Author: Refracktion

What really made Cuadrilla abandon Anna’s Road

What really made Cuadrilla abandon Anna’s Road

It was YOU! 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...

Correspondence with a councillor

Correspondence with a councillor

My local County Councillor is Tim (20 mph) Ashton, The Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport at Lancashire County Council can be seen here crossing Lytham Square, whilst apparently contravening rule 64 of the “Highway Code Rules for Cyclists” which states that “You MUST NOT cycle on a pavement. Laws...

Smal Logo

Councillor Gordon McCann and the “criminals” of RAFF

Last night saw a meeting of the Standards Committee of Wyre Council. The first item on the agenda was the reprehensible behaviour of Cllr Gordon McCann (pictured right) at this Summer’s Shale Gas World Conference. We reported on that sorry story here According to Wyre’s Democratic Services department the committee,...

The BBC – Fracking Rubbish

The BBC – Fracking Rubbish

Today the BBC put out a programme on Radio 4 – Inside Science – which claimed to get inside the science of fracking. It was terrible. Sloppy journalism and bad science. The list of badly reported programmes on fracking is long and ignoble – Iain Stewart’s Horizon programme springs to...

What the Elphicke are we supposed to believe?

What the Elphicke are we supposed to believe?

Politicians eh? Last night it seems that Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, underwent something of a Damascene conversion. Mr Elphicke made a bit of a Charlie of himself last week, when he was caught out getting rather mixed up about the differences between coal bed methane and underground coal...

The Sun eats its words

The Sun eats its words

We reported some time ago about the way in which the Sun misreported the results of its online poll, claiming that 71 % supported fracking, when the poll actually closed showing 52% against We raised this issue with the Press Complaints Authority and after a certain amount of toing and...

You’d think you could trust the Royal Society

You’d think you could trust the Royal Society

Of all the scientific institutions which grace our land you’d think that the Royal Society would set a standard for academic rigour which would be unimpeachable. Cuadrilla would like you to believe so. They set great store by the Royal Society’s Report “Shale gas extraction in the UK: a review...

Death threats? Really?

Death threats? Really?

Back in August we read with amazement that Francis Egan of Cuadrilla had had death threats made to him These claims were of course widely publicised in the Mail, Telegraph, Independent and Guardian. Even The Sun got in on the act although they probably had to illustrate the article with...

Fracking report author joins Centrica

Fracking report author joins Centrica

Regular readers may recall that we were not impressed by the claims made by Corin Taylor of the IoD in a Cuadrilla sponsored report on shale gas opportunities. In this report he claimed that fracking would lead to 74,000 jobs being created. We asked him how he got to this...