Mines are too ugly for rich men buying their horses The NSW Planning and Assessment Commission has just defined our times for us. It has ruled that a coal mine is simply too ugly for rich people to have anywhere near where they shop for that most exclusive of toys - the thoroughbred horse - and thus must be banned. Moreover, the mine it has rejected would have kept 500 Australian workers in their jobs. The two horse studs it wants protected are owned by Irish investors and a Middle Eastern Sheik. The story: Anglo American owners of the Drayton open cut mine had proposed to continue their operations into the southern part of their existing mine lease once current production ceased in 2015. Their development known as the Drayton South project would have utilised existing Drayton infrastructure and equipment as well as their 500 employees and over the life of the mine deliver $950million in royalties to the state government. Add to that company tax and the income tax of employees and contractors, plus spin offs for local business. But the expansion of the mine brought it close to two of the country's biggest thoroughbred horse studs Coolmore and Darley (Woodlands) near Jerrys Plains... In the review the two studs are described as being the core operations that support the entire Upper Hunter Critical Industry Cluster â Equine (CIC) and therefore they need protection from the mine and this would require a buffer of at least several kilometres not the proposed 500metres... The two studs produce almost half of the country's stallion fees... Anglo American's Coal business, chief executive officer, Seamus French, said this decision was a severe blow to the 500 people who work at Drayton mine and the families they support. "We have followed all the rules, consulted extensively and made $6 billion worth of compromises to reduce project impacts through revised mine designs," Mr French said. Significantly, we have forgone 53 million tonnes of coal, worth more than $5 billion, to move the mine behind the ridgeline to negate the visual impacts on our neighbours... Here, from the PAC report, is the critical issue, dressed up with fashionable buzz words such as "brandscape." Note that security gates to lock out the hoi polloi are cited as a point in favor of the horse studs: The rich must have their horses. The poor won't have the wages to even watch.