Gwyneth's personal blog

Monday 29th June, fine and clear. Between a rock and a hard place: members of Lancashire County Council Development Committee had all my sympathy this morning, caught between menaces from the Cuadrilla wise guys' lawyers (Mind how you vote, we know where you live, you know. We can make you pay!), and corrupt "direction" from David Cameron's meretricious government. I wasn't hopeful, but so far so good, common sense prevailed in Preston today, and Preston New Road Little Plumpton, Lancs will not, as of now, become a fracking site. I doubt if it's even the end of the beginning. Cuadrilla will appeal*. The fracking industry will keep coming (for at least a few more years; until they get bored of pretending they believe there's a "bonanza" lurking in UK shale) but every refusal makes the next refusal a little more probable, and opens up a space that can be flooded with more, and yet more evidence. And every appeal against a refusal, as Francis Egan has probably noticed by now, is another showcase for the opposition.

There is no case for shale oil and gas extraction.
There is no case for any new oil and gas extraction industry, anywhere.
The worst that can happen to a council for refusing is a fine.

This is not a sideshow. The world has to be transformed, or humane civilisation will die (along with many other species!), and this is one of the places where the tide turns.

Anyway, read all about it on drill or drop

My rock and hard place picture was taken on the edge of Kinderscout (by the Downfall) last Thursday, when I was out walking with a ramblers' group, retracing the steps of the Kinderscout Mass Trespass in 1932. Walking en masse is not usually for me (unless Parliament Square is somehow involved, okay), but it was in a good cause this time. Lovely day for it, charming sheep (esp one Swaledale ewe, intent on training her three-quarter grown lamb how to hussle tourists); & so many swifts, diving and skimming around us above the bog cotton, as we crossed Red Brook and headed back to Hayfield. Many thanks to Elly for organising me into this outing, and to the Ramblers for permitting me to join them.

Reading

Who Killed Robin Cleve?

I took Donna Tartt's The Little Friend to Manchester with me, to read on the train. I didn't read it when it came out, having read a few reviews first, though I loved A Secret History. I loved The Little Friend for almost four hundred pages. It was a great Southern Gothic, like Jane Austen on crack**, horribly funny, & I didn't mind if the set pieces, esp Snakes In Da House! went on and on a bit. But then someone seems to have lost interest, and I don't think it was me. Dunno what went wrong. I do, however, know who killed little Robin Cleve***. Or, I should say, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it's obvious if you think about it, like a detective book reader, but I'm definitely not going wading back through all those pages to check. Whether Donna Tartt intended her many frustrated readers to be as baffled as they seem to have been, that's the real mystery.

Looking Forward To (vicariously)

I won't be at Blissfields, Vicarage Farm Winchester, this weekend (otherwise engaged), but if you're going, make sure you save a place on your dance card for a really lovely singer songwriter, Millie Upton. Gabriel Jones is playing keyboards for her. They're third down in one of the smaller tents.

So little good news, so much that's fearsome and hideous, almost beyond the point of no return. I lie awake in the early morning, and listen to the gulls calling; the juveniles peeping and whistling. I never thought I'd be so glad to hear them, but for the last week or two they've had competition. There are sparrows chirp, chirp, chirping tunelessly in the front garden with the big yellow privet bush, right across the Crescent from us. Like a homely little friend returned from the grave. Are they back? After fifteen years away? Even in this terrifying, swiftly darkening world things can still get better as well as worse. Never say die.


*Of course Mr Egan's surprised. So would you be, if you thought the "vote" you needed had been bought and paid for!
** Crystal meth, in fact, but crack scans better.
***I'll tell you if you like, but owing to spoiler culture you'll have to approach me privately.

Monday 22nd June, cool and rainy. The first two froglets of the season transferred from the nursery tank to the wildlife pond on Saturday (where we hope they are too big for the ferocious boss stickleback to tackle, but it isn't critical, we have plenty frogs this year); the first two tiger moths emerged, found each other and immediately began an endurance copulation stunt, and then we had a barbecue with rugs, two of our guests were returning from the Anti-Austerity march, only one made it to the feast, reporting a nice, party atmosphere up there (allowing for the usual ruckers) & no trouble from the police; happy Solstice.

