Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35124077

Lunchtime today - that'll be it. I salute all those that worked the pits. Loads of my mates as a kid were headed for coalmining - 'a job for life' they said back then. Lads following their dads, who'd followed theirs before them. My mam & dad had other plans for me - and I was a soft bugger anyway, I'd have never hacked it. But we all stayed mates, right through the strike, so I saw first hand its effects and the astonishing strength and spirit of the families fighting for survival.

Sad day today.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Sad indeed - stupidity indeed guaranteeing paying the Chinese and the French 3 times the price for nuclear energy but not ensuring we have at least some deep mined coal and importantly the experience and skills.

And then I saw this

LAW firm JMW has hailed "exceptional growth" after revealing staff numbers have topped 300 for the first time ever.The Manchester-based firm said revenues in the first seven months of its current financial year are nearly 18% ahead of last year.Fee income to the end of November was £11.8m compared to £9.9m this time last year. This puts the firm well on course to achieve more than its £20m target


What kind of world are we creating when we are growing sectors of the economy which add no value and destroying elements that add fundamental value - all on the back of "economics" and "money"

This is why the Aliens fly past us. This and the guns.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Due to the increasingly litigeous nature of our society, also the reason why at work we are hamstrung by ridiculous Health & Safety regulations caused by companies pushing responsibility onto employees in order to avoid compensation claims.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Sad day indeed, I worked for The Board in the 80s (software development) and my dad worked all his life at Hickleton and Highgate pits.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Amazing that it has survived this long, seeing as the industry was decimated so long ago.

I only have a small connection to the industry. My first job on leaving school in 1969 was at Woolley in the wages office. I stayed for just over a year and then left to join the RAF.

I can still remember all the more senior staff wishing me well and telling me what a good decision I was making getting out of the industry, and that was in September 1970, long before the pit closed. Scargill was a union man there at that time.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Its a sad day but a small part of me is glad no more men have to work in those conditions. my old man did 20 years at goldthorpe, highgate and hickleton, he was alright with a pencil so worked in the wages office and only went underground 3 times in all those years

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

I was an engineer and then a chief designer for British Coal. The expertise of all the miners and engineers were the best in the world. China used to buy our obsolete equipment and people from all over the world were advised by our coal industry.
With reference to your point, I am one of the biggest haters of the Tories and have no time for them, they are money robots, but I Quote one of them Harold McMillan. He was right when he said that a colony existed as a triangle. They have a Leader, then a few wise men and old people Etc who have to be looked after. This takes up the top third of the triangle. The bottom two thirds are workers who produce to keep the colony alive.
Now in our Tory dominated world the Triangle is upside down, and the workers and producers are only the bottom Third and carrying basically the rest. Or two thirds. Most of whom just move paper from place to place. Hundreds flock into London everyday and move mountains of paper but do not actually produce anything

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

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It is a sad day indeed. I have been down virtually every pit in Yorrkshire and quite a few elsewhere. The spirit and expertise in these lads were second to none.
They all deserved a medal to just go down Every day. Some of the work they did in conditions that were horrendous they all deserved a medal. Instead, all they got was bad lungs and health. Miners worked hard and played hard, but they could rear canaries , fly racing pigeons, grow the best vegetables and flowers and were the best Brass Bands. This has all gone and typical of kicking them when they are down, the Tory Barstewards have cut the last lads redundancy and reneged on the original payout. What a society we are becoming.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

In the late 80's whilst at University I spent the summer working at a pit - South Kirkby colliery I think - for a company re-decorating the office block and used to have a cuppa with the mine manager - I forget his name.

He would gush about what a great thing it was that I wouldn't have to work down the pit and how using my brain to make a living was just going to be fantastic.

However I must be having a mid life crisis - I look around me and see people being paid huge sums of money to sit in meetings, have phone calls and send emails.

