Join us for a two-day event to explore how we can move away from an obsession with economic growth to a growth in wellbeing. Inspiring speakers and entertainment on the Saturday will be followed by an action-oriented day of workshops on Sunday.

Day One – 11 October 2014
A day of speeches, music, dance and poetry to explore personal, social and planetary wellbeing.

Speakers and artists include:
Love, family and wellbeing
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Journalist and author

Human wellbeing depends on wellbeing of the earth
Craig Bennett, Friends of the Earth

Sounds of wellbeing
Brina – Singer

Work: does it promote wellbeing?
Dame Carol Black – Principal of Newnham College Cambridge, Chair of the Nuffield Trust

The Healing Soil
Monty Don – TV presenter, writer and president of the Soil Association

Inequality – an obstacle to wellbeing
Mark Goldring – Chief executive of Oxfam

The City of the Future
Leo Johnson – Co-Founder of Sustainable Finance Ltd

Empathy and the Revolution of Wellbeing
Roman Krznarik – cultural thinker and founding faculty member of The School of Life. Author of ‘Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution.

Triple wellbeing: Soil, soul, society
Satish Kumar – Editor-in-Chief, Resurgence & Ecologist

Poetry for wellbeing
Pascale Petit, Poet

Resurgence of Wellbeing
James Sainsbury – Chairman of The Resurgence Trust

The Science of Wellbeing
Rupert Sheldrake – Author of Science Delusion and biologist.

Seeds of wellbeing
Vandana Shiva – environmental thinker, activist, physicist and feminist

Practical action for a happier society
Mark Williamson – Director of Action for Happiness


Day Two – 12 October 2014
A day of interactive workshop is hosted by UnLtd, Foundation for social entrepreneurs whose vision is a world in which people act to make it better. UnLtd has supported people to transform the communities in which they live for ten years and is the leading provider of support for social entrepreneurs.

On this day participants will explore the way forward to bring about Wellbeing on personal, social and environmental spheres.
 
We need to change habits and mind-sets as well as business practice, policy and our entire system to create the shift form a financial growth focused model to a wellbeing and ecologically sustainable model. After the first day of listening to speakers from the world of social economics, happiness, journalism and other practitioners of the new economy we are designing a day for YOU to get involved. We all have skills, expertise, passion and drive to influence our communities for the better.

During the second day we will bring people together in smaller groups, explore our passions and how we can take action. We will explore the theme of social entrepreneurship and social innovation and harness what you could potentially take with you into your life and help you get clearer about the difference you want to make. The day will be facilitated by experienced wellbeing social entrepreneurs and Satish Kumar.
 
The Festival of Wellbeing on 11th October will take place at Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH. Liverpool St Tube.

The Interactive Workshop on Wellbeing on 12th October will take place at Unltd head office. 123 Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8JJ. Barbican or Old St Tube.

Sponsors: Network of Wellbeing, Pukka Herbs, Neal’s Yard Remedies
Supporters: Permaculture, Friends of the Earth, Action for Happiness, Network Review, Oxfam, Positive News, Alternatives, New Internationalist, Soil Association, Red Pepper, St Elthelburga’s Centre.

Tickets: £45 individual/£35 concessions    
£15 Indian vegetarian lunch (11 October only)

Book your ticket
Telephone: 01237 441293
Send a cheque payable to The Resurgence Trust to: Resurgence & Ecologist, Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon, EX39 6EE
Online: www.resurgence.org/wellbeing

One of the very first big pieces of research that Forum for the Future conducted was for BP in the late 1990s, looking at the prospects for the growth of solar PV in the UK; BP had its own solar business in those days. Prospects were good, we argued, just depending on the speed with which costs in manufacturing PV could be reduced and average efficiencies in the solar cells themselves increased. I’m sorry to say that our report made little impact, and BP axed its solar business just as soon as it could.

