OT: Farewell to UK coal

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When I think of Scargill, I will always think of a Cnut.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher
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I think there is a problem generally with coal, ie unless its burned v in a certain way, it produces a lot of muck, including sulphur and soot, so until we can find a way to use it cleanly, other fuels will be used. Brian

Reply to
Brian-Gaff

I remember hearing recently that the various Heritage Steam Rail lines are having problems finding suitable coal for their engines. This confirms that problem.

Reply to
Davey

Steam locomotive boilers are designed for specific types of coal. (Width/area of firegrate, presence or not of brick arch/combustion chambers). Our local heritage railway gets coal from Vietnam!

Reply to
harry

Not before time. Burning coal is poisoning us all. Oil is nearly as bad.

Reply to
harry

Are you thinking of Welsh anthracite? If so, that's been source from abroad (Poland?) for a long time.

Reply to
Tim Watts

The Natural Philosopher scribbled

How many minutes have you worked 500 feet underground? Coalboard secretaries were earning more than 30 year miners.

Reply to
Jonno

Tim Watts scribbled

Plenty of it still down there, but the dust causes the worse type of pneumoconiosis. Open cast dust has allegedly given children around the sites lung problems too.

Reply to
Jonno

Are you and your solar cronies planning to nearly double your solar farm to keep your subsidies flowing in the 2030's?

Reply to
Andy Burns

In article , Jonno writes

And how much was Scargill "earning"?

Reply to
bert

"Defending the rights of my class" he said, then got back into his chauffeur driven Daimler...

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris

What was Scargill earning? A non-stop rain of kicks up the bum from all decent people, that's what he was earning.

Reply to
Tim Streater

A genuine question:

Do you believe the miners would have been better off without Scargill?

Cheers

Reply to
Syd Rumpo

perhaps if the miners had stayed on at school after 15 and learned shorthand-typewriting they could have been secretaries too?

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Reply to
Bob Eager

No, they had a _right_ to dangerous, badly-paid jobs in an industry that had been in massive decline for almost an entire working lifetime before the 1980s...

All this class-war bollocks forgets that the biggest loss of jobs in the UK mining industry wasn't even in the '80s, by a LONG way. It was in the late '50s and through the '60s.

From a 1910s-20s peak of 1.2m, about 700,000 people worked in mining in the UK in the mid '50s. By the time Thatcher took over as PM, less than

250,000 did - and the '70s had seen the number remain fairly static.

At that peak, the UK was using almost 300m tons of coal annually. By the '50s, it was about 200m. Last year?

Reply to
Adrian

*applause*
Reply to
Huge

Of course, he was right - mining & miners were doomed. But they would have lasted longer if he hadn't done what he did.

Reply to
Huge

They would still be digging it out of the ground and burning it in power stations.

Once Scargill turned the union into a wepon to over throw the government the outcome was inevitable, we had to diversify so coal was never going to be a weapon again.

In effect Scargill inflicted more damage than the government would have.

So some miners would have been better off without Scargill.

Reply to
dennis

Maybe they would've lasted longer if she hadn't done what she did too. But yes, they were doomed, and we could buy coal much cheaper from places without fair pay and conditions.

Cheers

Reply to
Syd Rumpo

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