Something happened

Compare and contrast (as the exam paper always says) the first and later edition of today’s issue of today’s The Times:

 

There is an obvious Murdochian explanation:

“Loophole”?

When Malcolm’s alter-ego was a Borough Councillor, Tories had a constant (and even honourable) line on compulsory purchase: they were against it on principle.

That got in the way of many worthwhile municipal schemes, or involved extra expense to “persuade” the sellers of the needed land.

Which makes him raise a wry eye-brow when he reads this, in today’s Times (£ — page 39 of the print edition):

Landowners are entitled to compensation from shale gas companies in return for allowing drilling. If they are still opposed, companies would have to acquire the land under a compulsory purchase order, but this can take several years and would be hugely expensive.

The Times revealed last month that the shale gas industry was talking to the Government about closing the loophole.

A bit more than a “loophole”, one might feel:

• It certainly plays fast-and-loose not just with any concept of “property”.
• Any Conservative should recall Margaret Thatcher (in her Reagan lecture of December 1997):

A totally planned society and economy has the ability to concentrate productive capacity on some fixed objective with a reasonable degree of success; and do it better than liberal democracies. But totalitarianism can only work like this for a relatively short time, after which the waste, distortions and corruption increase intolerably.

Does that define the ConDem unquestioning support for fracking as “totalitarian”, leading to “waste, distortions and corruption”?

• It also plays hell with language, extending mightily the metaphor of “loophole”.

Consider meaning 3 in the OED:

fig. An outlet or means of escape. Often applied to an ambiguity or omission in a statute, etc., which affords opportunity for evading its intention.

 The Times, normally so “conservative” (a capital letter C is optional there), is gung-ho for fracking. We have today a singularly-misguided second leader:

Environmental Dogma

Opposition to fracking and GM crops is anti-science and harmful to the world’s poor

That sub-heading goes missing in the on-line version, unless one clicks past the “taster”. The whole piece is a paean of praise for Owen Patterson (who is not only Environment Secretary, but about as far-to-the-right as any member of this benighted administration).

After a couple of paragraphs on GM crops, we go off on a side-track for this:

Debates over government policy on agriculture and energy are right and inevitable. They should be founded on evidence, however. The environmental groups’ campaigning is instead based on an obscurantist hostility to science itself. Mr ­Paterson is right to call it what it is.

Fracking involves blasting shale rock with water at very high pressures to release the gas. Environmental groups maintain that this activity can cause tiny earthquakes and that the toxic chemicals used in fracking may contaminate ground­water.

In practice, any seismic activity that has been produced by the fracking boom in the United States has been negligible — indeed unobservable by anyone except geologists. Contamination of the water supply is not strictly impossible, in the sense that science does not rule absolutely preclude any scenario that meets the conditions of logic.

Yet there is no evidence that any such scenario has occurred. To issue such warnings with no evidence, or even a plausible explanation by which it might occur, is irresponsible. It is not part of any scientific debate: it is baseless superstition. The benefits of fracking, conversely, in limiting the ­environmental impact of energy exploration and in diversifying Britain’s energy mix are huge.

The biggest losers as a result of the anti-science thrust of much campaigning by Greenpeace and its equivalents, however, are the one billion people still classified as hungry.

The Times‘s dismissal of the many proven unpleasantnesses and dangers of tracking is disingenuous, to say the least.

Unobservable by anyone except geologists ?

To claim that seismic activity [read: earthquakes] … has been negligible — indeed unobservable by anyone except geologists is patently untrue:

New research officially confirmed that ‘fracking’ caused the set of nearly a dozen mysterious earthquakes in Ohio in 2011. 

Scientists have spent the past two years trying to explain why Youngstown, Ohio- a town where there had been now reported earthquakes before December 2010- suddenly fell victim to 109 small quakes. [The Daily Mail, 5 Sep 2013]

They started small, but On Dec. 31, 2011, at 3:05 p.m., Youngstown was stirred by a 3.9 quake. For what it’s worth, a 3.91 quake is what was produced by a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, “touted as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed.” Non-geologists might notice that one.