Since then, as we all know, costs of solar PV have plummeted, primarily because of Chinese manufacturers driving them down. Efficiencies (in converting that solar radiation into electricity) have also improved, though much more slowly. More importantly, costs are continuing to come down by an astonishing 6–8% per annum. Most experts in the industry believe that this will continue for quite some time to come, as will be the case with the inverters and other bits of kit associated with any PV installation, be that roof-mounted, ground-mounted, embedded in building materials (roofing tiles, cladding, and so on), grid-connected or off-grid.

Solar energy brings instant benefits
So let’s cut to the quick here: the Solar Revolution that has been talked about for so long is with us here and now. It’s not ‘for the future’, or ‘just over the horizon’: it’s our reality today – which explains a new-found sense of excitement about the global implications of this technology-driven transition.

All sorts of mainstream organisation (such as the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, as well as various UN agencies) are now talking up the prospects for solar, especially for the hundreds of millions of people who are not connected to the grid. Policy think tanks are increasingly interested in modelling the potential impact of this transition on all sorts of bigger economic, social and cultural agendas. Could capitalism itself – eventually – be transformed?

What makes this so compelling is the universality of the benign impacts of mass solar roll-outs, both in the rich world and in developing and emerging countries. It’s impossible not to be moved by the instant, dramatic improvements in the lives of some of the world’s poorest people: light where there was once darkness; refrigerated vaccines where there was once death and disease; access to markets (via solar mobiles) where there was once ignorance and poverty.

Most governments just don’t get it
But it’s a big deal too in the rich world. I had a chance to see this at this year’s Large-Scale Solar Conference in the UK. From a standing start, 4,000MW of ground-mounted PV has been installed over the last couple of years, with the strong support of both farmers and local authorities – an 81% success rate on planning applications shows just how acceptable this particular form of renewables has become. And there’s every prospect of this growing to 20,000MW within a few years.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, as ever, it’s not quite as easy as that. The biggest threat to this unfolding revolution is ineffective, backward-looking and increasingly dysfunctional policymaking by governments. Most governments – even now – just don’t get it, and most politicians (particularly here in the UK) still see solar power as ‘a nice little niche’ to distract people’s attention from the still grim reality of their dependency on fossil fuels.

Fracking jeopardizes investment in renewables
That continuing collective idiocy has been compounded by the fracking fantasy that is now sweeping the world – even to the extent of some companies describing fracked gas as “renewables-lite”! There’s no doubt that, as a less carbon-intensive source of energy than both coal and oil, gas can help reduce overall greenhouse-gas emissions, especially where it helps to kill off coal – but, sadly, that’s not what’s happening.

More often than not, fracked gas comes on stream in addition to coal, not as an alternative to it. And that’s already jeopardising both the speed and the scale of new investments in renewables – at exactly the time where the rate of uptake is making even the most sceptical investor sit up and open up those fossilised brain circuits. I can pretty much guarantee that the following data points (from the USA) will be unknown to all but a tiny minority of Resurgence & Ecologist readers:

•    Wind and solar provided 80.9% of new installed US electricity-generating capacity for February 2014.
•    For the first two months of 2014, renewable energy (biomass, geothermal, solar, water and wind) accounted for 91.9% of the 568MW of new electricity-generating capacity installed.
•    Coal, oil and nuclear provided none, while natural gas and 1MW of ‘other’ provided the balance.
(My thanks to Ben Adler of Grist for directing my attention to those figures from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.)

Don’t panic – the transition to renewables will happen
So we shouldn’t panic. In the worst of all worlds, a short-lived, over-hyped fracking bubble will just slow the transition to solar and other renewables. That transition will still happen – though from the perspective of accelerating climate change, it is of course a big deal whether it happens in the next 5 years or the next 15 years. As costs fall and efficiencies rise, some of those much-touted laws of competitive markets will eventually kick in. It’s not necessarily governments, fixated as they still are on fossil fuels, that will call the shots. It’s more likely to be capital markets.

