Media and a Duty of Care.

In this talk, TEDxHousesofParliement, film director David Puttnam asks whether the media has a duty of care towards the public. It is a good question. I was asked for my thoughts on the presentation by a friend of mine on facebook.

Certain sections of the media distort facts, either in the service of government to drive forward a given ideology or policy, or in the interests of a given corporation or social group. Press on the left do this too: it is not just a top-down affair.

 Differing perceptions are of course grist to the mill of debate. Debate can only be informative and educational however, if the facts are agreed, or if that cannot be reached, at least as honestly presented and as available to scrutiny as circumstance allow. If this does not happen, then the result is sophistry, which often as not, is what passes for political debate and reporting nowadays. A shorter label for it is "spin".

Puttnam mentioned another aspect that informs action and that is morality. Now, let us say that the media has a duty of care to present the facts. Obviously there are a lot of facts to any given topic; a media outlet, be it the BBC, Fox News or a blogger, probably cannot know all the facts but should present a picture based upon the facts available. This is different from spin insofar all the available facts have to be distilled into the story, and not just the selection of those that fit a particular agenda. This is difference between balanced reporting and spin.

Balanced reporting is also not the same as current practice: allowing two (or more) proponents to take to airwaves and have at each other. This has the illusion of balance but in reality it is a collision of spins and thus far more difficult to get to the real facts. The most celebrated case of this currently on the British media circuit is BBC's Question Time: a show when up to six flavours of spin (plus audience participation) take part in a mass tourney. It is of course very entertaining, modern day bread and circus for the politically interested, and occasionally truth does emerge. Its most useful purpose as far as facts are concerned is that audience member may pick pointers to where further details can be found. It is in no way a presentation that allows the audience to impartially judge a given issue.

Still, BBC Question Time and similar shows are better than the media monocultures that are the real target of Puttnam: the uninformative and biased tabloids, whether in print or on air. They present politics and many other issues with the sensibility of soap opera writers: that the participants are either idiots or scoundrels. Of course, politics, like all walks of life have their share of both but by the relentless presentation of everybody involved as such, it dulls the sensibility of those nurtured upon such fare. It is popular for a very simple reason: most everybody likes to be able to look down upon somebody else and what gives the illusion of empowerment more than a feeling of moral superiority? That feeling literally sells tabloids by the truckload. It is not a factual picture though and thus fails Puttnam's duty of care test. It discourages political involvement and breeds nothing but cynicism.

One can already hear the screams warning of censorship and yes, in a democracy one must have the freedom to be wrong in the opinion of others, especially if that somebody is the government or other organs of the state. At its heart, Puttnam is calling for honesty in the reporting of facts. The democratic process lies in the interpretation of those facts. We can still disagree over what they mean but if the facts are skewed or completely absent, then the basis of our democracy and freedoms are not even on foundations of sand. They rest upon nothing at all.

Clarkson, Childhood and Eenie Meenie.

I do feel sorry for Jeremy Clarkson.  That rhyme, Eenie Meenie Minie Mo, was sang constantly in my childhood.  It wasn't right but in the 1960s, 1970s and doubtless before, nobody told us children it was wrong.  Thus it became part of our schooldays and our play days.  It is as ingrained in my memory as the two-times table.

But like the times table, I don't have to recite it any more.  Sometimes when making an either-or decision, it comes, unbidden, into my head.  Owing to the offensive word it contains, there it must stay, forever unspoken except during discussions such as this.

Clarkson is a talented writer and presenter who not only can mould a new image using language, but also taps into the British stream of consciousness.  That rhyme is part of that stream for those of us who are older.  His mistake was to give voice to it.

As far as race relations in the UK is concerned, the situation has improved markedly since my childhood.  Real equality however, is still a battle being fought.  If he is guilty of anything, Jeremy Clarkson is showing poor awareness of the current situation; either that or he simply doesn't care.  I do hope it is the former.

The bottom line though is that Britain has moved on since the 1960s.  Clarkson should have too.

Reading In Confinement

I have never been in prison and, by the grace of God, may that condition continue.  But my work often leads me into that state of confinement that is known as an offshore oil rig.

It was an early morning, last minute call and I had to pack in a rush.  Making the flight from Stavanger, it was straight down to Amsterdam, a train link to Den Helder and then immediately offshore and into work.  The survey was partly achieved but had to be suspended owing to bad weather.  It was only then I realised that I had not taken any books with me.

