Tuesday, 20 August 2013

Not So Sweet Caroline (Weekly Poll Lowdown)

You may have noticed the new poll yesterday. I asked the question whether we should arrest Caroline Lucas MP because she said she was 'prepared to be arrested' at the fracking protests near Balcombe. I thought at the time of posting it that she would chicken out at the last minute and leave the protests before getting arrested and thus for the rest of the week there would be a question as to whether she should be arrested or not. However, she stupidly did get herself arrested so the question is a little bit pointless and it is better to discuss this juicy story now.

Should we arrest Caroline Lucas MP (she was at the fracking protests and said she was 'prepared to be arrested')?

Yes
42%
No
58%
Unsure
0%

Total votes: 12

Weirdly most of you think that Caroline Lucas shouldn't have been arrested despite the fact she was clearly breaching the provision the police imposed on the protest as it caused 'serious disruption to the life of the community'. People were being terrorised in their place of work by the protest and had their freedoms restricted. Arguably also she was blocking a public highway and so is restricting people's freedom of movement as well. Her protest may not have been violent but definitely restricted the freedoms of all the people in the area and the ability for Cuadrilla to carry out its business. Hopefully she faces a court of law for her criminal actions. 

 See you in court Ms Lucas.

There is no reason for anyone to siege proposed sites of fracking, especially Caroline Lucas. As an MP the appropriate way to raise issues is to do it through Parliament. Considering being an MP gives you more voice than every other person you'd think she would be there all the time. Yet she chooses to squander that voice and commit crimes. If people want to protest about something they should do so where it doesn't restrict anybody else's freedom. There are plenty of areas to organise protests nearby the site where nobody is effected and people have their say. Clearly then protest was not the objective of this demonstration instead it was eco-terrorist militancy using seemingly old style flying pickets to close down businesses. The protesters recently had success at Caudrilla's HQ which they successfully shut down and essentially yesterdays protests was an attempt to shut down another site.  

 Fracking protesters yesterday were stopping people from carrying out or leaving work.

The justification for this protest from the protesters was that it is democratic considering 85% of locals do not want fracking. However that particular poll is very dodgy as it takes only a small slice of people who replied back, those who answered on the whole had a clear interest in wanting it to be stopped. The people of YouGov would frown on the green campaigners. Also a majority of people support fracking in the country. It has been allowed by a government which has the support of 60% of the British population and the actual planning permission for Cuadrilla (who is actually looking for oil at this moment) was approved by a democratically elected local government. 

I won't even begin to majorly explore the arguments that the anti-frackers are using because it is essentially bonkers. The water table doesn't get poisoned by fracking and even if it did the UK water table is below the fracking seam so there would be no risk of it happening. More gas on the market with less transport costs means lower prices so how on earth can prices not fall with shale gas, it fell by 1/3 in the USA where it is harder to extract shale gas. Also wildlife nearby fracking sites are not damaged. In Nottinghamshire for example a RSPB reserve is campaigning against the nearby turbines not the existing fracking wells, which take up less than a 50th of an acre and power 20,000 homes.

 Fracking protesters are just a desperate mob of left-wingers who don't have any argument that stands up to facts about fracking. The protest in part yesterday was to vent off their political radicalism, thus the Iran placards and Unite banners.

So go away Lucas and your eco-terrorist gang and let people lead better lives by not committing crimes and allowing fracking.

Vote in the New Poll.

4 comments:

  1. Elliot how much C**p can you get in one article, stop talking out or your bum and realise: She has tried everything possible in Parliament and whis was a LAST RESORT,this is an issue which affects her constituents, her constituency is 20miles away and EVIDENCE from the states shows that It will affect the water table in her constituency, so she´s a constituency MP standing up for her constituents, a rare breed in this country, there should be more like her. Also this was nother example of a peacful protest made to look violent, by the violent actions of the police.

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  2. Criminality is not a last resort. She could have protested without restricting other people's freedom, there are many squares and public places to vent anger. What she was trying to do was a deliberate attempt to close down the operations of Caudrilla. I don't think the protest was actively violent against people, although there was resistance from being budged. It was a passive attack by blocking people and traffic. I'm no expert on the geology of Brighton Pavillion and Hove but fracking does not effect water tables.
    In the USA where there have been complaints of natural gas in supplies geologists found this to be a natural occurrence that could be seen before fracking. The Gas was already there and didn't move in when fracking started. Furthermore scientists found it to be completely harmless unless you were one of those fools who set alight to your taps deliberately. You can look all that up in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

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  3. I'm having a similar debate (from a completely opposite point of view, of course) over here: http://www.speakerschair.com/post/fracking-protests-we-should-all-support-civil-disobedience-and-oppose-police-violence
    Firstly, there is nothing criminal about what Caroline has done. Public order offences are not crimes.
    Also your dismissal of water pollution in the US is foolish - there is clear evidence that it has occurred and people have had health problems that are very probably related with this.
    We shouldn't ignore the problem of climate change either and the fact that we need to move away from fossils and towards technologies with little greenhouse gas emissions.

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  4. Public Order offences are crimes it is defined in the law as a 'crime which involves acts that interfere with the operations of society and the ability of people to function efficiently'. Extreme forms of restricting other people's freedoms are considered crimes. I don't know why you think that attempting to disrupt people's lives should be seen as ok. The owners of their building had it blockaded so they couldn't carry out any work. Workers were trapped inside the building unable to leave and they couldn't get on with their lives and work like they wanted.
    There has been no evidence from what is scientifically credible that there are any health risks. There has been a lot of research on this over a fairly long period of time and the closest report that has come to say fracking poses a health risk said that in very unlikely situations the chemicals could escape in quantities which are not harmful to humans. That opinion is also not the consensus amongst scientists.
    Climate Change is a balancing act. Its effects are much over egged and the amounts of CO2 which would be produced by burning gas are comparable to the amount of CO2 which is created by wind turbines being installed in Scottish peat bogs. We should essentially push further into fuel poverty millions of people because we wish to follow an agenda which is not coherent and is more a political philosophy than genuinely about reducing CO2 emissions.

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