AS the date approaches for the North Yorkshire County Council planners’ decision on Third Energy’s application to frack at Kirby Misperton, one continues to wonder at the extent to which the fracking industry, even in the estimation of its own proponents, appears to have lost its way.

As recently as May 2014, Lord Howell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s father-in-law, and very much pro-fracking, was arguing that his conclusion, based on the advice of “just about all the expertise in the planet on shale oil and gas and fracking issues” (Journal of Energy Security, May 12, 2014), was that fracking should start in Britain “in carefully selected and remote (derelict) areas” such as “the north east, the north west and all the places where the Industrial Revolution has left the worst historical scars”.

Here, apparently, “they have the gas and they have the local wish to see fracking investment”.

Elsewhere in the article, Howell opines: “Every time Ministers open their mouths to claim that fracking must start everywhere around Britain... they lose thousands of Tory votes.”

If one gives credence to this voice in Osborne’s ear, how on earth can the Cameron regime continue to push blindly for shale gas, even discounting (as it does) the cost to the planet?

David Cragg-James, Rose Cottage, Stonegrave