Subsidy-free solar will reshape the energy system
And there are all sorts of positive signals here. Back in May, Barclays downgraded the bond market for the whole electricity sector in the USA on the grounds that over the next few years all electric utilities will be threatened by “a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and residential-scale power storage”. Paul Barwell, the Chief Executive of the UK’s Solar Trade Association, said at the time: “In the USA, the penny has dropped. We are up for the challenge of ‘properly costed’ policy, based on fact, not emotion. The simple fact is that with stable, logical policies, solar should be competing with fossil fuels by the end of this decade. When it does, subsidy-free solar will fundamentally reshape the energy system.”

Paul is being appropriately conservative here. The truth is that solar PV is already competing with fossil fuels in many countries – especially when you take account of the insane subsidies that fossil fuels still receive. This all-important indicator continues to move in the right direction year on year.

Companies like BP once had a chance to be on the right side of this historic, destiny-driving divide. Unfortunately, BP made the wrong choice, and to all intents and purposes, it is now dead in the water.

And, frankly, as one amongst many who tried hard to point to the extra‑ordinary significance of that decision, all I can say is good riddance.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. His latest book is The World We Made (Phaidon). www.forumforthefuture.org

Back in May, there were council elections in Oxford. In the Carfax ward, the former Labour council leader, Alex Hollingsworth stood. He lost narrowly to the Green candidate, Ruthi Brandt.

A couple of months later, a by-election was triggered. Each Oxford ward has two councillors, and there are elections for one of them every two years. The other councillor in the ward, Ann-Marie Canning, announced she was standing down.

Ann Marie had moved to London for a job soon after she’d been elected in 2012, and was finding it hard to do both jobs.

Elections timed for electoral advantage at public expense

Usually, it’s frowned upon to trigger a by-election immediately after there’s been a city-wide election, as it costs extra resources and it’s easier for everyone just to elect both seats for the ward on the same day.

But Oxford Labour have done it three times this summer. They know it’s easier to hold by-elections than to hold seats during the city-wide vote because they can pour resources in from across the county and beat the various smaller parties they have to contend with in each area.

Since Greens won the Carfax seat up in May, it seems likely they’d have got two, had both been contested then. Up against the whole Labour machine, it’s harder.

This case is more shocking though. Carfax is a funny kind of a ward. Fully 60% of the people who live there are students living in their Oxford colleges – and are unable to be present outside term time.

No public mandate at all

In a move clearly planned for many months by Labour, Ann-Marie announced her resignation at exactly the right moment to ensure that the by-election would be held at a time when students weren’t there.

She and the Oxford Labour Party connived to ensure that the majority of voters in the ward would be disenfranchised. Oxford students tend to vote Green. The non-students in the ward lean to Labour.

Not surprisingly, therefore, among the 40% of the voters who remained, Labour won. Or rather, among the 8.6% of the electorate who voted. 8.6% is apparently the lowest turnout in British electoral history. It provides no mandate at all.

Hollingsworth should refuse to take up his seat, and the by-election should be held again. If it was, Hollingsworth could well win again.

But he won’t stand down. He’ll instead claim to represent an electorate his party actively chose to disenfranchise, and vote in their name on issues which affect them.

Adam Ramsay is the Co-Editor of OurKingdom  on Open Democracy, and also works with Bright Green. Before, he was a full time campaigner with People & Planet. His e-book ‘42 Reasons to Support Scottish Independence’ is now available.

Adam also contested Oxford’s Carfax seat for the Green Party in 2012, taking second place to Ann-Marie Canning.

This article was originally published on Bright Green.

A study, commissioned by Greenpeace, found three in four (74%) people worldwide support the creation of a protected sanctuary in the international waters surrounding the North Pole.

In the UK, this rises to nearly four in five (78%). The single country giving the strongest backing was Argentina, with 80%.

Currently only 1.5% of the Arctic Ocean is protected – less than any of the world’s oceans.

In the past two months, more than 900 influential people have signed Greenpeace’s Arctic Declaration, calling for a sanctuary around the High Arctic, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Emma Thompson, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Paul McCartney and many UK political figures.

In the coming weeks, delegations lead by Greenpeace will present these demands along with the list of signatories to the embassies of Arctic States all over the world.

