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As Low As Reasonably Achievable

Tuesday 23rd February, bright sun and frost. A green december has made a fat churchyard of my garden, and it's the slugs that are fat. The red camellia returns? Solidarity for Don't Frack Lancs, while the Cuadrilla appeal is going on. I don't have a red rose so it has to stand in. I don't have any other flowers, except for a few blue specks on the rosemary bush. My native daffodils are sluggish and half blind, likewise all the other bulbs; I blame the dark skies, I've been feeling the same myself. Don't want to get out of bed.

Ah, the heady days when fracking was news to me. When, at buttercup time, I mourned the coming demise of the fields of gold, in the pastureland of Balcombe's AONB (Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty) but it was a local, minor loss; possibly even justified, probably unstoppable. It's almost nostalgic, responding to yet another Government Consultation (that familiar little black & white crown!), and finding exactly the same specious language, exactly the same total misrepresentation of what the perpetrators know to be the truth (except in those days, the Environment Agency actually had agency; it hadn't been taken down to the basement and shot in the back of the neck, to be replaced by a yes-Dave imposter). So, anyway, here's my response to the ongoing Onshore Oil and Gas Consultation (open until 3rd March). NB, the consultation is not addressed to you. It's addressed to the industry, for the industry's approval. You, as a member of the public are allowed to express your opinion, as a matter of form. I wrote it long because I didn't have time to write it short. I responded because I try never to miss a chance. It's about quantity, not quality, so don't worry if you can't come up with any whizzy technical objections, or new evidence. I just doused them with sarcasm. I believe my approach is equally valid.

http://www.gwynethjones.uk/OnshoreOilandGasConsultation.htm

here's the link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/onshore-oil-and-gas-sector-guidance-consultation

& here's the live feed to the Lancashire Cuadrilla Appeal, via Drill Or Drop, as always thanks to Ruth Hayhurst

If you have the expertise and the patience to pick holes in the Emperor's New Clothes, please do! But once you know the "Environment Agency" is prepared to rip up our National Parks (approval for surface fracking installations in the National Parks is coming soon, NB), and is happy right now to approve 4,000 fracking wells on the Fylde without seeing any "significant impact" on public health, quality of life, the roads, the landscape; the environment in short, I think you know all you need to know. All you can do, as in all these cases, is let them know about a growing, disaffected public.



Watching, Reading, Walking

As my french reader, I'm still enjoying Delphine de Vigan's Nothing Holds Back The Night The tainted paradise of childhood, a place none of us ever really leaves. But seven children! Seven! It's like a fairytale.

I'm going out to see Room this evening, a late single showing, I missed it first time round. Very much looking forward to it.

And we went walking from Exceat down to the sea & over the Seven Sisters to East Dean last Tuesday, with Gabriel and Noemie, on another brilliant chill and sunny day like this one. A familiar route, but it never stales.

The twitchers were out in force at Cuckmere Haven. Hordes of them, all lined up taking turns with their binocs, rubbernecking a greenshank. Can't understand it. I would have thought it would have to be at least two.

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