Not just Ohio, either:

In 2010 and 2011, there were as many as 1,000 minor earthquakes in Arkansas. And scientists believe they were caused by fracking.

Seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey say the disposal of millions of gallons of wastewater flowback as part of the fracking process can create “micro earthquakes,” which are rarely felt, and also the rare larger seismic disruption. Scientists say that’s what happened in Greenbrier, Arkansas, where the quakes damaged homes.

Yesterday, five local residents settled for an undisclosed sum of money after suing two oil companies. Those five residents aren’t the only ones suing Chesapeake Energy and BHP Billiton. Twenty other residents are expecting to file lawsuits in Arkansas state court, according to Reuters. [The Atlantic Cities, 29 Aug 2013]

And again:

The earthquake registered a magnitude 5.7*—the largest ever recorded in Oklahoma—with its epicenter less than two miles from the Reneaus’ house, which took six months to rebuild. It injured two people, destroyed 14 homes, toppled headstones, closed schools, and was felt in 17 states. It was preceded by a 4.7 foreshock the morning prior and followed by a 4.7 aftershock… Between 1972 and 2008, the USGS recorded just a few earthquakes a year in Oklahoma. In 2008, there were more than a dozen; nearly 50 occurred in 2009. In 2010, the number exploded to more than 1,000. [Mother Jones, March-April 2013]

And yet again:

A recent wave of small earthquakes in and around the Eagle Ford formation in Texas was probably the result of extracting oil and in some cases water used for hydraulic fracturing, according to a study.

Clusters of small-magnitude seismic events between November 2009 and September 2011 were “often associated with fluid extraction,” according to the study scheduled to appear this week in the online edition of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The study follows previous research that links earthquakes to the disposal of drilling wastewater by injecting it underground. [Bloomberg, 27 Aug 2013]

Contamination of the water supply is not strictly impossible ?

Pity the editorial writer at The Times didn’t consult the other end of the Murdoch operation, at the Wall Street Journal:

Chemicals found in a Wyoming town’s drinking water likely are associated with hydraulic fracturing, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday, raising the stakes in a debate over a drilling technique that has created a boom in natural-gas production.

The agency’s draft findings are among the first by the government to link the technique, dubbed “fracking,” with groundwater contamination. The method—injecting large volumes of water, sand and chemicals to dislodge natural gas or oil—has been criticized by environmentalists for its potential to harm water supplies, which the industry disputes …

The EPA has responded to several instances of potential fracking contamination, including in Texas and Pennsylvania. In Texas, the EPA ordered a company, Range Resources, to provide fresh drinking water to residents who said their water was contaminated. The case is the subject of a lawsuit.

The agency ordered Pennsylvania to tighten its standards related to removal of drilling wastewater and recently said it would consider nationwide standards for disposal of such water.

Let’s bring that Pennsylvania reference up to date:

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General has filed criminal charges against ExxonMobil for illegally dumping tens of thousands of gallons of hydraulic fracturing waste at a drilling site in 2010. The Exxon subsidiary, XTO Energy, had removed a plug from a wastewater tank, leading to 57,000 gallons of contaminated water spilling into the soil.

… a July study found that the closer residents live to wells used in fracking, the more likely drinking water is contaminated, with 115 of 141 wells found to contain methane. [Thinkprogress, 11 Sep 2013]

If it’s in your coffee and shower water, what about the air you breathe? —

A study by researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in late 2012 reconfirmed earlier findings of high rates of methane leakage from natural gas fields that utterly vitiate any climate benefit of natural gas, even when used as an alternative to coal.

Previous findings showed leakage of 4% methane leakage over a Colorado gas field and the new findings have more than doubled that to 9%.

Gas drilling operations release airborne contaminants that can have detrimental effects on our health.  Areas where there is gas production have reported significant increases in ozone, commonly known as smog, because some of the toxic precursors to smog, such as volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides are released during the process that brings natural gas from the ground to market.  Lisa Jackson, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admitted in an interview with National Public Radios’ Michele Norris at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2011, “You are going to have huge smog problems where you never had them before……These are rural areas. … There is a lot of activity around those wells and that has an impact on air quality — and we know it already.” [Catskillmountainkeeper]

Moreover, in Britain, we are not talking of fracking out where there’s land, lots of land under starry skies above, as frack-off.org.uk’s map (right) shows.