After rechecking the tools, there was little else to do.  The following two weeks passed at a crawl.  Mentally I was in some distress; bouncing off the walls one could say.   The OIM (offshore installation manager) even took pity on me and had me arrange to give a talk on my speciality to the crew as part of that week’s safety meeting.  I am sure that it was less to do with keeping the personnel informed as to the dangers of seismic guns and high pressure air, and more with helping me keep my sanity together.

Even in these days of the Internet and Facebook, books are my constant companion both at home and offshore.   I even launched a mini rebellion at one oil company’s ban on reading material during helicopter flights to their installations.  Wedged into an old Bell Huey with ten other guys, there is little to do other than sleep or read; the latter option being taken away.  Frankly it felt like being in a cattle truck.

Reading is a transportation of the mind from the immediate physical surrounds and leads it into contact with other minds and areas.  This is usually just seen as a choice entertainment, but when the body is in confinement, whether voluntary or being incarcerated, it becomes so much more than that.

So it comes to the recent call from Chris Grayling to ban books from prison.  Actually, he didn't say that.  What he wants to do is ban prisoners receiving packages from the outside, with them only allowed cards and letters.  This is to be done both in the name of security and of punishment.  Apparently loss of physical liberty is not enough and Grayling claims there is a demand for "a regime that is more Spartan unless you do the right thing".  The book ban is about receiving literature from the outside, which under new rules are now seen as a luxury.

Prison is about punishment but it should also be about rehabilitation.  Many criminals see the world from only their own selfish viewpoint, and anything that can help to broaden their outlook, help them to feel empathy with others, should not be curtailed but actively encouraged.  Books, and novels in particular, can fulfil this role.  For those who cannot read, prison is another opportunity to address the holes in their education that school was unable to fill.

 

It is hard not to see Grayling’s claims terms of cost cutting, for of course there are security implications.  But that is what scanners are for, are they not?  Mail depots and airports have the technology so it is hard to claim that it is not possible in prisons.

The exchange of ideas is one of the things that mark us as being different from other animals on this planet.  Limit that, take it away, and a person is quickly reduced towards the level of a beast.  This is what the new rules on the banning of outside books will do to prisoners.  It also shows from the Conservative justice minister the same kind of paucity of thought, empathy and imagination that has led many others into a prison cell.

The Ruble vs. The Euro: What Putin Didn't See.

In the good old days of the Soviet Union, the leadership of the Kremlin did not really have to care much about neither public opinion nor world markets.  During the 1980s, the citizens of the Soviet Europe did not even know there was a war on in Afghanistan until the dead and wounded started to return and mothers started to take to the streets to prevent their sons from being drafted.

Things have changed a great deal since then.  Take a moment to consider this:

This graph (courtesy of XE http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=EUR&view=1M) shows the fall of the Russian Ruble against the Euro since mid January. 

Here are some “highlights” of events in neighbouring Ukraine.

A.  22 January: Street protests in Kiev spread beyond the capital to other cities. 

B. 12 February: in the Russian weekly Zavtra, the Izborsk Club publish an article titled Save Ukraine! In it, the authors appeal for Russian intervention to prevent the Ukraine’s, as they put it, fascist and Nazi creeping coup”.   According to the Centre of Research on Globalization, the Izbork Club is a think tank that has gained prominence under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/russias-save-ukraine-memorandum-prevent-the-ukraine-from-going-fascist/5368608

C.  18 February: Night of violent riots in Kiev with deaths, as police surround Independence Square.  There are reports of police using plastic and live rounds, as well as fragmentation grenades against protesters.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26248021

D.  21 February: EU intervention leads to a compromise agreement being reached between President Yanukovych and  demonstration leaders agreeing to early elections and the return to the 2004 constitution.  The Ukrainian Parliament passes a bill approving the release of former president Yulia Timoshenko.  

E.  22 Febuary: President Yanukovych flees the capital after being impeached by parliament.   25 Febuary sees Pro-Russian Aleksey Chaly appointed mayor of Sevastopol as pro-Russian rallies in Crimea gain strength.  Russian troops mobilise outside their barracks.

