The list for Tuesday includes the following pro-speakers

James Rudd – NSG Environmental
Michael Roberts – Retired Vicar and general fractivist
Stuart Livesey – Delta Imperial Credit
Jim Harrison – Builder and smallholding owner
Nick Campbell – Inspired Energy
Frank McLaughlin – Retired Commercial Director
Clare Smith – Stay Blackpool

The list for Thursday includes the following pro-speakers

Devon Platt – Geology Student
Paul Linderman – Paul Linderman Lettings
Tony Raynor – Abbey Telecom

Which one of the nine is the odd one out and why?

The answer is international jet-setter Devon Platt as he is the only speaker who does not have (as far as we can tell) a clear and documented connection to the discredited North West Energy Task Force.

Lined up against these industry apologists will be 99 passionate local residents.

Cuadrilla seem as far away from having a social licence to operate as they ever have been.

Now, I am not suggesting that there is anything intrinsically wrong with being a committed activist – far from it. I have the utmost respect for those environmental campaigners and activists who put their concern for our world before their own comfort and sometimes safety.  There are some campaigners against fracking who would fit this bill, and the campaign is richer for them. Clearly opposition to fracking brings in people from all sorts of backgrounds and people who hold a broad spectrum of political and social opinions. This diversity is one of the campaign’s great strengths.

But in persuading the undecided it is important that people should realise that the vast majority of people opposing fracking are (wait for it ….) – JUST LIKE THEM.

So thank you to the BBC for making this point so clearly, and well done to the subjects of the film for getting this point across so very clearly.

Leaving aside the credibility issues they have by insisting on remaining anonymous, it has been interesting to comment on the posts they make and to see the often hysterical reactions that you get if you attempt to have a lucid discussion with them.

I thought it would be interesting to demonstrate what happens if you do try to engage these people in a rational (and polite) debate.

Take a look at this – it shows what we have to deal with

It is a bit hard to have a sensible discussion with people who think saying Thomas the Tank engine and Santa are big backers is amusing, but I particularly enjoyed the final witty and intelligent contribution to the debate from Mr Thornton.

Still at least they haven’t refused to engage at all – Blackpool Fracking For a Better Future refused to let me join their group and banned me when I applied, and FORGE (Friend(s??) of Ryedale Gas Exploration) deleted any (polite) post I made if it didn’t conform to their narrative.

If you ever wonder WHY you may be be having trouble getting a rational response from the pro-frackers you are not alone!

Turner

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Anyway Michael was so pleased with himself, (being a Rev of the people, as he is) that he thought he’d Tweet a cultural reference to Alan Bleasdale’s 80s TV drama “Boys from The BlFrack Stuff” to show what a trendy vicar he really is.

Poor MadRev

Initially we were not sure that tweeting a reference to Yosser Hughes the desperate anti-hero of an 80s anti-Thatcherite black comedy was a good idea. However, on reflection, Yosser’s hopeless refrain of ‘Gissa Job’ described as “almost a requiem for the old working-class community that is being destroyed” does seem strangely appropriate, given that fracking offers few, if any, employment prospects to the unqualified unemployed struggling against austerity in George Osborne’s Britain.

Yosser Hughes

Local people may indeed want fracking jobs but sadly the American experience has shown that claims made by the industry have been highly exaggerated and job creation has been “very modest”.

Ultimately Yosser Hughes may be more emblematic of fracking’s bitter future than the Reverend Roberts intended.

“BRITAIN’S shale gas industry faces a day of reckoning tomorrow when planners decide whether to allow fracking in Lancashire.

The verdict from the county council’s planning chief will have far-reaching consequences for shale gas, which has transformed America’s economy, but has been stalled in Britain by public opposition and planning delays.

Frack Free Lancashire

The head of planning will tomorrow make a recommendation on whether Cuadrilla’s mitigation measures have addressed the concerns ahead of council votes on June 24 and 26th”

If you haven’t already done so please visit the Frack Free Lancashire page for simple instructions on how to register your objections (or you support if you are one of the handful of local people who can’t see that this particular emperor is a little deficient in the clothing department).

Fracking is a way of extracting gas from the earth using methods which have some very detrimental effects on the environment and on the local area, including health impacts, earthquakes and (if you are  Daily Mail or Express reader) even worse – falling house prices.

In spite of this our government seems set on pushing it onto communities without proper regulation, and the frackers are brandishing wads of cash to persuade people to let them in. Many people in my local area seem quite happy to sleepwalk into disaster.

Recently a local writer where I live in Lytham decided to create an anthology of local voices called “Lytham Lives” – this poem was my submission to it.

What Lies Beneath

The always-been, the ever-long,
lies patiently beneath the crowd,
that moving, milling, grinding throng
like fruit flies, seething, buzzing, loud.

The shouldn’t be, the chancing boys,
come charmingly with carpet bags,
make honeyed, monied, unctuous noise,
sell lies of wealth and jobs and Jags.

The mustn’t be, the tearing screws
thrust hard into the rigid earth
and pump their rotten putrid juice
to force a mewling spewling birth.

