What a bunch of idiots,UK Coal should lift another 100,000t of Coal each time one of these muppets causes a rational human being aggravation.I live within 2 miles of the Wrekin and wish these idiots would stop their stupid protest.

Report abuse

Personally I find this story very funny.

And then it gets twisted around as if the protesters wanted to stop the wrong vehicle!

Good luck to the protesters anyway. The whole coal mining thing is such a short term profit for what? best wait a few more years when energy prices are double or triple what they are now.

The ironic thing is that if the protesters do manage to stop the mining for now – UK coal stands to make much more profit in future when they do eventually start!

Report abuse

Huw Peach said..Coal companies might concede in 50 years time that open-cast mining in beauty spots was a ‘ mistake ‘

Or they may look at the Granville country park today and think, ” that looks rather nice, i wonder what used to be there “.

Report abuse

“Or they may look at the Granville country park today and think, ” that looks rather nice, i wonder what used to be there “. ”

Twisting,

Firstly, “what used to be there”, was countryside before the Granville colliery.

Secondly, the Granville colliery was one of the biggest collieries around employing many more men, over many more years, than this piffling little site, which , as Rob suggests, is more of an excuse to build more housing estates on beauty spots, than economic sense.

Report abuse

Re. “Roadrunner” @ 8

Granville, like other deep mines, worked UNDER the countryside – the surface installations and waste heaps occupied a few acres, the area mined extended over several thousand – the last face worked (329′s if I remember correctly, although it was over 30 years ago) was way out the other side of Lilleshall.

Granville employed about 640 in the last few years – skilled, confident and errr, living locally, doing what they had been told was a job with a future (not long before Granville was supposed to have had 70 years of economically workable reserves).

Instead we’ve now got open cast “mining” of low grade coal in the rush to build more houses (instant “brownfield” land).

I won’t get into the environmental argument about coal being the filthiest and most polluting fuel – enough lies have been told on both sides. Suffice it to say that we now import coal that is often mined in lethal conditions, sometimes by children, when we are sitting on hundreds of years of reserves that could have provided a secure fuel supply and provided employment for miners in what was the safest mining industry in the world (which was also the base for the world’s largest mining machinery industry – when our rulers vented their spite on the miners they also killed off a massive sector of our manufacturing industry – what happened to Anderson Strathclyde, Dowty Meco, Gullick Dobson, Huwood and dozens of smaller firms that led the world in mining technology?).

But hey – we’ve still got hedge-betting, investment banking and the rest of the financial services “industry”.

Report abuse

Shame the Star didnt give all the facts – the lorry stopped contained a digger being delivered to a UK Coal owned Farm in the South mine site – to a Tenant farmer whose landlord is UK Coal.
UK Coal workman just happened to be at the land next to the farm at the same time of delivery.
What a co -incidence!
bet they wont let this comment be published.
COTEYG

Report abuse

Thanks to the Star for actuually printing a comment!
Also to Huw – appreciate that.
You might all like to check out the Sustainable Communities Act Of Parliament – instilled by this Government in 2007 – its on the All Friends Around the Wrekin webpage, and it gives local Authorities responsibility for maintaining the Act – and the distance Sustainable fuels such as Coal in this case, can legally be transported, from source to use.
Pat,
COTEYG.

Report abuse