F.  2 March:  The day after the Russian Parliament approves the use of troops in the Ukraine, Russian forces take over the Crimea.

G.  5 March: US Secretary John Kerry has face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia.  Talks fail as Lavrov refuses to talk with Deshchytsia.

H.     6 March onwards.  US imposes visa sanctions on selected Russian and Ukrainian officials and Russian annexation of the Crimea continues.

In the past, the Soviets controlled very effectively what their people were aware of, both in their empire and in the world beyond.  That is no longer possible.  Nor was the Ruble  a transferable currency.  It is now.

During the past week, I was listening to City Radio, Moscow.  There was a phone-in during which business people and small traders had made the link between the Ukrainian crisis and the fall of the Ruble against the Euro.  Now the drop in value may not seem much: around about ten percent.  But, as one restaurateur pointed out, he has to import seventy five percent of his ingredients.  The fall in the value of the Ruble is causing real hardship for business, some are starting to fail, and they are vocal in their complaints.   

The unwritten deal with Putin and the Russian people is that in exchange for power, he will provide economic stability.  The longer this crisis continues, one very much laid at his feet by the business owners phoning in, the more he will fail.

One also has to wonder what the reaction of the people of the Crimea will be when they convert to the Ruble (currently scheduled for April), only to find themselves instantly more poor.

Other sources:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/timeline-ukraine-political-crisis-201431143722854652.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution

MPs' Pay.

In an independent report, IPSA, the body responsible for parliamentary oversight suggests a pay rise for MPs of eleven percent. Frankly I am for the idea.

The whole travesty of the expenses scandal occurred owing to MPs not putting up their wages but instead supplementing their income through the back-door of expenses. The majority of them are running two households, one of which is in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. On a basic of £66K (a little less than $110,000 US), that is by no means a life of luxury.

In Scotland, MSPs have their expenses published on a website and thus accountable to the press and people of the UK. I want to see the same for Westminster. I also want MPs to be paid decently so it does not rely on either coming from a background of privilege, or being sponsored by private industry or trade unions.

This has been a problem since the rules changed under Thatcher in the late 1970s and is still being avoided for popularist political motives. I am fed up of the knee-jerk reaction of those against, but most especially those in the cabinet who were back-benchers but are now All Right Jack, being on ministerial wages (about double), and those who demand the highest ethical standards but demand the minimum living standards for our elected representatives. To keep MPs poor is to open the door to corruption.

Before the Thatcher reforms, each MP from outside London got £3000 and was told to get on with it. It was up to them how they used the money. If they had the means of renting a Mayfair apartment, fine.  If they preferred to save the cash and bed down under Westminster Bridge, that was their business. There was no need for oversight; they just got the money and made their own arrangements.

Instead of having IPSA, another level of bureaucracy, to monitor our elected representatives, maybe it is time to return to the practices of a more simple age.

Part-Time Deterrent

As part of today’s conference debate F32Defending the Future – UK Defence in the 21st Century (Defence Policy Paper), (pages 50-53) in lines 49 to 72, the leadership advocate reducing the Trident nuclear-carrying submarine fleet from the current four Vanguard-class boats to two Successor-class boats and ending the Cold War policy of Continuous At Sea Deterrence – known as CASD.  It would include such subterfuges as openly going to sea with unarmed missiles but having a stockpile of real weapons ready that can be primed in times of international stress (lines 57-58) and “surging” with armed patrols in the case of the international situation deteriorating (59-60).

It is obvious from these examples that the paper’s authors do not give any credence to Toby Fenwick’s paper Dropping the Bomb (Centre Forum 2012), in which he outlines the problems of such a part-time deterrent.

“Such a part-time deterrent is dangerously escalatory.  First, the act of sailing a ballistic missile submarine in a crisis would be a major escalation just at the time when governments are attempting to de-escalate.  Second, as the UK’s only nuclear weapon system, a part-time deterrent in port provides a major incentive for an adversary to mount a pre-emptive strike to disable or destroy the Trident submarines in port or to ambush them on sailing, again increasing the incentives for an adversary to escalate a crisis more rapidly.  A part-time deterrent is dangerously escalatory in a crisis, and must be rejected.”