My fracking round-up wakes up again in a brand new world. To put it simply, for the last few years opponents to the great plan to rip up the rural UK with thousands, upon thousands, of poisonous, dangerous drilling wells, for no b***dy good reason whatever except making some rich people richer, have called the government's bluff. We have proved, comprehensively, that if you subject the fracking industry to regulation, the fracking industry can't survive (a lesson the USA skipped, or the first well would never have been drilled). Francis Egan himself (Cuadrilla CEO) expressed this opinion. Environmental hazards, unacceptable industrial traffic, polluting development in rural areas, destructive effects on wildlife and natural beauty, overwhelming resistance from local communities; Environment Agency concerns about water table contamination & identified and unidentified poisons in the drilling fluids; irreconcilable with carbon emission targets, unacceptable etc etc. There was just no way forward. The fracking industry could always be stopped, and always would be stopped, by determined and well-informed opposition.

So, we are at stage 2. The government has called our bluff. The fracking industry can't survive regulation? Fine! We'll get rid of the regulation! The Infrastructure Bill is law, anything, any poison whatever can be pumped into the ground and into our water. We have no right to refuse. The National Parks are not protected. The government of the UK, that's any UK government*, is legally obliged to "maximise the economic recovery of oil and gas". The fracking industry will no longer be regulated. The public will not be consulted. The Environment Agency will not make inspections or assessments. Permits for exploratory drilling must be issued automatically. Actually, the Environment Agency is no more. It has been taken down to the cellar and shot in the back of the neck (with or without a blindfold, we don't know). Your Lib Dem MP's private opinion is overruled by his party's committment to fracking, and the same goes for Labour. Oddly enough, you might even be better off with a Conservative, but that's a postcode lottery, sort of. Here's Nicholas Soames on the subject

here's that "maximise the emissions" link again, worth a look and worth sharing, and a referenced version of the Ecologist article:

http://occupylondon.org.uk/the-infrastructure-bill-and-the-new-legal-duty-to-maximise-emissions/

http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/musings/2015/20150615-decc_media_misinformation.html

Has anybody here seen defra recently, by the way? You may have wondered why I stopped updating on ash dieback? That's because the tracking of the outbreak has been dramatically stepped down. There's not much to tell you, since most of the UK's rate of infection is now classified as "undefined". The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs may still be alive, but I'm not sure how many arms or legs the poor creature still possesses. Or where it's currently being detained.

Where do we go from here? Interestingly, there's been a correspondence in New Scientist (13th June) on the puzzle of human pain, giving scientific backing to the strategy that remains freely available. Why do humans make such a fuss when they're injured and vulnerable? Why scream, groan and carry on the way we do? Isn't that counter-adaptive? Maybe not. "External signs of distress," says Mr Peter White of Cardiff "caused by pain, must be strong enough to overcome (this powerful avoidance tendency) the revulsion we feel towards cues associated with disease-risk. We might feel pain more than other species because it is the way to get people to help us when they really want to get away from us. It's not easy being a social animal"

Do no harm. But make yourselves hard to ignore. Non-Violent Direct Action. It's worked before. I have the right to vote (currently!) to prove it.

http://www.unisonnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Dont-Frack-Lancs.pdf

I can't be in Preston this week (ironically, because I'll be in Manchester). But I'm afraid I'll have other opportunities. If you can't be there either, at least consider signing the petition. Fracking is not a minor issue. It's a wrecking ball through our hopes of saving the future, and our hopes of having a country worth living in.

