English: David Cameron’s picture on the 10 Downing Street website (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am responding to Dr Alf’s blog entitled First photo of UK fracking site via Mail Online surely justifies wider protest? and his six open questions:
- What ever happened to David Cameron‘s environmental credentials?
- Why wasn’t there greater consultation from the Government?
- Why don’t the Government publish the economic benefit case?
- Why don’t the Government publish the risk assessment?
- What do individual MPs think about fracking and environmental risk?
- Should these or similar questions be sent to MPs to ask the Government to clarify policy?
1) David Cameron never had any environmental credentials because even when he claimed to be cycling to work the limousine following him at a discreet distance carried his bodyguards and his red boxes
Why wasn’t there greater consultation from the Government?
2) There was no greater consultation from the Government on fracking because we, thanks to the neglect of this and previous Governments, are facing blackouts because populations have risen, existing generating capacity is coming to the end of its useful life and has not been replaced.
Nuclear power stations have not been built and the money to do so has not been found but has been wasted on overseas aid, the Barnett Formula, poor purchasing, badly managed projects at the MOD and payments to unnecessarily large numbers of councils, quangos, constabularies and civil servants.
The Government and the BBC have both been telling the British people that Global Warming /Climate Change exists even though for the past 8 years all their reports have been showing that the opposite is the case. As a result they could not be seen to be building extra energy capacity because, according to them, that extra capacity would not be needed.
The Russian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese and Indian Governments, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, Lord Lawson and Lord Christopher Monckton have all determined that Climate Change is a fiction and now the UK Government has been caught out but cannot admit it because then people would realize that the whole Climate Change scenario is a device to raise carbon taxes.
Nuclear power stations take 15 to 20 years to build so the only thing that can credibly close the generation gap in time is fracking.
Why don’t the Government publish the economic benefit case?
3) Because they never planned to frack but through their own neglect are being forced to do so for the reasons stated in 2 above.
Why don’t the Government publish the risk assessment?
4) Because if they did so and damage ensued from fracking they would be faced with an admission of culpability at inception.
Waiting, they reason, will avoid this, although in my view their neglect and culpability will be exposed in any case.
By not doing the risk assessment, and relying on the American experience, they think that they can avoid blackouts and create good news stories about employment growth, freedom from OPEC and Mr Putin’s on/off gas supplies.
What do individual MPs think about fracking and environmental risk?
5) Most of them think about their salaries and expenses and their over long summer recess.
A few like Julian Huppert MP, an affable Liberal Democrat, think about the environment a lot.
In the end, it does not matter what they think because fracking will have to happen if the lights are to stay on.
Should these or similar questions be sent to MPs to ask the Government to clarify policy?
6) We are supposedly in a democracy and yes, they should be.
However, the die has already been cast and matters are too far gone for it to matter.
The Daily Mail photograph is as Dr Alf implies, disgusting, but so are the scenes around coal mines, oil drilling wells in rural Lincolnshire and off Poole in Dorset about which we hear very little.
We have to frack and frack now but the sites need to be better landscaped and screened so that negative impacts are lessened.
As for the right to protest, people need to understand the position the country is in and the truth versus what they are being told because otherwise they will be protesting about the wrong things.
Similarly, the risks and costs of not fracking need to be on the table as well as the risks of doing so before objective decisions about what to base protests on are made.
Since the cart has preceded the horse, in this instance, much of the present protest will be in vain.
In the event that fracking is stopped, then the alternative to blackouts is going to be buying more nuclear power from France, remaining in thrall to Russia and OPEC and periodic brownouts.
Power bills will rise inexorably, fuel poverty will skyrocket, the Government will benefit from higher tax take via VAT on fuel bills and food prices will rise making the bulk of people poorer.
All this is very sad but those really responsible in the Club of Rome are going to profit either way.
Let me also take this opportunity of discussing the protests at Balcombe, Sussex.
The anti fracking protesters at Balcombe, in West Sussex, are it seems being backed by the Co-operative Supermarket and the Co-operative Bank and have received assistance from Lush the cosmetics chain.(Source:Daily Telegraph).
The Co-op financially supported the release of the documentary GASLAND a film which was made 2 years ago,saying that the film about America’s dash for shale gas showed how the technology “risks” local ecological disaster”.
The Co-op has called for a moratorium on fracking and has asked its customers to put pressure on their local MPs to oppose test drilling.
In addition to this, the Co-op has organised meetings in areas where fracking may be about to take place to screen GASLAND and discuss references to a report on fracking commissioned by the Tyndall Centre For Climate Change Research.
They are enthusiastic supporters of renewable energy and of left-wing causes and could not say how much they have spent on their anti fracking campaign.
They are the biggest financiers of offshore wind farms which only generate electricity 14% of the time and are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer.
Thus the people of Balcombe and elsewhere are being stirred up into a frenzy of indignation by the Co-op Bank, Lush and others through a combination of anti-fracking films and messages without knowledge of the full facts of our dire energy supply situation or what will happen if we have a harsh winter, namely blackouts and potential economic chaos.
The Daily Telegraph should go further and research the Balcombe protesters to ascertain whether links exist between them and the Co-op in terms of investing in wind farms.From that, we would discover whether they really are as they portray themselves–Concerned apolitical Middle Englanders on the march to protect the environment and the tranquility of their rural idyll.
Related articles
- First photo of UK fracking site via Mail Online surely justifies wider protest? (dralfoldman.com)
- A Trans Atlantic Perspective in Support of UK Fracking (dralfoldman.com)
- A True Fracking Story – UK Take Heed – Part 4 (dralfoldman.com)
- First photo of UK fracking site justifies protest – Mail Online (dralfoldman.com)
- A True Fracking Story – UK Take Heed – Part 1 (dralfoldman.com)
- A Hard Look at UK Life Under David Cameron – John Gelmini 2/3 (dralfoldman.com)
- Fracking boss Francis Egan receives bomb threat over shale gas exploration – Telegraph (dralfoldman.com)
- David Cameron and Sun Tzu’s Art of War – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
- A Hard Look at Individual Liberty in the David Cameron’s UK – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
- Understanding the UK NHS’s Terminal Cancer – John Gelmini (dralfoldman.com)
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