Those With Nothing to Hide

Having very frankly and courageously sneaked out, on the last day of Parliament, its permission for Cuadrilla to frack the great prole wastes of Lancashire, the Government has very courageously and frankly sneaked out a report which says that the process could make the country's air quality even more illegal than it already is. Some of the report's conclusions were based on American data, which made some difference because British wells are likely to be fewer and deeper; and by a charming coincidence it has taken until four days after Cuadrilla got the go-ahead to sort everything out, much as happened in the case of a 2014 report which ministers delayed, at great cost to their conscience no doubt, so that house prices would retain their blimpish buoyancy until a more opportune time. Published on 27 July, the report on air quality was compiled three years ago by the Government's own Air Quality Expert Group, but was delayed because of the unfortunate intrusion into the group of some experts on air quality, who seem to have behaved in the customary expert fashion and tarnished the entrepreneurial glossiness of the document with their pessimistic, citizen-of-nowhere doom-mongering.