Governments are letting us down!

Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, said: “Unfortunately our governments are massively failing in their responsibility to protect our environment and our climate for our children’s future.

“But today, our leaders have received a strong signal that the public appetite for action on the Arctic is overwhelming and must no longer be ignored. Our leaders now have both the mandate and the opportunity to act for the health of the climate and the Arctic. The world is watching and demanding action.” 

To coincide with the release of this new study, climbers and mountaineers are climbing iconic mountain peaks and buildings all over the world throughout the day, to demand that governments respond to the global outcry to make the creation of a protected Arctic Sanctuary a top priority.

Highs and lows

All 30 countries polled show that the vast majority of people either support or strongly support the creation of an Arctic Sanctuary.

The strongest support for protection came from Argentina, Italy, India and South Africa, but also Arctic states like the USA and Canada went above the global average with approximately 80% in favour.

The lowest support for Arctic conservation came from Japan and Russia, where 51% and 45% of people throught the Arctic should be opened up to oil companies and other heavy industries – yet both countries still supported an Arctic Sanctuary by a decisive margin.

But despite supporting an Arctic Sanctuary by a good margin, Japanese opinion was almost equally split on whether “Oil drilling, oil transport, and industrial-scale fishing should be banned in the international waters of the Arctic Ocean around the North Pole.”

The biggest surprise came in the high level of trust expressed in oil companies’ ability to clean up spills. A astonishing 51% worldwide agreed with the proposition that “I trust that the oil companies have the necessary capacity and technology to clean up a major oil spill in the Arctic.”

• Poll results.

A $4.9bn diamond mine opens tomorrow in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the ancestral land of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen – exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were “no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve.”

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen – in 1997, 2002 and 2005 – were due to the rich diamond deposits.

It justified the Bushmen’s evictions from the land in the name of “conservation”.

In 2000, however, Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper that the relocation of Bushmen communities from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve “is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine.”

And in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International: “Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

The mine opening has also exposed Botswana’s commitment to conservation as window dressing. The government falsely claims that the Bushmen’s presence in the reserve is “incompatible with wildlife conservation” – while allowing a diamond mine and fracking exploration to go ahead.

Khama’s government has also been heavily promoting tourism to the CKGR while driving the Bushmen off their land.

Half the CKGR opened up to fracking

Botswana has opened up large parts of the CKGRto international companies for fracking, it was revealed last year in the documentary film ‘The High Cost of Cheap Gas‘.

A leaked map shows that exploration concessions cover half of the CKGR – a reserve larger than Switzerland – raising fears of land grabbing, a drop in water levels, water pollution and irreparable damage to a fragile ecosystem essential for the survival of the Bushmen and the reserve’s wildlife.

Licenses have been granted to Australian Tlou Energy and African Coal and Gas Corporation, without consulting the Bushmen.

While Botswana’s government has denied any fracking in Botswana, Tlou has already started drilling exploratory wells for coalbed methane on the traditional hunting territory of the Bushmen.

CKGR Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone said: “The government is doing everything it can to try to destroy us … Fracking is going to destroy our environment and if the environment is destroyed our livelihoods are too.”

Hypocrisy personified: Botswana’s President Ian Khama

Botswana’s dash to develop extractive industries in the Kalahari, and its abuses the the indigenous Bushmen, are plenty bad enough in their own right.

But adding insult to injury, Botswana’s President Ian Khama is widely feted as a great conservationist. In 2010, the UK’s Princes William and Harry paid Khama a visit in Botswana in support of the Tusk Trust, which supports various African conservation projects.

And Khama is a board member of Conservation International, the US-based NGO. CI and other conservation organizations have heralded Khama’s conservation efforts – while remaining silent on the persecution of the Bushmen and mining and fracking in the CKGR.

A Bushman whose family was evicted told Survival, “This week President Khama will open a mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Do those organizations who have been awarding President Khama for his work with the flora and fauna still believe he is a good example to the world?

