Comments on: Residents to hit UK Coal with demands

By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:39:47 +0000

Lucy W. I presume you’ve lost your job through spending so much time contributing nonsense to this debate, and that’s why your annual mileage has dropped by 15000 in just 4 days? That would be a real shame…

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By: Lucy W

Lucy W — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:51:19 +0000

Winja: Quite right, the average family car is 261g/m – just goes to show that the greenies moan at anything without understanding it.

As I am environmentally frendly and work from home, my average mileage is less than 5000m pa, so it a great relief to know that I have planted more than enough trees this year to keep the greenies happy.

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:02:11 +0000

Correction; the poven coal-reserve value once available at Thorne was £4 billion, not £40 billion as previously stated, however still making £3.9 billion worth of coal up for development for a company that was truly interested in energy security. Not any more; the shafts are filled and the previous development workings flooded, meaning even a new pit cannot access them. The surface infrastructure was some of the biggest and most advanced in Europe, and further coal resource still was likely to exist. It is now debris…

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By: winja

winja — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:32:54 +0000

261g/mile?

So, without having a conversion table handy, about 140g/km.

That’ll be an average sized family car, then.

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By: Pat judson

Pat judson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:57:39 +0000

Lots of sense being spoken by those who have experienced the situation of living next to an opencast mine, well done to you for sharing reality -not illusion created through ignorance and then posted.
Those who are so vocal in support of Uk Coals planned mine, seem to have been very silent when confronted with the chance of speaking publically at the Public Inquiry – unlike others who gave it their all, loss or win.
perhaps this was because they could not hide behind a screen name and snipe, but would have had to come out of the shadows, into the light, and faced down a Giant, whatever the outcome.
Well done Joe henshaw and all those that have spoken sensibly on this.
Pat Judson.

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By: ohdear

ohdear — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:55:06 +0000

It seems like Lucy W has taken a bit of a whooping here. At least she’ll contribute to the local economy by buying her trees, assuming she buys them local.

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:00:49 +0000

Seems to me someone can now get planting rather than contributing utter tosh to this debate…

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By: Plant more trees

Plant more trees — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:10:08 +0000

Lucy, a simple Google search and calculation shows you need to plant 11 trees to offset the carbon produced by your car. It didn’t take me long to find a calculator that would tell me that.

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:09:57 +0000

Oh, and I presume that if your car really emits 261g/mile C02, then you haven’t realised you’re driving around in the Flying Scotsman…

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:46:07 +0000

Lucy W. You would be a joke, but you just aren’t funny. Away you go with your baseless stereotyping again. I am not a “green”, nor am I anti-nuclear, anti-coal, or ever likely to be. And if you choose to drive a 261g/mile vehicle, and what this must cost you, we can probably see what the bug up your behind really is…By the way, how about 70 years personal experience?

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By: Aussie Joe

Aussie Joe — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:19:00 +0000

The more statistics I use , the more verbiage i see on the site.

My regard for the English remains extremely positive despite the drift to personal attacks now appearing. A shame really because the overall need for fuel in a expenentially growing worldpopulation will not go away. China did its bit with the one child policy and gets no credit for that effort by ALL of its people.

Picadilly is still part of the world even if not still the centre of it. As i said earlier there are no more Brigadoon`s.

I leave the site now permanently . YET , With all the personal slights extracted I feel we have covered much of the ground so, collectively we have made a very tiny contribution to the debate. I congratulate us all .

Joe maybe a little more time at the Pub with the missus of a weekend may mellow each and all of us.

Heathrow in November for me on an Emerites Jet no doubt flown by an eclectic crew and some good old Sterling Pound or two in my pocket to waste in London Town. Globalism.

PS my son owns a unit in Pepys Estate if any of you know where that is specifically. Pepys was of course a great English writer. Drakes Steps are right outside my son and daughter in law`s apartment block. Fantastic. Drake of course gave you guys all the new vegetables from The America`s for your dinner table..

Loveto All. including the fortuneate people who live in the spaceous and beautiful land of Shropshire. Thanks to them for the lend of the Cruiser so long ago. Strange the Warship and those we bought it for/against so soon became our major trading partner in an ever changing world.Recently relegated to second by the MIDDLE KINGDOM of old. The Boxers for the historically minded.

Enjoy Joe.

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By: Lucy W

Lucy W — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:10:54 +0000

Green Joe, until you lot can tell me how many trees I need to plant to offset 20,000 miles in a 261g/mile CO2 emitting car, then whats the point?

All problems but no solutions, thats the greenies. At least pro-nuke, pro-GM and pro-carbon capture people are trying.

So you just quote names with no personal experience or view, (just like someone else).

Oscar Schindler was a member of the Nazi Party and the Pope Benedict was in the Hitler Youth, but that doesn’t make Hitler a saint does it?

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By: Norman Pitkin

Norman Pitkin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Haha Lucy W,Wayheyhey gerroff!! I can see there’s trouble in store…
As for Snob Hill, that was a term we used to use in Dawley with regard to Little Wenlock

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:58:39 +0000

Lucy W. You are stereotyping and misidentifying. Again. For example, Professor James Lovelock, of “Gaia” theory fame, is pro-nuclear (yes, that’s how it’s spelt), yet to you, he is surely the ultimate “greenie”. To us on the coalfields, a “greenie” is the bi-product of a respiratory tract infection (opencast mining often contributes), not some ill-defined and ill-directed insult to people who actually care about the evironment. And let’s face it, a toxic environment will solve all the energy problems for the human race. Is that what you want, or would it be better to more efficiently use what we already have, and move away from a toxic future?

