so many coalmines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal all together,” he added. These remarks prompted widespread criticism with Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland dismissing the comments as “crass and deeply insensitive”. “Lives & communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry (which had zero to do with any concern she had for the planet),” she said on Twitter. “To treat that as something to laugh about is crass & deeply insensitive to that reality.”
Against such a background, the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, is set to pay tribute to the nation’s miners in a monument that will be dedicated to courageous pit workers in a ceremony planned for early next month. “We felt it was an appropriate thing to do for the miners of this country,” Mike Mellor, president of Chase Art for Public Spaces, which launched this initiative, said.
The monument is a creation of…