Malcolm admits a personal interest here. Two of those sites are just down the road from his new home. Dart Energy have rights all the way from Easingwold, to Tadcaster, and all the way to the centre of the city of York.

Fracking Tories

In those days of Borough Councillorship, Malcolm’s alter-ego (see top of this posting) could see where the Tory side was on the matter of compulsory purchase.

Similarly, it is comforting to observe, as at the Manchester Conference, that many Tories today remain uncomfortable with George Osborne’s approach:

Chancellor George Osborne has sent a strong message to the Conservative rural heartlands, warning that he will fight any Tory backlash against fracking and saying that it would be a real tragedy if Britain allowed the shale gas energy revolution to bypass the UK.

Research conducted by Greenpeace has shown that 38 out of 62 MPs in the south have land with existing oil and gas drilling licenses – and 35 of them are Conservatives, including many cabinet ministers.

It raises the prospect that many Tory backbenchers in the run-up to the 2015 election will find themselves conflicted by the demands of the UK economy and business to exploit the reserves, and opposition from environmental groups as well as many of their anxious constituents.

ConHome and senior voices in the Tory Party have to be rounded up to keep the line.

For how long? 

The sky is falling! (selectively)

Murdoch’s Times not only went tabloid, it has acquired some down-market degeneracies with it.

A couple of posts back, Malcolm was whining about the comic’s fullest fluffy Murdochian populism. He now bemoans a parallel ghoulish, blood-chilling, thrill-seeking sensationalism.

The Melanie Phillips memorial meme

What provoked this was the third Comment article in yesterday’s fish-n-chip wrapper. After Finkelstein (a contract artist, so comes with the fixtures and fittings) on the holocaust, and the German Foreign Minister soft-soaping the chasm between Cameron and Merkel, comes Maajid Nawaz:

Muslim patrols are s sign of things to come

We should worry that battle-hardened fanatics could impose their dogma on Britain’s streets

Then — yawn! — his opening tries to draw straight-lines across a very uneven surface:

On the streets of Greece supporters of the far-Right Golden Dawn party patrol neighbourhoods, attacking anyone who looks like an immigrant. In Denmark a group calling itself Call to Islam has declared parts of the country to be “sharia-controlled zones” and its “morality police” confront drinkers and partygoers. In France right-wing vigilantes ran Roma families out of a Marseilles estate and burnt down their camp. In Spain nine Islamist extremists recently kidnapped a woman, tried her for adultery under sharia and attempted to execute her before she managed to escape. And here English Defence League thugs march in towns and cities “reclaiming” the streets from Muslims.

Something very worrying is spreading across Europe. Fascist and and Islamist extremists alike are copying what Hitler’s Brownshirts excelled at — enforcing with threats and violence their version of the law in neighbourhoods, And the moderate middle is left gawping.

Well, well: if that had appeared in any inter chat chat-room, Mike Godwin would be invoked:

It was back in 1990 that I set out on a project in memetic engineering. The Nazi-comparison meme, I’d decided, had gotten out of hand – in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as “similar to the Nazis” or “Hitler-like” was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer…

I developed Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Then there’s the other matter: proportion. The European Union embraces a population of nigh on half-a-billion. Let’s be generous to Maajid Nawaz: he has identified, at most, a few hundred ne’er-do-wells. His nine Spanish Islamists amount to 0.00000019% of the people of Spain. Similarly, there’s a Grand Canyon of difference between the hysterical:

The complete Islamification of Tower Hamlets continues, as anyone who dares to “look like a fag” or drink alcohol in their declared republic now risks harassment walking in the street.

and the factual:

A small group of individuals were recently seen harassing members of the public in East London, and the council is proactively working with partners in the community and police to monitor for further incidents and take appropriate action.

And the marauding Muslim hordes of E1 amounted to precisely —

A fifth person has been detained after a video of a ‘vigilante Muslim gang’ tormenting members of the public in east London was released on YouTube.

