Gwyneth's personal blog

Thursday 5th June, very sunny, not all that warm, no sign of the eight or ten local swifts (I've seen very little of them, no screaming parties, I think only a single pair may be nesting at the Brighton General site). And that was brilliant, Greenpeace. Immaculately put together and timed! "The police are absolutely right", says Greenpeace spokesperson, as they were led away from their pretend fracking installation at Dave Cameron's house yesterday morning. "Nobody should frack under somebody's home without permission."

Interestingly (well, okay, predictably) the plan to change the trespass law did not turn up on the list of bills destined to become law before the end of this Parliament. It's going to consultation! You can make your views known, and I encourage you to do so. Here's the link: Underground Drilling Access. Just for fun, nb, and to be annoying. This isn't Passport to Pimlico, I'm afraid. No happy ending is planned. These are the Bad Barons, they mean to have their way and they will have it. But in terms of the future of fracking in the UK, Mr Francis Egan's response says it all. If the trespass law isn't changed, that's the end of fracking in the UK. Why? Because if you have to ask, and nobody who can say no to a fracking operation next door will say yes, that's just about it. Nobody. Not even for £20,000. Quite an admission, you'd think.

Not entirely unconnected: about that British Geological Survey, did you know both Cuadrilla (the major player in Extreme Energy extraction/exploration plans) and Celtique Energie (the exploration operator in the Weald) are cited as advisers in the report? (See ppiii) Confirming publicly that they knew all along, despite the passionate vows they have made to the contrary, with tears in their eyes: a) that nothing could be extracted without thousands of wells employing the controversial technique known as fracking. b) that in the South East there's no nice-sounding "natural gas" at all: only a tiny fraction of "tight oil".


That isn't my tweet (above), by the way: I borrowed it from the Australian research into twitter response, in this case to Australia's Rightist, Climate Change Denier Tendency regime's 2014 budget cuts. Twitter is an interactive graph of public mood (it says here). Twitter's emotional storms are fleeting, lasting only hours. They can be read, obviously, and can influence the equally fleeting moods of our politicians. But can they be manipulated with longer term effect? I wonder. "Demosthenes" did it, with great success, back in 1984 in Ender's Game, as I'm sure you remember, dear reader. Admittedly, that was science fiction

I was hardly likely to expect anything that even sounded good to me, on MP recall, on zero hours contracts, or even on plastic bags, from the Coalition's last "Queen's Speech"; and I was not disappointed. Not at all, just devastated, furious and ashamed, same as usual. Greenpeace's stunt had to put a smile on my face (reference to the row between Mr Gove and Ms May has been deleted here as I've realised I have no idea who did what to whom or why). And now, back to my flowers; and a talk about HG's Time Machine that needs to be written.