In his paper, Fenwick also dismisses the “Cruise Missile” option, with multi-role submarines, as it runs the risk of giving the hypothetical enemy a confused signal.  In the twenty minutes it takes from launch to impact, are those cruise missiles carrying nuclear or conventional weapons?  Should the enemy launch an all-out nuclear retaliation or assume that we Brits are the good guys and would never launch nuclear weapons first?

There are therefore only two real choices as far as a credible policy on nuclear weapons are concerned.  We should either maintain enough capacity for CASD deployment, thus backing Conservative and Labour policy to replace the Vanguard boats with Successor, or to end the United Kingdom’s ownership of nuclear weapons altogether. 

What the author’s of today’s paper are really trying to do is maintain economic and expert capability in the fields related to nuclear weapons, hence the call for continuous training and practice (61-62) and dual-usage submarines (64).  They know that holding on to a Cold War stance is not credible but in their view neither is the stark alternative of unilaterally disarming.  Thus the fudge that conference is being asked to approve today, a case of when the cart is being put before the horse if ever there was one. 

The best that Conference can do today is support the amendment which calls for the cancellation of the Successor programme and thus leads to the retirement of Trident within the next decade.   Just in case one is tempted to support the paper as it stands though, just remember this one thing.  In the 2030s, the Trident missiles themselves will be at the end of their lives and will need replacement too.  So if one were to think that any form of support for the Successor programme is viable, think again.   In spending all these billions of pounds, the decision is only being put back 20-25 years and then the nation will be facing exactly the same debate as we have today, but with even less control of the outcome because Trident is almost exclusively US-made.

Today, end support for Successor and let Liberal Democrats lead the way with the truly credible and realistic outlook on nuclear weapons.

Fracking for Beginners (Part Two)

In Part One, we examined the basics involved in setting up a well site and the impact on local communities. This time we have a closer look at fracking and the possible impact the process has on the environment. If you have not read Part One and only have a vague idea what happens on a well site, you would be well advised to read that one first then come on back here. I have tried to keep technical terms to a minimum but unless you know what the basics are, some of what follows below may be lost.


As stated in Part One, a well bore is cased and cemented and this is no small thing as the cost of casing is often as much as fifty percent of the entire well. Usually that is enough to prevent sub-surface fluids migrating up the outside of the casing and reaching upper rock layers or even the surface. This is still important whether a well is to be fracked or not. Unfortunately not all cement jobs are tip-top. On a well offshore Angola, I once identified a zone devoid of cement, over which the client intended to perforate the well. If they had done so, at best some oil would have been wasted as it migrated up the outside of the casing and into upper formations. (Not that I got any thanks for telling them of course, you’re welcome). Bad cement jobs can be fixed though. After cement has been allowed to set, acoustic logging tools should be run, which will tell the company whether their casing has a good bond with surrounding rock. If it is found that there is bad cement contact, the well can be repaired (known in the business as a “squeeze job”). Of course, this is an extra expense but given the risk to surface waters, a necessary procedure. Thus the wells used in fracking should be surveyed for cement bonding and repaired if necessary. In addition, it is standard practice that all cased wells should be pressure tested to prior to being perforated to ensure structural integrity. It cannot be emphasised enough as to the importance of the casing and its bond with the formation.

Fracked wells are different from standard wells though insofar that in a usual reservoir, the oil and gas has already migrated from a source rock and have been accumulated naturally. So when a well bore pierces an accumulation, there is only one way for the hydrocarbons to go – up the well. An artificially fractured formation on the other hand releases its gas and it goes in the direction of low pressure – into the well bore again or, if the pressure difference is not enough, upwards. After all, gas and oil are less dense that water and therefore floats, even up through a column of rock unless it meets an impassible barrier. It is suspected that this has been the issue in Pennsylvania where some fracked wells have been accused of polluting water supplies. In those cases, the wells have been extremely shallow, less than half a kilometer deep, so it can easily imagined that extra release of gas would rapidly make its way to surface. One of the problems with the US is that there was no measured baseline that could tell consumers what was in their water before fracking started so it cannot be ascertained what levels of natural gas were making its way to the surface before fracking began. That should not be the case in the UK where water supplies are well monitored and companies ought to know already what is coming out of our taps.

