Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the demise of UK Coal passed most of the mainstream media by with little comment. There was all that Wimbledon excitement, for a start, and much more importantly the debates that have paved the way for same-sex marriage to become law. Having made history, Westminster is now slipping into recess.
But if you’ve ever worked for UK Coal, or are a widow of a former miner, your world changed for the worse last week – and you might still not even know it.
If you did manage to catch the media reports or Government announcements, UK Coal going bust was almost certainly presented to you as a great success. The company will soon be reborn as UK Coal Production, and the Energy Minister Michael Fallon hailed the “tremendous effort” PricewaterhouseCoopers had undertaken to “secure more than 2,000 jobs.” The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has rescued miners’ pensions from oblivion, we are told, and any changes to these pensions are part of a necessary restructuring.
