Gas Fracking In Somerset

Last Tuesday evening, I fully intended to watch a football live feed of Stranraer v Glasgow Rangers.
I support Stranraer. 

However, I suddenly remembered a poster outside the Roxy Cinema  in Axbridge. They were due to screen a film about gas fracking. With a Q & A to follow.
As I was almost completely ignorant about the subject, I headed for the Roxy.

The film was very illuminating.

Here it is, put together by FrackFreeSomerset .

I regularly listen to BBC Radio 4. Shortly after the current Westminster government came to power in 2010, R4 interviewed new appointees to several ministries. All were investment bankers, fresh from the City.  I thought ... "Uh, .. new government brings in their friends .".

So I was not surprised to see, about 1 minute into this film, that the government has inserted
Pro-Fracking people into strategic departments.., Treasury, Energy and others. They are there to promote the interests of their corporate background sponsors, to ensure that day-to-day activities are in line with the promotion of gas fracking policies, and to ensure that every effort is made to ease the path of fracking.

What does astonish me is the numbers, the scale of it. 

Film is also available on DVD from FrackFreeSomerset.

Shipham Community Cinema....

I took a short trip up to Shipham Community Cinema last Friday evening. I like it there. They had Ken Loach come down a couple of years ago. He's a director at Bath City FC. The son of one the Cinema organisers was in the Bath youth team. And contact was made that way. Loach spoke, and did a  Q&A, for about an hour before they screened 'Looking For Eric'. Ken Loach worships footballers, and the opportunity to make a film with Eric Cantona was irresistible.

He spoke of learning his trade, directing plays, with the BBC. He also described how, during the Thatcher years in the 80's, he had huge difficulty in getting his work screened in the UK. At one point he had been so desperate he'd had to make a commercial for MacDonalds.

Anyway, Friday night was black comedy night. Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino. Small excerpt here, as some of the locals prepare to sort out the heroes............