POWERGEN is negosating to buy a substantal stake in the mining industry of the former east Germany, now on the market as part of the post-unification drive to sell off state property.
The privatised doctricity goneration compary is currenty resisting attempts by Michaol Hoselfine, prosi. existence as a small specialist hospi dent of the Board of Trade, to force t to purchase more coal from British While analysts have not so far pointed to PowerGen as a potential purchasor for British pits if Tory privatisation plans go ahead, its diversi. fication move could be indicative of its stratogic thinking.
PowerGen has formed a 50-50 consortium with NAG Ltd of the USA.
which Germany's Treuhandanstalt privatisation agency has given exclu.
sive rights unti July to negotiate the purchase of nine mines belonging to Mittedeutsche Braunkohle.
rite, notorious as a pollutant, and a major cause of the which stil dogs industrialised areas of eastern Germany.
The plan is to koop the pits open a dangerously inadequate network of casualty units, having dosed Bart's, St Thomas's and Charing Cross -three key units treating a total of up to 200,000 cases a your.
Inner London's hospitals would be unable to cope with aster or epidemic, while hospitals in outer London could find themselves struggling to handle emergencies for whom there are no beds in the inner Atter a slow and confused start, all the major unions and the Labour front a sire Desaibor United in oc position to Tominson, with even MA timidly express the Royal College of Nursing and St John's Ambulance have emerged as servile alies of Bottomiey in imposing these cuts.
The task now is to buid vigorous campaigns inking health workers in and go on to construct a now coal.
frod generation plant near Leipzig.
equippod with expensive desuiphurisation equipment. Industry sources beleve that the mines deal could be worth around C387m.
While the coal would probably be considered unsultable for British use.
its importation could not be ruled out espocially in the evont of industrial acton.
WEIS each of the threatened units with local community organisations, pensioners and user groups, for whom the hospi tal services are a vital lifeline. Now the scale of the threat is clear, the scale of the ightbeck must be increased.
Londoners need London's hospitals: but so does the rest of the NHS. The spurious arguments the Tories use and get away with to close hospi tals in London today wit be whooled out in the near future to threaten beds in Cardift, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast and other major cities.
Bottomley had the bottle to throw cown the our how the libour movement must show if it has the ability to Sght back. Will the left rise to he challenge?
• London Health Emergency can be contacted at 446, Uxbridge Rd, London W12 ONS. Affiliation £15/E25.