Sunday 28 June 2020

Backing the wrong horse

Not so much beery today. More 20-2-20 eyesight. Respectively.

More a demonstration of how the world changes. This must have made total sense on 1948.

"There are tremendous developments in connection with the steel trade taking place in Aberavon, a town where fortunately we have a representative number of licensed houses. There are similar developments it Llanelly, although not on quite such a large scale, where we are well represented. But it is to coal that we must look for the future, coal and everything that goes with it such as shipment of coal and the manufacture of steel and so forth. There has been an increase in production, although the returns from South Wales pits are by no means the best, and there has been during the first six months of this year quite a fair increase in the export of coal. Unfortunately I am afraid that the quality of the coal is very unsatisfactory, and the price appears to go up as the quality goes down. It is true that to some small extent South Wales ports are now being used for export trade, and that the modern cold storage plant at the Cardiff Docks, which was installed during the War, has been partially used by the Ministry of Food.

Also, there are new factories completed, some occupied and some not, but the amount of labour employed in these new industries bears no relation to the employment in the coal trade. When producers of coal realise their tremendous responsibility, then we shall have little fear of the future, and the prosperity that should follow and benefit all classes of the community."
Western Mail - Friday 17 September 1948, page 1.

Yeah - coal is the future.

I'm off to lie down now. Too long a park bench session with Mikey this arvo. Feeling a bit tired.  But not too emotional. Just tired, really.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know who wrote that, but any decent geologist could have told them where the coal supply in the UK was going. We got the same thing in the US a few years ago, but even Trump seems to have given up on the idea that coal mines are ever going to be great again.