Could Fracking Be The Saviour of the North?
I can remember a documentary on the BBC in probably the 1960s about how a Scottish company extracted oil from shale rock. I don’t know whether they still do. I have just found this museum to the industry and it says it closed in 1962.
According to today’s Sunday Times, there is enough shale gas in the shale deposits mostly in the north of England to last 70 years.
Now I know extracting shale gas is controversial, especially, where the process of fracking is used. There was controversy in the Blackpool are, as fracking was blamed for a couple of small earthquakes. Read about it here.
But then there was controversy, when horseless carriages first arrived on British roads and they had to be preceded by a man with a red flag.
I’m not saying there is no risk from fracking, but I do think, that with proper research fracking will be safe to use in many places in the world.
And eventually, it will be used in many places in the UK, when the problems are sorted out. After all, we mined coal for years, despite the subsidence risk nearby.
And remember that for the same amount of energy coal produces forty-percent more CO2! This is because coal is pure carbon, whereas natural gas is a mixture of Hydrogen H2 and Methane, CH4, so it produces a large proportion of water when it burns.
Hopefully, I’ll know more later in the week, when I have gone to the Geological Society of London to hear a lecture.
The other thing about shale gas in the UK, is that it is located where we need jobs; in the north of England. So it becomes a vote winner for whoever wants to play the shale gas card.
Any extraction of shale gas, should be linked to two measures.
1. A local extraction tax, that goes directly to the local authorities over the extraction. This was proposed in the seventies, by someone I knew, as a means of pursuing oil extraction in places like Surrey, which in his knowledgeable view was one of the most likely places to find oil in the UK. Imagine the fuss it would create if large quantities of oil were found under say Epsom. But if Surrey got enough money to build everything they needed, the reaction of some might be different.
2. Full insurance for any buildings damaged by extraction process.
Politicians and the press will see it as a simple black and white issue. Most will be against! I see it as a multi-coloured jigsaw, that must be based on sound technology.
I would start by setting up an well–funded Institute of Fracking, at a university that has the reputation to recruit some of the best researchers in the world. It may prove that fracking is a dead end but if it showed that it was economically viable in the UK, we would reap the benefit in spades.
I have just found this article from the American Consumer Institute. It makes a lot of interesting points. Note that the United States has a local extraction tax in some or all states and this seems to push opinion in various directions.
I think the worst thing we could do is ban fracking, with the second worst being to ignore it.
Whatever we do, because we have so much of this gas, we should set up some form of research institute.
There is also a page of expert opinion to the Qradilla report on the links between fracking and earthquakes at Blackpool.
Mums Launch Student Home Swap Scheme
It’s all here on the BBC. And their web site is here at unihomeswap.co.uk.
As it says in the article it’s just returning to how it was done in the 1960’s, except that you didn’t actually swap.
For instance in my first year at Liverpool University, I was in digs at Huyton, which was quite a long bus ride to and from the City Centre. Students may moan about their lot these days, but we had a whole different set of moans and digs a long way from the University was one of them.
These days as I wander around London, it seems most students have their own room in a modern block, somewhere near their University or College. But then they are expensive.
Even when I got into Hall for the third year of my course, it was still a long way from the University.
Incidentally, C wasn’t very lucky with the digs she shared with a girl called Sandra and had terrible trouble finding something where they could stay. In one case, the landlord wasn’t a man, any sane father would let near his daughters.
I think it’s a good idea and I wish the designers of the site well.
Oxford Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
I had to smile at this article.
At least she decided to follow in C’s footsteps and go to UCL to read law.
I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t go to a university, that is in a place, that is very similar to where you were brought up, as it doesn’t widen your mind.
Stratford’s Unwanted University
It has been announced that University College London is exploring the possibility of creating an additional campus at Newham, just to the east of the Olympic Park.
You’d have thought that this would have been welcomed by the people of the area. But according to a piece on BBC Breakfast this morning, the residents are against the plans. There’s a video here.
We need jobs and I suspect that those who will be moved, will get a new house, so surely this is a good plan. Or is it just the BBC saying that all development is bad.
I suspect if UCL were to build another campus in China or Malaysia, they’d be welcomed with open arms. And cheque-books too!
Now Is The Time For All The Good To Come To The Aid of Universities
A friend and I recently gave some money to Liverpool University for pancreatic cancer research.
What we hadn’t realised was that as Liverpool University is in tier three of the government’s Matched Funding Scheme, this means that they add one pound for every three pounds raised. So if you say give £100, which with Gift Aid is actually £125 to the University, another £42 will be added. There are conditions and not all universities get a one to three topup.
Full details of the scheme are detailed here.
The scheme ends in July 2011, so if you are thinking about giving some money to a University, perhaps now is the time to do it!
A Sign on a Lift
I found this sign by the lifts in the Electrical Engineering building mildly funny.
A Sign on a Lift
I know what it means, but I suspect it does raise a chuckle with many.
Incidentally, these lifts were a butt of a lot of humour, when I was a student as they were always getting stuck. In one case they became a story about Liverpool University’s space program using a lift, launched from Cape Dingle.
UKAS Visit Day
Yesterday, as I walked up Brownlow Hill to the University. I saw this sign outside the Victoria Building.
UKAS Visit Day at Liverpool University
It was all so different, when I went in 1965. I was accepted by the university with no interview and the first time I went to the city was the day I arrived by train after a four and a half hour train journey from London and had to haul my heavy suitcase up the hill to get a bus to my digs.
Yesterday, as I did the same walk, I reflected on how far I’d come in those 46 years. The Catholic Cathedral was now of course finished and new buildings were lining Brownlow Hill.
And there was a welcoming notice on the doors of the Electrical Engineering building!
Welcome Sign
I liked that! C would have been proud.
Ken Dodd and Bessie Braddock
Lime Street station hosts one of the more unusual street sculptures in the UK on the station concourse. It commemorates two local heroes; Ken Dodd and Bessie Braddock.
Ken Dodd and Bessie Braddock
I have never seen Ken Dodd perform, although if I’d gone to university a year earlier, I would have seen his legendary performance at the Students Union in Panto Week, where he told jokes for several hours. Panto Week was a uniquely Liverpool University name for their Rag Week. It was so named because the students used to block book the last night of the pantomine in the Liverpool Empire. That tradition had died out before I went to the University, but it was still part of University life and raised money for charity. There is an account of Panto Week in 1936 here.
Back To The Sixties
In 1965 when I went to Liverpool University, the Electrical Engineering and Electronics building was brand new.
It appears to have worn reasonably well and is just how I remember it all those years ago. So bits have been replaced and it’s been redecorated, but it is a real credit to its creators, which you can’t say for many of the buildings of the time.
It’s still contains all the original prints too. Some of which I seem to remember.
However the infamous legend by one painting has been removed. It had been beautifully typed and framed and said something like. “Unfortunately, we were unable to afford a painting by this artist. ut he was kind enough to sell us the rag on which he wiped his brushes!”
After the lecture, we retired to one of the staff’s room and I was pleased to see that he still had a genuine blackboard with real chalk on the wall.
How civilised!
The Lecture
I wouldn’t really think it would be a good idea to judge myself on how my lecture went this lunchtime.
I did however enjoy it and I was able to do it direct from this blog. I think that it would have been better with a more presentation oriented theme.
In some ways though it was strange to be lecturing in a theatre, were I’d perhaps listened to upwards of a couple of hundred lectures. And to the biggest audience, I ever have!
The Anonymous Widower 