YP Letters: Fracking is not a solution to the woes of British steel

HAVING read Sue Cuthbert’s reasoned and heartfelt letter opposing fracking not only in Yorkshire but in the whole of the UK (The Yorkshire Post, December 28), it throws into sharp contrast Angela Smith MP’s rather cold blooded and somewhat inaccurate and therefore poorly argued pro-fracking article on the following page.

Realising that there is not sufficient space here to forensically dissect her piece, I would like to highlight one glaring error. She claims that cheap gas provided by fracking will revive the British steel industry and enable it to produce “12,000km of high quality steel casings costing £2.3bn and 50 drilling rigs costing £1.6bn”.

What she fails to realise is that the steel infrastructure will have to be in place before any “cheap” gas can be produced to enable the British steel industry to economically manufacture the said steel products!

The not unreasonable inference being that her forecast £3.9bn will be spent on subsidised/dumped imported Chinese steel before revived British steel manufacturing gets off the ground.

Might it not be better to tackle such problems at root? Over the decades, British coal, steel, manufacturing and agriculture have all but been destroyed by the dumping of artificially priced and subsidised products – I thought there were EU laws against this.

She also turns a blind eye to the visual and aesthetic devastation fracking will cause, turning “God’s own county” into a rural industrial landscape. NIMBY yes! North Yorkshire, Ryedale and East Yorkshire are everybody’s back yard.

From: Anne Nightingale, Station Road, Helmsley.

I WRITE regarding Thirsk and Malton MP Kevin Hollinrake’s comments on fracking in the House of Commons. He yet again made large generalised sweeping statements in favour of fracking.

His empty reassurances about the industry being compatible with daily life wouldn’t be possible. How could we continue with our rural way of life, with food production, tourism and farming with the fracking industry bringing hundreds of wells, pipelines, and HGV traffic to disrupt the area?

Mr Hollinrake seems intent 
on being a self-appointed champion for the fracking industry, forging ahead to 
push this unnecessary and unwanted, dangerous industry upon both his local residents and other regions of the United Kingdom.