Last week the site of a new UK Coal open cast coal mine at Huntingdon Lane in Shropshire was occupied in defiance of the companies’ plans for the site and in defence of local communities and wildlife.
With a take-over bid for the UK’s largest coal mining company, the finance behind soon-to-be applied for Hunterston coal-fired power station and control of Scotland’s coal ports, Peel is consolidating its position as a major financier of new coal.
Hadda be the conscious opposition to truth. Hadda be contrived and calculated untruth. Hadda be the first trial relating to an eviction at Mainshill Wood.
We wrote about Underground Coal Gassification (UCG) a while ago, but it’s back in the news again, this time with a shiny new company behind it, Clean Coal Ltd. Now, we’ve heard governments, mining companies and power companies say “clean coal” instead of “coal” to make us believe that it’s different just because they’ve changed the name, but surely calling your company “clean coal” verges on the ridiculous.
In the past weeks over 600 letters of support for the Airfield Open Cast Coal Site near Cousland have been submitted to Midlothian Council ahead of the next planning hearing for the mine, scheduled to take place on the 10th of this month. The late rush of letters shows the level to which Scottish Coal and their newly enlisted allies, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), will stoop to force new open cast mines on communities that put up a fight against them.
Cockenzie Coal-Fired Power Station, the dirtiest power station in Europe and a scar on the East Lothian coast line, is due to close in 2015. ScottishPower had hoped to re-build it, or retrofit it, making it one of up to 7 new coal-fired power stations to be built in the UK. However, those plans quickly disappeared, to be replaced by plans for a gas-fired power station instead. At a packed public meeting on the 9th February, councilors and community members resoundingly rejected the plans.
The Scottish Resources Group owns Scottish Coal, the Castlebridge Plant and SRG Estates, making it the UK’s largest surface coal mining producer, the owner of Europe’s biggest earth-moving fleet and one of the largest land owners in Scotland. Big money presumably needs big protection – the Scottish Resources Group has called in FD (Financial Dynamics – one of the world’s most sought-after business and financial communications consultancies) and Weber Shandwick (the world’s largest global public relations firm) for UK-wide and Scotland-wide communications respectively.
The National Union of Mineworkers has ended its legal battle for justice for mine workers who suffered lung disease as a result of working at the surface of coal mines. The NUM cites the horrendous and dusty conditions in surface washeries, screens and coal preparation plants as the suspected cause of so many surface workers becoming ill.
This years Earth First! Winter Moot was held in Dipton Community Centre, which looks over the proposed site for an open-cast at Bradley, in County Durham. Members of the local campaign against the mine have asked their supporters to write in their objection to the development.
Read about the eviction, another action at Ravenstruther and an upcoming skill-share in the post-eviction issue of the Mainshill Solidairty Camp newsletter.
