YP Letters: Blockading businesses is a disgraceful way to fight fracking

I READ with horror that two businesses were forced to stop providing services to a fracking site in Lancashire (The Yorkshire Post, February 11).

One of the businesses issued a letter stating that protesters had blockaded the business and stopped them serving all of their customers.

The protesters have also threatened to shut them down in the future if they do not continue to obey. The Times reports that the police are now investigating, including that staff were apparently sent letters stating their names and claiming that the protesters knew where they lived.

This is disgraceful behaviour. It is all beginning to look very aggressive and desperate.

What comes next? We must remember that the ASA found that the protesters’ claims are not supportable. This is not unimportant and cannot just be hand waved away by becoming more extreme. For years UK regulators and numerous experts have stated that these groups are cherry-picking data and ignoring anything that might prove them wrong.

No amount of blockading small businesses will make experts suddenly agree with the claims by activists. They need to start engaging with experts, not just shouting at anyone they disagree with as well as trying to destroy people’s businesses if they do not get their own way.

From: Sue Cuthbert, Newton on Rawcliffe, Ryedale.

LORRAINE Allanson seems to be becoming the self-appointed spokesperson for Ryedale businesses.

Does she know that there is a Frack Free Business group in Ryedale, with 202 and counting signed-up members?

This group is concerned about the industrialisation of Ryedale by the spread of fracking.

Very many of the businesses are involved with tourism. I’m sure that the question that is being asked is “do tourists and holiday-makers travel to industrial areas to spend their leisure time?”

From: Wendy Cross, Waterside Road, Beverley.

EACH time Lorraine Allanson’s letters appear, they give helpful information which aids the anti-fracking cause. She must be thanked, for example, for disseminating the news that a cement company in Lancashire, supplying the fracking company Cuadrilla, has modified its operations because, she says, of the protesters’ (peaceful) actions. Of course, huge thanks to the brave people who have achieved such results.