The 17-year-old boy was questioned at a police station in Walthamstow in relation to incidents that were posted on the video sharing website on January 12 and 13.

The pillars of bourgeois society have not even been vibrated. The events Maajid Nawaz wants to daisy-chain are, taken one by one, not insignificant — but on a continental scale do not register on the Richter Scale of earth-shakers.

Another small country about which we know nothing

Curiously, though, Maajid Nawaz omitted one obvious civil disruption.

We have had some eight weeks of continuing street riots in East Belfast, orchestrated by the local UVF. Arson-attempts, especially on Roman Catholic targets, are regular events. The Police Service have reported dozen of officers injured, truing to contain the almost-nightly excursions. Numerous arrests have been made. The cost is now running towards eight figures. And the machinators are known to all:

A small number of senior UVF men are directing the riots in east Belfast that have brought shame on Northern Ireland.

Two senior henchmen of the UVF chief in east Belfast have ignored warnings from the organisation’s leadership to bring an end to the violence which has left dozens of PSNI officers injured and cost millions of pounds.

And while the UVF’s leader in the east of the city — as the ‘Beast from the East’ — could end the rioting immediately, he has failed to bring his men under control.

Even Andrew Gillian, at the [London] Daily Telegraph knows where to go calling:

What East Belfast, Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey do have in common, however, are maverick factions of the Loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force.

“We’ve got no doubt whatever that this is coming from the UVF,” says Terry Spence, leader of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland.

The East Belfast leader of the UVF – the so-called “Beast from the East” – was not at home to callers when The Telegraph dropped in to his small terraced house in a quiet side street.

His white reinforced front door doesn’t have a knocker or a bell, but there are five CCTV cameras just in case anyone tries to murder him again.

Two of his lieutenants have been spotted in the background helping direct the main East Belfast riots.

Security sources say they are acting with the Beast’s consent, if not the UVF leadership’s active involvement, and he could end the trouble in the area whenever he wanted.

Ugly Doris

If you go to those-in-the-know, you’ll hear a lot about this reclusive figure. Here’s an Analysis from the Irish Times, eighteen months ago:

THE SO-CALLED “Beast from the East” took over the Ulster Volunteer Force in east Belfast about six years ago and has strengthened his power base since then, according to well-placed loyalist sources. He and some of his senior lieutenants are chiefly responsible for the violence in east Belfast over recent days, they say.

He makes his money mainly from “gangster-on-gangster or bad-on-bad crime”, which is chiefly about drug dealing and extorting other criminals – while also managing to maintain some distance from these activities to keep him, so far, out of prison. How to clip his wings is the challenge for the police and also for other members of the UVF…

… what is happening in Short Strand and on the Newtownards Road in east Belfast these past dangerous nights is not about the dissidents. It is about the UVF, which is fomenting the disturbances. And it is primarily about the UVF leader in east Belfast nicknamed the Beast from the East or “Ugly Doris”. The first nom de guerre relates to his east Belfast bailiwick and the second refers to the late Jim Gray, the UDA east Belfast leader or “brigadier” murdered by his own people. He was called Doris Day because of his blond hair and his fondness for Hawaiian shirts, pink jumpers and gold jewellery. The UVF leader is said to resemble Gray only in his strands of blond hair – hence Ugly Doris.

According to senior loyalist sources, the new man, who is in his 40s, has “lost the run of himself” and is becoming increasingly dangerous and, some fear, almost unstable. “He is creating a little empire for himself in east Belfast and is now flexing his muscles,” said one loyalist insider. “He is also partial to cocaine and likes to party . . . He believes he is untouchable.”

The Belfast Telegraph identified the East Belfast UVF as:

… the most powerful paramilitary faction in Northern Ireland.

With a fiefdom stretching from the Lagan’s edge on the Newtownards Road to Millisle, Donaghadee and beyond, it struts a swathe of territory no other loyalist element can match.

It has dwarfed the UDA in east Belfast and the Ards Peninsula to the point where seasoned paramilitaries declare a ‘no contest’ between the two loyalist terror groups.