Footnote on Sir Tim Hunt:

Just for the record, by his own report Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt wasn't joking. At the time he confirmed that he'd meant what he said (about women being a menace in the lab, and segregated labs being advisable etc), but he did realise it had been foolish to make such remarks in front of the journalists. He was just being honest! The "I was only joking" spin arrived several days later, and is really creepy. He meant what he said, he has not apologised, and please don't tell me he's getting loads of support from Other Arrogant Male Scientists, and their female admirers (of course he is! Would you Fifty Shades Of Grey leave it out???); and expect me to be impressed. Or expect me to be less concerned.

Here's the top original witness-tweet

http://www.themarysue.com/sir-tim-hunt-sexist/

Distractingly Sexy news of a better kind here, in the latest issue of the International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology: You can get copies of all the papers for free. http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset
My seagulls did come back, by the way. Just fewer than last year, and fewer chicks being raised, but at least our colony is still with us. I hear them calling every morning now, at dawn and often in the night, and I don't mind the racket at all







*the Tories probably couldn't make this stick if the Greens won a General Election, but in that unlikely event so many bets are off, I suppose they decided not to worry. All other parliamentary parties are in agreement with this Maximum Extraction line.

Friday 19th June, sunny and clear, light breeze, blue and silver sky; a blackbird singing outside my open window.

Duly went up to London for the fortheloveof Climate Change action event on Wednesday. It was a small gathering, a few thousand people: mostly Faith groups (almost entirely Christian or Muslim, far as visible identifiers go) and the emergency humanitarian orgs (hard to tell those two apart these days); plus the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB. A mild mannered lot! We did not, as I'd thought was the plan, swarm into the Lobby to speak to our various MPs. No, no. We gathered in little constiuency groups along the Embankments and across Lambeth and Westminster Bridges, and our MPs were brought to us, thus causing absolute minimum disturbance to the House. (Maybe there was a good fortheloveof reason for this revision, but I sometimes think the gentle people have a little to learn about protest as an effective tactic). Anyway, the half dozen of us who got to talk to Caroline Lucas were, as she ruefully remarked, probably having the best of it. Nick Herbert of Arundel and the South Downs, I am shocked to report, apparently told his constituents that unregulated fracking all over the UK is vital so that we will be self sufficient in fuel. Nick Herbert, who cannot possibly be such a dummy; who knows very well that the shale gas/or oil, if any, will go to feed the European energy market, and sold to the highest bidder, to benefit the shareholders, not the fuel poor of the UK. Last year, he defended the Weald valiantly from Celtique Energie. But there's been an election. Votes have plummeted in value (and will stay low for years! It's lovely!). His constituents, who may have thought they'd been saved, had better watch out!

There was bunting, there were free Ben and Jerry icecreams ad lib, and a beautiful, touching art installation by South London school kids & students in the Archbishop's Park (the Archbishop's Park was the best bit), there were "workshops" in the Royal Society's Emmanuel Centre, including two Royal Society actual scientists, roped in to give us a really excellent illustration of the problem with Climate Change as an issue . . . The bloke's main points were a) I'm a scientist, I'm sceptical of everything and b) I'm sorry to be a spoiler but the sea ice in the Arctic hasn't been behaving as you people would obviously like.

I'll accept the first assertion (with reservations!). The second seemed either deliberately misleading (the actual situation: Arctic Sea Ice Grows) a bad case of Climategate Paranoia Syndrome, or maybe just hard to make out. The other scientist was milder, but seemed equally uncomfortable. She just said, biodiversity in the oceans will change due to acidification, because acidification stops things building skeletons. If you like kelp and you like algae, you'll be fine. Jelly fish too, she could have added . . .

There was the No Nukes guy with his little No Nukes dog, convinced the whole operation was a front for the Nuclear Power lobby. There was the Population Matters stall, from which Peter and I both silently, politely and independently turned away. We have one child between us, our choice, but anything that smells like First Worldism (your babies aren't as good as mine) is a big taboo. Sorry mates, sure you mean well, but there has to be another way. There was the smiling bicyclist, who wanted to know what it was all about: whose response to our explanation that we all need to use less energy, and keep fossil fuel in the ground, to avoid catastrophic climate change, was a smug and smiling, "But we're all addicted, aren't we", wringing from me an unforgiveable, dreadful, "Oh, I can't be bothered with this. Let's go." There's a reason why I've never been tempted to go into politics. I'm sorry smiling lady. I'd been out of sorts all day. The air in London was stifling, my head felt thick, I was still recovering from that hopeless struggle with Consultation 11.