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By: Lucy W

Lucy W — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:04:47 +0000

I stayed up late last night to watch Newsnight so I would have something intelligent to add to this thread.

I learnt that the Greenies object to Nucleur, Carbon Capture and GM, which are obvious solutions.

They even tried to close the London Carbon Trading Centre this summer – just what do they want? There’s no pleasing them!

Its seems they don’t want a solution because then they will have no purpose in life.

Now they say we only have 6 years to save the planet. Well if that’s true, I’m afraid we are doomed, so I’m doing my share of flying while I still can!

I see that John Prescot, former Deputy PM and Ship Steward, is in on the Global Warming act and flew to some Conference in Bejing. Why didn’t he of all people take the slow boat to China?

Hypocrits the lot of ‘em!

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:40:52 +0000

I subscribe to Mr. Pitkin’s sentiment that this debate has largely dissolved into “hogwash”, particularly in respect of the comments of opencast’s two main protagonists herein.
Lucy W. is so clearly out of her depth that she reads the comments selectively, makes childish assumptions, and follows up with equally childish statements rather than developing cogent arguments.
On the other hand Aussie Joe, a UK Coal shareholder who lives 10,000 miles away, apparently knows what’s best for us, motivated no doubt by the fact his shares have fallen from £5.85 to £1.08 in the past 17 months. Knows what’s best for him, perhaps?
Furthermore, he lives in a country of population 21m, area 7,618,000 sq. km, and density 2.75 persons/sq. km.; in the UK the population is 61m, area 245,000 sq.km, and density 250 persons per sq.km. I can see why this would give him an insight on the impact of an opencast mine in the UK. Not.
He also uses figures 4 years out of date on coal consumption and supply, and confuses lower average population density figures for the UK as a whole with those 30% higher in England.
I do not live on “Snob Hill” (whatever that is), nor in Shropshire at all. But I certainly do not live on the other side of the planet, and unlike the contributors mentioned, do live close to an active opencast mine. Without local jobs…

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By: Andrew Owen

Andrew Owen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:52:41 +0000

Absolutely not.

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By: Lucy W

Lucy W — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:37:46 +0000

Norman Pitkin: Are you a Norman Wisdom Fan? Funny they showed ‘On the Beat’ not long ago. Please don’t tell us you have been rejected by the police and secretly aspire to be ‘Norman Pitkin’? (albeit the police would benefit from such a recruitment)

Do I get a prize for this?

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By: Joe Henshaw

Joe Henshaw — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:48:52 +0000

You are stating average poulation values whereas the opencast mining developments are being made adjacent to towns and villages in former coalfield communities where the population density is very high. I suspect that you envisage mines being tucked away in rural areas like they are in many other countries including Australia. This simply isn’t the case, or possible, particularly in England, as the exposed (opencast) coalfield is always associated with high population density due to the country’s industrial history. The impacts on these communities is therefore severe, and what cannot be escaped is the fact that UK Coal, who you invest in, have closed many deep-mines, and additionally sterilised some of the country’s beat reserves, e.g at Thorne Colliery (which it probably hasn’t told you about). UK Coal does not see its future in mining, but property development, made possible by preparing sites through opencast. Its arguments based upon energy security are a sham, and clearly exposed whereby it sterilised 100mt of coal at Thorne, with all the surface infrastructure in tact, maintained mostly by the taxpayer over the years. Probably fearing that former CEO and competitor Richard Budge would make a play for these from nearby Hatfield Colliery, UK Coal levelled Thorne and sterlised the reserves. The cost of bringing Thorne back into production at thattime was estimated at £100m, the reserves available valued at £40 billion; perhaps UK Coal also failed to tell you this? And by the way, the average UK opencast site employs 10% of the labour of a modern deep-mine, the hourly pay-rate is low, and much of the work is short-term contract as a site progresses through different phases. I wouldn’t try to tell you how things happen in Australia, so please don’t try to tell me how things work over here; all you probably hear is the propaganda in trading statements. I would also guess that your investments with UK Coal have bombed, and you are expecting us to have to suffer to see you make a financial return. If so, thanks for nothing.

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By: Aussie Joe

Aussie Joe — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:58:12 +0000

BIS figures which i just looked up show UK2005 Coal consumption at 62million tonnes and UK Production 20mln at $75 a tonne right now, so= $imports?.No UK coal is exported.
Commentary on coal sites suggest both figures have increased since but imports moreso.

Shropshire Council Site right now shows 290.000 population in Shropshire. Density 0.91 per hectare which is a quarter of the average for the UK which i presume still incledes England < Sc0tland , Wales. and Nth Ireland. If not there than where?

In Oz Mining is moving to opencast/cut partly because it employs less miners per tonnage and partly because it is signifcantly more safe for the miners.

With the world heading toward a 50% population increase soon all things are relative there will be no Brigadoons, Alas .

21st Century Joe ( from OZ)

I read this stuff because I need to follow my Investments in retirement.

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