News :North Lincolnshire & Surrounding area

In the fourth part of a series, we look at how climate orthodoxy is coming under fire in Lincolnshire

• An unjust transition?: Teeside divided over net zero

• It breaks my heart’: how a refinery closure is hitting jobs and politics

• ‘They feel betrayed’: how Reform is targeting manufacturing heartlands

In early summer the wide open fields of Lincolnshire seem to expand beneath even larger clear blue skies. Travel north through the breadbasket of Britain towards the North Sea, from Grantham to Grimsby, and farming gives way to factories, refineries and the Humber docks. Each sector tells a story of Britain’s industrial decline: the demise of heavy industry on the banks of the Humber, the closure of coal power plants, fishing fleets decimated by the cod wars of the 1970s and 80s.

Lincolnshire is at the heart of the government’s plan for the greatest economic step-change since the Industrial Revolution: a green re-industrialisation to help galvanise the country’s net zero agenda, create jobs and revitalise deprived areas.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

UK government writes to husband and wife team amid concerns that finding buyer for plant will be difficult

The UK government has written to the husband-and-wife team behind the stricken Prax Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire urging them to “do the decent thing” and support affected workers financially, amid mounting concern that finding a buyer for the plant will be difficult.

In a letter to the Prax Group owners, Arani and Sanjeev Kumar Soosaipillai, seen by the Guardian, the junior energy minister Michael Shanks said the government was “urgently exploring what support can be offered to the workforce at this difficult time”.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

The Bank of England is redesigning money with new themes. So how about Lincoln Cathedral, the London Marathon … or wheelie bins?

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

Details of payouts to Winston Soosaipillai and wife Arani emerge as calls grow for couple to financially support 625-strong workforce

The married couple behind the Prax Lindsey oil refinery awarded themselves at least $15.9m (£11.5m) in pay and dividends in the years leading up to its collapse, it has emerged, as the government urged the company’s boss to “put his hand in his pockets” to help workers.

Winston Soosaipillai, who goes by his middle names Sanjeev Kumar, jointly owned the refinery with his wife, Arani, until it plunged into insolvency on Monday.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

Fears over fuel supplies and jobs as Lincolnshire facility handles nearly a tenth of total UK capacity

• ‘It breaks my heart’: how a refinery closure is hitting jobs and politics

• Business live – latest updates

One of the UK’s largest oil refineries – and the only big one owned by a British company – has collapsed into administration, prompting calls for the government to intervene urgently to protect fuel supplies and jobs.

State Oil, which owns the Prax Lindsey refinery in north Lincolnshire, called in administrators on Monday, Sky News reported first, prompting concern from the trade union Unite.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

British potter and ceramic sculptor fascinated by the ‘vessel’, which he used as a metaphor for imaginary terrains and travel

Gordon Baldwin was probably happiest with the term “sculptural potter” to describe himself. He disliked most definitions because they did not adequately encompass his art, one that explored broadly and complexly the potential of the “vessel”. He investigated this in lyrical big bowls and striking articulated and enclosed pieces, using the premise of containment to gauge ideas about painting and drawing on new types of form.

Baldwin, who has died aged 92, was a modernist in ceramics, but he never eschewed his traditional roots because they enabled him to evolve a highly original language. It led to some of the most convincing and liberated clay sculpture since the second world war.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian

Exclusive: emissions from power-hungry warehouses at Lincolnshire facility expected to be 850,000 tonnes a year

A vast new datacentre to feed Britain’s rising demand for artificial intelligence could cause more greenhouse gas emissions than five international airports.

Elsham datacentre in Lincolnshire is on course to cost £10bn and its 15 power-hungry computer warehouses are projected to release five times the carbon dioxide of Birmingham airport, including from take-offs and landings.

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Lincolnshire | The Guardian