UKC

We went to the Big Pit museum today in South Wales .
It's a free museum. The ex miners working there, gave a very funny and informative underground tour. The guide said he finally got laid off in the 90's. He didn't seem to bare malice openly, but said that the Uk has 80/c of its coal reserves left, and that the stuff we import from China doesn't burn unless it's mixed with ours. He said he thought that large scale mining should restart in the Uk. Given that the area we drove through seemed pretty desperate and run down, I would agree that opening the pits would be a good move for the economy.
What do you think?

In reply to Skol:




In our little valley
They closed the colliery down,
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.
Empty gurneys red with rust
Roll to rest among the rust
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.

CHO: 'Cos it's hard, Duw, it's hard
Harder than they will ever know.
And it's they must take the blame,
The price of coal's the same.
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.

They came down here from England
Because our output's low.
Briefcases full of bank clerks
That had never been below.
And they'll close the valley's oldest mine
Pretending that they're sad.
But don't you worry, Butty bach,
We're really very glad.

My clean-clothes locker's empty now,
I've thrown away the key.
And I've sold my boots and muffler
And my lampcheck 153.
But I can't forget the times we had,
The laughing midst the fear,
'Cos every time I cough I get
A mining souvenir.

I took my old helmet home with me,
Filled it full of earth,
And I planted little flowers there -
They grew for all their worth.
And it's hanging in the glasshouse now,
A living memory,
Reminding me they could have grown
In vases over me.

But I know the local magistrate,
She's got a job for me,
Though it's only counting buttons
In a local factory.
We get coffee breaks and coffee breaks,
Coffee breaks and tea.
And now I know those dusty mines
Have seen the last of me.

FINAL CHORUS
'Cos it's hard, Duw, it's hard
Harder than they will ever know.
And if ham was underground,
Would it be twelve bob a pound.
And the pithead baths is a supermarket now.
Aye, the pithead baths is a supermarket now.

In reply to stroppygob:

A moving song
I've got 2 mining souvenirs. A piece of coal from below, and, a 'coal not dole' mug.

In reply to Skol:

Isn't it just too expensive to deep mine in the UK? Also, people are trying to get away from burning coal and people are less happy about waste tips in their back gardens now.

In reply to gethin_allen:


Why still do we need to import though? To be honest, the waste tips are still there in these communities backyards, but the jobs are not.

In reply to Skol:


If we did want to get at the coal there are now various methods for extracting the coal without exposing an army of people to health destroying medieval working conditions, for example underground gasification or hydraulic fracturing. Considered with a naive understanding of the issues the gasification sounds fundamentally dangerous but the fracturing could be pretty nifty.

On the other hand, given the abundance of Thorium and the 1,000,000 people being killed, per year, worldwide by the results of burning fossil fuels I'd rather we left it all down there and started building some grown up power plants.