Dear Friends,

The season of gifts and goodwill seems like a good time to ask that the Haig Mining Museum funded with £Millions from the Heritage Lottery is handed back to the people of Whitehaven, Cumbria. 

The museum and lands along the Lake District coast on the fringe of the National Park and sitting high on the cliffs above the Irish Sea were given to the CEO of West Cumbria Mining for the sum of £1 by the Coal Authority who have now after almost a decade of public money spent on legal actions and inquiries refused WCM a licence to drill.  Why on earth did the regulatory authority with responsibility for licences hand the museum and land to the developers in the first place? 

What you might also ask, given the title of this petition to Save the Whale and Snail is,  what has this got to do with seismic blasting in the Irish Sea? 

Well,  the Dept of Business and Industrial Strategy who sponsor the Coal Authority also sponsor the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management who appointed the coal mine CEO Mark Kirkbride as nuclear dump advisor.  It was he who advised on the seismic blasting and how to get around any inconvenient scrutiny by regulatory bodies and the public by calling it a purely "scientific" investigation rather than the industrial groundwork for development of a deep sub-sea nuclear waste dump.

I have written to my MP and asked the following:

Hand back to the people of Whitehaven the Heritage Lottery Funded (£Millions) Haig Mining Museum and land given away for £1 to West Cumbria Mining.

Investigation into the conflict of interest between the appointment of the CEO of West Cumbria Mining, Mark Kirkbride to the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management whose sponsors are the same government Department (BEIS) as the Coal Authority’s who handed Mark Kirkbride the multi £million Haig Museum and Lands for £1

There is also the very real possibility that Mark Kirkbride's exploratory boreholes for his now refused coal mine set off the ongoing acid mine pollution from the honeycomb of interconnected historic mines under Whitehaven and the Irish Sea.   We are running a campaign to investigate and highlight this and if you have the wherewithal to help in any way it would be much appreciated.  

The next investigations in the Irish Sea proposed by Mark Kirkbride in his role as  mining advisor at the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management are very deep boreholes to follow up on the seismic blasting.  Like the seismic blasting we suspect these deep boreholes will be dubbed "scientific investigations" in order to circumvent any meaningful scrutiny by the regulators, wildlife and environment organisations or the public. 

Instead of being held to account with a comprehensive inquiry into conflicts of interests, the CEO of West Cumbria Mining will be profiting from the sale of the £1 gift of the multi- £million Haig Museum and lands.  WCM has offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, very handy to put the profits from sale of the Haig Museum and land.

There is more information here

Onwards and Upwards!

Best Wishes

Marianne