Global warming is happening now, and hitting the poorest people in the world first and worst, that's why I was in London. We can't stop it, the damage that has been done will stay done for thousands of years (now why do I, a non-scientist, have to make that Job's comforter point?). But I, for one, personally, am going to continue trying to stop it getting worse. If we are addicted to tumble dryers, longhaul holidays, new cars, whatever your poison is, we can get sober. It can be done. Addicts do beat their addictions. 4 degrees of warming is unacceptable, however good it looks in a Mad Max movie. I know I won't be there (except the results of fast-track warming are unpredictable, and there I go, talking like a scientist again; so who knows). But I feel I have a lot of children, and grandchildren, and they will be there. A lot of responsibility for their world.

My Library Books

Memory of Water Emmi Itäranta Young adult (far as I can tell), climate fiction debut. Some very nice touches, a sober, gentle pace that suited the Tea Ceremony motif; nice detail, but this one felt unstructured. Like a first draft that needed another going over to pull all the threads tight. I wanted to know, for instance, what the Tea Ceremony tradition was even doing in Finland & I didn't like the drop off ending. I probably won't be looking for episode 2 unless I get a strong shove in that direction.

The Girl With All The Gifts. M.R. Carey. Not much to it: a nice, light zombie apocalypse read. Squeamish fans will be pleased to know (if nobody has told you yet) that Carey reduces his cast so dramatically (early on and without much ghastly detail), that you will be spared that Walking Dead ordeal of seeing your current favourite member of the plucky band of survivors eaten alive before your very eyes every ten pages. He can't spare a one of them until the finale! I enjoyed this, but I might skip the movie.

footnote: Climate Change not so lite. What was really going on that day in:

Climate Change Policy and Practice

postscript: To save you having to read the whole thing, Rolling Stone has done a precis of that Encyclical:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-13-most-radical-lines-from-the-popes-climate-encyclical-20150618

I'm a bit lost for words on this "Consultation No.11" thing, although not entirely (see below). What's the use? is one response. Why didn't I know, is another? Was this a public consultation or not? I'm not totally clear. When I tried checking for previous comments, on the online form, I found responses to a previous consultation (Horse Hill) but apparently not a single person had entered any objections to this one, before me. Can't be right.

Anyway, what is it? This is, I think, an early implementation of the Fracking Good/Onshore Wind Farms Bad new legislation in the Infrastructure Bill. It's wickedly, blatantly, all about serving private vested interests. You used to have to get the Environment Agency to make an assessment, before you could apply for exploratory drilling, in preparation for fracking for gas or oil. In future, that won't apply. You just tell the Environment Agency what you fancy doing, where you fancy doing it, they refer themselves to their spreadsheet, which says Low Risk all the way across the boxes, whether the supposed question is about the protection of rare bats, air quality, climate change, noise pollution, or what the hell, and then they issue a "Standard Permit". Job done.

Exploration shows the very clear intention to exploit. The oil men know what's down there, "Exploration" is boots on the ground, foot in the door, it's standard tactics, and, as I thought we all knew by now, Cuadrilla and Celtique Energie (Balcombe, Fernhurst, Wisborough Green & Kirdford ) have consistently told their shareholders they intend to extract by hydraulic fracking, in just about so many words, while at the same time promising the locals, hand on heart that they will never, ever frack!.

Anyway, I'm bemused, but I responded to 38 Degrees, and I made my personal response here:

https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/ho/ep/src/newrules/oilandgas

& to help you out, if you wish you had known about this, and you want to hurry and get your response in by midnight, or by tomorrow, here's what the questions are and what I said:

Update: I'm sure you've had enough of looking at my spluttering. Here's a link to The Ecologist instead.

