From: martin.baines@uk.sun.com (Martin Baines - Sun UK - SE Manager Cambridge)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: The Price of Coal (was: Currency Problems)
Date: 1 Oct 1992 11:18:28 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Ltd
Distribution: world
Reply-To: martin.baines@uk.sun.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: bottomdog.uk.sun.com

In article 25772@dcs.qmw.ac.uk, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>From: streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater)
>>P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
>>>
>>>(We're even importing COAL, for heaven's sake.  Even after the
>>>devaluation, the government is planning to go ahead with the closure of
>>>another bunch of British coal pits, and the power companies are
>>>
>>Certainly it should be imported given how much cheaper imported coal is. That
>>will reduce the cost of energy to the consumer and to industry, which will
>>improve people's standard of living (a bit) and make British industry more
>>competitive. Isn't this a Good Thing?
>
>Typical loony right thinking. The Thatcher/Major years have
>been marked by various industries being closed down, blithely
>dismissed with "it doesn't matter, imports are cheaper, so
>we'll be better off". The trouble is the country does need to
>have *something* to trade for its imports, if it doesn't the
>currency will plummet in value, imports will become more
>expensive, but unfortunately we can't go back to the home
>produced product because the industry was wrecked (in the case
>of coal, once a mine is closed down and no longer maintained,
>it cannot be re-opened).

Of course it can be re-opened: it's just a matter of cost.
If imported coal reached a level at which it was reasonable
to do this it would be done. Of course the old deep mines
wouldn't be the first to be opened, lower cost new open
cast seams would be first, followed by other new shallow seams.
The nearly depleted old deep seams would be the last.

>Of course the real costs of imports should include the
>increased taxes necessary to make welfare payments to the
>unemployed, to deal with all the crime and social problems and
>general misery the unemployment has caused etc., but this
>doesn't figure on the accountant's balance sheet - it's someone
>else's problem.

Typical looney middle thinking (smiley deleted for cultural
reasons). We are all paying to subsidise uneconomic pits:
it makes little difference if I subsidise a Yorkshire miner
miner via my Electric bill or Tax bill: I still pay. At
least if it goes on un-employment benefit the miner is
available for re-employment in an economic industry, rather
than locking part of the economy in to uneconomic, out dated
industry.

>One must also take into account issues of national security.
>The more a country becomes dependent on imports, the more it is
>afected by the vagaries of international politics. This country
>was held to ransom by the oil producers in the 70s. Without our
>own coal, we stand to be held to ransom by the coal producers
>in the future. 

Or held to ransom by our *own* coal industry. See 1974 for more
details.

>The Tories are the biggest hypocrites going for
>numerous reasons, but here's yet another - they've continually
>got elected by saying they're the party which is concerned for
>defence, but everything they've done has increased foreign
>domination of the country and reduced its independence. 

I agree that there is a national independence argument, it's
just that I favour making any subsidy highly visible: if we
want to subsidise the coal (or nuclear) industry, let them
sell their good on the open market and then pay them the
difference needed to keep them alive (either through a
scheme like the CAP, or like that used before we entered
the EC to subsidise agriculture). What I don't like is
the idea that we hide all these costs and expect other
parts of industry to pay (which is what we are doing with
the nuclear industry). The net costs are the same, but
we make the judgments with our eyes open.

Martin

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