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Columbian black gold


islandgun
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14 minutes ago, islandgun said:

My local shop is selling bags of coal [retailing for about £18 a bag] which originated in Columbia. 

Did we not have some coal ?

Yes of course we do, but nobody is allowed to dig it up!

Far better to import it from thousands of miles away!

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48 minutes ago, Rob85 said:

Is there any people in UK today who would be willing to go down a pit and toil to get the coal extracted? Most would be too worried about getting the coal dust under their fingernails 

 

Coal could be economically extracted using large electric mining vehicles, similar to other mining industries. The days of pickaxe coal mining are long gone.

As others have said, coal is not being left in the ground for economic reasons, it's being left there for (malicious) political reasons. 

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We have a working drift mine in our village, which has a current license to extract 40 million tons of anthracite coal.

The Aberpergwm Mine is owned by Energybuild and employs local people.

The Welsh Government was actually against the proposal to rework the mine.

The mine closed back in the 1980s after the miners strike and reopened 11 years later under numerous owners and still continues to provide quality anthracite coal.

My father was a coal miner and worked in numerous mines until he retired at 65 years old and died at 82 years old a few years back.

He only had 2 different types of work in his life and joined the merchant navy on leaving school and after a few years went into the mines and worked along side other members of his family.

When I left school, the only work available was in the Aberpergwm Mine and my father played hell with me when I applied to to have an apprenticeship .

I went for the interview and was told by the manager, that my father had spoken to him, expressing his concerns.

A week later I started working for an engineering company and working with hydraulics for the past 37 years, which kept my father happy.

 

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Hello, it's just another rip off like bags of logs in supermarkets, the latter keep saying the whole sale prices are going up, ?, I've not heard dairy farmers getting more money, people are spending less yet supermarket profits are up, Tesco have the buying power to help customers but prefer profits,

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Strong mining ancestry on both sides of my family as well Shambam 1962. I always thought that there would be a place for coal in the future  as i expected UK technology to have looked at using it in a more environmentally friendly way, we still have quite a lot of it. Sadly (unless someone here knows different i would love to be wrong) that does not seem to have happened, I agree though importing coal from Columbia seems totally wrong. 

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9 hours ago, Shambam1962 said:

We have a working drift mine in our village, which has a current license to extract 40 million tons of anthracite coal.

The Aberpergwm Mine is owned by Energybuild and employs local people.

The Welsh Government was actually against the proposal to rework the mine.

The mine closed back in the 1980s after the miners strike and reopened 11 years later under numerous owners and still continues to provide quality anthracite coal.

My father was a coal miner and worked in numerous mines until he retired at 65 years old and died at 82 years old a few years back.

He only had 2 different types of work in his life and joined the merchant navy on leaving school and after a few years went into the mines and worked along side other members of his family.

When I left school, the only work available was in the Aberpergwm Mine and my father played hell with me when I applied to to have an apprenticeship .

I went for the interview and was told by the manager, that my father had spoken to him, expressing his concerns.

A week later I started working for an engineering company and working with hydraulics for the past 37 years, which kept my father happy.

 

My BIL worked Aberpergwm under Energybuild up until a year or so ago. This after stints at Tower colliery, Unity and a few others ending each stint as/ when each colliery was closed down.

He left last year as he didn't have confidence in the Welsh government to enable a long term career option in mining. The industry is so volatile under WG that a minister could close Aberpergwm in an instant over nothing more than getting out of the wrong side of the bed that morning. It's no way to live your life worrying if your going to have a job next month or the month after.

He took a job elsewhere paying a fraction of the wage he earnt at the mine for some job security. He was the equivalent of a shift manager (mining has some weird job titles) and now has started again at the very bottom of the pile in his new career.

It's a complete shambles that most of south east Wales is sat on millions of tons of coal which cannot be touched for nothing more than political will. WG would rather see these men queuing up at the job centre than in a well paying career.

I believe that the Steelworks in Port Talbot which lies only a few miles south of Aberpergwm imports all of its coal from Eastern Europe.

Let's not even get started on the thousands of tons of that **** lignite that Germany are pulling out of the ground every year to fuel their power stations and industry.