Note that didn’t say most powerful Loyalist paramilitary faction in Northern Ireland. Nor are we considering a handful of self-advertisers in Brick Lane, or even a tight little gang of perverts in Malaga. This is something far bigger, far nearer to the dystopia with which Maajid Nawaz would wish to chill us.

What you don’t find in those columns, usually, is a given name for the Beast a.k.a. Ugly Doris. He is (pace Susanne Breen) A former prisoner from a well-known loyalist family. His code-title is “S” [the UVF just lurve these Ian Flemingesque touches]. Look a bit further and you’ll find the name of Stephen Matthews.

Now there’s a candidate for Maajid Nawaz’s little black book.

Going, going …

It was only when he was ensconced in The Bridge House, lunchtime curry on order, pint of Broadside to hand, reading Rachel Sylvester in The Times, the truth hit home. Andrew Lansley and his NHS Bill are truly, irredeemably in the cess-pit.

A peep behind the pay-wall

Starting half-a-dozen paragraphs in (after a tour d’horizon of past ministries and their resignations) we get to the meat:

 It is extraordinary that Andrew Lansley is still in position as Health Secretary having so monumentally mishandled the Government’s NHS reforms.

This week peers will give another mauling to the Health and Social Care Bill, which is already bent double under the weight of amendments and concessions. The Royal College of GPs— whose members are supposed to benefit most from the changes — has now joined the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the British Medical Association, the nurses and the midwives in calling for the “damaging, unnecessary and expensive reorganisation” to be scrapped. A joint editorial by the three leading health journals describes the planned reforms as “an unholy mess”. Mr Lansley has failed spectacularly to persuade either the professionals or the public of the purpose of this legislation. What was intended as a symbol of modernity has become an emblem of obstinacy that will do little to improve patient care.

There is deep frustration in No 10 about the Health Secretary’s handling of the “pause” in the passage of the Bill — which was announced last April in an attempt to show that the Government was listening. Strategists have watched in dismay as, far from attempting to win over his critics, the Health Secretary has used the time to further annoy NHS staff and alienate voters.

“We’re back to square one,” says one exasperated insider. “Andrew Lansley is just a disaster. Dogged and determined at his best, the Health Secretarey is at his worst described as a “law unto himself”: during the last general election campaign he entered into talks with Labour on long-term care for the elderly without telling Mr Cameron. He seems emotionally incapable of showing any understanding of other people’s concerns and intellectually unwilling to consider alternative ideas.

This matters to the Conservatives, of course, because proving that they could be trusted on the NHS was central to the detoxification of the Tory brand. Now Ed Miliband has been given an opening to echo Tony Blair’s 1997 line that there were only “24 hours to save the NHS”. with his call for a cross-party campaign to block the health reforms.

“Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot,” says a Downing Street source. “He’s messed up both the communications and the substance of the policy.”

Both Mr Cameron and George Osborne are remarkably loyal to Mr Lansley, who was their boss at the Conservative Research Department. But many senior figures, Lib Dem and Tory, now admit privately that it was a mistake to introduce a flagship Bill on health when most of the key changes could have been implemented without primary legislation. Indeed, Nick Clegg considered calling publicly for the whole thing to be abandoned­ then decided, for the sake of coalition unity, to back substantial amendments instead.

“Health reform should have been carried out by stealth,” says one strategist. The contrast is drawn with Michael Gove’s education reforms, which have been presented successfully as the fulfilment of Tony Blair’s schools policy rather than a complete break with the past.

Perhaps it’s too late to change direction. Maybe the Government now just has to minimise the damage and move on. But this issue still has the potential to destroy the Conservatives at the next election, and they know it. 

Malcolm copies that at length, because the Murdoch policy on pay-walls means too many will miss that gem — correction, necklace of priceless diamonds.

The anatomy department

Of course, there are things, small and grand alike, adrift with the Sylvester biopsy.

