Maltby Colliery closed last week and they are all devastated. Very soon there will be no collieries left in the UK.
Our coalmines in Kent cannot re-open, due to costs or will not, due to ecological reasons.
At Betteshanger for instance, after getting down the shaft to pit bottom the furthest coalface was a 25-30 minute train ride.
There is no coal surrounding any of our shafts.
Snowdown could have been a brand new pit, with a new coal seam only yards away from the worked out seam.
But for some reason the management chose to drift down through a known fault, against objections from Snowdown miners.
The inevitable happened and the costs were heaped on to the pits losses and the mine was shut for financial and ecological reasons.
Coalmines with shafts and miners are a thing of the past.
If you buy your gas & elec from BG and want to know where your cash is going, look below.
'BRITISH gas giant BG Group has taken the lead in the race to establish the world's first coal seam gas to LNG project.
This follows it signing-off yesterday on its $US15 billion ($15.24bn) Queensland project'.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bgs-15bn-gladstone-project-starts-coal-seam-gas-race/story-e6frg8zx-1225945864263
It's a shame they are not investing like that in the UK?