FRONT PAGES

Our meeting last week has certainly given a kick start to opposition to fracking and coal bed methane extraction in Cheshire West! The front page of the Chester Chronicle is given over to the issue - http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/ - andcovers our meeting in some detail (without mentioning Left Unity) while a companion article features opposition from Paula Dixon, headmistress of Upton High School, near which exploratory drilling is taking place.

The council meanwhile has been forced onto the back foot. In the Chronicle they deny 'cheerleading' for fracking - untrue: Tory Council leader Mike Jones is on record as supporting it, as is his party nationally - while on the front page of the Leader -http://www.chesterfirst.co.uk/ - the council denies having received any planning applications for 'fracking' around Chester.

This last denial needs careful treatment. It is strictly true that there have been no applications involving the particular technique of fracking around Chester. There have however been a slew of applications for exploratory drilling and two licences granted - in Ellesmere Port - for the equally environmentally destructive techniques involved in coal bed methane extraction. The process of opening up the whole of Cheshire West to these 'extreme energy' techniques is well under way.

The next stage agreed at the meeting was to get together and produce a general leaflet explaining the dangers of all these techniques and, armed with this, to build a broad based campaign - especially in Ellesmere Port - against the threat posed by all these techniques, which will at best make a few oil companies rich, while leaving the rest of us to pay the price in compromised water supplies and other environmental damage.