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1 hour ago, Poor Shot said:

My BIL worked Aberpergwm under Energybuild up until a year or so ago. This after stints at Tower colliery, Unity and a few others ending each stint as/ when each colliery was closed down.

He left last year as he didn't have confidence in the Welsh government to enable a long term career option in mining. The industry is so volatile under WG that a minister could close Aberpergwm in an instant over nothing more than getting out of the wrong side of the bed that morning. It's no way to live your life worrying if your going to have a job next month or the month after.

He took a job elsewhere paying a fraction of the wage he earnt at the mine for some job security. He was the equivalent of a shift manager (mining has some weird job titles) and now has started again at the very bottom of the pile in his new career.

It's a complete shambles that most of south east Wales is sat on millions of tons of coal which cannot be touched for nothing more than political will. WG would rather see these men queuing up at the job centre than in a well paying career.

I believe that the Steelworks in Port Talbot which lies only a few miles south of Aberpergwm imports all of its coal from Eastern Europe.

Let's not even get started on the thousands of tons of that **** lignite that Germany are pulling out of the ground every year to fuel their power stations and industry.

Hello, thanks for posting, do not forget China are building more coal fired power stations ?🤔, Where's their carbon policy 🤔, I worked at Didcot , only No 2 now run by gas,

Edited by oldypigeonpopper
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I know it's tough but times change. I for one can see the impact of climate change on the shooting season and I don't want to see it get worse. The most important thing about low carbon energy is that it will free us from other countries controlling our energy prices but it will take time for us to get there. Ironically it's only times of high prices like this that actually force investment. Companies are fundamentally lazy and avoid risk where possible. In 10 years we may be completely free from international oil gas and even coal prices and still have a season cold enough to give us some good shooting!

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Here are a few photos of the Selar Opencast site above our village, which was worked under Celtic Energy and closed around 7 years ago employing 70 plus people.

When I started shooting in 1979, I joined a syndicate of around 20 shooters , and this land was leased from the Forestry Commission and had a lot of wildlife and was good shooting for many years.

When the opencast proposal was announced , we had a swarm of eco warriors move into the area and demonstrated, and found we had habitat for rare butterflies, which the opencast had to cater for, by removing a large area of land to be reinstated at a later date with the butterfly larvae.

I walk this area weekly and see the odd hare or the dogs will flush a duck from one of the ponds, but nothing like it was.

 

B702A5CC-8BA7-44F8-9173-0502239012C2.jpeg

8D471C85-36BA-4E55-8EC4-9933F245727C.jpeg

7CD04CA4-008A-4B47-B70A-EF18622B67C0.jpeg

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15 hours ago, Smudger687 said:

Coal could be economically extracted using large electric mining vehicles, similar to other mining industries. The days of pickaxe coal mining are long gone.

As others have said, coal is not being left in the ground for economic reasons, it's being left there for (malicious) political reasons. 

Yep, we certainly have to be crucified over this stupid green agenda, the idiots driving it know full well that our total compliance and economic ruin that goes with it will have absolutely no impact on the world total as a whole? But we are forced into it? Why Foxtrot, Foxtrot, Sierra?

We seem governed by either seriously deranged or crooked people

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3 hours ago, old man said:

Yep, we certainly have to be crucified over this stupid green agenda, the idiots driving it know full well that our total compliance and economic ruin that goes with it will have absolutely no impact on the world total as a whole? But we are forced into it? Why Foxtrot, Foxtrot, Sierra?

We seem governed by either seriously deranged or crooked people

You don't get into positions of authority by being deranged.

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54 minutes ago, Smudger687 said:

You don't get into positions of authority by being deranged.

It is possible to fail upwards to a point where you reach the top. See welsh government for example.

The senedd is packed full of those who had Intentions of being successful politicians but weren't good enough to get into Westminster.

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14 minutes ago, Poor Shot said:

It is possible to fail upwards to a point where you reach the top. See welsh government for example.

The senedd is packed full of those who had Intentions of being successful politicians but weren't good enough to get into Westminster.

Google "the Peter principle" if you're not familiar with it.

Very interesting, helps you understand the management structure in many business's as well as the political hierarchy.

 

I also seem to remember one of the reasons we stopped digging up our own coal in the 70s was because we could import it from eastern Europe at a fraction of the cost.

And their miners weren't on strike every five minutes.

 

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