The always been, the earth’s dark core
stirs, then shakes, and with a crash
tears back the scab from off the sore,
spits back the bile, the toxic trash.

The “cannot bes”, “will never bes”
hit hard on unsuspecting folk.
The accidents and maladies
were never things of which they spoke.

But if the could have been had been,
If men had listened, thought and done,
Then none of this would now be seen
and Fyldes’ green fields would lie in sun.

Copyright © John Hobson 2014 – All rights reserved.

I have not attended the protest camps at Balcombe or Barton Moss, and I am wary of becoming involved in anything that approaches direct action. In this respect I think I am typical of many people in my local area. I do have great respect for those who do give up their time and energy to highlight what they, and I, consider to be an anti-democratic imposition of a foolish project onto a public, who are being fed misinformation by a government hell-bent on fracking.

I am, however, coming to the conclusion that civil disobedience in the face of a government which promises one thing and does another is not only legitimate, it is what any person with a brain and a conscience should be considering. As Professor Kevin Anderson has pointed out the targets our government publicly signs up to and the incompatibility of their resulting actions represents, in itself, a form of institutionalised civil disobedience. You can listen to what Professor Anderson had to say here http://manchesterclimatemonthly.net/2013/12/17/professor-kevin-anderson-on-shale-gas-civil-disobedience-and-barton-moss-manchester-climate/. It is well worth 5 minutes of your time.

In this context I was both profoundly shocked and moved to read this impassioned and articulate open letter from a young lady who was arrested recently for exercising her democratic right to protest.

Please take the time to read it and consider what it says about our society and the way in which our government seems intent on subverting our democratic system.

Happy Christmas!

+++++++

“Seems appropriate to send this out on the darkest day of the year. As the light will be returning to the world i hope it shines on the decision makers of this country and allows them to see more clearly. Its an open letter to GMP police about their actions and my last arrest. Thank you for all your support and well wishes. To GMP I am writing to you regarding my treatment by your officers on the 13th and 14th of this month and your handling of the Barton Moss anti-fracking protest, and to voice my sense of injustice at the absurdity of my arrest and subsequent overnight imprisonment for merely exercising my legal right to protest. To start with I would like to sincerely and publicly express my gratitude to the night officer who showed me firstly the level of respect that we should all show to each other regardless of differing backgrounds, beliefs and position within society. This man then demonstrated his humanity by taking a little time out of what seemed a pretty hectic Friday night to talk to me like a human being. This helped me through what would otherwise have been a much more harrowing experience. I didn’t catch your name but thank you. Barton Moss is the 3rd anti-fracking camp I have attended this year as it’s a cause my conscience will not let me ignore. In May I spent a water-logged week in Lancashire where drilling company Cuadrilla first sunk its teeth into the English countryside. I followed their progress though the country to Balcombe in Sussex where the opposition to this poisonous, destructive and corrupt industrialisation of the countryside first gained the national prominence that it so urgently deserves. This was due not least to the well informed creative peaceful protesters being met by overly zealous policing. I would have hoped that the police would have learnt lessons from the 3 month long camp but after less than 12 hours at Barton Moss I discovered this is sadly not the case. You are still treating peaceful protesters as criminals. You are still making arrests where no crime has been committed. You have wasted your time, court time, tax payers money, and have caused unnecessary suffering to those you are arresting. At Balcombe a disabled protester had their mobility equipment put in jeopardy by an officer forcing their electric wheelchair out of the way instead of facilitating her right to peacefully protest. At Barton Moss in the process of arresting me you pushed a disabled man out of the way into a ditch breaking his leg. And you are still facilitating these ecocidal maniacs in their daily business without questioning whose interests you are serving. The force should ask why as a public service it is being used at all our expense (not just monetarily) to drive through the infrastructure of this profound pollution. It is clear that a major national debate is needed. It is not right that companies recklessly driven by desire for huge profits that has many of our mps and members of the House of Lords in positions with conflict of interest should be assisted to risk something as fundamentally important as our drinking water. Prior to my arrest, my behaviour was no different to the many others I was marching with and if what I was doing was really breaking the law why weren’t there many more arrests? Your arrest strategy of ‘just pluck a few from the crowd’ seems driven by the desire to scare other protesters away from exercising their legal right to protest. My arrest seemed rather arbitrary apart from the testimony of one officer (collar number 11505) to his senior that my behaviour was threatening. This is just absurd to anyone in the vicinity, or if you look at the video footage. If this officer towering over me with the full authority of the law is genuinely threatened by a woman who is 5 months pregnant and at the time walking backwards drinking a cup of lukewarm tea, trying to engage him in intelligent conversation, perhaps he should be undergoing some form of psychological evaluation. Exactly what was he threatened by? Does he have a pathological fear of pregnant women, tea, or more depressingly, intelligent conversation. This man was willing to misuse his considerable authority to remove a young woman for peacefully exercising a basic and vital human right. It appears so often the case the authorities would rather violently remove the messenger than confront the inconvenient truth of the message. Countless times during the protest the front line police and PLO officers were peddling the same line ‘you voted didn’t you?’ implying the country voted for fracking. Fracking was not mentioned in the 2010 election campaign so how could a vote for the current government constitute an acceptance of fracking. Even if it had been, to suggest that once the country had voted people should simply suspend all democratic activities till the next election irrespective of how our politicians choose to act is just plain daft. When officers where speaking to those who chose not to vote (1 in the 35% of the electorate that didn’t) it was suggested by officers that they should try voting before protesting. I would like to inform those officers that people who protest in the face of injustice have been central to every civilising democratic advance from slavery to the rights of women, to healthcare for all. Protest exposes issues the nation might otherwise be unaware of and when our government is found to be corrupt or simply just horrendously misguided, it is through peaceful protest that we can hold them accountable and ensure the democratic will of the people is actually upheld. I assume we’d agree the police forces of this nation are there to keep the peace. They are there to protect and serve the people and not simply tools of an oppressive and corrupt regime. I would hope that you could ensure your officers understand why peaceful protest is so crucial to our democracy and stop treating protesters as criminals. We are rather concerned citizens who are very passionate about his vital issue. This is our nations drinking water at risk and it shouldn’t be gambled away purely for private profit. What’s more according to stark warnings from the scientific community and to reach our countries carbon reduction targets we need to be moving away from fossil fuels not looking for more. I hope as the beginning of this letter demonstrates I don’t think the whole of the police force are ignorant bully boys but there are some bad apples and I feel as a whole your great responsibly to the people of this country is not being fulfilled. I look forward to your response.”

