The Anonymous Widower

Miners Have a Go at the Iron Lady

The BBC has reported that the Iron Lady film has had protests in Chesterfield, which lost their coal mines, when she was Prime Minister.

My view is straightforward.  Coal is a dirty fuel, that causes lots of ill health and is a major cause of global warming. Even with the small number of pits we have now, the death of miners is not unknown.

Mrs. Thatcher may have been the Prime Minister, who actually shut the mines, but in my view it was done about twenty years at least too late.

North Sea oil and gas, gave us the opportunity to abandon coal production and it should have been done in a managed and gradual way. I’d love to know, whether Prime Ministers before Mrs. Thatcher had thought of shutting the mines.  After all, when the railways abandoned steam engines, a lot of coal wasn’t needed any more. So do those who want more mining jobs, want steam trains as well? And domestic coal fires, which created the smog of the sixties? Many days, I had to walk home from school in thick pea soup.

I should also say, that I’ve met quite a few people, from mining families and all were advised to get an education and avoid going down the pits.

How have other countries weaned themselves off coal? I found this article about the rise and fall of the German coal industry. It seems that German industry has managed to survive the loss of its prime energy source.

I suspect they have managed the run down of their industry much better.  I can remember a proposal in The Guardian to use redundant miners to insulate our rather poor housing stock. Nothing happened, as far as I know!

We don’t learn either! Most of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuel, which don’t help the stopping of global warming. So when we bring forward proposals to help like wind, wave and tidal power, new electricity networks and rail lines, the Nimbys come out in force.

We can’t have it both ways, even if the Americans and the Chinese think they can.

I think I’ll prefer to go to hell on my two legs, a bicycle or a New Bus for London, rather than a fossil-fuel powered handcart.

January 12, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | News | Coal, Entertainment, Films, Germany, Global Warming/Zero-Carbon, New Bus for London, Nimbies