Fracking is going to mess up the countryside to some extent, even if it won't do all the things its opponents claim to the water supply and the stability of their houses. And it looks rather like barrel-bottom scraping in our desperation to find more burnable fossil fuels and avoid the really hard questions about sustainable energy resources for a population that is too big and whose growth is out of control.
But I have grave misgivings about the carnival of protestors that has descended onto the village of Balcombe in Sussex to stop one of the fracking companies, Cuadrilla, carrying out test drilling.
What Cuadrilla are doing is lawful, whether you like it or not, according to laws passed by an elected government. The protestors are trying to impose their will on Cuadrilla. They're bullies, in exactly the same way as animal rights protestors who attack researchers in Cambridge.
The costs of policing their blockade has been reported to exceed £500 million. When the government doesn't have two beans to rub together, I wonder whether they think this is money well spent,
