On 14 Oct, 00:20, Les  wrote:
> On Oct 13, 5:11 pm, Brian J Goggin 
> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:15:00 -0700 (PDT), Les 
> > wrote:
>
> > >Why do you assume that because Columbian coal is cheap is must be
> > >because they are exploiting the poor miners?
>
> >http://www.pri.org/business/global-development/price-columbian-coal.html
>
> > bjg
>
> I was only using Colombian coal as an example of how uncompetitive our
> coal production was in the 1980's compared to other countries. You
> can't expect to deep mine dirty coal and compete with opencast clean
> coal operations from anywhere in the world which is why our coal
> mining industry died when it did.

Though back then the cost of closing down the industry and paying
money to out of work miners was a lot greater than keeping the best
pits going and the men employed. Of course now this is just words
though a certain AS did mention this once on TV (Channel 4 news) then
(strangely) seemed to backtrack.  We were on the Chesterfield back
then and all the fishermen actually welcomed boats while police
convoys thundered by on the A1. Talk about big brother!