Thursday
Mar262015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day, hidden truths edition
Mar 26, 2015 Energy: gas Greens "Just being anti-fracking is nonsense to me and always has been. It's purely a reaction and not a positive one. Often in response to utter gibberish news stories or propaganda set off by Frack-Off and co. I am up to the eyeballs with it. They want me to add professional credence to this utter nonsense."
Antifracking campaigner Mike Hill's job application to Cuadrilla. Seriously.
Reader Comments (16)
Is anyone surprised?
Antifracking campaigners tend to be one of 3 types: I) part of the renta-crowd who do not work for a living; II) a demented celebrity with too much money and little brain, or III) those who want money no matter how sleazy it makes them.
Such is the Green Plague!
I don't believe he added any "professional credence" did he ? Just a lot of easily debunkable nonsense.
Either way it looks like a request for a job to keep quiet and lend his support to Fracking ?
Dana of Skeptical Science works for an oil company.
Mike Hill is just a simple businessman, trying to use the anti fracker's cause to build up an market for the products his company (Gemini Control & Automation) sells. By calling for more regulation, the drillers would have to buy his products to meet the regulations that he calls for. Mike Hill is also a naive useful idiot and pawn for the man who controls him. That man is Mark Mills who made his millions running Cardpoint which charged the public to use ATMs.
A bit on Mike's background on the Counting Cats blog. http://www.countingcats.com/?p=12517.
"He is obviously held in high esteem by the [anti fracking] group[s] because they seem to promote his views on fracking industry regulation and safety at every opportunity."
One can only hope that Cuadrilla refused to employ him
Had it done so, a PR story from FoE/Greenpeace/Green Blob would have appeared in due course with sufficient technical disinformation to cause Cuadrilla real PR problems
A Fifth Column sort of thing
Is there a canon of ethics for 'chartered engineers'?
That's funny. I received an email from the same Mike Hill addressed to all members of an EU JRC shake fracking task force, of which I am a participant. I had not heard of him before. Now I know more!
Perhaps I can also call myself an expert advisor to the EU Commission's JRC?
His email finishes with "Please excuse any typos I am under huge time pressure". Now I know what he means by that. He's a very busy man for the next few weeks!
It is a measure of his professionalism, that he will sell his services to the highest bidder, and put aside, his personal beliefs. Isn't prostitution noble, if the cause is personal financial greed?
Golf Charlie
The point is, surely, that to a greater or less extent we are all "prostitutes" above a certain employment level.
I sold a "cutting edge" product to the grocery trade in the late 60s. One of the majors brought out an improved version, I was made redundant when our sales flopped and I promptly went to work for the opposition.
The difference between most of us and Hill is that we retain a residual sense of morality in that you cannot in all conscience (sorry about that outdated concept!) sell yourself to both sides at once where there is a fundamental conflict of belief.
You can certainly do advertising or PR work for both sides since all you are doing is using your technical expertise with words and ideas to put the best gloss on what they believe. You don't have to believe it yourself. To be active in support of one side while at the same being prepared to work for the "enemy" if they'll pay you has all sorts of possible descriptions. Calling it prostitution is an insult to respectable prostitutes!
Mike Hill should only be praised for finding his conscience in this.
He is spot on in his description of the anti-fracking movement.
Now if we can get the equivalent to "come out" regarding the cliamte hysteria promoters- after all, they are birds of a feather and certainly not all are as conscience-free as it might appear.
The main reason these Fylde Nimby's oppose fracking is because they fear their houses will be worth less. I'd suspect the more likely scenario though would be a house price boom so they may well be shooting themselves in the foot.
Seems there is more to come on Michael Paul Hill*. http://order-order.com/2015/03/27/walter-mitty-cv-of-anti-fracking-candidate/
* He changed his name from Michael Hill to Michael Paul Hill because his twitter handle of Hill_MP is against electoral rules which stipulate that no-one can use the term MP or Member of Parliament during the election. Clever, but if his middle name is Paul, then he has broken Companies House rules which stipulate that company directors must record their full and proper name, including middle names. He hasn't used the name Paul in his directorship of Gemini Control & Automation Ltd.
Shaky
I have to say that I don't understand the anti-fracking hysteria and never have.
There are, doubtless, arguments to be made against the process, especially in built-up areas. But they seem to have less than nothing to do with the the controversy, which seems to be fuelled simply by
(a) The fact that fracking is done by large, rich engineering conglomerates and
(b) That it's called "fracking". Which sounds nasty. And a little bit like "fucking".
None of the protesters have any doubt at all that it's evil, no matter how little they know about it. I've seen diagrams that show nothing much except for a hole in the ground next to a house, and they point at that and say, "Look! Look at the damage they're causing!"
What???