Yesterday Cuadrilla announced their decision to pull out of Anna’s Road and to restore the site (as far as is possible) to its greenfield state.

Francis Egan claims that the reason for the abandonment is “technical constraints related to wintering birds”. He stated that their planning permission only allowed them to drill for 6 months of the year and that this did not allow them to develop the site.

Now we don’t believe for a second that Cuadrilla are so unprofessional that they weren’t aware of this limitation before investing the milions of pounds which they have now wasted at this site. They obviously felt at the outset that they could make this work in spite of the limitation, so what has changed?

The events down at Balcombe showed two things. First of all they showed that legitimate protest could play havoc with timetables and secondly they showed that an articulate and highly motivated general public could check on Cuadrilla’s activities and highlight areas where they were in breach – their breaches of noise levels and the issues around underground trespass being two cases in point. No longer it seems can Cuadrilla expect to be able to carry on operations for 3 months after permission runs out, ignoring key conditions to safeguard bird life, as they did at Banks in 2011.  Now they know that if they make a mistake they will be delayed, and this would potentially prove very costly if it resulted in operations running into the 6 month window where they can’t drill.

Cuadrilla have already demonstrated at Banks that they have little real regard for the well-being of the pink footed geese and whooper swans of the Ribble Estuary. What has stopped them is no environmental concern. This abandonment has been caused by people power. It is without a doubt a victory for all those who have in so many ways campaigned against this destructive industry.

Of course this doesn’t explain the timing of the announcement. We wonder whether Cuadrilla have had this card up their sleeve for some time now but have been forced to play it now in the hope of stemming or offsetting some of the negative fracking has been attracting. This week we have seen the negative reaction to David Cameron’s “fracking capital of Europe” gaffe, and the ensuing critical editorial in the local press. Maybe they were forced into using this card now, but if so it’s a weak play as few people seem to have been taken in by their reasoning.

Anyway, we are so pleased that we put together a video to celebrate which has already been slagged of by shale gas supporters on the You Tube comments so it can’t be that bad!:-)

It’s quite similar to the one which both our local newspapers got themselves over-excited about because they have no understanding of the internet meme that it is part of.

Here is the one that was shown at the meeting.

Funny how the won’t allow comments on the articles – maybe they realised they risked being made to look very foolish indeed if they allowed them?

Rather unbelievably the leader of Fylde council, Coun David Eaves, has described the video as “a disgrace”. We imagine that he hasn’t actually seen it, or that he is simply out of touch with the real world. It is amazing that somebody can be quite so eager to be offended by something so inoffensive. Downfall parodies have even been done in Yiddish for goodness sake!

The press even got Coun Carol Lanyon to comment “From my personal point of view I find it distasteful” she went on to describe it as “tasteless satire”. Again we suspect this says rather more about easy-quote local politicians than it does about satirical parody of an industry set to have a huge impact on the constituents who elect these people.

To put this manufactured outrage into context, Francis Egan of Cuadrilla told me at the consultation in Singleton that, although he hadn’t actually seen the parody, he had been told it was very funny and was looking forward to watching it. Cuadrilla may be dangerous, but at least they have a sense of humour.

What our press and councillors should be getting upset about isn’t satirical comment, but the stark reality of what Cuadrilla are setting up for the Fylde.

Now if Councillor Eaves described that as a “disgrace” he might gain a bit more respect.

And if our local press spent more time investigating the issues in a serious way we’d all be a lot better off.

In case Coun Eaves wants to get himself worked up into another lather, here is a video of a semi-naked woman discussing the merits of fracking. Enjoy Councillor! This one’s just for you! Perhaps you’d better not watch it on a council computer though eh?