Northern Powerhouse

The uncompromising Britishness of the shale-fracking industry is attaining unhoped-for levels of ineffability in Yorkshire, where the operator has been unable to prove its financial resilience even to its understanding chumlies in the Conservative Party. As a result of tripping over this rather low bar, held down on its behalf by backwards-bending ministers, Third Energy has so far been unable to reap its earth-shaking rewards; but this has not prevented the company's machines and vehicles running at the Kirby Misperton well, attended by protestors who in turn are attended by the police. Thanks to the prevailing religious orthodoxy against giving the provincials any say, let alone share, in taxpayer-funded works, a wind or solar project might well attract protests too; but there would at least be a chance of one day producing clean energy. At the moment, without having fracturised a single bedrock or lit a single bulb beyond the five-watt IDEA! above some fat little heads in Whitehall, the site is achieving pollution levels equal to the flatulence levels of a suburban supermarket.