If I might be allowed a digression, I would like to illustrate the point of gas migration. Natural gas (methane) is produced from both shale rich in organic content and coal. As you know, accumulations of methane in a coal mine are extremely dangerous so the British Coal Board used to syphon off the methane and it would end up in the national gas grid, providing the tax payer with a nice little extra income. When the mines closed, so did much of the gas collection associated with them. That means for nearly thirty years now, that gas has just been naturally dissipating up through the surface layers and into the atmosphere. What a waste, especially since methane is ten times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

This small tale of woes illustrates however that gas migration is a natural event. With this in view it would be unwise to frack shallow formations. Gas from deeper formations has far more chance of being trapped against higher, impermeable layers of rock. The same can be said for the fracking fluid. A shallow target is far more likely to pollute shallow ground water. It has to be pointed out though that deep ground water has often been down there for millions of years and as a result can be pretty nasty stuff itself, often rich in salts and dissolved metals. Any fluids coming to surface from the well bore will have to be treated as industrial waste. I believe at this time most of it is reused in the drilling / fracking process. Of course, fracking water is unlikely to migrate as quickly as gas but one must be alert to the possibility. Such risks have already been recognized by the British Geological Survey; in their paper THE UNCONVENTIONAL HYDROCARBON RESOURCES OF BRITAIN’S ONSHORE BASINS - SHALE GAS certain potential targets in Midlands have already been ruled out of development owing to their near-surface position. Drawing on analogies from the USA, the BGS have identified that potential target shales should be at the depth of at least 1000m, with most of them being a lot deeper.

Earthquakes have also been fretted over as a potential threat from fracking. Let me be very clear: fracking causes earthquakes. In fact, almost by definition, fracking is the artificial inducement of localized earthquakes but of a magnitude so small as to be undetectable by human senses. The recorded earthquakes caused by fracking activity, those nearby Blackpool in 2011, were of magnitudes 1.5 and 2.3. My theory of what happened is that the fracking pumps introduced additional energy into a system that is metastable. What does that mean? Let me illustrate it by comparing it to settling alight a lump of coal. If one was to strike a match under a coal and expect it to burn, it will be a cold night. There isn’t enough energy to start detaching the hydrogen atoms from the carbon – it is this breakage that releases additional energy in the form of heat. So a fire of tinder then of wood kindling is built up first, then the coal is introduced. The energy now available is enough to set up a chain reaction in the coal and release the energy within. It is the same principle with the Blackpool earthquakes – energy which was stored up in that part of the earth was released when the addition energy from the fracking was introduced. So can it happen again? The answer is yes. It should however be put into context.

A couple of years ago I was in a hotel in Haifa when, closed to ten o’clock in the evening, my bed started to sway gently. At first I thought I was imagining it but no, it really was happening. After ten seconds or so it stopped. I had just survived my first earthquake. It was a magnitude 5.5 with the epicenter in Cypress where it measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. Although no longer used by geophysicists, the Richter scale remains the public benchmark of earthquake intensity. It is logarithmic, which means a magnitude 2 earthquake is ten times more powerful that a magnitude 1, and likewise a 3 is ten times stronger than a 2. So that 5.5 Haifa quake was 2000 times stronger than the Blackpool earthquake at 2.3 on the scale (10x10x10x2). What is accounted as a large earthquake, a magnitude 7, would be 70,000 times stronger and the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011, which led to tragic Japanese tsunami and the destruction of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, was a magnitude 9.1 (8x10x10x10x10x10x10), eight million times stronger that the strongest Blackpool event. The energy involved in such large events are almost beyond human imagination; certainly beyond all nuclear arsenals owned on the entire planet. Wikipedia gives it at 600 million times stronger that the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima and fair play to you if you can encompass that in your imagination because I cannot. I can see though that the energy provided by thirty or so pump trucks used in fracking is miniscule by comparison. That is not to say though that we are totally in the clear however. A recent paper in Science suggests that larger earthquakes far from fracking sites could trigger smaller but still quite powerful (magnitude 4 to 5) quakes around fracking sites, along the principle of the extra energy introduced could lead to greater local instability. If that is the case there is still the possibility of some damage to property. On that basis, it would be sensible for the government to ensure that license holders are suitably insured to cover potential claims.

None of this answers the basic question of “Does the UK need fracking?”

