Fracking with the Fillies

One of the Bullingdon Club's token fillies, Andrea Leadsom of the Department for Energising Climate Change, has been gushing about the green crap. "The UK has one of the best track records in the world when it comes to protecting our environment while also developing our industries," she babbled; and since she is a minister, and a minister for the political wing of News Corporation to boot, of course we must believe her. Naturally, her masters in Cabinet are doing what they can to rectify the situation, and as an incidental result they have placed the token filly for pleasuring the energy cartel, Amber Rudd. in the Nick Clegg league of political pledge-keepers. Six months ago Rudd told MPs that the Government had agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks and sites of special scientific interest; but the Bullingdon Club's idea of scientific interest begins with Jeremy C Hunt's homeopathic leanings and ends with the Home Office's vendetta against recreational drugs for the little people. It transpires that fracking will not be banned in areas of special scientific interest, although it will not as yet be permitted in areas of outstanding natural beauty, world heritage sites or the Conservative-voting counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Companies will be allowed to undermine national parks, but only if their rigs are kept at a decorous distance; and of course they will be allowed to contaminate drinking water, since the effects can be blamed on migrants, badgers or the NHS.