so sad for all those involved with the loss of over 450 jobs and years of history. The pit will be cemented over and within years will be unusuable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-35124077



Miners at a North Yorkshire colliery are working their final shifts as the closure of the pit brings an end to centuries of deep coal mining in Britain.
Owners UK Coal said it would oversee the rundown of the Kellingley mine before the site is redeveloped.
Unions said it was a "very sad day" for the country as well as the industry.
The last 450 miners at the pit are to receive severance packages at 12 weeks of average pay.

I wish we could say we were moving to something cleaner...but we're not :(

We will still import coal from Russia and Poland but now are more dependant than ever on these countries :idc:

I think that's the rush to frack, no dependence on others and limited manpower.
Ecological impact be damned.

I don't really know too much on this subject, but it's a shame that we're having to rely on Russia to give us Coal.:umm2:

Obscene is what it is Mock.
Very sad day for the UK in my view this one.

We're basically privitising everything in the country I know that.

Basically it boiled down to cost, it's cheaper to import coal than to mine it here.
I don't know why Polish and Russian coal is so cheap, maybe it's heavily subsidised by their governments or maybe the pay nothing to their workers either way just like the collapse of British Steel due to cheap imports from China, the Government should have taken steps to save these industries.

Okay thanks for the explanation.

Yes it does sound sad that we didn't keep these Industries going, but I think it's always been a Tory tradition to have Industries by foreign companies whilst closing our Businesses down hasn't it?

It may have been cheap initially until import costs rose, bills have risen exponentially since. There are associated health risks with mining, it isn't just a mucky job it's a killer.

there's the problem, the government wants you to work longer for less,

well that's what they get. the coal miners were so lazy and demanding they destroyed the whole industry in britain. Thatcher TRIED to tell you...but no one wanted to listen.

Are you happy now? you destroyed HER and you destroyed the whole industry. well done labour. well f-ing done.

If we're going to import it from other countries anyway then we may as well have left it open, we need to close coal mines AND switch to renewable energy sources. Both. Not just one.

well said josh - but I think people are blind to see this. they love to talk about saving the planet and recycling but on things that matter that are on a big scale they seem to be blind. this is why I am so anti the green message.

good point josh. :dance:

No its no longer Viable
Imported Coal is half the Price of UK Dug Up Coal


Its Simple Economics

ship it all across the world as its dirt cheap and then we can all going on about fossil fuels etc planes and ships polluting the country. we can not win.

I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, I'm not exactly convinced that the exploitation of finite resources, with the destruction of the countryside and then the pollutants released burning the stuff, is a Great British tradition to be "proud" of in the first place...

But then again, if it's just to be replaced with just-as-toxic coal from elsewhere and even more insidious "fracking" activities then it's all a bit pointless.

I can't say it really leaves me anything up cold, though. Yes, job losses are always terrible in human terms, but hacking the world to pieces for fuel leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's a necessary evil, not "white knight" stuff.

I could understand and accept its closure if weren't still reliant on fossil fuel and if as you say we weren't rushing head first into fracking, putting economics aside it would have seemed a far better option to keep the pit open, subsidising it heavily so English coal prices were competitive, keeping 450 people in jobs (I thought the Tory's wanted everyone in work), until some other method of producing our own fuel to keep the lights on is found, relying on other countries when the world is in upheaval can't be a good thing.

Could you expand on how the miners destroyed mining in the UK?

We do still producè some of our own coal, open cast must be à bit more viable than deep pit:shrug:
Cheap production around the world..we can't compete' a familiar ring to it these days"

I don't know what open cast is :worry:

Basically instead of digging pits and tunnels to get to whatever they want to get to, they just dig out one huge open crater with heavy machinery...

they go down 1000 meters and then get a train 8 miles along to the coal face

:onmgno: