"Coal produced 42.8 per cent of the UK's electricity in 2012..."
But Mrs T. was active in the 80s.
Time and hindsight are huge advantages, even for back-pocket socialists and crypto-reds!
Funny how the mines have mostly gone, though, and only some strange folks playing troglodyte in the New Forest still approach it with zest. The problem as I see it is this: you can approach one of those convenient mines with an outside, ground-level tunnel entrance, armed with nothing more than a shovel, a pick, a canary, a candle, a mule and a carrot. As a single miner, you make a profit from the mineral you extract because you don’t have to pay the canary and the mule squat.
Now, if you introduce an actual lift-shaft, your logistical problems magnify and multiply, almost as rapidly as your costs and other difficulties, the principal one of those being the fact that the mule couldn’t give a damn about the carrot when faced with a cage on a string. Mules may be half-breeds, but they ain’t dumb! Ask any mule. So, importation makes sense, especially when the dust remains somewhere else, as does the mule shit, though I expect the British farmers might be persuaded to use that to fertilize and disinfect, instead of the toxic, bee-killing stuff that they do use. However, should the mine be in Ireland, you may be in luck: they have horses there that regularly get taken into high-rise apartments, so perhaps substituting horses for mules… worth a shot. Well, not literally I hasten to add, we’ve had enough of those!
There are so many options, so many facts, so many conflicting sources of super information…
Rob C