There Is No Alternative

Since the Japanese are apparently no longer prepared to endure the security and stability that comes with owning Britain's independent nuclear industry, Her Majesty's Government faces a cruel dilemma. Either they can go on chucking money at fracking companies, in hopes that the resulting earthquakes and methane sprays will be justified with a bonanza of shale oil as light, sweet and crude as a Conservative campaign leaflet; or they can abandon the plebs to the cold and the dark. The frackers' only slightly earth-shattering performance so far might seem to indicate the latter course; yet that too would be fraught with difficulties. Allowing lights to go out all over England could well cost votes, particularly if ministers failed to ensure that the power cuts were appropriately targeted against shirkers, scroungers, citizens of nowhere and opponents of the people's will. Given the complexity of the calculations involved, and the oft-proven inability of Her Majesty's Government to calculate feasible trajectories for extricating finger from sphincter, it is difficult to see much promise in this scenario either. Such, alas, are the paradoxes of power.