Underground Rumblings

So green and clean is shale fracking, and so many jobs will it create, that misgivings have set in even among the more expendable Conservatives. Caroline Spelman is the former environment minister whose main contribution to the greenest government ever was a failed if ambitious attempt at privatising large numbers of trees. Anne McIntosh is the expenses claimant for a constituency somewhere in northern England, who has expressed concern over female doctors on the grounds that they tend to marry and breed, thus putting a huge burden on the health service. Spelman and McIntosh have both had a sudden attack of environmental consciousness, and are now calling for a moratorium on shale fracking despite all the workfare opportunities it would infallibly open up in McIntosh's little place up north. McIntosh has even realised that fracking is inconsistent with pretensions to be the greenest government ever, and could derail efforts to tackle global warming if any such efforts were actually being made; and her arrival at this realisation has taken a mere four years and eight months. No doubt it would be uncharitable to assume that the light of revelation resulted from a sudden loss of faith in her prospects for appointment as a token filly in a Bullingdon cabinet; but it still seems remarkable that the privilege has managed to elude her.