Scottish diehards in futile resistance

Astonishing news from Scotland has provoked a small diehard group trying to hold back the tide into drastic action.

No, not the Scottish Tories' decision to choose as their new leader a young ex-BBC lesbian new to politics (no chance she's a double agent, then), confirming that Tory grassroots always choose the wrong person.

What the Scottish Tories do hardly qualifies as news any more. In passing, though, we can note that they have scarcely chosen Ruth for her political rhetoric or simple, down to earth communication:

A political party is not a leader, a political party is its membership and I want to bring our members at all levels much closer together in our party going forward and to take our party forward in unity.

David Cameron welcomed the party's choice, which shows an unexpected sense of humour.

Ruth puts her view on devolution this way:

She said the Scotland Bill to increase Holyrood's financial responsibility, currently going through Westminster, was "a line in the sand".

Now the point about lines in the sand, as any child or parent know, is that the tides wash most of them away. So Ruth's probably right. She is indeed a special talent.

No, I really didn't mean to talk about this provincial hiccup. Far more interesting is the news that a first licence for fracking has been granted in Scotland. Wasn't the Scottish economy to be based on so called "renewable" energy? Maybe Mr Salmond has read this and is hedging his bets.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) which granted the licence, says fracking is likely to become more widespread in Scotland in coming years.

However, what Scotland on Sunday chooses to call "other environmental groups" believe the process should be banned. This turns out to mean putting Friends of the Earth Scotland on the same level as Sepa. FoES (is that right?) say it is a "worry" to hear that a fracking licence has already been granted in Scotland.

Communities near fracking sites in the US can’t drink their tap water, but they can set it alight due to the amount of methane being leaked.

Not so, say those pesky science people:

Scientists believe the environmental consequences of fracking have been exaggerated. Quentin Fisher, professor of petroleum geoengineering at the University of Leeds, said some groups were “overly concerned”. “There isn’t actually any evidence to suggest water supplies have been contaminated due to hydraulic fracture formation,” he said.

“The examples of gas igniting from taps are probably caused by gas leakage along the casing of boreholes – not hydraulic fracturing.

To translate, Friends of the Earth Scotland are telling lies. Is this the best they can do? They try harder:

Now to add to these dangerous and disruptive impacts, it has been revealed that fracking also causes earth tremors. Scottish communities living near numerous identified fracking sites across the central belt will be rightly alarmed.

What's actually been revealed is that a couple of scarcely detectable tremors have been caused at one English site by the particular rock formation there. To deal with environmental concerns in the US, a new regulation régime is being standardised, but there is no question of prohibiting fracking of shale for gas (and potentially for oil).

For what has also been revealed is that the cost of gas in the US has tumbled, cutting household energy bills and bringing more jobs. Your energy bills may be shooting up - partly to support the expensive so called renewables we advocate - but we at Friends of the Earth Scotland would rather you stayed poor. Sorry, wasn't that in the quote we gave?

Happily these Scottish diehards seem to be hopelessly outnumbered.