They go home in flash cars and go on skiing holidays - and what have they done - and increasingly more importantly for me what have I done - a few power point presentations and some shuffling of spread sheets and I get rewarded with a greater share of the worlds resources than is reasonable for my output.

Then we have a political system where we're hamstrung by the European Union so we can't subsidise the pits in economic troughs to protect their long term viability - We have 15 years of labour govt who failed to address the destruction of the past - and now a new govt. charging head long in to short term "market" dominated economics - and certainly no fan of coal.

It all seems mental - maybe I need a sports car and have an affair with one of the girls from personnel to make me feel right.

Or maybe winning the JPT trophy will make me feel better about things.


Anyway - I hope the lads from Kellingly have a decent Christmas and all get massive redundancies and enhanced pensions and them that are young enough go and have a better life in Australia or sumat.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Worked 12 yrs down Grimethorpe with some top lads until it's closure.
A very sad day indeed!

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

I remember 'Big K' opening at Kellingley in around 1964. You only had to look around to see why it was opened in that location, Europe's tallest chimney of Drax power station towering over it and the Kellingley coal being transferred either by merry-go-round train, or conveyor as what was called 'coal by wire.' I can also recall the closure of Upton Colliery, for many years prior to Big K Yorkshire's 'newest' pit (1928 opened). The closure of Upton was because of geological problems and it was always know as a 'hot' pit, but Big K could access the Barnsley seam coal under the Stapleton estate east of Upton and so had seemingly years of production left in it, especially as its shafts were right next to the main market at Drax. There is both sadness, but also something healing about today, as workers will no longer have to scrape a living in those conditions any more. For too many, the former mines are a grave and there should, maybe, be some act of remembrance today, even if only privately among those who do remember the true cost of coal. Upton's pit deputy and colleague were killed on the day before nationalisation in 1946 when checking for gas in the new headings, which never did open afterwards. A paddy train driver died when the whole engine slumped off the tracks into the mire. Even after closure, Upton was still claiming lives after one of the lorries which was tipping into the old shaft was found without its driver, who had fallen to his death. That;s before we even get to the Oaks Colliery disaster and the hundreds who died that day alone.

The mines were not just mechanisms - they were people and community. We owe them a time of remembrance today.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

All very good points but while we are remembering those who died digging out the coal we should also spare a thought for the many thousands more who died in the other mining industries in this country.

The tin mines under the sea in Cornwall claimed many lives, some who were simply trying to get either to or from work because they were obliged to jump on and off the very dangerous "man engines" that carried them up and down the shafts.

Then there are the lead mines and the precious stone workings in the Peak district.

Men all over the country have been going underground for centuries to eke out a living. RIP all those who never made it home.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

This is a quote from Charlie Kidd Snr. This is something he said in Mitchell & Darfield Club in the 80s when mine closures were being announced, "They should have shut them down 40 years ago".

It was a horrible job which destroyed the heath of the men who worked in it.

If it didn't kill you in an accident it would kill you from dust. I remember walking many a time up Roy Kilner Road with a couple of old miners who lived in Hudson's Haven. It was a case of 50-100 yard walk and then sit on a wall waiting for them to get their breath back.

My Dad wouldn't let me work at the pit even though the pay was £2 a week more than the £3 I was getting as an apprentice motor mechanic. One of the best things he ever did keeping me out of that hell hole.

 

Re: Sorry if this has already been posted, but a significant day in the mining indust

Good point that Prince.
For anyone who's interested in paying their respects to one of those men. We in Mexborough have a plan to rename our Town Square in early July after this man, Sapper William Hackett VC. The only tunneler to be awarded the VC.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...orial-94-years-dying-UNDER-German-trench.html

The words in the last sentence are very moving
''And this is where his moment of supreme bravery came - not on the battlefield but metres below in the cold and dark.''
As a very poignant postscript to this, by the time Sapper Hackett's wife and family received his VC from King George, their sixteen
year old lad had lost a leg in the pit.