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Even the biggest coal boosters have long admitted that coal is a dying industry - the fight has always been over how fast and how hard the industry will fall.

The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral.

The coal mining industry is very destructive and it doesn't have to be.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.

Coal mining is an industry rife with mismanagement, corruption, greed and an almost blatant disregard for the safety, health and quality of life of its work force. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known it.

My great-grandfather was a coal miner, who worked in Pennsylvania mines when carts were pulled by mules and mines were lit by candles. Mining was very dangerous work then.

I tried to write 'Trainspotting' in standard English, but people weren't talking like that.

To shut off coal, or to say you can't have further coal development, I think is the wrong way to go.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.