Black Gold for The Midlands (Oil/Gas Fracking in Leicestershire & Newark)

Supporters of fracking will be delighted to know that Union Jack Oil have announced a major oil/gas find in North Leicestershire. Shares in the company have soared following their announcement (Daily Telegraph) that there could be as much as 5.4bn barrels of oil in place under the “PEDL 201” licence area, in which the company has a 10pc stake. This site lies between Wymeswold and melton Mowbray. Similar finds could be found in the PEDL 202 licenced site, which includes the whole village of Wymeswold.

Whilst there could be objections from Wymeswold residents, concerning the contamination of ground water, earth tremors and the 100's of lorry movements that will be needed to take the oil/gas to the M1, this is unlikely to be succesful. This is because the Coalition Government's Queen's Speech includes a new bill to take away the right of householders to object to oil/gas extraction from under their homes.

This major find also raises hopes for similar finds in Nottinghamshire, where large swathes of the County have had licences granted for oil/gas and underground coal gasification exploration. This should be a great boost to UKIP's candidate for Newark, Roger Helmer, who has strongly campaigned in favour of Fracking. Licence number PEDL 206 includes the whole town of Newark and is held by Egdon resources.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10870767/Leicestershire-shale-oil-potential-outstrips-south-east-England.html

http://frack-off.org.uk/locations/

THE END OF SECONDARY MODERN SCHOOLS

Many of you will be too young to remember the strange school system that we had 50 years ago. In those days, in the summer, all children aged 10 were required to sit a State Controlled exam. It did not matter if they had just turned 10, or the next day was their 11^th birthday, or were sick or well, all had to sit this State Controlled exam on the same day. The State also manipulated the 'pass' mark to ensure that only 1/3 'passed'. The 'failures' were told by The State that they were too stupid to be allowed a proper education. Instead of going to a proper school, they were sent to ones that had the worst buildings, the poorest facilities, and the lowest paid teachers. These 'schools' assumed that the children sent to them would never be high achievers, or get to University – so entrenched was this discrimination that they did not allow them to sit O Levels, which was the only route to post-16 education. Thankfully this iniquitous system was stopped, and between 1965 and 1975, almost of these 'schools' were turned into the same schools that the lucky 1/3 were allowed to attend. The greatest advocate of this outstanding improvement in Britain's schools was a pioneering Secretary of State for Education. Herself a product of an elite Grammar School, Margaret Thatcher closed more Secondary Moderns schools than her predecessor, Anthony Crosland. At last all children could go to Grammar Schools, and instead of the State deciding their future at the age of 10, children were empowered to reach their own level of attainment without State interference. To underline that things were changed for ever for the better, these schools were renamed Comprehensives. It is incredible that any politician who wants to be taken seriously should seek to return us to the days when the State decided that 2/3rds of our children were unfit to get a proper education at the age of 10.

Farge denies 2/3rds of children an education

Incredible - there are only 178 Grammar Schools left - the biggest cluster being in Kent -which as a direct result has one of the poorest overall educational achievement levels in the UK. How stupid can Farage get - Thatcher (his hero) led the way is closing down Grammar schools, and thus gave all children the educational opportunity prior to that given to just 30% of them. Comprehensives are the outstanding educational success story of the UK. Only UKIP would take us back to an era when 2/3rds of all kids were declared too thick at the age of 11 to be allowed to be educated. Thankfully UKIP do not have the level of popularity that they seem to think they have. This sort of daft policy is to be expected from someone who has had a privileged upbringing