Oh. It's shorter than it was last week (but I can fix that|). . . What a tricksy place the Internet is!

The Ecologist 15th June

A stormy night, & now the panes are blind with showers. Have gone out in the rain to feed the birds, black sunflower seeds and live mealworms. The birds are not in evidence, not even the starlings. It certainly is wild and wet out there. Todays interaction with wildlife was that I killed two slugs that were after Peter's youngest sweet peas. Which was a bit pointless. The photo is of red campion and wild parsley at Woods Mill where we went last week to hear the nightingales (not much luck with the latter, and see if the kestrels were nesting again. They weren't, but there was a nice lot of bat action in the gloaming, along with a half moon, and a cuckoo's song,

The blue tits next door fledged! We watched three emerge in the morning, and later I took pictures of the 4th. This is the best of them. I got worried that I was upsetting the little bird (though it gave no sign) and stopped and went away before it actually flew.
Bon voyage, kiddies

Nicky next door says blue-tits only live about one and a half years on average in the wild, but there's a record of one living to be 21. So I suppose the limitation is: they are popular prey, and live until something kills them.

Watching

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night The "Iranian Vampire Western". Very beautiful b&w cimematography and a tiny movie with a tiny but appealing cast, sparsely inhabiting an urban wasteland called Bad City, oil donkeys ducking and rising in the background as a constant refrain. The Iranian girl vampire is a great conceit, shimmering sinister apparition in her black cloak. I loved it when she takes the little kid's skateboard & from then on scoots around on it, when out hunting. Why a Western? I don't really know, but I did think of Once Upon A Time In Anatolia. Is it the loneliness, the desolation of the landscape urban and otherwise; the makeshift-seeming city melting into badlands; the gun law or none? Is it the darkness on the edge of town? A Springsteen sort of Western.

Timbuktu Stunning to look at, low-key, wise and sad. I can't tell you much, go and see it. It's not going to tell you anything you don't know, but it's heartbreaking, and grimly interesting, to see what happens to individual people, ordinary lovely people, when IS arrives in town.

I thought of Walter Scott's novels, which are often about the savage wars of religion in the UK in the seventeenth century, especially in Scotland, & the culture around that time (and often btw sympathetic to women's rights). I never noticed when I was a child (I wasn't meant to) but rape happens a lot in Scott's novels. It's called "outrageous violence". Women, especially young women suffer "outrageous violence", from lawless armed men on both sides all the time. Marriage by rape and kidnap (actually, "rape" covers the whole process, you snatch a girl, rape her and keep her; and possess her child, if any) was something every family with a daughter feared and not only from the religionists of course. The rapist's party (just as in Timbuktu) liked to insist on moral acceptance of the crime, and could usually rely on the girl and her family being shamed & scared into accepting a form of marriage. But in Scotland, even three hundred years ago, women were not cattle. They were persons, and had rights in law. There's a historical account, I think it's in the preamble to Rob Roy of a young woman who refused to comply. Her rapists' lawyers tried every trick in the book (they needed to catch her acting nicely in the rapist's company; so they could say she was willing). But her father had good lawyers too, she stuck it out, and in the end, god bless legalistic Scots, eh?, she won & went home. Most didn't.

I suppose you could hope that equally legalistic Islam would work for you in the same circs, if IS wasn't doing the interpreting. But not really. A woman living under Sharia, as things stand, is living on the edge.

Mad Max: Fury Road Gabriel's treat. 2D, naturally. I was fine with it. Nostalgic. How often, in the long ago, did convoys of desperate good guys, in whacky falling apart transport, flee across our basement floor, savagely pursued by evil Transformers . . . ? How well I remember those days. And on the way home I got to explain to Gabriel why its "The Many Mothers" as the desirable alternative to one Big Daddy, in terms of a) social animal behaviour & b) humane governance. I've done that before too. Plus, who could ever have enough of Charlize Theron being heroic with a buzz cut, a big gun and a fancy mech arm?

Peter did not like this movie at all.