Category: Political Issues
As many of you will know Cuadrilla make a big thing of their responsiveness to local community issues and their PR company, PPS Group, man a Community Helpline 0800 170 1115 (24hr message service outside office hours) We contacted them by email with the following query 10 days ago In...
The Farming UK web site carried a story today in which George Osborne’s pledge to support shale gas come what may was roundly condemned as short-termist and dangerous It quoted the Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management (CIWEM) ‘s Executive Director Nick Reeves as saying: “The Chancellor’s dangling carrot...
The continued unusually cold weather conditions also prompted so-called “experts” to renew their scaremongering about Britain’s gas running out. We were given two weeks of continuing cold weather before rationing was implemented. Earlier in the week OFGEM had reported that the ‘Big Six’ energy companies will make a record profit...
The mission statement of OUGO (Office of Unconventional Gas) was published and confirmed the simple fact that the UK government is absolutely determined to push ahead with shale gas and other unconventional gas and oil development at any cost. The brief included: “Making the most of our natural resources, Enabling...
Green MP Caroline Lucas pointed out the potential impact of Ed Davey’s announcement on energy prices, reminding him that the only two nuclear power stations under construction in Europe currently were billions of pounds and years over budget. The only benefit would be to French taxpayers, at the expense of...
The big UK fracking story of the week was on 20th March, the budget speech by George Osborne. After exempting the pottery industry amongst others from the Climate Change Levy, and announcing more subsidies for the declining North Sea industry he said: “But I also want Britain to tap into...
We are starting to get concerned about the welfare of Francis Egan, CEO of Cuadrilla. We have noted before that there seems to be something going around locally which makes people forget things that they said recently and then say something which contradicts it shortly afterwards. Our MP, Mark Menzies,...
A rather unconvincing sounding Francis Egan was interviewed alongside Tony Juniper former head of Friends of the Earth on the Sunday Politics at about 11:30. It will be on the BBC Iplayer here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rbxkg/Sunday_Politics_North_West_24_03_2013/ As we have now learned to expect Mr Egan came out with the usual platitudes and...
One of the little discussed issues around the recent announcement that the government is going to throw tax breaks at an industry which insists it doesn’t actually want or need them (see https://www.refracktion.org/index.php/fracking-and-the-budget/) is that it turns us all into investors in this business, as it is now OUR money...
As expected George Osborne used his budget speech on Wednesday to express government support for the fracking industry. He said: In the spending round, we will provide support for energy-intensive industries beyond 2015. For the North sea, we will this year sign contracts for future decommissioning relief, the expectation of...