We Cannot Allow the Public to Interfere With Local Democracy

The Government has renewed its commitment to localism with the announcement that, if local authorities fail to process fracking applications smartly enough, Whitehall will step in with its hobnailed boots and kick the uppity provincials into line. Councils will be "strongly encouraged" to reach decisions within sixteen weeks, thus bypassing inconveniences like information-gathering and local opinion. Naturally, the same conditions do not apply to nasty, noisy, dirty windfarms, which must be "clearly backed" by local people. The fracking company Cuadrilla, or "industry" as Britain's leading liberal newspaper hath it, welcomed the news, on the grounds that it's much more difficult and costly to get rid of a windfarm than it is for a fracking company to make itself scarce as soon as methane starts coming out of the water-taps.