The vocabulary of mining - the twisted rhetoric and doctrine presented by the mining industry.

The proposed open cast mine viewed from residents homes

For years mining companies and minerals officers have been waging a subtle yet effective campaign to shield the destructive effects of mining through a clever method of manipulating the vocabulary with which mining is discussed. This has become so deep seated that it is now indoctrinated in the NPPF and every planning policy.

At the highest level ‘quarrying’ has replaced ‘open-cast mining’ as the preferred cosier and seemingly less harmful term. Similarly ‘mineral extraction’ has replaced ‘mining’. Both terms are deliberately designed to try and hide the true devastation that would normally be associated with mining.

Minerals will apparently be ‘sterilised’ if unmined. The reality being they are simply left in the ground untouched and as they have for millennia.

‘Receptors’ has become the impersonal term for human beings, people’s homes, animals, heritage assets and landscape.

Focus is deliberately drawn away from the harmful impacts on real people, on communities, on our landscape, on our heritage assets, on our ecology and on our health and wellbeing.

‘Temporary impacts’ can mean harmful impacts lasting over 100 years.

‘Processing plants’ means huge industrial developments often immediately adjacent to communities and residents homes.

The reality lies far from the gentle harmless picture painted by the mining companies and minerals and waste teams. The destruction of our lives, landscapes and communities is extensive and devastating.