The graph above is based upon figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and is worth a moment’s consideration. The first peak in oil production (in blue) coincides with the miners’ strike of the 1980s and the subsequent need to pay the resulting unemployment and disability benefit, as well as replace coal as Britain’s major source of fuel. This replacement of coal also explains the “dash to gas” (in red). Giving up coal though is not a bad thing as far as greenhouse gases are concerned because of all the fossil fuels, coal is the dirtiest. As is painfully clear from the graph, production from the offshore has been consistently falling from the turn of the century and despite the promise of new finds in the future, this trend will continue unless new sources are discovered. At this time, coal still makes up 30% of how our energy is produced and coal imports are rising, as are imports of both oil and natural gas. From its peak in the late 1990s, UK oil production is down 67% and gas has fallen 66%.

New sources should certainly not be restricted to hydrocarbons. In government figures published in 2012, the UK is slightly under-achieving on our renewable targets but I would make the point that if the focus of both private and public investment is switched purely into fracking, the nation will miss the modest target of fifteen percent renewable energy by 2020. The current total of wind and solar is 4.5%, with the remaining five percent being made up by hydro-electricity. Germany on the other hand is looking towards a 35% target for renewables by 2020. Cynics might say “Good! Let Britain compete with cheaper energy costs” but the retort is “what happens when the hydrocarbons run out?” Germany will have already made the investments necessary to keep the lights on and the factories working.

Another important question is will fracking result in cheaper energy? I doubt it; the promise of free electricity was first made with nuclear power in the 1950s. What will definitely happen, if the promised levels of gas can be produced, is that price-rises will be slowed. It is simple economics, demand for energy is rising globally but meeting some of that demand locally will give some counter-balance to that trend. Nuclear power will also have a role to play in the future as it is clear that Britain’s old nuclear power stations are at the end of their respective lives. I am no fan of nuclear energy (mainly for its waste and the weaponisation of by-products) but the new generation seem to offer less waste and there is potential in thorium-based technologies, which is easier to obtain than uranium and far less useful to designers of nuclear weapons.

At this time it is not possible to know how many new jobs will be created due to fracking because, as I pointed out in Part One, it is impossible to know for sure what is down there until the hole is drilled. It is known though that at this time about 85,000 jobs are linked to offshore work and that we are an aging workforce. Certainly those with technical skills, engineering and science-based degrees will be demand by both the fracking and renewable industries. This has the potential to be a golden time for UK colleges and universities but one can be sure if the people here do not possess the necessary skills, the posts will be filled somehow.

The government should not leave it up to private companies to enforce their own safety standards, especially when the results of a large accident are so potentially damaging, in terms of the danger to human life and environment yes, but also in terms of public relations. Few blowouts that occur offshore make it into public consciousness but it would not be difficult to imagine the outcry if images of a well out of control on land would make on the television screens. Cuadrilla, the main player in the infant UK fracking field at this time, claim on their website they are subjected not only to careful planning regulations but also to unannounced site visits. I sincerely hope that public staff in this area has not been cut back in recent years because if the projections for the number of wells are accurate, there will be a need for a knowledgeable and well-funded (no pun intended) governmental inspection regime.

While on the topic of government intervention, I am somewhat nonplussed by the Conservative’s tax break for fracking companies and the reason for my puzzlement is this: despite the fact it is in its infancy, drilling on land is much cheaper than drilling offshore. Rigs are less expensive to rent than their offshore counterparts and the logistics are far easier. So why would companies need large incentives to open up land operations and in comparison making offshore investment less attractive?

During a Twitter exchange and subsequent blog, a friend offered the view that the Conservatives were pushing for fracking purely to preserve the South East from development by renewables such as wind farms. I thought this “wonderfully cynical” until proved wrong the very next day by Lord Howell speaking in Parliament. What is evidently clear is that the whole issue of energy supply is too important for short-term politics. A single technology does not hold the key to securing our energy future. It is vital that as much investment as possible is put into renewables now; to look ahead to 2050 still relying primarily upon fossil fuels would be irresponsible in the extreme. Nuclear too will have a role. When it comes to electricity generation, gas-fired power stations are the cleanest option that fossil fuels gives us so fracking will play an important part in making our greenhouse gas targets by replacing coal. Wide-scale activity such as fracking and renewables could also herald the re-industrialisation of the United Kingdom.

But maybe people prefer to leave the money-making to the City and the global banks nowadays? If that is the case, let me know how it works out.