Middle England « Dr Alf's Blog

Balcombe Viaduct (Photo credit: Simply Jan)

Passions are supposedly running high in Middle England but an examination of the Balcombe protesters is in order.

Most of them were comfortably off middle class, Guardianistas, including ageing rock stars, horse breeders, dog breeders, a former page 3 girl and assorted NIMBIES who do not need to work.

The views of ordinary people who need work,who are on zero hours contracts and who are in 50% of cases unable without extreme difficulty to meet their bills have not been sought whether by the BBC or anyone else.
The reality is that we have a 4% margin of generating capacity which a hard winter or an act of weather warfare by a foreign power would eliminate.

We would then have blackouts, layoffs, permanent economic damage and a worse balance of trade situation as lorries carrying exports would not be able to refuel with diesel as pumps are electrically powered.

Our population is increasing and ageing.

Older power stations are being decommissioned faster than new generating capacity is being brought on stream so we are in a state of fast-moving crisis already.

Professor James Lovelock ,the father of GAIIA theory has upset his pagan,Mother Earth Goddess supporters and people like Caroline Lucas of the Green Party by stating that the only way to stop blackouts from happening is to build more nuclear power stations.

Since these take 15 to 20 years to build we need to plug the gap now.

Conservation, hot rocks, wind turbines, OSPREY tidal power generators,microgeneration and more efficient boilers can help but are insufficient in themselves to plug the shortfall fast enough.

Fracking, albeit with safeguards, is the only thing capable of dealing with the immediate problem and we lack the luxury, thanks to Government ineptitude over decades, of time and lots of other alternatives to consider.

Fracking would weaken the power of the OPEC nations and Russia to bully us over energy supplies and could help to create much needed jobs.

We should not let anyone, armed or otherwise impede progress or prevent the country from becoming prosperous.

The Druids, NIMBIES, leafgazers, nihilists, gnostics, environmentalists who would have us running around in smocks, returning to feudalism and lighting our homes with candles need to be put back in their boxes along with the protesters at Balcombe who are a vociferous minority who speak only for themselves.

John Gelmini