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Tuesday 24 May 2016

188. Pursuit of Profit is a Terminal Illness


#Save Druridge Bay
R.I.P Kirby Misperton
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POP (Pursuit of Profit) – is the deadliest carcinogen on the planet. Sadly, the profit motive has never had such necromantic energy. Pursuit of Profit is a disease out of control; a bigger killer than cancer. It is more terrifying than terrorism and as destructive as war.

Why is open cast mining, in environmentally sensitive areas such as Druridge Bay on any agenda in 2016? How, yesterday, did fracking get approval in North Yorkshire?

When did the lunatics take over the asylum?

No, I am not talking about third world countries or places that British Prime Minister Cameron sneeringly refers to as “fantastically corrupt”. I am referring to the UK. Specifically, a beautiful pocket of British NE coastline called Druridge Bay.

If I showed you a puppy in a basket and told you to stamp on it till it was dead, you would think I was mad. If I excused the act on the premise of profit and short-term gain you would say I was worse than mad. But companies such as Banks Mining, with their eye on Druridge Bay and Third Energy who just persuaded the Neanderthals on North Yorkshire council to approve fracking at Kirby Misperton are doing this but on a huge scale.  

Ok wildlife and the creatures living in these precious eco-systems don’t get dressed up in human clothes and appear in moronic youtube videos but actually they are far more important to the planet than puppies falling asleep with babies and kittens tumbling hilariously of sofas.

Plus, the stuff produced as a result of the proposed environmental vandalism kills us. Why does Pursuit of Profit snuff out common sense?

I was at Western General Hospital last Friday morning for a cardio check. (My heart is probably just broken by the litany of global misery). I saw a young woman struggling with the electronic exit doors. She was in a wheelchair, hooked up to a mobile IV unit, desperate to get outside for a cigarette. It was a perfect analogy for the state of the planet and this government is aiding and abetting self destruction.

Here in the UK – despite minor earth tremors during the previous fracking ‘experiments’ a little way off in Lancashire – Yorkshire council approved fracking yesterday.

This government even welcomed French company Total into the UK shale gas frenzy. Ironic. Fracking is banned in France and other more forward thinking EU countries (see blog 142. Fracking Fraud).

As technological advances allow deeper sea investigation, we find that human rubbish and toxins got to The Deep before us. We’re destroying places we haven’t even explored.

You have to be a Profit Zombie not to acknowledge the problems of Eco Vandalism.

Here in the UK the press love nothing better than a story about how science is going to provide the answers to all global crises. No one runs big stories about how the most effective answer is to waste less, use less and create less pollution. Stop consuming like human locusts.

So - I heard from old friends that Druridge Bay in Northumberland, where I used to live, is under threat from open cast mining. Druridge Bay is a breathtakingly beautiful part of the NE coast, relatively untroubled by heavy-foot tourism. But Banks Mining cannot see wildlife, nor beauty, nor a precious natural haven but PROFIT. They are POP zombies.

Now – like a weird prophetess of old (and possibly as mad and as unpopular) I wrote about an identical scenario in a piece that was first penned well over a decade ago. It may have to come under the heading of another unhappy brown girl premonition / prediction like the 2015 election results (see blog 135. Kim Kardashian & Ed Miliband – I TOLD you...)

After years of re-writes I posted the eco story, Casey and the Surfmen as an audio free-to-listen on bandcamp in 2014 and toured the story round schools and libraries here in Edinburgh.  

Inspired by the very part of the Northumberland coast now under threat, part 1. of Casey and the Surfmen depicts an excavated, ravaged coastland and environmental devastation – exactly like the plans for Druridge Bay. Part 2. portrays an heroic grassroots campaign to defeat ‘the digger men’. I’m not joking (spooky noises in background as I type). Check out

The planet is in a wheelchair attached to a life support machine and we are still doing the global ecological equivalent of smoking – because somewhere someone is making bad profit out of bad habits.

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The grass roots campaign to save Druridge Bay can be found at
http://www.savedruridge.co.uk/