Today the last deep coal mine closes with millions of tons of coal still available. Kellingley in north yorkshire is to close with 450 jobs gone, in a mine that once employed over 1500. A sad end to a major part of the countries industrial history. My father was a former miner, MrRaws also, and im sure many of you will also know of some. Climate control changes or purely economics or maybe a combination. Its the very last nail into part of british history.
There is an estimated 600 years supply of coal left under this nations soil. We could have been self sufficient in producing electricity.
Sadly now we're primarily a Nation of Corporate Controlled Operatives, enslaved to the system toiling in soul destroying Call Centres, Zero Contracted Industries to provide us all with their corrupt ill-gotten finance, crap merchandise & commerce... Whilst wishing us all a Merry Christmas
My dad's family all lived and worked around the Durham coalfields, mainly around Fence Houses. My dad told me how his older brothers gave him a good hiding when he tried to get a job down the mines, and all my uncles wouldn't let their kids work there either. Two of my uncles died from Pneumoconiosis, Black Lung. It's not pleasant to watch someone slowly die from that. Its hard to be objective about emotive issues like this but I would never want my kids ever having to make a living in mining.
They did. A lot of men died of lung disease but so did a lot of spray painters in the past. Safety technology however has moved on in the form of protective masks etc. Furthermore, a lot of inland mine were open cast after Thatcher closed them by private mining contractors who were donating funds to the Tories. It was all very lucrative. Once all the power stations had been changed from coal to gas fired the utilities were sold off to her cronies. When they were nationalized the profits were ploughed back in, not given away to shareholders as it is now, which has ultimately drove prices up. These days it doesn't really matter who you buy your gas or electricity from, it's unlikely to be British owned. More money leaving the country. Infact, most of the gas is supplied by Russia. A lot of pits were closed by the Wilson government but not a single miner was forced into redundancy. They were offered jobs at other mines. Those pits were non profit making. Thatcher had a different approach & was hell bent on smashing the miners. That's why she brought in Ian McGregor. The hatchet man. I was born & raised in Co Durham. Mining country. In some towns 90% of the adult males worked at the pit. 100's of men laid off in one fell swoop. Now this had a snowball effect. Not only were those men on the dole but it affected workers in companies that supplied them, even down to stuff like office paper clips. Add to that, there wives didn't have the money to spend in the supermarkets, the men didn't have the money to spend in the pubs. Some towns have never yet fully recovered. Not only were those men's jobs lost but their son's too. If your father worked at the pit & had a good record, chances are you'd get a job there. Same was true of the shipyards.
Good stuff mate, cheers for that. Sounds a bit like industrial evolution... the fact is, we're a tiny island and without annexing other nations, we are limited to what we can call our own. I know there's a massive supply of gas and oil in the Falklands area, I was presented an opportunity to invest before they started to drill it, turns out we are sat on a gold mine... whodathunkit ey? We've moved on from being a nation of labourers, to one of tech, finance and IT, it's just how the cookie has crumbled, but nobody has stopped to think what we're going to do with all the lads who haven't got that sort of mentality, the lads who only know manual labour and working with their hands. Maybe getting out of Europe will help rejuvenate some of the forgotten industries.
My older family members worked the pits and none of them had a good word to say about what they did. They always praised the people they worked with, though. They all knew it was ****ty and dangerous, but they all had to put food on the table. I'm just glad we've moved away from it.
A very sad day indeed. The emotion from some of the workers interviewed when finishing their last shift was very moving..
The world collectively won't subscribe to green renewable energy so we may as well dig it up. We're all doomed anyway.