Yes, the “24 hours to save the NHS” was a good ploy. It was from the 1997 campaign; and it was on Tony Blair’s watch. But it wasn’t original, and it wasn’t decisive. It wasn’t decisive because the battle had long since been won: this was merely the cherry on the sundae (well, Thursday, but who’s counting). It was merely a Blairite encapsulation of Neil Kinnock’s better, unscripted (?), uncontrived effort at Bridgend on 7th June 1983:

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.

Thirty years on …

They had to stifle Kinnock’s oratory through a concerted Tory campaign: “the Welsh windbag” — and a bit of xenophobic abuse never went adrift among true English Tories. But — the point here is … what should we make of Sylvester’s systematic shafting of Lansley?

• First, and most obviously, this one came from His Master’s Voice. Consider the repetition of “deep frustration in No 10”, and all those “strategists” — safe bet, they’re one and the same source. In a sentence, the inner-cercle Cameroons are briefing against Lansley.
• Second, the hard-core parliamentary Tories have lost faith in Lansley. He has no political future, in office or on the back-benches, simply because he has demanded too much of the poor-boody-infantry. The Whips have registered this, and Lansley is dead meat.
• Third, whatever Lansley wanted to deliver (it was a semi-privatised system) is beyond the possible. So, now it’s down to palliative treatment. Somehow the Great British Public (who, lest we forget, see on every pay-slip a subscription of  9% of gross income to National Insurance) have to be convinced they are getting value-for-money.
• Fourth, Cameron hasn’t got the guts to knife Lansley from the front. Therefore, there’s this back-doors whispering to persuade him to be a sick man and spend more time flipping his second homes, pleasing his wife’s Pharma clients, Walker’s Crisps and Micky D’s (one expenses scandal and various financial subsidisers, if anyone missed out).

Above all, what concludes Sylvester’s essay is a very, very strange — even bizarre — final paragraph:

There is an intriguing idea circulating in No 10 — that Alan Milburn should be offered a seat in the House of Lords and his old job of Health Secretary. With a guaranteed free hand to change the policy, he would be asked to complete for the coalition the reforms he began under under Mr Blair. By creating in effect a government of national unity, this would neutralise the issue of the NHS. In policy terms, it would achieve many of the aims of the Bill without the controversy. That’s a reshuffle people would notice but it would certainly end the era of stability.

Huh? Milburn’s apotheosis suddenly makes him the angel of universal harmony? With a single bound our Dave is free? [I]n effect a government of national unity?

In your dreams!

All of the above should be read in conjunction with Paul Goodman on ConHome. He starts from Sylvester’s end-piece (subtly implying that her only one source is LibDem liaison in Downing Street, which may point a finger at Julian Astle or, even more likely, James Mcgrory). He then extends into a dystopian prognosis of what Cameron could, and should do:

He should keep the bill and stick with the Health Secretary till the reshuffle.

Then he should hand over the Act (as it will be) plus the coming NHS crisis – complete with patients parked on trolleys, ambulances marooned outside A & E wards and NHS managers closing wards while pleading bankruptcy – with his compliments and very best wishes to a new Liberal Democrat Health Secretary plus an entire team of Liberal Democrat health Ministers.  And turn the Business Department over to a Conservative Secretary of State who, unlike the present incumbent, is enthusiastic about enterprise and deregulation.

So, if you thought things couldn’t get even worse ...

Compare and contrast …

Exhibit A:

The Times First Leader, 15 April 2009, page 2, top (15 column inches):

The Hardest Word

The Prime Minister is not personally responsible but must be politically accountable for Damian McBride’s insulting e-mails. He should say sorry

[…]

Gordon Brown should see an urgent lesson here. Instead, he is proving himself fluent in the language of non-apology …

The Prime Minister’s response to his disgraced adviser’s behaviour is worse than inadequate …

etc. etc. [for 644 words and ten paragraphs in total]

Exhibit B: The Times, 15 April 2009, page 4, down page 4 (1¾ column inches and in full):

Correction

We were wrong to state in a leading article on Monday (April 13) that Tom Watson, the Cabinet Officer minister, received some of the e-mails sent by the disgraced Downing Street adviser Damian McBride. As we correctly reported elsewhere, he was merely mentioned in some of them. We are happy to set the record straight.

Remind us: what is that “Hardest Word”?