"IT is only when you check the prices for train travel that you begin to feel that Yorkshire is at the end of the world.

The idea of a cheeky museum trip to London on the first Wednesday of January was soon squashed.

As I typed in my destination into the booking website, I could see the pound signs whirring.

Staggeringly, an open return to King’s Cross from Whitby would set me back £313.00p..."

"Private rail companies are crippling the country and should be stopped. Trains should run for people and not for profit. It is now time to renationalise the train industry for the benefit of passengers and not foreign shareholders hell bent on twisting the cash out of British workers. It may have once been called British Rail, but trains are now provided by companies from Germany, France, Holland and Italy.

Passengers will only get cheaper fares when the railways are back in public ownership and not in the control of foreign, faceless multi-national companies."

Erm ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prZ4m1qgvLk

One for the Bird Box ;-?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozie3crHHVs

Vesuvius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLpoeUKjvzo

"AN intense battle over how much protection communities should be granted from exposure to fracking operations has resumed.

Amid tight security in a packed council chamber at County Hall, lawyers lined up alongside shale gas companies, including Ineos, Cuadrilla and Third Energy, green energy campaigners, residents and planning authorities to debate the county’s proposed mineral extraction policies.

Since North Yorkshire’s minerals and waste plan was examined in public last April, the Government has issued a ministerial statement on shale gas and the hearing was reopened for two days to examine whether the Whitehall guidance would impact on plan developed jointly by North Yorkshire and City of York councils and the North York Moors National Park Authority.

The key issue facing the hearing followed the Government statement that planners should not set thresholds or have areas within their minerals extraction plans that unjustifiably restrict shale gas development, while the county’s proposed plan had set out a 500m buffer zone between shale gas developments and homes and other sensitive buildings, such as hospitals and schools.

The hearing, the conclusions of which could shape planning policy on fracking across the UK, saw industry representatives show an interactive map of what the impact of the 500m buffer zone would be...

They said there was no justification for the buffer zones and the 500m limit that had been set was arbitrary.

Campaigners and the planning authorities told examiner Elizabeth Ord that the claims the proposed minerals policy would create “no-go areas” were nonsense.

Speaking outside the hearing, Chris France, planning director for the national park, around which a 3.5km buffer zone has been proposed, said: “We’re saying that when an energy firm is within 500m of where somebody lives they’re going to have to increase the mitigation measures to stop that development impacting on that property.”

The planning authorities said firms could laterally frack and site surface developments outside the buffer zone and still access the gas under people’s houses from 2.5km away.

The hearing also featured lengthy debate between acoustics experts over the impact of noise at different distances.

Energy firms said they could fully mitigate against noise and showed the hearing a photograph of a gas rig close to a house, but separated by a stack of shipping containers.

Mr France said: “It clearly would reduce the noise, but you have still got shipping containers bang next door to where somebody lives. The mitigation in itself can have a harmful amenity impact.”

After speaking at the hearing, Mayor of Malton Councillor Paul Andrews added the 500m buffer zones were essential to “balance the interests of residents against those of the industry, because the industry want to build multi-acre fracking sites right up to the fences of anybody’s and everybody’s back yard”.

He added: “Five hundred metres is not far enough, it should be a mile..."

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/17386142.battle-resumes-over-frac...

http://pygs.lyellcollection.org/content/34/1/1

https://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/17385760.bbc-countryfile-to-explore...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDkVS-AN4NU

“They are playing politics with the future of the country. We have a non-existent energy strategy and are heading towards an energy crisis that will do long term and irreparable damage to the economy and the government needs to decide whether they are finally going to put the country first and develop a workable UK onshore gas industry,” said Ratcliffe.."

"In a statement issued on Monday, Ineos attacked the government for setting the limit at 0.5, which it called “a level that has no sound basis in science and betrays a total lack of understanding of the shale extraction process”.

"The firm pointed to other countries that have much more relaxed rules on seismicity and fracking. But the UK government has repeatedly said that one of the virtues of a UK shale gas industry is that it would be tightly and robustly regulated.

Tom Pickering, chief operating officer of Ineos Shale, said he “would not speculate” on whether the company would scrap its fracking plans if seismic rules are not reviewed. But he said: “What we are saying is the time is now. We really do need to get clarity.”

The company has spent more than £150m on shale gas plans so far, and its fracking arm employs has 10 staff.

Ineos claimed the government was “shutting down shale by the back door” and branded the planning regime “archaic, glacially slow, inordinately expensive and virtually unworkable”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/04/ineos-chairman-jim-r...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUY-TCOWsS4

https://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/farmingnews/17382115.column-dont-rush-ba...

"Geometric modelling shows the ancient extinct cousins of modern kangaroos could use the same range of gaits as living kangaroos."

'Special place in hell for Brexiteers without a plan'

"It's one of the most biologically weird and wonderful animals you're likely to find."

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-latest-lucifer-would-not...

"The truth is, no one really knows what caused the death of the birds. We can only assume and speculate until there is a hard proof that confirms that the 5G network experiments are to blame. Until then, people will continue to come up with all sorts of claims and conspiracies."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47150658

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-02-07/police-use-phone-cracking...

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Se...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47166938

"The Amazon boss didn't try to hide the potential for embarrassment, writing "of course I don't want personal photos published" and noting what he called "AMI's long-earned reputation for weaponising journalistic privileges".

"But," he continued, "I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favours, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out."

His blog contained itemised details of 10 pictures in an email from the magazine's editor Dylan Howard, who said they had been "obtained during our newsgathering".

Modern Britain ;-/

"If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” Bezos asked."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/09/jeff-bezos-trump-nati...