“The residents of the Reserve are not benefitting anything from the mine. The only benefits go to communities living outside the reserve, while our natural resources are being destroyed. We strongly oppose the opening of the mine until the government and Gem Diamonds sit down with us and tell us what we will benefit from the mine.”

‘Poaching’ on their own land

The government continues its relentless push to drive the Bushmen out of the reserve by accusing them of “poaching” because they hunt their food.

The Bushmen face arrest, beatings and torture, while fee-paying big game hunters are encouraged. The government has also refused to reopen the Bushmen’s water wells, restricted their free movement into and out of the reserve, and barred their lawyer from entering the country.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “When the Bushmen were illegally evicted from their ancestral homelands in the name of ‘conservation’, Survival cried foul play – both we and the Bushmen believed that, in fact, diamond mining was the real motivation for kicking the tribe off their territory.

“Forced evictions of Bushmen from the CKGR have nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with paving the way for extractive industries to plunder Bushman land. Why does President Khama continue to receive prizes for his ‘conservation’ efforts?

“It’s an absolute scandal that Conservation International accepts on its board a man who has opened up the world’s second biggest wildlife reserve to fracking, whilst persecuting the Bushmen whose home it is in the name of conservation.”

Diamond mine timeline

Early 1980s – A diamond deposit is discovered in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve within the territory of the Bushman community of Gope.

12 October 1986 – Botswana’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr Moutlakgola Nwako, announces the government’s decision to relocate the Bushmen.

1996 – A formal evaluation of the mine is completed.

May 1997 – First evictions of Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve take place.

1997 – Anglo American drills two exploratory holes in the reserve.

31 August 1997 – Anglo American (the majority shareholder in diamond company De Beers) “denied any knowledge of its activities within the reserve” to South African paper ‘Sunday Independent’.

1999 – Mineral exploration camps are set up a few miles from the Bushman community of Molapo.

July 2000 – Botswana’s ‘Midweek Sun’ reports that Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs, Boometswe Mokgothu, told Ghanzi District Council that “the relocation of Basarwa (Bushman) communities from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine.”

2001 – In its draft management plan for the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana’s Government Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) writes, “DWNP should continue to point out that mining is incompatible with the Game Reserve’s objectives.”

2002 – Bushmen tell Survival, “Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

2002 – A second wave of Bushman evictions from the reserve. The Bushmen’s water borehole is destroyed.

7 November 2002 – President Festus Mogae claims, “the program of assisted relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) from areas of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve … was in no way related to any plan, real or fictitious, to commence diamond mining in the reserve.”

2004 – The Botswana government releases a statement which claims: “There is no mining nor any plans for future mining anywhere inside the CKGR as the only known mineral discovery in the CKGR, the Gope deposit, has proven not commercially viable to develop the mine.”

2005 – Third wave of Bushman evictions from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

2006 – The Bushmen win their historic case against the government. High Court Judge Justice Dow states that the Bushmen were evicted “forcibly, unlawfully and without their consent.”

May 2007 – De Beers sells its deposit at Gope to Gem Diamonds, for $34 million. Gem Diamonds’ chief executive calls the Gope deposit “a problematic asset for De Beers” because of the Bushman campaign.

5 September 2014 – Gem Diamonds’ official opening of the Ghaghoo (formerly Gope) mine worth an estimated $4.9 billion. The mine lies within the territory of the Gope Bushmen and just 3.2 kilometers from their community in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Principal source: Survival International.

A reader of the Daily Telegraph saw red on reading an ad by Breitling Energy Corporation – one the the US’s biggest frackers – making big promises about the benefits of fracking in the UK.

Now their complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has been upheld on all six counts, as the ad is ruled to be making claims that are at the same time misleading, unsubstantiated and exaggerated.

