T and W council waste enough of our money on pointless things, so why not put some money into something useful for once, like this appeal?

Report abuse

These anger protesters really need to get over themselves, nothing but NIMBYs. Your voices were heard, its just that there were clear arguments for getting this coal now in light of the life of Ironbridge power station and the environmental effects will be controlled by conditions.

The site will be restored in 3 years. Better to us native coal than than pay another country for their coal, our balance of payments is already too high.

Good on the Government for making the right decision rather than cave into the vocal minority!

Report abuse

The council were always in an impossible situation in how they were to determine this scheme and ultimately thats why they didnt and the coal authority called non determination and it was taken to enquiry.

I personally know that officers in the council fully appreciated the concerns of the residents but any refusal of this scheme had to be related to defendable facts and policies. This could never be done and the authority knew that the enquiry was likely not to go their way but would still had to spend £500k of your money defending a weak refusal case so they were seen to be doing the right thing.

Lets please not waste even more authority money funding solicitors mansions and sports cars in a legal battle which is unlikely to go in the authorities favour.

If people take the time to investigate the whole proposal fully it is clear that the associated benefits to Telford are actually quite good and would certainly not come about if the site was left untouched.

Time to let this sleeping dog lye until they propose to put a wind farm and solar panels on the Wrekin too !

Report abuse

Big Matty says there have been ‘no sensible arguments against the mine’.

For those unfamiliar with how sensible Big Matty is, see his theory about WMD in Iraq ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/2009/08/31/slogans-beamed-on-to-power-station/ #18).

In my opinion, one sensible argument against burning 900,000 tonnes of coal is that it releases 1153 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour.

Wind releases 24 grammes per kilowatt hour.

A responsible government should be pushing through off-shore wind farms, not unpopular open-cast coal mines.

Report abuse

Huw, I welcome anyone to read my posts as I have the decency to offer reasoned debate rather than your one dimensional approach to everything. I look at the whole issue, and form my own opinions based on the information available. You on the other hand Huw appear to lack the ability to look beyond government driven propaganda presented to us by the media.

In most cases of political nature we have limited information available to us, yet the majority take this limited ammount of information and assume they know the whole story. Please stop being so narrow minded, step back and look at the entire issue. It would also help if you realised you are not an economist, lawyer, or Stephen Hawking lost prodigy.

Judging by the responses on this and almost every other story I read on here it would appear that world peace, economic harmony and environmental equilibrium is simple…. The truth is that it isn’t simple. Lets open a hospital in every town, they cost nothing. Lets pay nurses double their current wage, they’re worth it and money is growing on very green trees in Huws garden. Wind farms are cheap and easy to build (in Huws garden)… except very few ACTUALLY wants them in their area!

Report abuse

I’m sorry, Big Matty.

After reading your reasoned debate I now realise how narrow-minded and one-dimensional I’ve been not to look beyond the government-driven propaganda presented to us by the media.

Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes I understand that

a) there WERE WMD in Saddam’s arsenal

b) the government wanted to cover this up, because otherwise they might have been able to claim the reasons they gave to justify the war were true

c) we should all want an open-cast mine in our backyard and the people who don’t want it are irrational, closed-minded and impervious to your reasoned debate

d) burning coal without carbon capture is the government’s way of telling future generations that we care

Report abuse

this is what happens when miner loving labour commies get in charge of planning, we would never allow this because a vote for blue is a vote for green, we hate coal and we love the countryside and we hate wind turbines and other EU inventions like that too, we are the best and we will soon rule again like we are destined to, we will sort out the planning system with less red tape for starters and less council beurocrats telling me what i can and cannot put on my house

get rid of brown, get out of the EU

god save the Qween

Report abuse