YP Letters: We're grateful for support in our fight against fracking

VISCOUNT Ridley (The Yorkshire Post, March 11) deserves our sympathy. His defence of the fracking industry, and his attack on those who oppose it, is such a curious mixture of non sequiturs and Trump-style alternative truths that it would be hilarious if it were not so confusing for those who are still looking for real answers.

Evoking the Russian menace seems fashionable at the moment. I have no doubt that Russian TV propaganda includes anti-fracking material along with other subjects in their attempts to unsettle the West. Supporting with hard cash? I have been campaigning against fracking for over three years, and have met hundreds of protesters, pensioners, housewives, working people.

We are all digging deep into our own pockets to support our protests. It would be great to have some financial support but that is wishful thinking. We fund our own opposition, fighting fracking with the knowledge we have gained from peer-reviewed scientific studies that prove leakage of fracking fluids and noxious gases occurs frequently.

We in the North are more than grateful to the “tiny group of middle-class southerners”, actually a large number from all over the country, who come and join us in our fight against the fracking invasion.

From: Shaun Pye, Moor Park Mount, Headingley, Leeds.

I WAS interested to read Matt Ridley’s speech on the anti-fracking mafia, and was rather concerned. However, you helpfully told us that he had been chairman of Northern Rock from 2003 to 2007. Could this be the same Northern Rock that had to be bailed out by the taxpayer in 2007 because the reckless behaviour of its management had placed the company at risk? I don’t think I’d buy a used car from Matt Ridley, let alone his arguments about fracking.

From: Heather Stroud, Gilling East.

THIRD Energy operations director John Dewar’s comment ‘Respecting our right to protest’ rather misses the point.

Local and national residents who oppose fracking in Yorkshire and other threatened areas in the UK are not looking to protest for the sake of protest. But then that’s the aim, isn’t it? To move the debate away from fracking onto ‘protest’.

Protest is simply a vehicle toward protecting the future for our children and our children’s children. The focus here is not about respect for protest, it’s about respect for those who live here.