“Dear Citizens of the United Kingdom”, the ad began. “Do you know that your country is blessed with an incredible gift? It’s shale gas – natural gas trapped in layers of shale rock deep below the surface of the earth …

“The British Geological Survey has recently released new shale gas estimates considerably higher than former estimates. This is fantastic news for the UK – especially in the wake of a near-catastrophic gas shortage last winter …

“This means: Decades worth of natural gas … Millions of pounds in tax revenues to support social and other government programs … Freedom from interruptions and stoppages as a result of Russia’s political games with your gas supply … Lowering energy prices for millions … Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by replacing coal with natural gas for energy … “

But not a single claim held water!

But now its claims have been ruled out of order. The complainant set out the following issues, all of which were upheld following the ASA’s painstaking research:

Claim 1: “a near-catastrophic gas shortage last winter” – false because it exaggerated the severity of the shortage.

ASA: “We considered that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the UK had been in real danger of running out of gas, and therefore that the reference to a ‘near-catastrophic’ shortage was misleading.”

Claim 2: “This means … decades worth of natural gas” – false because the amount of natural gas in the UK, and the economic viability of extracting it, was not yet known.

ASA: “Because the report related to shale gas resources only and not reserves, and because we understood that informed opinion was at best divided as to the likely recovery factor of those resources, we concluded that the claim was misleading.”

Claim 3: “This means … Millions of pounds in tax revenues” – false because the amount of natural gas in the UK, and the economic viability of extracting it, was not yet known.

ASA: “We considered that it was not possible definitively to calculate the likely tax revenues resulting from the resources identified by the BGS report … We therefore concluded that the claim was misleading.”

Claim 4: “interruptions and stoppages as a result of Russia’s political games with your gas supply”, because Russia did not supply gas to the UK and had never interrupted the UK’s gas supply.

ASA: “the claim … exaggerated the outcome of the 2009 Russia-Ukraine dispute for the UK and misled as to both the direct intent of Russia’s actions and the probability of future similar events causing interruptions or shortages in the UK.”

Claim 5: “This means … Lowering energy prices for millions” – false because the amount of natural gas in the UK, and the economic viability of extracting it, was not yet known, and that in any case domestic extraction would have minimal impact on energy prices because the UK was part of an integrated European gas market.

ASA: “Whilst we acknowledged the view expressed by David Cameron that fracking in the UK had ‘real potential’ to drive down energy bills, we noted that that view was contingent upon a number of assumptions as to the size of UK shale gas reserves and the scale upon which extraction would be adopted, and were concerned in any case that the press article did not constitute robust documentary evidence in support of the claim.”

Claim 6: “This means … Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by replacing coal with natural gas for energy” – false because there were no reliable estimates for the carbon footprint of shale gas extraction, that extraction carried the risk of methane emissions, which if unburnt was more harmful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and that there was no certainty that gas would be used instead of, rather than in addition to, coal.

ASA: “it was not certain that the development of UK shale gas resources would lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions where that happened alongside a concurrent reduction in the use of coal for energy. We also considered that the wording ‘by replacing coal with natural gas for energy’ implied that shale gas would be used instead of coal, when that was only one of several scenarios including an additional energy source to meet increased future demand.”

A final telling off

In conclusion, the ASA admonished the Dallas, Texas based Breitling, “The claims must not appear again in their current form.

“We told Breitling Energy Corporation to ensure that they held robust documentary evidence in support of claims likely to be regarded as objective and that were capable of objective substantiation, that matters of opinion were not presented as objective claims, and that their future ads did not suggest that their claims were universally accepted if a significant division of informed or scientific opinion existed.”

Friends of the Earth energy campaigner Tony Bosworth commented: “Supporters of fracking claim that their opponents peddle myth and misinformation, but this verdict and a previous ASA decision against Cuadrilla for their ‘misleading advertising’, is a damning indictment of fracking industry spin.”

But most remarkable is that Breitling’s claims coincide precisely with those made by David Cameron, the UK’s pro-fracking Prime minister, his equally pro-fracking Chancellor, David Osborne, and other Cabinet members.

Now that the claims they make at every opportunity have been subject to exhaustive scrutiny and found to be simultaneously misleading, unsubstantiated and exaggerated, will they change their tune?